The third Morton W. Bloomfield Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 1993.

Here are translations of 25 Latin sermons written between 1350 and 1450, demonstrating how preachers constructed them and shaped them to their own purposes. This book contains a general introduction and short historical notes on the individual selections.

This book demonstrates that monastic preaching was a diverse activity which included preaching by monks, nuns and heretics. The study offers a preliminary step in understanding how preaching shaped monastic identity in the Middle Ages.

Siegfried Wenzel's groundbreaking study seeks to describe and analyze the linguistically mixed, or macaronic, sermons in late fourteenth-century England. Not only are these works of considerable religious interest, they provide extensive information on their literary, linguistic, and cultural milieux. Macaronic Sermons begins by offering a typology of such works: those in which English words offer glosses, or offer structural functions, or offer neither of the two but yet are syntactically integrated. This last group is then examined in detail: reasons are given for this usage and for its origins, based on the realities of fourteenth-century England. Siefriend Wenzel draws valuable conclusions about the linguistic status quo of the era, together with the extent of education, the audiences' expectations, and the ways in which the authors' minds worked. Obviously of interest to scholars and students of early English literature, Macaronic Sermons also contains much valuable information for specialists in language development or oral theory, and for those interested in multicultural societies.

This volume of three Studies concentrates on the changes in religious thought and institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and includes not only monks and nuns but also less organised types of life such as hermits, recluses, crusaders and penitents. It is complementary to Professor Constable's forthcoming book The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, but is dissimilar from it in examining three themes over a long period, from late antiquity to the seventeenth century, in order to show how they changed over time. The interpretation of Mary and Martha deals primarily (but not exclusively) with the balance of action and contemplation in Christian life; the ideal of the imitation of Christ studies the growing emphasis on the human Christ, especially His body and wounds; and the orders of society looks at the conceptual divisions of society and the emergence of the modern idea of a middle class.

Between the early 14th and early 15th centur ies, England experienced momentous social and political turb ulence. This volume studies the impact of the Church during the period in question. '

Generations of scholars have meditated upon the literary devices and cultural meanings of The Song of Roland. But according to Andrew Taylor not enough attention has been given to the physical context of the manuscript itself. The original copy of The Song of Roland is actually bound with a Latin translation of the Timaeus. Textual Situations looks at this bound volume along with two other similarly bound medieval volumes to explore the manuscripts and marginalia that have been cast into shadow by the fame of adjacent texts, some of the most read medieval works. In addition to the bound volume that contains The Song of Roland, Taylor examines the volume that binds the well-known poem "Sumer is icumen in" with the Lais of Marie de France, and a volume containing the legal Decretals of Gregory IX with marginal illustrations of wayfaring life decorating its borders. Approaching the manuscript as artifact, Textual Situations suggests that medieval texts must be examined in terms of their material support—that is, literal interpretation must take into consideration the physical manuscript itself in addition to the social conventions that surround its compilation. Taylor reconstructs the circumstances of the creation of these medieval bound volumes, the settings in which they were read, inscribed, and shared, and the social and intellectual conventions surrounding them.

26 expert contributions to this volumes discuss the manuscript book from a variety of angles: as physical object (manufacture, format, writing, and decoration), its purpose and readership, and as a vehicle for particular types of text (history, sermons, medical treatises, law and administration, music).

Richard Kaeuper’s career has examined three salient concerns of medieval society - knightly prowess and violence, lay and religious piety, and public order and government - most directly in three of his monographs: War, Justice, and Public Order (Oxford, 1988), Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), and Holy Warriors (Penn, 2009). Kaeuper approaches historical questions with an eye towards illuminating the inherent complexities in human ideas and ideals, and he has worked to untangle the various threads holding together cultural constructs such as chivalry, licit violence, and lay piety. The present festschrift in his honor brings together scholars from across disciplines to engage with those same concerns in medieval society from a variety of perspectives. Contributors are: Bernard S. Bachrach, Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Samuel A. Claussen, David Crouch, Thomas Devaney, Paul Dingman, Daniel P. Franke, Richard Firth Green, Christopher Guyol, John D. Hosler, William Chester Jordan, Craig M. Nakashian, W. Mark Ormrod, Russell A. Peck, Anthony J. Pollard, Michael Prestwich, Sebastian Rider-Bezerra, Leah Shopkow, and Peter W. Sposato.

The Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible was the ubiquitous text of the Middle Ages. Compiled in twelfth-century France, this multi-volume work, containing the entire text of Scripture surrounded by a commentary drawn from patristic and medieval authors, is still extant in thousands of manuscripts, testifying to the centrality of the work for generations of medieval scholars. Although the Glossa has been the subject of modern study, it is surrounded by myth. This book, based on manuscript evidence, is the first to draw together the history of this monumental work, its authorship, content, layout, production and use. Raising new questions, and pointing the way to further research, it opens up the Glossa to all students of medieval religion and intellectual history.