PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

October 2015

The Making of the Historia scholastica, 1150–1200

Studies and Texts 198; Mediaeval Law and Theology 7. xvi + 322 pp. • 2015 • ISBN 978-0-88844-198-0 • Cloth • $95

In the theological landscape of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica stands out as a conspicuous yet strangely overlooked landmark. Like the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the History towers over the early scholastic period, and it was the extraordinary success of these twin towers that ensured the joint ascendancy of the reputations of the two masters. Indeed, we find one medieval writer after another testifying to the greatness of the man whose nickname had become synonymous with a voracious appetite for knowledge, and the encyclopedic work whose extraordinary dissemination and influence over several centuries made it the medieval popular Bible.

July 2015

Symeon of Thessalonika. The Liturgical Commentaries

ST 168. 2011. viii, 302 pp.

New in Paperback (2015): ISBN 978-0-88844-423-3 • $42.00
Casebound: ISBN 978-0-88844-168-3 • $90.00

This volume contains an edition and facing English translation of Explanation of the Divine Temple and “On the Sacred Liturgy,” the two commentaries on the pontifical (hierarchal) Byzantine Divine Liturgy by St. Symeon of Thessalonika (†1429).

June 2015

Art of Documentation: Documents and Visual Culture in Medieval England

Studies and Texts 194; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 2. xviii, 242 pp. 147 colour and b&w images • 2015 • 8x10 in. • ISBN 978-0-88844-194-2 • Cloth • $100

The later Middle Ages was a time of profound connection between the spheres of bureaucracy and art. By discussing the two together, this book argues that art-historical methods offer an important contribution to diplomatics, and that works of art are important sources for the cultural reception of documentary practices. Documents are also an important model for representation, and an understanding of the paradigmatic role of the document suggests alternative dimensions to the interpretation of late-medieval art.

June 2015

Monk-Bishops and the English Benedictine Reform Movement

Reading London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii in Its Manuscript Context

Studies and Texts 193. xviii, 368 pp., including 5 colour plates. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-193-5 • Cloth • $95

London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii is a compilation manuscript made at Christ Church, Canterbury, (arguably) in 1020–1023. Its ninety-four texts and two illustrations initially seem to present an incompatible miscellany: a monastic customary and texts concerning pastoral care; private prayers and public liturgical forms; scientific treatises and prognostics. This book argues that when viewed as a product of the third generation of the English Benedictine Reform, and an episcopate that was almost entirely monastic, however, the codex begins to make sense as a reflection of a reform movement that involved much more than the ejection of some clerks and the establishment of a few Benedictine monasteries and monastic sees.

April 2015

Mediaeval Studies Volume 76 (2014)

ISSN 0076–5872
Volume 76 (2014) • ISBN 978-0-88844-678-7 • $105 

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and editorial policy, as well as tables of contents for recently published volumes, and indexes in electronic form, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

April 2015

John Prise. Historiae Britannicae Defensio / A Defence of the British History

Studies and Texts 195; British Writers 6 • liv, 336 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-195-9 • Cloth • $150

Co-published with The Bodleian Library (ISBN 978-1-85124-436-2).  

The present work brings John Prise’s Historiae Britannicae Defensio back into print for the first time since 1573, when an edition was published by the author’s son, Richard Prise. The 1573 printing forms the copy-text, critically edited in the light of the one surviving manuscript (Oxford, Balliol College, MS 260) of a version which is very close to it, and drawing also on an earlier draft (in BL MS Cotton Titus F. III). The facing English translation is the first published translation of the Defensio. The work is accompanied by an extensive introduction and elucidatory notes.

April 2015

Religion, Reformation, and Repression in the Reign of Francis I: Documents from the Parlement of Paris, 1515–1547

Volume 1: Documents 1515–1543 • Volume 2: Documents 1544–1547

Studies and Texts 196. 760 + 768 pp. (2 volumes). ISBN 978-0-88844-196-6 • Cloth • $210

The vast treasure of manuscript archives of the Parlement of Paris – the Supreme Court of justice in ancien régime France – has been exploited over the centuries by a number of scholars in several disciplines. The notable exception is that very few historians of religion in sixteenth-century France have delved into these rich and remarkable resources. This edition of nearly 1200 documents – the great majority previously unpublished – is based on an examination of more than 100,000 manuscript pages in over a hundred of the Court’s registers and cartons.

March 2015

Réécritures: Regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance

Studies and Texts 190; Toronto Studies in Romance Philology 2. 2015. viii, 396 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-190-4 • Cloth • $95

Des variantes manuscrites aux traductions, des changements de forme ou de genre aux adaptations idéologiques, non seulement la réécriture est omniprésente dans la production littéraire de la période médiévale, mais elle se situe au cœur même de la conception de la littérature au Moyen Âge. Ce volume réunit quinze articles qui se proposent d’approfondir notre connaissance de ce phénomène dans le contexte français et roman, en l’étudiant aussi bien dans son évolution que sous l’angle des techniques d’adaptation, de l’intertextualité et de la performance.

March 2015

Historia calamitatum: Consolation to a Friend

Edited from Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 802 by ALEXANDER ANDRÉE

TMLT 32.  x, 108 pp. 2015. ISBN 978-0-88844-482-0 • $19.95

Peter Abelard’s Letter to a Friend, frequently known as The Story of My Calamities, recounts the meteoric and disastrous career of one of the driving forces of the twelfth-century renaissance. The son of a minor Breton noble family, a public intellectual who turned the academic establishment on its head, lover of Heloise, and sometimes his own worst enemy, Abelard produced in elegant prose one of the signal works of medieval autobiography. This new edition presents the Latin text as it appears in the earliest manuscript—until recently misdated by a hundred years—studded with a commentary that explicates the circumstances of its composition, context, and language.

