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Review of Gaudenz Freuler (with contributions by Georgi Parpulov), The McCarthy Collection, Volume I: Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London: Ad Ilissvm 2018, 304 pp. ISBN 9781912168071 .

Using evidence drawn from S. de Ricci and W. J. Wilson’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, American auction records, private library catalogues, public exhibition catalogues, and manuscript fragments surviving in American institutional libraries, this article documents nineteenth-century collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscript fragments in North America before ca. 1900. Surprisingly few fragments can be identified, and most of the private collections of them have disappeared. The manuscript constituents are found in multiple private libraries, two universities (New York University and Cornell University), and one Learned Society (Massachusetts Historical Society). The fragment collections reflect the collecting genres documented in England in the same period, including albums of discrete fragments, grangerized books, and individual miniatures or “cuttings” (sometimes framed). A distinction is drawn between undecorated text fragments and illuminated ones, explained by aesthetic and scholarly collecting motivations. An interest in text fragments, often from binding waste, can be documented from the 1880s.

Irina Dumitrescu has written a learned, eloquent, and seminal book that exposes widespread pedagogical metaphors in pre-Conquest writings. In Bede's Historia ecclesiastica (Latin chronicle history)...

The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts can be used not only to track the provenance of individual manuscripts, but also to uncover larger patterns in multiple provenance strings of manuscripts. For example, does an individual auction sale or bookseller’s catalogue have any discernable influence on the acquisitions made by a collector or institution? Or is the publication of a collection or exhibition catalogue preceded or followed by any discernable pattern of acquisition activity? This paper explores patterns of acquisition, exhibition and sale associated with the collections of William Bragge (1823-1884) of Sheffield and Dr. T. Shadford Walker (1834-1885) of Liverpool. Bragge was the largest single exhibitor in the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition in 1874. The sale of his library less than two years later at Sotheby’s in June 1876 was only identified as the property of “a gentleman of consummate taste and judgment,” but full reports in The Times revealed his identity to those not already in the know. Not surprisingly the London antiquarian booksellers, Bernard Quaritch, were a major buyer at the sale; its Catalogue 31 published in the fall of 1876 after the sale contains numerous items acquired there. Quaritch was also apparently bidding on behalf of the British Museum and of Dr. Walker of Liverpool. In October of the same year Walker was a major contributor to the Liverpool Fine Arts Club exhibition of illuminated manuscripts and every one of the 18 manuscripts exhibited by Walker had been purchased at the Bragge sale earlier that year.

More or less covering lines 1071a-1159a (not counting the introductory verses), the Finnsburg digression comprises the longest and most intensively studied episode inBeowulf. Its context in the poem may be summarized briefly. Beowulf has mortally wounded Grendel. War-leaders from surrounding territories follow Grendel's tracks to the mere, now boiling with gore. On the way back a warrior sings of Sigemund and Heremod. Horse races are held, and the Danes and their guests gawk at Grendel's arm, which has been hung from a beam in Heorot. Hroðgar acknowledges Beowulf as an adoptive “son,” and a lavish celebration honors the hero, who secures five dynastic treasures not only in recognition of his valor and but also as confirmation of retainership and possibly of Hroðgar's adoption. Immediately following the bestowal of these gifts, a poet recites Finnsburg “fore Healfdenes I hildewisan” (“before Healfdene's warriors,” 1064). The tale commemorates a Danish victory over Frisians, a triumph which all agree should compliment Danish resolve. In fact, just before the episode opens, the Scylding Hntef is called a “hæleð Healf-Dena” (“hero of the Half-Danes,” 1069a), an epithet explicitly linking audience and characters.

Beowulf 3074–75 has been construed as confirmation of God’s grace for a man ‘eager for gold’ (Klaeber), an invitation to consider Beowulf’s dragon-killing sacrificial (Smithers), and an indictment of Beowulf’s greed (Stanley). John Tanke’s recent work on the passage offers significant new readings, and some of these have been adopted by R. D. Fulk. Working from Tanke’s interpretation, I suggest that that Beowulf merely appraises the treasure Wiglaf has brought from the barrow. Since he is dying, Beowulf stares at this wealth more keenly than he had ever examined any other reward in the past. This appraisal evokes an ambivalence and invites an observer’s assessment of Beowulf’s deeds in the dragon fight.

'De raris fabulis,' an early tenth-century text from Wales or Cornwall, preserves colloquies used by monastic oblates to practice conversational Latin. It yields a potential Arthurian context and may represent the first known account of Arthur's continental war against Rome, as detailed in Historia regum and hinted at in the 'Life of St Goeznovius.'

Maureen Alden's recent book, Homer Beside Himself, explores Phoenix's para-narratives from Iliad 9. However, different emphases in Phoenix's biography, the "Ainos of the Litai" and the paradeigma of Meleager challenge some of Alden's readings. The biography illustrates and validates Achilles' option to return home rather than demeaning the choice of a long and obscure life. The "Ainos of the Litai" suggests why Achilles could (not should) accept Agamemnon's gifts from the embassy without expecting Agamemnon's personal capitulation or even hiketeia. Finally, the paradeigma of Meleager entails Achilles' distortion of Phoenix's argument in favor of accepting the gifts. This episode functions as dramatic irony: Homer's audience understands that Meleager's wife "Cleopatra" represents Patroclus, but the characters in the world of the epic have no such understanding.

