The Virgil Commentary of Aelius Donatus ‘ Black Hole or ‘Éminence Grise‘?

1990 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Daintree
Keyword(s):  
Black Hole ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Middle Ages

Helen Waddell, in her charming Medieval Latin Lyrics, surely a book which inspired many a young person, trained in the classics, to become a ‘convert’ to the middle ages, described the collection of poems known as the Appendix Virgiliana, as coming ‘down through the Middle Ages bobbing at a painter's end in the mighty wash of the Aeneid’. This same description can, I think, be prettily applied to the Virgil scholia, the humble and often nameless attempts of innumerable scholars to elucidate the master's poems; notes and glosses sometimes wise and often banal, which exist, not like other literature as an end in themselves, but solely as a means towards a better understanding of Virgil.

The Meaning of ‘carruca’ in the ‘Leges Barbarorum’

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 297-300
Author(s):  
Theodore John Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The term carruca (or carruga), like many other terms in medieval Latin, acquired a new and different meaning in the Middle Ages in place of its original classical meaning. There is no confusion over the meaning of carruca in Roman historical and literary sources: it clearly means a four-wheeled wagon or carriage. However, its original meaning was modified during the medieval period so that by the early ninth century carruca denoted a wheeled plow. Although the medieval plow is often called a carruca (whereas the Roman plow is called an aratrum), one should not infer that all references to carruca in medieval sources signify a plow, particularly if these sources are datable to that transitional period during which the classical meaning of the word was beginning to be transformed into its medieval one. Characteristic of the sources which fall within this period are the Germanic tribal laws (leges barbarorum), and of these, three individual laws in particular are of interest: the Pactus legis Salicae 38.1, Lex Ribuaria 47.2, and Lex Alamannorum 93.2.

Medieval Latin Commentaries on Classical Myth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Critical Editions ◽  
Classical Myth ◽  
Classical Mythology ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Classical Myths ◽  
The Middle Ages

As the abundance of extant medieval commentaries attests, classical mythology presented several conundrums for medieval audiences. The historical distance between the writers of classical myths and their medieval readers prompted numerous scholars to reframe and even rewrite their sources to ameliorate challenges ranging from complicated classical Latin syntax to theological conflicts between pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism. Despite its polytheism, classical mythology became a source for manifold medieval erudition, beginning with the grammatical studies that introduced students to Latin literacy. Scholars and writers since the beginning of the Christian Middle Ages turned to these myths to gain mastery over Latin, history, natural science, and even ethics. To study these subjects, medieval scholars produced collections of scholastic notes, or commentaries, primarily in Latin. The medieval commentary tradition began in classical antiquity itself. Soon after Virgil wrote his Aeneid, scholars started developing commentaries that prompted audiences both to study and to imitate his works. The Middle Ages inherited some of these commentaries, such as the influential commentaries by Servius on Virgil, which then influenced commentaries on other classical writers of myths, such as Ovid and Statius. The modern study of these diverse medieval materials has recently benefited from the increased availability of digital manuscripts, critical editions, and a few translations, all of which have facilitated more cross-commentary analyses than used to be possible. However, the wide range of interpretive approaches and formats as well as the irregularities of medieval scholastic transmission mean that much more work remains to be done on how medieval audiences accessed classical mythology. This article combines older foundational studies with more recent contributions to represent how modern criticism, like the commentaries it studies, takes many forms.

Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Trans. with an intro. by Dan Attrell and David Porreca. Based on the Latin edition by David Pingree. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xii, 372 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 530-532
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
State University ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Early Modern Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

Ordinary readers would welcome this new translation as one of many publications rendering a medieval Latin into modern English. All those efforts are certainly most welcome and necessary to maintain the scholarly and pragmatic-didactic approach to Medieval Studies. However, the Picatrix represents a unique magical treatise which every European pre-modern magician consulted and which enjoyed greatest respect for its universal relevance. Many contributors to the edited volume Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. by Albrecht Classen (2018) refer to the Picatrix, acknowledging it as a most important source for magic throughout the entire pre-modern world.

Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries Authors A-F

Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 313-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Lohr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Civilization ◽  
The Middle Ages

The history of Latin Aristotelianism reaches roughly from Boethius to Galileo — from the end of classical civilization to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Whereas the early Middle Ages knew only a part of Aristotle's logic, the whole Aristotelian corpus became known in the period around 1200. From the middle of the thirteenth century to the end of the Middle Ages, and in some circles even beyond, the influence of these works was decisive both for the system of education and for the development of philosophy and natural science.

scholarly journals El conector ilativo-consecutivo onde en el español medieval = The illative-consecutive connector onde in Medieval Spanish

2018 ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Herrero Ruiz de Loizaga
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Argumentative Texts ◽  
The Middle Ages

