Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations – serie

Ranulph Higden, monk of St. Werburgh's Abbey and well-known author of the «Polychronicon» and other treatises, penned a concise and user-friendly Art of Preaching about 1346. His «Ars componendi sermones» follows a schematic common to many members of this genre and includes attributes desirable or necessary in the preacher, methods for piquing an audience's interest, the process of effective repetition, and suggestions for creating rhythmic patterns in prose. Its major focus, however, is the clear and comprehensive discussion of each thematic sermon part: the theme or scriptural text, its development in protheme and introduction, its division, subdivision, and embellishment. In structure and content, Higden's prescriptive manual has affinities to contemporary rhetorical texts, especially the «artes poeticae» and «dictaminis», and displays an analogous relationship with Ciceronian «dispositio» as developed in the «De Inventione» and «Rhetorica ad Herennium». A few of the many items of interest scattered throughout the text are Ranulph's insistence that preaching be separate from university exercises and his comments about various subjects like direct entry into heaven «post mortem», the scope of medieval optics, what and who compose the church, and the quadruple levels of scriptural exegesis.

Adam of Saint-Victor’s († 1146) sequences are recognized as sophisticated liturgical poetry, the highest development of this literary genre. In addition to their merit as unique medieval cultural sources, they offer an expression of the lived theology of the twelfth-century Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris. This translation of the collection of Adam’s sequences presents them as a whole, using language that seeks to retain the theological significance of the Latin terminology. The parallel Latin text allows readers to examine the original language used. The included introduction and notes situate the sequences in their historical context and offer references to Adam’s many sources.

Paul the Deacon was undoubtedly one of the most prolific and gifted scholars of the early medieval period. Working for different patrons, first in his native Lombardy and then at the Frankish court, he left an impressive literary legacy, including a six-volume History of Rome and a History of the Lombards. All in all, Paul wrote more history than any of his contemporaries. He composed the Liber de episcopis Mettensibus around 784 at the behest of Angilram, bishop of Metz and chief counselor of Charlemagne. The text has received considerable attention from modern historians since it contains the first genealogy of the Carolingian family, one that establishes Arnulf, the seventh-century bishop of Metz, as Charlemagne’s forefather. However, rather than being a simple work of royal propaganda, composed to support and legitimize the Carolingians, who had usurped the throne only thirty years earlier with Pippin III’s coup in 751, the text subtly advances the prominent role of Metz within the Frankish kingdom. The present volume offers a new Latin edition of the Liber, including the late tenth-century interpolated section that both transformed the text and ensured its transmission. It also provides its first translation into a modern language. The introduction analyzes the textual strategies and the political claims at play in the Liber within the context of a reassessment of Angilram’s episcopacy (768–791) in Metz.

The Waltharius, a medieval Latin epic poem of over 1400 lines, richly retells the story of a vigorous Germanic saga in the language and style of classical and Christian Latin poetry. Walter, its hero, is a pagan warrior ready to mock his enemies and mercilessly decapitate them, but also a pious Christian who refrains from premarital sex and stops to pray and ask for God's mercy in the middle of a battle. The poem varies remarkably in tone, providing both fervent moral commentary and bitter black comedy. The growing scholarship on the poem outside of Germany, where it has always been popular, no doubt results from its weird allure and eclectic nature. It has something for everyone. This new edition uses a fresh review of manuscripts - especially the recently discovered fragments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - in order to provide a text and apparatus that will aid the reader in understanding the poem's tangled manuscript history. The notes are rather fuller than those of previous English-language editions, providing useful context to understand the complicated relationships among the Germanic, classical Latin, and Christian Latin traditions as well as tracking various themes and stylistic features that the poet employs.

Adelmann of Liège was one of the first interlocutors of Berengar of Tours in the Eucharistic controversy of the eleventh century. For that reason, his contribution was of great importance for the development of sacramental theology. This book contains all the known texts of this pre-scholastic theologian from the school of Liège, that is, not only his correspondence with Berengar, but also his famous poem on the theologians of Chartres - the Rhythmus alphabeticus - and his admonishing letter to Arshbishop Hermann of Cologne on the forgiveness of sins.