Series: Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

An authoritative new Greek edition and English translation of the life of a notable Byzantine monastic leader. Saint Peter of Atroa (773–837 CE) was a Byzantine monastic leader, remembered primarily as cofounder and abbot of the influential monastery of Saint Zachariah at Atroa, below the holy mountain of Olympos in Bithynia. Peter sought to live in tranquility and solitude, travelling...

Today the Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian (ca. 949 to 1022 CE) is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church and revered as one of its most influential spiritual thinkers. But in his own time, a cloud of controversy surrounded him, and the suspicion of heresy tainted his reputation long afterward. The Life was written...

A rare Latin edition of Saint Augustine's dialogue on immortality, accompanied by an Old English vernacular adaptation translated into modern English for the first time in a hundred years. Around the turn of the tenth century, an anonymous scholar crafted an Old English version of Saint Augustine of Hippo's Soliloquia, a dialogue exploring the nature of truth and the immortality...

The first English translation of the earliest Latin poems about miracles performed by the Virgin Mary, composed in twelfth-century Canterbury by a Benedictine monk who inspired Chaucer. Nigel (ca. 1135–1198), a Benedictine monk at Christ Church in Canterbury, is best known for The Mirror of Fools—a popular satire whose hero, Burnellus the Ass, is referenced in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Nigel's...

Until the Renaissance, the work of Calcidius offered the medieval West almost the only direct access to Plato's corpus not dispersed in fragments. In the 4th century CE, Calcidius translated into Latin an important section of Plato's Timaeus, complemented by extensive commentary and organised into coordinated parts. The first part is broadly devoted to the architecture of the world, to...

Among Greek histories of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the work of Laonikos (ca. 1430–ca. 1465) has by far the broadest scope. Born to a leading family of Athens under Florentine rule, he was educated in the classics at Mistra by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plethon. In the 1450s, Laonikos set out to imitate Herodotos in writing the history of...

Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain—the earliest work to detail the legendary foundation of Britain by Brutus the Trojan and the life of King Arthur—was among the most widely read books throughout the Middle Ages. Its sweeping account of the Britons began long before the Romans and challenged the leading histories of the twelfth century. Merlin,...

In 1039, Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079, it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History by Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this...

Theodore (759–826), abbot of the influential Constantinopolitan monastery of Stoudios, is celebrated as a saint by the Orthodox Church for his stalwart defence of icon veneration. Three important texts promoting the monastery and the memory of its founder are collected in The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios. In the Life of Theodore, Michael the Monk describes a golden...

The Patria is a fascinating four-book collection of short historical notes, stories, and legends about the buildings and monuments of Constantinople, compiled in the late tenth century by an anonymous author who made ample use of older sources. It also describes the foundation and early (pre-Byzantine) history of the city, and includes the Narrative on the Construction of Hagia Sophia,...

A fascinating window into daily Byzantine religious observances The Menologion of Basil II, one of the most famous manuscripts surviving from Byzantium, contains short narratives to be read during the morning office to commemorate the saint or feast of the day. Dedicated to the emperor Basil II (r. 976-1025), it is best known for its decorative programme: each of the...

The Old English Boethius boldly refashions in Anglo-Saxon guise a great literary monument of the late-antique world, The Consolation of Philosophy. Condemned to death for treason around 525 CE, the Roman scholar Boethius turned to philosophy to transform his personal distress into a powerful meditation on fate, free will, and the human capacity for virtue in a flawed, fallen world....

The first complete translation into a modern language of a major authority on the medieval Christian liturgy. Honorius Augustodunensis's Jewel of the Soul (the Gemma animae) gleams as one of the most attractive liturgical commentaries from the twelfth century. A lively and effective teacher, Honorius strives to unveil the meaning behind the sacred texts, objects, music, and ritual of the...

The first complete translation into a modern language of a major authority on the medieval Christian liturgy. Honorius Augustodunensis's Jewel of the Soul (the Gemma animae) gleams as one of the most attractive liturgical commentaries from the twelfth century. A lively and effective teacher, Honorius strives to unveil the meaning behind the sacred texts, objects, music, and ritual of the...