March 2015

The Church and the Languages of Italy before the Council of Trent

Studies and Texts 192; Toronto Studies in Romance Philology 3 • x, 320 pp. • Essays in Italian and English • ISBN 978-0-88844-192-8 • Cloth • $90

In recent decades, historians of language have directed increasing attention to the relationship between the Italian language and the world of religion, transforming what was once a sidebar in university textbooks into a privileged chapter. The importance of the topic is manifest: since its beginnings, religion has been intertwined with matters of language, for the Church has continuously educated speakers and readers, especially through preaching, the translation of sacred texts, and the diffusion of devotional works in the vernacular.

March 2015

Thierry of Chartres: The Commentary on the De arithmetica of Boethius

Studies and Texts 191.  2015.  xii, 262 pp.  ISBN 978-0-88844-191-1 • Cloth • $95

Arithmetic was one of the seven liberal arts taught in the French schools just before the middle of the twelfth century, and Boethius’s De arithmetica was the principal textbook for this art. This volume provides an edition of a commentary on the De arithmetica; the accompanying introduction identifies the author of the commentary as Thierry of Chartres, and provides a careful consideration of how the commentary reflects his philosophy.

October 2014

Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, 
Volume X

Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides

CTC 10. 2014. xxxvi, 404 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-950-4 • Cloth • $95

This series lists and describes the Latin translations of ancient Greek authors and the Latin commentaries on ancient Latin (and Greek) authors up to the year 1600. A contribution to the history of classical scholarship, it is intended to illustrate the impact which the literary heritage of ancient Greece and Rome had upon the literature, learning, and thought of those long centuries of Western history usually known as the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The articles in Volume X represent various fields (literature, history, and philosophy) and span a vast period of time, from the sixth century B.C. (Pindar) to the sixth century A.D. (Agathias).

September 2014

Ambition and Anxiety: Courts and Courtly Discourse, c. 700–1600

DMRME 3. 2014. vi, 270 pp. ISBN 978–0–88844–862–0 • Cloth • $90.00

Our knowledge of medieval and early modern courts usually depends to a large extent on their writers and artists. By examining literary works concerned with life at court, this volume hopes to address fundamental questions about high culture and its literary results within many different societies, including Tang China and the Ottoman Empire as well as western Europe.

June 2014

New Monks in Old Habits: The Formation of the Caulite Monastic Order, 1193–1267

Studies and Texts 189. 2014. xvi, 260 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–189–8 • Cloth • $85.00

The eleventh to the thirteenth centuries saw the growth of a number of movements seeking monastic reform. The Caulites, or Valliscaulians, named for the site of their first monastery in northwest Burgundy, were innovators in monastic practice. They expanded throughout a broad region in western Europe, and counted among their benefactors some of the most important noble families of their day. The order lasted almost six centuries, yet remains obscure in the historiography of medieval monasticism.

May 2014

University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, c.1300–c.1350

Studies and Texts 188. 2014. xiv, 198 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–188–1 • Cloth • $80.00

The need for an educated parochial clergy had been seen from early times. During the first half of the fourteenth century, over twelve hundred rectors of Lincoln diocese received permission to absent themselves from their parishes to attend university. Many dispensations were granted by virtue of Pope Boniface VIII's decretal Cum ex eo of 1298, but the Lincoln bishops' registers reveal a much wider practice. This volume examines this educational phenomenon and concludes with an appendix listing the Lincoln rector/students and the permissions they received.

April 2014

Celtic Cosmology: Perspectives from Ireland and Scotland

Papers in Mediaeval Studies 26. 2014. viii, 316 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–826–2 • Cloth • $90.00

The essays in this collection, many originally presented at a 2008 colloquium on Celtic Cosmology and the Power of Words, aim to examine the worldviews held by the Celtic peoples, particularly the Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) perspectives; the main sources are inscriptions and texts in Celtic languages and in Celtic Latin.

April 2014

Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering

Papers in Mediaeval Studies 25. 2014. viii, 298 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–825–5 • Cloth • $90.00

This volume celebrates the fullness of Howell Chickering's reach, with contributors responding to his extensive scholarship on Old English as well as Middle English subjects – Chaucer especially, but also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gower, Lydgate – as well as his other interests from the Middle Ages to medievalisms both Romantic and modern.

April 2014

Mediaeval Studies Volume 75 (2013)

ISSN 0076–5872
Volume 75 (2013) • ISBN 978–0–88844–677–0 • $105 

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and editorial policy, as well as tables of contents for recently published volumes, and indexes in electronic form, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

March 2014

Augustine's Virgilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum

Studies and Texts 187. 2014. xvi, 192 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–187–4 • Cloth • $80.00

This volume historicizes Augustine's habit of turning to ancient diction through the specific act of quotation, locating this habit in pedagogical and philosophical practices owed to his training. Far from disdaining or rejecting his ancient inheritance, Augustine made his first task at Cassiciacum the articulation of a method by which the pagan auctores represented by Virgil might be made safe for Christianity.

November 2013

A Life of Thomas Becket in Verse: La Vie de saint Thomas Becket by Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence

Mediaeval Sources in Translation 56. 2013. viii, 202 pp.
ISBN 978–0–88844–306–9 • Paper • $25.00

Composed in the immediate aftermath of Becket's murder in 1170, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence's 6000-line narrative poem is the earliest Life of Becket to appear in the French vernacular. It was written to be listened to by lay men and women, and provides a picture of events as they would have reached a contemporary French-speaking public avid for first-hand knowledge of their new heroic martyr.

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