<p><em>Onde</em> como conector ilativo-consecutivo  continúa el empleo desarrollado por UNDE en el latín tardío y medieval, y se halla preferentemente en textos o fragmentos expositivo-argumentativos, en buena medida como consecuencia de una imitación culta de estos usos latinos. A pesar de su intensidad de empleo durante la Edad Media, su preferencia por determinados contextos en los que tiende a especializarse y la progresiva desaparición de <em>onde</em> como adverbio relativo e interrogativo y su consideración de vulgarismo en este empleo a partir del siglo XVI determinarán la desaparición de este conector, ya desusado en el español clásico.</p><p>Onde as consecutive connector continues the use developed by UNDE in Late and Medieval Latin, and<br />it is found mainly in expositive-argumentative texts or fragments, largely as a consequence of learned<br />imitation of these Latin uses. Despite its intense use during the Middle Ages, its preference for certain<br />contexts in which it tends to specialize and the progressive disappearance of onde as relative and interrogative adverb and its consideration of vulgarism in this adverbial use from the sixteenth century on<br />will determine the disappearance of this connector, already obsolete in classical Spanish.<br /><br /></p>

scholarly journals A Note of the Latin Granicies 'Border' and the -(it)ies Formations in the Corpus of Medieval Latin in Polan

1970 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 95-99
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jasińska ◽  
Dariusz R. Piwowarczyk
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Specific Population ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Polish medieval Latin corpus is a specific collection of texts created during the Middle Ages in the Polish lands. The language itself had a special status as it was no longer the native language of any specific population. Consequently, it underwent changes in the lexicon to the extent that both Latin forms were transferred into Polish and the Polish ones into Latin. Such is the case with the word granicies ‘border’ which was transferred from the Polish word granica ‘border’. The baffling thing is that the transfer itself created a word within the non-productive Latin fifth declension. The purpose of the present article is to try to explain why it was transferred to this specific type of inflection.

THE BIBLIA PICTA VELISLAI AND LATIN BIBLICAL MNEMONICS IN 14TH AND 15TH C. BOHEMIA

Daphnis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-355
Author(s):  
Lucie Doležalová
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Middle Ages

After an overview of late medieval Latin biblical mnemonic tools with a special attention to those transmitted in Bohemia, the study moves to an analysis of the most singular biblical retelling from Bohemia, the Biblia picta Velislai (Velislav bible) from ca. 1340. While this “biblical comics” displays many inconsistencies both in its visual and textual aspects (e.g., there are only nine precepts of the Decalogue included), the author argues that such features were quite common during the Middle Ages and did not exclude its use for education and meditation. Like substantially later Manualník by Jan Amos Komenský (1623, printed 1658), the main aim of this and other biblical retellings was the moral edification of the readers.

The Medieval Latin Literature of Germany As German Literature

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
Edwin H. Zeydel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Vernacular Language ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the vast body of medieval literature written in what is called the Germanic area of Europe—and in the Middle Ages that included parts of present-day France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland—there is an immense amount of writing in a non-vernacular language known as Medieval Latin, in German Mittellateinisch—a term not coined by Wilhelm Meyer in 1882, as Karl Langosch claimed. It was used as early as 1838 by Jacob Grimm in the epoch-making Lateinische Gedichte des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts, prepared in collaboration with Andreas Schmeller. Mittellateinisch, among other things the medium of the Roman Catholic Church, is a language apart, growing not directly out of that of Cicero and Vergil, but rather originating from the late Latinity of Antiquity in its dying stages, and under the influence of tendencies present in the vernacular tongues.

scholarly journals Łacińska humiliatio a staropolska pokora. Wpływ polszczyzny na łacinę w średniowieczu

2019 ◽  
Vol LXXV (75) ◽  
pp. 73-85
Author(s):  
Anna Ledzińska
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Linguistic Interference ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Middle Ages

Latin humiliatio and Old Polish pokora. The influence of Polish on Latin in the Middle Ages. Summary: The paper discusses cross-linguistic interference observed while studying Latin humiliatio, humilitas (and additionally homagium, venia) and Old Polish pokora, referring to the statutory and customary legal practice of ‘public humiliation of the culprit, most often the murderer, and their request for forgiveness’. The research focuses on the linguistic and socio-cultural changes that made the juridical meaning of humiliatio, humilitas emerge. The paper offers a diachronic analysis of the development of a set of words that share the root humil*, followed by a synchronic study of the vocabulary attested in Old Polish, Old Czech, and in Medieval Latin used in other countries. The article discusses linguistic and socio-cultural factors that might have contributed to the development of the juridical sense of humiliatio, humilitas in Medieval Latin in Poland, and concludes with a hypothesis that the described sense emerged as a calque of one of the senses of the Polish word pokora. Streszczenie: Artykuł przedstawia interferencje semantyczne, do których doszło na styku łaciny średniowiecznej i staropolszczyzny w obrębie leksemów opisujących usankcjonowany prawem i zwyczajem akt pokory, to jest publiczne upokorzenie się winowajcy, najczęściej zabójcy połączone z prośbą o przebaczenie. Są to: humiliatio, humilitas, a dodatkowo homagium, venia) oraz staropolska pokora. Po dokonaniu diachronicznej analizy rozwoju wyrazów współdzielących rdzeń humil* sięgnięto do materiału porównawczego z łaciny średniowiecznej innych narodów, staropolszczyzny oraz języka staroczeskiego. Starano się w ten sposób ustalić, jakie zmiany językowe i społeczno-kulturowe przyczyniły się do wyłonienia się znaczenia prawnego leksemów humiliatio, humilitas w łacinie średniowiecznej ziem polskich, wysuwając ostatecznie hipotezę, że doszło tu do kalki językowej jednego ze znaczeń polskiego terminu pokora.

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