(2004). Diogenes the Cynic in the Scholastic Dialogues Called De raris fabulis. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 3-6.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury'sProsa de virginitate(hereafterPdv) can be called one of the most enduring works of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Immensely influential in Aldhelm's lifetime, the text continued to be popular in England and on the Continent until Viking invasions put an end to native learning in the last half of the ninth century. Yet by the 920s interest in Aldhelm's prose treatise had revived, inaugurating a new movement in ‘hermeneutic’ Latin that lasted, in some centres, beyond the turn of the twelfth century. Fourteen English manuscripts ofPdvdocument the renewed interest in Aldhelm's work. Most of these manuscripts are heavily glossed, and, indeed, some preserve about 25,000 bilingual annotations ranging from single letters or symbols to entire paragraphs copied verbatim from Isidore'sEtymologiae. The density of glossing is astounding, when contrasted with the length ofPdv, about 20,000 words.

"Second Language Acquisition and Anglo-Saxon Bilingualism: Negative Transfer and Avoidance in AElfric Bata's Latin Colloquia, ca. A.D. 1000." The Anglo-Saxon AElfric Bata authored a series of Latin colloquies around the year 1000 that arguably represent the sole evidence of spoken Latin from the pre-Conquest period. Certain idiosyncratic features of these dialogues almost certainly derive from Old English influence and can be explained by theories and observation of cross-linguistic interference found in second language acquisition research. Thus, "language transfer" explains unusual Latin constructions modeled (deliberately or not) on Old English: the use of adverb foras, double negation, and semantic shifts, among others. Furthermore, the communicative strategy of "avoidance" describes the preponderance of Latin preterit periphrastic forms with masculine or feminine direct objects. This phenomenon is likewise traceable to Old English practice. The article offers a completely new model for describing Anglo...

Some time around 1000 A.D. the Anglo-Saxon Ælfric Bata composed Latin colloquies or dialogues by which oblates could learn elementary spoken Latin. Bata used several sources in the colloquies, two of which are newly identified here : Isidore's Synonyma de lamentatione animae peccatricis and the Hermeneumata pseudodositheana. Variant wording in the Synonyma quotations proves that Bata drew from a glossed manuscript closely related to Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 448. Bata's Hermeneumata parallels suggest that he borrowed from BL MS Harley 5642, a St. Gall manuscript, or a close relative. It has not be noticed before that Bata relied on a Hermeneumata volume as a model for his own colloquia., Vers l'an 1000 de notre ère, le moine anglo-saxon Ælfric Bata composa des colloques pour enseigner le latin parlé aux oblats. Il se servit de plusieurs sources, dont deux sont identifiées ici pour la première fois : les Synonyma de lamentatione animae peccatricis d'Isidore de Seville et les Hermeneumata pseudodositheana d'un auteur inconnu. Des variantes dans les citations des Synonyma signalent un emprunt au manuscrit n° 448 de la collection de Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (ou un ms. apparenté), tandis que celles tirées des Hermeneumata suggèrent une connaissance du manuscrit B.L. Harley 5642, originaire de Saint-Gall, ou d'un autre manuscrit apparenté mais perdu., Gwara Scott. Ælfric Bata's manuscripts. In: Revue d'histoire des textes, bulletin n°27 (1997), 1997. pp. 239-255.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury (ca. 640–709/710) conceived and practiced an idiosyncratic style of Latin prose called “hermeneutic,” which was characterized mainly by lexical peculiarities: neologisms, graecisms, archaisms, poeticisms, distributive numerals, and other varieties of contrived or recherché diction. The principal model of the hermeneutic prose style was, of course, Aldhelm's treatise on virginity, theProsa de virginitate(hereafterPdv). Aldhelm probably wrote the work in the 670s. Partly — if not mainly — because of this influential treatise, hermeneutic Latin became a vogue in seventh- and eighth-century England, and practitioners of it flourished on the continent, too. Alas, ninth-century Viking incursions put an end not only to hermeneutic latinity but also to native literature. Not until the 920s would interest in hermeneutic Latin be renewed, and after a few more decades Aldhelm's prose work became one of the most intensively studied books in Anglo-Saxon England. In fact, the complexity of Aldhelm's prose led to copious glossing.

Aldhelm de Malmesbury (640-710) fait partie des hommes de lettres les plus influents de l'Angleterre anglo-saxonne. Sa Prosa de Virginitate, un traite theorique sur la virginite, fourmille de figures rhetoriques complexes et a engendre de nombreux imitateurs. Ainsi, les frequentes gloses attestent de la lecture et de l'etude intensives du manuscrit; elles sont d'ordre lexical, morphologique, verbal. Le manuscrit Hereford P.I.17 montre que l'etude du traite d'Aldhelm s'est largement poursuivie aux X e et XI e siecles a Canterbury et Winchester; elle s'est etendue a Abingdon durant les XII e et XIII e siecles

Anglo-Saxon pedagogy derives from late Roman and provincial precedents, extant booklists or books, and descriptions of monastic routines, both English and Continental. In a Roman school a boy would learn both language arts and arithmetical calculation in the elementary curriculum. Many of Isidore's derivations are fanciful, but their occurrence in texts and glosses may reveal a linguistic precision covered in grammatical study. Science in the Anglo-Saxon classroom took the form of computus and natural history. Elementary computus was found in the Anglo-Saxon curriculum and may be best represented in Bede's De temporum ratione or De temporibus. The advanced curriculum in the Anglo-Saxon monastery may have included a significant amount of Latin verse. Prosper's Epigrammata may be thought of as superseding Cato's Distichs a thoroughly pagan work. Production of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the translations of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica and Orosius' Historia adversus paganos suggest the prominence of the subject.