This volume presents two complementary medieval anthologies containing lyrics by two outstanding Latin poets of the second half of the twelfth century. The poet Peter of Blois was proclaimed by a contemporary of his to be a master composer of rhythmic verse. Peter's secular love-lyrics gathered in the Arundel manuscript give substance to that claim. Written with a technical virtuosity that rivals the metrical display of Horatian lyric, the poems give eloquent and learned expression to the cult of secular love that emerged in the twelfth -century.

The collection is further augmented...

This is the second volume, in two parts, of a projected six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible.

Compiled and translated in large part by Saint Jerome at the turn of the fifth century CE, the Vulgate Bible was used from the early medieval period through the twentieth century in the Western Christian (and later specifically Catholic) tradition. It influenced literature, visual arts, music, and education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its contents lay at the heart of Western theological, intellectual, artistic, and even political history during that period. At the end...

This is the second volume, in two parts, of a projected six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible.

Compiled and translated in large part by Saint Jerome at the turn of the fifth century CE, the Vulgate Bible was used from the early medieval period through the twentieth century in the Western Christian (and later specifically Catholic) tradition. It influenced literature, visual arts, music, and education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its contents lay at the heart of Western theological, intellectual, artistic, and even political history during that period. At the end...

One of the most influential texts in the Middle Ages, The Rule of Saint Benedict offers guidance about both the spiritual and organizational dimensions, from the loftiest to the lowliest, of monastic life. This new Latin-English edition has features of interest for first-time readers of the Rule as well as for scholars of medieval history and language.

The Latin text is a transcription of manuscript 914 of the Abbey of St. Gall (Switzerland), an early ninth-century copy regarded as the version that most closely reproduces Benedict's style. The saint's idiom was...

The Historia of Richer of Saint-REmi (ca. 950-ca. 1000), an invaluable source for understanding tenth-century West Francia (present-day France), provides a rare contemporary account of the waning Carolingian dynasty, accession of Hugh Capet, and failed rebellion of Charles of Lorraine. Beginning in 888, the Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized upon the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer's descriptive talents are on display as he tells of synods and coronations,...

The Historia of Richer of Saint-REmi (ca. 950-ca. 1000), an invaluable source for understanding tenth-century West Francia (present-day France), provides a rare contemporary account of the waning Carolingian dynasty, accession of Hugh Capet, and failed rebellion of Charles of Lorraine. Beginning in 888, the Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized upon the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer's descriptive talents are on display as he tells of synods and coronations,...

Composed in Germany by a monastic poet steeped in classical lore and letters, the Satires of Amarcius (Sextus Amarcius Gallus Piosistratus) unrelentingly attack both secular vices and ecclesiastical abuses of the late eleventh century. The verses echo Horace and Prudentius, are laced with proverbs and polemic, and portray vividly aspects of contemporary life--the foppery of young nobles, the vainglory of the nouveaux riches, the fastidiousness of debauched gluttons. This is the first English translation of the Satires.

The Eupolemius is a late-eleventh-century Latin epic that...

This is the third volume of a projected six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible. Compiled and translated in large part by Saint Jerome at the turn of the fifth century CE, the Vulgate Bible permeated the Western Christian (and later specifically Catholic) tradition from the early medieval period through the twentieth century. It influenced literature, visual arts, music, and education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its contents lay at the heart of Western theological, intellectual, artistic, and even political history during that period. At the end of the sixteenth...

Alongside famous long works such as Beowulf, Old English poetry offers a large number of shorter compositions, many of them on explicitly Christian themes. This volume of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library presents twenty-nine of these shorter religious poems composed in Old and early Middle English between the seventh and twelfth centuries. Among the texts, which demonstrate the remarkable versatility of early English verse, are colorful allegories of the natural world, poems dedicated to Christian prayer and morality, and powerful meditations on death, judgment, heaven, and...