PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

January 2023

Pious Fictions and Pseudo-Saints in the Late Middle Ages: Selected Legends from an Icelandic Legendary

Mediaeval Sources in Translation 61. xii, 282 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-311-3 • Paper • $35.00

This volume provides English translations of selected legends from a remarkable sixteenth-century Icelandic collection known as the Reykjahólabók. The Middle Low German originals it translates are no longer extant, apocryphal wholly or in part, and wondrous strange. The volume also includes a wide-ranging introduction that surveys the historical and literary contexts for the translation of Catholic saints’ lives on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in Iceland, as well as normalized editions of the legends accessible to readers of contemporary Icelandic.

November 2022

Studies in the Sacred Page: Encounters with Medieval Manuscripts, Texts, and Exegesis; A Book of Essays in Honour of Lesley Smith

Papers in Mediaeval Studies 34 • x, 266 pp. plus 14 colour plates • ISBN 978-0-88844-834-7 • Cloth • $95

This volume of twelve essays aims to honour the career and scholarship of Lesley Smith. The first section begins with two witnesses to Lesley’s excellence as teacher and culminates with an appreciation of her as a scholar. The second section explores the scholarly terrain in which Lesley has made her most signal contributions: the material and cultural sites and artefacts within and by which the Christian Scriptures emerged as a field of theoretical inquiry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The third and final section explores Latin Christian use of scriptural inquiry and understanding so as to engage scholarly and religious traditions outside those of the Latin Church.

September 2022

Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature

Studies and Texts 229 • x, 216 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-229-1 • Cloth • $90

The reader of Boccaccio’s voluminous writings, from the early Filocolo through the Decameron and to the later Epistles, cannot help but marvel at the pervasive engagement with the power and reach of consolation. Time and again, his protagonists suffer heartache and tribulation and seek comfort in the words of others or, significantly, in the reading of literature. These scenes are accompanied, tellingly, by the author’s own declarations for the care and solace of his readers. Although scholars have long recognized its importance, this wide-ranging and multifaceted exploration of the consolatory value of literature has not received the attention it deserves. Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature is the first sustained study of Boccaccio’s consoling fictions as well as his reflections on the way literature can, and should, offer solace.

May 2022

Oltre la mer salee: Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of the Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes, Toronto, 13–17 August 2018

Studies and Texts 227; Toronto Studies in Romance Philology 4 • xii, 422 pp. • Essays in French, English, Italian, and Spanish • ISBN 978-0-88844-227-7 • Cloth • $100

Oltre la mer salee collects revised versions of twenty-eight papers in English, French, Italian, and Spanish originally presented at the 21st International Congress of the Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes, held in August 2018 in Toronto. Specialists in the field of medieval Romance epic reconsider traditional approaches and present novel research perspectives. Their studies are divided among four major themes: family relations, manuscripts, French epic in England, and travel and exchanges.

April 2022

Mediaeval Studies Volume 83 (2021)

ISSN 0076-5872
Volume 83 (2021) • ISBN 978-0-88844-685-5 • $120

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and its editorial policy, as well as indexes in electronic form and ordering information, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

April 2022

“Of latine and of othire lare”: Essays in Honour of David R. Carlson

Papers in Mediaeval Studies 35 • xii, 362 pp. plus 4 colour plates • ISBN 978-0-88844-835-4 • Cloth • $95

Unsurprisingly, in view of the remarkable diversity of David R. Carlson’s own scholarship, the eighteen essays gathered here in his honour represent a corresponding variety of subjects across a broad range of countries and periods, but all drawing inspiration from his deep learning.

April 2022

Gold in the Sanctuary: Reassessing Notker of St Gall’s Liber Ymnorum

Studies and Texts 228 • xvi, 290 pp. plus 12 colour plates • ISBN 978-0-88844-228-4 • Cloth • $95

A meticulous reading of Notker of St Gall’s texts and their backgrounds, as well as the exploration of their multifaceted reverberation in literature and art, allow for retracing the story of a significant if forgotten aspect of the poetic tradition in the Latin Middle Ages.

February 2022

Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, Volume XII

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

CTC 12. 2022. xxxvi, 560 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-952-8 • Cloth • $105

Volume 12 contains a single article of monographic length on the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Frank T. Coulson, †Harry L. Levy, and Harald Anderson, a testament to the vastness and complexity of the Nachleben of Ovid’s most popular work.

December 2021

Gower and Anglo-Latin Verse

Studies and Texts 226 • xii, 346 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-226-0 • Cloth • $95

This study offers a novel paradigm for explaining the late-medieval Anglo-Latin verse, by analyzing the development of the writings of the English poet John Gower (ca. 1330–1408), who made major contributions to English- and French-language poetry, in addition to being the pre-eminent Latin poet of the “Age of Chaucer.”

December 2021

Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism

Studies and Texts 213 • 2018 • x + 238 pp. 

New in Paperback (2021): ISBN 978-0-88844-429-5 • $37.50
Casebound: ISBN 978-0-88844-213-0 • Cloth • $80

Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence.

