Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

Producing books of original medieval and Byzantine texts with facing-page translations.

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Review: The Old English History of the World

Like its Latin source text, The Old English History of the World maintains a narrative of four successive, war-torn empires, culminating in a Roman empire that becomes more peaceful as it adopts Christianity. The Old English does not extend all the way back to creation as Orosius’s Latin account does but begins with Ninus, King of Assyria, becoming the first king in the world, 1300 years before Rome.

This volume will be a useful addition to many libraries, both institutional and personal. It should bring a wider readership to The Old English History of the World, which has much to offer those interested in early medieval historiography, vernacular adaptation of a late antique source, and Old English prose. It should be particularly helpful to graduate students and their instructors.

Nicole Guenther Discenza
The Medieval Review

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In Praise of Everyone

We’re excited to announce the publication of two new volumes in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series: the Latin Poems of Venantius Fortunatus, and a selection of six Christian novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes. Both texts, in full English translation for the first time, trace the lives of political and religious figures, with special attention to women testing the gender boundaries of their societies.

Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, edited and translated by Stratis Papaioannou, director of the program of medieval studies at Brown University, brings together six narratives that were not so much written by Metaphrastes as heavily revised and standardized.

The Poems of Venantius Fortunatus, edited and translated by Michael Roberts, the Robert Rich Professor of Latin at Wesleyan University, are similarly focused on the lives of individuals. Born in Italy around the year 530, Fortunatus’s poetry, preserved in twelve books collected in this volume, nevertheless found its true subject in the people of his adoptive homeland, Gaul. His poems, varying dramatically in length, take many forms, most frequently panegyrics to the virtues of ecclesiastical or political figures.

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Review: On Plato’s Timaeus

Cet ouvrage offre la première édition anglo-saxonne, par John Magee, de la traduction (partielle) du Timée et de son commentaire par Calcidius.

Calcidius était-il “médio-” ou “néo-platonicien?” Il utilise, selon Magee, les deux types de sources, avant de devenir à son tour une source d’inspiration fondamentale pour les penseurs du XIIe siècle. Cette postérité, rapidement traitée, justifie cependant la publication de cette édition dans une collection dédiée au Moyen Âge (“Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library”).

Béatrice Bakhouche
The Medieval Review

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Review: Holy Men of Mount Athos

Given the diachronic importance of the Holy Mountain, as it is often styled, the editors and translators of Holy Men of Mount Athos have done a great service to the academy and the wider reading public by providing the lives of five Athonite saints in accessible Greek texts and, more importantly, first-ever English translations. Richard P.H. Greenfield and Alice-Mary Talbot were the main editors and translators, while Alexander Alexakis re-edited the first Life and Stamatina McGrath translated the last one.

In terms of chronology the Lives cover large intervals of the history of Mt. Athos during the Byzantine period, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. In terms of forms of monastic life, they include the exploits of isolated hermits, the communal institution-building of coenobites, and different practices in between–sometimes in the life of one and the same saint. Though differing in linguistic and stylistic register and showing differing degrees of theological interpretation and reworking, all six of them present their subjects in substantial detail, replete with anecdotes of both exalted and mundane happenings in their lives.

Nicholas Marinides
The Medieval Review

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Review: Allegories of the Iliad

As a good Byzantine Christian, [John] Tzetzes did not believe in the gods. But he did believe in nature. Following a long tradition of Platonic exegesis, he treated each intervention of the gods in human affairs as a meteorological event. Each god was a code name for some powerful weather formation, much as hurricanes are spoken of by their Christian names—with bated breath—on the more excitable modern weather channels. Zeus was a lightning storm. Themis and the Nymphs stood for the rising of the mist. Apollo was the merciless light of the morning sun as it slanted into the eyes of the Trojans, blinding them to the onslaught of Achilles. And above and behind the weather on earth, human affairs were ruled by the planets, who glowed treacherously as they sidled through the Zodiac. This was not a world of steady matter.

Peter Brown
The New York Review of Books

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Review: Lives and Miracles

Why You Should Read St. Gregory of Tours: A new edition of his Lives of the Fathers and Miracles of Julian and Martin offers a profound look at early medieval Catholicism.

Early in his brief book The Miracles of the Martyr Julian, St. Gregory of Tours writes, “I am not the least qualified or experienced enough to tell about these things, for I have neither been instructed in the arts of grammar nor educated in the literary culture; but what am I to do, since my love for my patron impels me so strongly that I cannot be silent?”

Gregory’s work has the feel and power of folktales: homely narratives told simply and with a purpose.

Thomas L. McDonald
The National Catholic Register

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