English

A medieval encyclopedia was an educational text describing the natural and human worlds that was used primarily within an institutional setting such as a monastery, cathedral school, or university. A few encyclopedias were also sources for exempla used in medieval sermons both in Latin and in the vernacular languages. Only two such encyclopedias were translated into English: Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum was translated by John Trevisa in 1398/9, and a French version of Honorius Augustodunensis’s Imago mundi made by Gossouin of Metz in 1245–50 was translated by William Caxton as Mirrour of the World (printed 1480/1481 and 1490). These are both popular translations that render their originals rather literally than freely. Trevisa’s technique preserves the Latin terminology of the original, which suggests that his translation is meant to speed up searching for the English reader while it preserves the key terms of Bartholomaeus’s Latin. Caxton’s technique is to anglicize the original thoroughly, down to place-names and local color, while he also expands his original somewhat via his stylistic preference for restatement in doublets and triplets.

This article edits and translates a letter purportedly by Morgan le Fay in Anglo-Norman French that was written at the bottom of two astronomical tables in London, BL Royal 12.C.ix.  After an analysis of the letter's Arthurian motifs, rhetorical features, and manuscript context, the article suggests that the letter, the only Arthurian text in which Morgan speaks in her own voice,  is a critique of Piers Gaveston's political ambition.

This essay briefly surveys the encyclopedias used in education in medieval England, their employment as resources for of exempla for preachers, and their manuscript dissemination in England.  It also considers how the manuscripts were annotated and outfitted with indices in order to facilitate searching.

From the Conclusion (p. 361):  This paper outlines "three kinds of reception for encyclopaedias in medieval England.  In that period, encyclopaedias moved from the monastic and cathedral schools to the pulpit and outward to a varied audience of clerical and lay readers.  On the basis of extant manuscripts and of medieval library catalogues, booklists, and bequests, it appears that the Carolingian encyclopaedias of Isidore, Bede, and Rabanus Maurus continued to be read in religious houses throughout the Middle Ages in England.  To these we can add certain other encyclopaedias--namely, Honorius' Elucidarium and Imago mundi, Alexander Neckam's De natura rerum, Vincent's Historiale, and Bartholomaeus' De proprietatibus rerum....  For English preachers, it would seem that Bartholomaeus' encyclopaedia is a source for exempla, though whether exempla come directly from the encyclopaedia or via an intermediary exemplum collection based on an encyclopaedia is a matter for further study.  For literary authors, both religious and secular, Bartholomaeus' encyclopaedia is far and away the encyclopaedia of choice."

After a brief summary of the origin, contents, and distribution of the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius, one of the most widely-read apocalypses of the Middle Ages, this paper surveys the manuscript situation in England, arguing that (a) Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS. 165 is the oldest known MS of Pseudo-Methodius in England, (b) it is the only surviving MS of the first (longer) recension of Pseudo-Methodius copied in England, and (c) it was replaced at Salisbury by a second-recension text, now London, BL Royal MS. 5.F.xviii, because, lacking the prologue found in second-recension texts--in which Jerome is said to have approved of the Revelationes--it was not considered authoritative for use in biblical study.

One’s own culture can seem so familiar that it is easy to presume no explanation of it is needed. the very existence of the two books under review here reminds us that memory, increasingly outsourced to the Internet, and emotion, increasingly complicated by encounters with people from other cultures, cannot be taken for granted as unchanging or universal. Spanning the widening gap that separates us from medieval lives, the books under review work admirably to replace reflexive responses to romance literature and the culture that produced it with informed understanding, illuminating both the past and the present. the essays in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature expand on papers read at the 2011 and 2014 International Arthurian Society congresses. Displays of emotion are plentiful in Arthurian romances, and because parallel versions of Arthurian romances abound in different European languages, comparative study of the behaviors and vocabulary of emotions across linguistic bound...

Bartholomaeus Anglicus' encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum [On the properties of things] (ca. 1240) privileges Bartholomaeus' homeland, England, in its coverage of geography, citing as a source an unidentified 'Brut history' that is most likely not a Latin source. Bartholomaeus further claims 'Engela,' a Saxon queen, as the eponym of England, securing for her a place in Britain's legendary history that would have delighted Fiona Tolhurst, to whose memory this article is dedicated.