November 2021

The Early Glossed Ecclesiastes: A Critical Edition with Introduction

Studies and Texts 224; The Glossed Bible: Editions and Studies of the Medieval Sacra pagina 1 • x, 324 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-224-6 • Cloth • $95

The Glossa ordinaria was the main exegetical instrument by which the Bible was taught and studied during the Middle Ages, a resource whose influence began in the early twelfth century and remained perceptible in theological writing beyond the sixteenth century. For much of its modern history, the sheer scale, range, and ubiquity of the Glossa have deterred scholars from sustained study of its origins, development, and reception. However, the recent growth of studies devoted to the Laon-Paris teaching milieu in which the Glossa was central has altered the scholarly landscape. This volume, like the series of which it is part, should contribute to this development by providing the first textual and historical analysis of the earliest written version of the glossed Ecclesiastes.

November 2021

Regino of Prüm. Two Books on Synodal Causes and Ecclesiastical Disciplines

Mediaeval Sources in Translation 60; Saint Michael’s College Mediaeval Translations. 2021. viii, 366 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-310-6 • Paper • $35.00

Regino of Prüm (ca. 840–915), after being deposed as abbot of Prüm, became a notable musical theorist, historical chronicler, and student of the canons. His Two Books on Synodal Causes and Ecclesiastical Disciplines have generally been seen as practical handbooks to be used in the decision of synodal cases. Although they may have been used in the course of episcopal visitations, they are not to be read as limited to such use.

October 2021

Peter Comestor. Lectures on the Glossa ordinaria

Edited from Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 1024

TMLT 37 • xii, 158 pp. • 2021 • ISBN 978-0-88844-487-5 • Paper • $19.95

Edited for the first time from the late twelfth-century manuscript Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 1024, the prefatory material of Comestor’s lecture courses on the four glossed Gospels offers a unique glimpse into the classroom of one of Paris’s preeminent masters at the height of the renaissance of the twelfth century.

August 2021

The Birth of the Author: Pictorial Prefaces in Glossed Books of the Twelfth Century

Studies and Texts 225; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 9 • xxvi, 302 pp. incl. 150 colour illus. • ISBN 978-0-88844-225-3 • Cloth • $100

This book argues that the images devised to accompany medieval commentaries, whether on the Bible or on classical texts, made claims to authority, even inspiration, that at times were even more forceful than those made by the texts themselves. Paradoxically, it was in the context of commentaries that modern concep­tions of independent authorship first were forged. 

April 2021

Mediaeval Studies Volume 82 (2020)

ISSN 0076-5872
Volume 82 (2020) • ISBN 978-0-88844-684-8 • $120

An annual journal of scholarship on the Middle Ages. A description of the journal and its editorial policy, as well as indexes in electronic form and ordering information, are available on the Mediaeval Studies page elsewhere on this site.

April 2021

The Llanthony Stories

Mediaeval Sources in Translation 59; Saint Michael’s College Mediaeval Translations. 2021. x, 174 pp. ISBN 978-0-88844-309-0 • Paper • $25.00

Compiled in the early thirteenth century, The Llanthony Stories is a fragmentary collection of exemplaria gathered by an anonymous canon at the Augustinian priory of Llanthony Secunda, Gloucester. While intended primarily for the edification of readers and those who heard the stories preached in sermons, many of the thirty-five exempla offer humorous (even ribald) glimpses of life in the Severn watershed and beyond. Filled with short tales of greedy archdeacons, licentious monks, pious laymen and prelates trying to navigate their world with decorum and piety, the work expands our knowledge of ecclesiastical politics and evangelical priorities in the Anglo-Norman church.

April 2021

Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections

Studies and Texts 221; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination 8 • xxxii, 362 pp. incl. 291 colour illus. • ISBN 978-0-88844-221-5 • Cloth • $150

In the fall of 2016 an international scholarly conference accompanied the exhibition Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections. The speakers were chosen because of their expertise and because they were known to have research underway pertaining to important manuscripts in the exhibition. The aim of both exhibition and conference was to provide a broad overview of the history of patronage and book production over the course of the High and late Middle Ages, to the extent that the eclectic holdings of Boston-area institutions permitted. Most of the papers delivered at the conference have been collected as essays in this abundantly illustrated volume which, while still linked to the exhibition, now has an independent purpose.

February 2021

In This Land: Jewish Life and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Provence

Studies and Texts 223; Judaism in the Medieval and Early Modern World 1 • 2021 • x, 168 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-223-9 • Cloth • $90

Jewish communities existed across the county of Provence throughout the Middle Ages. In This Land reveals the changes that those communities underwent during the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the social and cultural tensions that shaped their identity.

January 2021

Beyond the Sermo modernus: Sermon Form in Early Fifteenth-Century England

Studies and Texts 222 • 2021 • xii, 282 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-222-2 • Cloth • $95

In England, as well as on the continent, the early fifteenth century saw a slackening of rigorous academic work in theology and at the same time a stronger interest in biblical and devotional approaches and practices. This book addresses the question of whether, and if so in what way, such a change may also have occurred in preaching by investigating the form in which sermons were constructed, to determine whether a new development or innovation replaced the scholastic sermon, or sermo modernus, in use from the later thirteenth century on. The volume concludes with editions of sermons drawn from major works created in England between the final years of the fourteenth and the middle of the fifteenth century.

September 2020

Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages

116 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-428-8 • Paper • $20

Etienne Gilson’s Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, first delivered as the Richard Lectures in 1937, was published in 1938 and became an immediate success. Not only does it contribute to a major question of debate in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophy and religion in the medieval period but it also insists on the validity of truth obtainable through reason as well as revelation, of rational argument alongside religious faith. This message is as important in the twenty-first century as it was in the fourth century of the young Augustine, the thirteenth of St Thomas Aquinas, and the twentieth of the mature Gilson.