Latin books are among the most numerous surviving artifacts of the Late Antique, Mediaeval, and Renaissance periods in European history; written in a variety of formats and scripts, they preserve the literary, philosophical, scientific, and religious heritage of the West. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography surveys these books, with special emphasis on the variety of scripts in which they were written. Palaeography, in the strictest sense, examines how the changing styles of script and the fluctuating shapes of individual letters allow the date and the place of production of books to be determined. More broadly conceived, palaeography examines the totality of early book production, ownership, dissemination, and use. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography includes essays on major types of script (Uncial, Insular, Beneventan, Visigothic, Gothic, etc.), describing what defines these distinct script types, and outlining when and where they were used. It expands on previous handbooks of the subject by incorporating select essays on less well-studied periods and regions, in particular late mediaeval Eastern Europe. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography is also distinguished from prior handbooks by its extensive focus on codicology and on the cultural settings and contexts of mediaeval books. Essays treat of various important features, formats, styles, and genres of mediaeval books, and of representative mediaeval libraries as intellectual centers. Additional studies explore questions of orality and the written word, the book trade, glossing and glossaries, and manuscript cataloguing. The extensive plates and figures in the volume will provide readers wtih clear illustrations of the major points, and the succinct bibliographies in each essay will direct them to more detailed works in the field.

In the concluding stages of the eleventh-century Eucharistic Controversy, which turned on whether, and how, sacramental consecration changed the nature of bread and wine at the altar, Alberic of Monte Cassino composed a small but important treatise. Alberic was the most renowned teacher of rhetoric in his time, and his treatise, buttressed by appeal to the authority of the Church Fathers, was said by contemporaries to have "utterly destroyed" the argument of his opponent, Berengar of Tours, that the bread and wine survived its consecration. Modern scholars had long believed Alberic's treatise to be lost. This book demonstrates that this crucial document, far from being lost, is an existing identifiable text. By showing conclusively that this work was written by Alberic, Radding and Newton transform our understanding not only of the particulars of the controversy and papal politics but also of the intellectual process by which theological doctrines took shape in mediaeval Church councils. The book includes the full Latin text and the first translation of Alberic's treatise.

This study of Santa Maria del Gualdo Mazzocca, a Benedictine priory, and then abbey, directly dependent upon the papacy, offers a remarkable glimpse into the nature of monastic life in the middle ages.

Includes section "Reviews".

“This erudite history illuminates the social, cultural, as well as theological developments of the cross” through 2000 years of its symbolic evolution (Library Journal). Jesus’s death on the cross posed a dilemma for Saint Paul and the early Church fathers. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of execution reserved for slaves and criminals. How could their messiah and savior have been subjected to such an ignominious death? Wrestling with this paradox, they reimagined the cross as a triumphant expression of Christ’s sacrificial love and miraculous resurrection. Over time, the symbol’s transformation raised myriad doctrinal questions, particularly about the crucifix―the cross with the figure of Christ―and whether it should emphasize Jesus’s suffering or his glorification. How should Jesus’s body be depicted: alive or dead, naked or dressed? Should it be shown at all? Robin Jensen’s wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

This student-friendly volume brings together English translations of the main narrative sources, and a small number of other relevant documents, for the reign of Roger II, the founder of the kingdom of Sicily. The kingdom created by King Roger was the most centralised and administratively advanced of the time, but its genesis was fraught with difficulty as the king sought to extend his power from the island of Sicily and Calabria into other parts of the south Italian mainland. This struggle, that lasted from 1127 until 1140, is graphically revealed by the two main texts in this book. A number of other texts illuminate key aspects of the reign: the relationship with the papacy, the German invasion of 1137 that came close to toppling the king’s rule, the expansion of Sicilian power into the Abruzzi in 1140, and the law and administration of the kingdom, often seen as a model for the growth of effective government in the twelfth century. Despite the great intrinsic interest of the reign of King Roger, these texts have never appeared in English translation before. This will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of medieval Europe.

This book explores one of the most significant medieval saints’ cults, that of St. Maurus, the first known disciple of Saint Benedict. Despite the centrality of this story to the myth of medieval Benedictine culture, no major scholarly work has been devoted to Maurus since the late nineteenth century. Drawing on memory studies, this book investigates the origins and history of the cult, from the ninth-century Life of St. Maurus by Odo, abbot of Glanfueil, to its appropriation and re-shaping by three powerful abbeys through to the thirteenth century—Fossés, Cluny, and Montecassino. It traces how these institutions deployed caches of mostly forged documents (many translated here for the first time) to adapt the cult to their aspirations and, moreover, considers how the cult adapted itself further, to face the challenges of the modern world.

In this first comprehensive study of the Latin Passion play, Professor Sticca examines the medieval liturgical ceremonies commemorating the events in Christ's Passion and traces their gradual change in character from the contemplative to the dramatic. The author shows that while Christ's Passion became increasingly popular as one of the sacred mysteries beginning in the tenth century, new forces that allowed a more eloquent and humane visualization and description of Christ's anguish first appeared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Professor Sticca analyzes the earliest extant Latin Passion play, the twelfth-century Montecassino codex, and compares it with other Latin and vernacular Passion plays. He refutes the traditional view that the Planctus Mariae is the germinal point of the Latin Passion play and then offers a new theory of its inception. As a literary form, the Latin Passion play appears to Professor Sticca as a creation of the Montecassino monastic circle which was inspired by the liturgical services of Good Friday and the Gospel accounts. Particularly influential also were three themes that developed in the eleventh century: in liturgy, a concentration on Christocentric piety; in art, a more humanistic treatment of Christ; and in literature, a consideration of the scenes of the Passion as dramatic and human episodes. In the course of this investigation, Professor Sticca also reappraises traditional views of the origin of the medieval liturgical drama, indicating that it should not be traced exclusively to the tropes from the schools of St. Gall and St. Martial of Limoges, but rather to a number of sources.

The volume presents a comparative perspective on victors and vanquished according to the categories of remembering victory and defeat, practices of celebrating victory and triumphs as well as the culture of dealing with the vanquished. Specifically, the representation of victory and defeat in Byzantine literature of the 10th–12th centuries is contrasted with commemorative practices in early Russia, and the reflection of military events in courtly music of the 15th century is examined. In addition, the practices of celebrating victories in England in the High and Late Middle Ages are explored, as is the treatment of the defeated and the subjugated in the Frankish Empire of the 9th century, in Norman southern Italy and in Byzantium.