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Late in the nineteenth century, while working in the archives of the Benedictine monastery of Admont, the monk-librarian Jakob Wichner discovered four parchment leaves wrapped around the nuns' wine service register for the year 1431. He recognized that these fragments, though badly damaged and stained with wine, contained a collection of twelfth-century Latin letters linked in some way to Admont's female community.1 He concluded that what he had discovered was probably the remains of a formulary, a collection of model letters designed for imitation, once belonging to the nuns. Wichner transcribed and printed two of the letters in the appendix to his article "Das ehemalige Nonnenkloster O.S.B. zu Admont," which appeared in 1881.2 Wichner's discovery was more important than he realized. On a recent visit to the monastery, I had the opportunity to examine the letter fragments and noticed immediately the opening lines of several letters beyond the two that he transcribed. Preserved on these unimpressive-looking parchment leaves are copies of nineteen complete and partial Latin letters written by Admont's nuns-an extraordinary collection that contains both routine correspondence related to patronage and remarkably powerful letters that detail the exigencies of individuals. In these fragments echo women's voices speaking of their intersecting spiritual, economic, and personal concerns, voices offering us a rare glimpse both of the lives of Admont's twelfth-century nuns and of their continuing interaction with the world outside the cloister.

Harvard Law Library MS 43, an English compendium from the second half of the fifteenth century, deserves study.' This codex, on 133 paper and parchment folios, has much to reveal about secular education in late medieval England.2 The bulk of the manuscript is made up of an extensive collection of legal forms acquittances, contracts, indentures, wills for the most part in Latin or legal French,3 but with a few entries in Middle English.4 The pedagogical function of the book can be seen in the Latin grammatical exercises found on the flyleaves and pastedowns and by a method for keeping accounts on the penultimate gathering.5 The purpose of this note is not, however, to provide the much-needed discussion of the book as a whole. Rather, it is to bring to the attention of students of Middle English two sections of the book: a Latin-English Nominale occupying twenty-six folios; and a dictaminal formulary containing four folios of letters and parts of letters, some in English. The Nominale begins on fol. 16rv with a list of chapters, that is to say, categories of substantives to be listed. The first category, common nouns

Late in the twelfth century an unknown monk at the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland took an old unwieldy parchment (112 x 77 cm.) with a drawing on one side and folded it upon itself, reducing its size to onesixteenth of what it had been. Upon fourteen frames on the unused side and one frame on the side with the drawing, he then wrote a text of the Life of St. Martin. Since the folded parchment was manageable in size, and given its new content, it was probably placed among the other manuscripts in the famous library of St. Gall. In this fashion the drawing that we know as the Plan of St. Gall was allowed to survive. Though we cannot be certain of its whereabouts until the late twelfth century, since then the manuscript has never left St. Gall, where it is now MS 1092 in the Stiftsbibliothek. The significance of the drawing began to be recognized in the seventeenth century. The verses inscribed on the plan were published in 1604, and from that time the literature has grown very greatly. None of it, however, can compare in scope and ambition with the three grand volumes published by Walter Horn and Ernest Born. Their remarkable and wonderfully detailed monograph, The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery,1 embodies intentions nothing short of heroic: to extract, extrapolate from, and interpret the data of the plan so as to re-create not only the appearance of a great many buildings, but also the diverse human activities that they framed, especially but not exclusively during the early Middle Ages. This is a work of exegesis so massive that at first glance it seems no less surprising than the historical accident that brought about the preservation of the plan. Noteworthy, too, is the magnificent effort of book production, a fitting complement to the data of the densely packed text (mainly by Horn) and the elaborate, very accomplished drawings and renderings (mainly by Born). Arrestingly detailed captions, by Horn unless otherwise indicated, accompany a great many of the illustrations. In fact the captions are often so

AMONG the representations of persons in mediaeval Italian art, the images of Popes and Emperors and other spiritual and temporal authorities which adorn Southern Italian Exultet rolls make up a special group. It was customary in South Italy from the end of the tenth to the thirteenth century (sometimes as late as the fourteenth) to write on long scrolls of parchment the Praeconium Paschale, a hymn in prose which is sung on Holy Saturday on the occasion of the blessing of the paschal candle. Originally several different forms of the hymn were in use. One of these is the Exultet, which derives its name from the first word. The Exultet itself exists in several versions. The one which is still being sung, the so-called Vulgata, was not always and everywhere exclusively used.1 Besides the Vulgata, which first occurs in Celtic and Gallican liturgical manuscripts of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century (Misal of Bobbio, Missale Gallicanum Vetus, Missale Gothicum), there can be found in the Southern Italian Exultet rolls and in some Southern Italian codices, dating from the tenth or the eleventh century, the so-called Vetus Itala. The Vetus Itala differs from the Vulgata from the Preface on, that is to say, in its second part, which is longer than the first. The name Vetus Itala is based on the hypothesis that this version of the Exultet, in spite of its late appearance, is a remnant of the old-Italian (non-Roman) liturgy which for the most part has been lost.2 The reason for preferring the late-antique fashion in writing the Praeconium Paschale on rolls (which however was done only in Southern Italy), is probably to be found in the peculiar kind of illustration and the liturgical use of the Southern Italian Exultet rolls.3 Miniatures contained in certain rolls show how the deacon, while singing the hymn, unrolled the scroll from