The complete works of the first known woman playwright Hrotsvit, a canoness at the convent of Gandersheim in Saxony during the tenth century, is the first Latin dramatist since late antiquity whose work survives. While her plays are still frequently performed, her other works are not readily available in English. A desire to provide a morally superior, elegant alternative to...

A thousand years of English history, encapsulating invasions, the rise and fall of kings, and religious events Among the vernacular historical writings of early medieval England, the Old English Chronicle holds a prominent place, providing not only a backbone of English history from the fifth through the twelfth centuries but also a record of language development and geography. The seven...

The first complete, modern translation of one of the most important Byzantine works of Marian doctrine and devotion. John Geometres (ca. 935–ca. 1000) was one of the most highly esteemed poets and authors in Byzantium; yet his most important text, the Life of the Virgin Mary, remains largely unknown today. This literary and rhetorical masterpiece stands as a work of...

A collection of ancient Byzantine hymns featuring women as pivotal characters, now in a new translation. At a time when Christianity was becoming the dominant religion in the Byzantine Roman Empire, Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485–565) was a composer of songs for festivals and rituals in late antique Constantinople. Most of his songs include dramatic dialogues or monologues woven with...

A new translation of two medieval Spanish versions of the tale of Apollonius, a story central to the premodern literary imagination and a source for Shakespeare's Pericles. Incest, riddling, piracy, prostitution, shipwreck, Lazarus-like resuscitation, and seductive musical performances—the story of King Apollonius and his wanderings, with its riveting plot twists, has been told and retold in many languages since its...

What offers over seven hundred witty enigmas in several languages? Answer: The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition. Riddles, wordplay, and inscrutable utterances have been at the heart of Western literature for many centuries. Often brief and always delightful, medieval riddles provide insights into the extraordinary and the everyday, connecting the learned and the ribald, the lay and the devout,...

A contemporary edition and translation of one of the great monuments of Old English literary and religious culture. The homilies of the monk Ælfric, written in the last decade of the tenth century, offer some of the most important prose writing in Old English. They convey mainstream Christian thought, a distillation of the spiritual inheritance of the English Church before...

When does imitation of an author morph into masquerade? Although the Roman writer Ovid died in the first century CE, many new Latin poems were ascribed to him from the sixth until the fifteenth century. Like the Appendix Vergiliana, these verses reflect different understandings of an admired Classical poet and expand his legacy throughout the Middle Ages. The works of...

The first comprehensive edition and translation of Old English writings on health and healing in more than 150 years. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, vernacular writings on health and healing had a major place in early medieval England. These texts—unique local remedies and translations of late antique Latin treatises—offer insights into the history of science and medicine, social history, scribal practices,...

An elegant medieval guide to verse composition and rhetoric, presented in a new authoritative edition and English translation. The Art of Making Verses, Ars versificatoria, was composed by the thirteenth-century English poet and teacher Gervase of Melkley, who studied under John de Hauville. He belongs to a select company of French and English scholastic poets including not only de Hauville...

A classic, Dantesque political epic from medieval Spain that inspired Cervantes and Góngora, in its first English translation. Why do the injustices of the past still afflict the present? With this question, Juan de Mena is transported to heaven by a vision in the Dantesque The Labyrinth of Fortune. Composed in 1444 by Mena, a royal chronicler and Latin secretary...

Maximos the Confessor (580–662) occupies a unique position in the history of Byzantine philosophy, theology, and spirituality. His profound spiritual experiences and penetrating theological vision found complex and often astonishing expression in his unparalleled command of Greek philosophy, making him one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. So thoroughly did his thought come to influence...

A collection of medieval tales of Byzantine saints, including some rejected by the Church, translated into English for the first time. The legends collected in Saints at the Limits, despite sometimes being viewed with suspicion by the Church, fascinated Christians during the Middle Ages—as related cults, multiple retellings, and contemporary translations attest. Their protagonists span the entire spectrum of Byzantine...

An influential medieval allegorical interpretation of the Metamorphoses that uncovers the hidden moral truths of Ovid's stories, translated into English for the first time. Written in about 1340 in Avignon by the Benedictine preacher Pierre Bersuire, The Moralized Ovid—commonly referred to by its Latin title, Ovidius moralizatus, to distinguish it from the anonymous French vernacular Ovide moralisé—was arguably the most...

