Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations – serie

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.

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 Notory Art of Shorthand (Ars notoria notarie), an important yet understudied late medieval work, is newly edited here and presented for the first time in English translation along with an introduction and commentary. This unique treatise on shorthand writing is a hybrid of literary genres that sheds much light on late medieval scribal culture. Following in a medieval tradition of works such as the Secret of Secrets, the innovative Ars notoria notarie points forward to early modern hermetic writers such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, the latter having owned one of the three manuscripts of the work. The Ars notoria notarie relates to disciplines ranging from paleography to magic. It has multiple identities: a unique branch of one of the most popular magic treatises of the Middle Ages, the Ars notoria; a rare report on medieval paleography and the notarial trade; an exposé of a unique medieval cipher based on the famous Tironian notes; an eclectic university text bringing together authorities from Pliny and Aristotle to Donatus and Bede; a remarkable source for the liturgy of Thomas Becket; and, finally, a distinctive contribution to the epistolary genre known as the mirror for princes.