Nicole Eddy

Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus (mid-fifth century to 518 CE), the bishop of Vienne, left us with a large letter collection, a biblical epic of five books, De spiritalis historiae gestis, and a poem addressed to his sister on the virtues of chastity, De consolatoria castitatis laude. With his translation, Michael Roberts aims for readability and accuracy while leaving room to make choices for the sake of fluency. He achieves his goal and offers a clear and uniformly excellent prose translation.

As expected from Dumbarton Oaks, this volume is of high quality. The layout is handsome and typos are very few. While scholars have shown much more interest in Avitus in recent years, Roberts also notes that more work remains to be done, especially on the De consolatoria. Roberts’s translation and notes will surely bring Avitus to an even wider audience.

Amy Oh
The Journal of Medieval Latin
Read Full Article >>

In the face of scant biblical information about the background and life of Mary, the virginal mother of Jesus Christ, Byzantine theologians relied on a variety of sources including apocryphal texts, homilies, hymns, and exegetical commentaries. Literary attempts to recount and celebrate Mary’s entire life story emerged somewhat late in this tradition. It was John Geometres who produced the most sophisticated, in theological and rhetorical terms, of the surviving texts. In the words of Maximos Constas and Christos Simelidis, this Life of the Virgin is “arguably the single most important witness to Marian doctrine and devotion ever produced in the Byzantine world” (viii).

The present edition and English translation represents an invaluable contribution to the fields of Byzantine literature, Mariology, and Eastern church history. Scholars will now be able to study a text that captures the complexity and sophistication of full-blown Marian celebration in the Middle Byzantine period. The edition is reliable, complemented not by a critical apparatus but by helpful notes, and the translation elegantly conveys John Geometres’s high literary style while remaining lucid and readable. This book represents an indispensable addition to any library of Byzantine, and indeed Western medieval, Mariology.

Mary B. Cunningham
Speculum
Read Full Article >>

Commentaries on the liturgy constitute a significant, but still unjustly neglected literary genre in the medieval period. In recent decades, excellent critical editions have been produced of some of the major monuments of the genre, including the De ecclesiasticis officiis of John Beleth, the Mitralis de officiis of Sicard of Cremona and the Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durand. This makes the decision of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series, lavishly produced on high quality paper in two volumes of a comfortable size, to include an edition and lightly annotated translation of the Gemma animae (Jewel of the Soul) of Honorius Augustodunensis all the more welcome.

The editors are to be congratulated for producing a volume that makes liturgical ritual accessible to a wider public. Students of medieval liturgical manuscripts and visual art will find helpful detail. While later liturgical commentators, like John Beleth, might draw more on secular examples to explain specific rituals, Honorius has his own way of explaining liturgy through a rich knowledge of scripture. These two volumes help show how the Gemma animae can illuminate the meaning of medieval liturgical ritual.

Constant J. Mews
The Medieval Review
Read Full Article >>

Frank T. Coulson and Justin Haynes here offer an edition and English translation of the Ovidius moralizatus, or Moralized Ovid, of Pierre Bersuire.

In all, this volume offers a wealth of fascinating material, adding an immensely important text to those already available for the study of the medieval and early modern reception of Ovidian myths, as well as the complex practices of moral and allegorical readings of pagan texts. The lucid English translation and informative notes will make it accessible not only to experienced scholars but also to students newly discovering medieval mythography.

Sylvia Huot
The Medieval Review
Read Full Article >>

Sophia Xenophontos has successfully managed to render in fluid English a Greek text which is not equally fluid in its original form, and yet to reproduce in an almost perfect manner its stylistic peculiarities. Thanks to this great job both scholars and students are provided with a very useful tool for the study of Theodore Metochites and his work, as well as the intellectual affairs of the so-called “Early Palaeologan Renaissance.” Moreover, as it has already been observed, the book can equally be a useful tool for a broader audience, namely for all those engaged in intellectual activities, inasmuch as the main subject of the Ethikos, the value of human logos and the question on how intellectual activity could be harmoniously combined with the (always) growing demands of everyday life, is a perennial and constantly topical issue.

Eleni Kaltsogianni
The Byzantine Review
Read Full Article >>

For the teaching of Old English language and literature, for scholarship on early medieval healing practices, and for the study of premodern medicine more broadly, Medical Writings from Early Medieval England offers at once both an accessible point of entry and an invaluable resource for even the most specialized research in the field. This first of a projected two-volume set includes The Old English Herbal and Old English Remedies from Animals, Lacnunga, and Peri Didaxeon, as well as 101 miscellaneous remedies scattered across approximately twenty-five additional manuscripts. The result is nothing short of a monumental feat.

While neither this volume nor any other should be seen as an ultimate replacement for all preceding editions or translations, the compilation of texts, translations, and comparative research generously provided in this first volume of Medical Writings from Early Medieval England is to be celebrated, offering as it does an engaging point of access to a beautiful but often enigmatic body of texts. In short, if you are teaching, researching, or simply curious about any aspect of early medieval healing traditions, begin with this volume and follow the leads it provides. It will serve your needs wondrously.

Lori Ann Garner
Speculum
Read Full Article >>