One of the most influential texts in the Middle Ages, The Rule of Saint Benedict offers guidance about both the spiritual and organisational 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...

The Old English poems in this volume are among the first retellings of scriptural texts in a European vernacular. More than simple translations, they recast the familiar plots in daringly imaginative ways, from Satan's seductive pride (anticipating Milton), to a sympathetic yet tragic Eve, to Moses as a headstrong Germanic warrior-king, to the lyrical nature poetry in Azarias. Whether or...

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...

This volume contains two texts that crossed the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity. The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was one of the first works composed in response to the Arab invasions and the establishment of the Muslim empire in the seventh century. In a matter of decades, it was translated from its original Syriac into Greek and from Greek into Latin. (Both...

The Latin psalms figured prominently in the lives of the Anglo-Saxons, whether sung in the Divine Office by clerics, studied as a textbook for language learning by students, or recited in private devotion by lay people. They were also translated into Old English, first in prose and later in verse. Sometime in the middle of the eleventh century, the prose...

Maximos the Confessor (580–662) occupies a unique position in the history of Byzantine philosophy, theology, and spirituality. His profound spiritual experiences and penetrating theological vision found complex and often astonishing expression in his unparalleled command of Greek philosophy, making him one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. So thoroughly did his thought come to influence...

The Old English poems attributed to Cynewulf, who flourished some time between the eighth and tenth centuries, are unusual because most vernacular poems in this period are anonymous. Other than the name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not even the most basic facts of where or when he lived. Yet the poems themselves attest to a powerfully inventive...

A contemporary edition and translation of one of the great monuments of Old English literary and religious culture. The homilies of the monk Ælfric, written in the last decade of the tenth century, offer some of the most important prose writing in Old English. They convey contemporary Christian doctrine shaped during a period of monastic reform. Taken together, the homilies...

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...

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous centre of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early...

This volume completes the six-volume 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 tradition through the twentieth century. It influenced literature, art, music, and education, and its contents lay at the heart of Western theological, intellectual, artistic, and political history through the...

Beowulf is one of the finest works of vernacular literature from the European Middle Ages and as such is a fitting title to head the Old English family of texts published in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. This volume offers something unique. For the first time in the history of Beowulf scholarship, the poem appears alongside the other four texts...

At the intersection of medieval religion and medicine. Prince Louis, son of Charles II of Anjou, died at age twenty-three in 1297, but had already taken vows as a Franciscan friar and been invested as bishop of Toulouse only six months earlier. Immediately after he was buried in Marseille, miracles were reported—first by local citizens then by pilgrims as rumours...

The Old English History of the World is a translation and adaptation of the Latin history known as the Seven Books of History against the Pagans, written by the Spanish cleric Paulus Orosius at the prompting of Saint Augustine after the sack of Rome in 410. To counter the pagan and republican narratives of Livy and other classical historians, Orosius...

The twelfth-century Latin beast epic Ysengrimus is one of the great comic masterpieces of the Middle Ages. This long poem, composed in what is today Belgium, recounts the relentless persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus by his archenemy Reynard the fox, in the course of which the wolf is beaten to a pulp, flayed (twice), mutilated, and finally eaten alive by...

"How I wept at your hymns and songs, keenly moved by the sweet-sounding voices of your church!" wrote the recently converted Augustine in his Confessions. Christians from the earliest period consecrated the hours of the day and the sacred calendar, liturgical seasons and festivals of saints. This volume collects one hundred of the most important and beloved Late Antique and...

The Book of Pastoral Rule, or Liber regulae pastoralis, by Pope Gregory the Great—the pontiff responsible for the conversion of the English to Christianity beginning in 597—is a guide for aspiring bishops. Pope Gregory explains who ought and who ought not seek such a position and advises on what sort of spiritual guidance a bishop should provide to those under...

The twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalising insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the...

Saints of Ninth- and Tenth-Century Greece collects funeral orations, encomia, and narrative hagiography. Together, these works illuminate one of the most obscure periods of Greek history—when holy men played central roles as the Byzantine administration reimposed control on southern and central Greece in the wake of Avar, Slavic, and Arab attacks and the collapse of the late Roman Empire. The...