Böcker i Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library-serien

Maximos the Confessor is one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. The Ambigua is his greatest philosophical and doctrinal work, in which daring originality, prodigious talent for speculative thinking, and analytical acumen are on lavish display. The result is a labyrinthine map of the mind's journey to God.

The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios collects three important works promoting the influential Constantinople monastery of Stoudios and the memory of its founder, who is celebrated as a saint in the Orthodox Church for defending icon veneration. New editions of the Byzantine Greek texts appear alongside the first English translations.

Writings on Body and Soul includes a selection of the theological, historical, and devotional works of Aelred, the controversial abbot of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire who was widely admired but also criticized for frankness about his own sins. Freshly revised editions of the Latin texts appear here alongside new English translations.

The Old English Pastoral Care, a ninth-century translation from Latin of Pope Gregory the Great's guide for aspiring bishops that advises on what sort of spiritual guidance bishops should provide, was aimed at revitalizing the English Church. This new edition and translation into modern English is the first to appear in a century and a half.

The anonymous Tria sunt, with its wealth of illustrative materials, was a widely used and highly ambitious textbook compiled in the late fourteenth century for rhetorical composition at Oxford. Of all the major Latin arts of poetry and prose, it is the only one not previously edited or translated into English.

Alan of Lille was renowned for his learning, his contributions to systematic theology, and his Latin poetry. The works included in this volume give imaginative expression to the main tenets of Alan's theology, but the original forms in which his vision is embodied are informed by a rich awareness of poetic tradition.

The Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church. The Life was written more than 30 years after Symeon's death by his disciple and apologist Niketas Stethatos. This translation, based on an authoritative Greek edition, makes it accessible to English readers for the first time.

Volume IV presents writings attributed to the "major" prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Dire prophecies of God's impending judgment are punctuated by portentous visions. Profound grief is accompanied by the promise of mercy and redemption, a promise illustrated best by Isaiah's visions of a new heaven and a new earth.

Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints includes narratives from the eleventh and twelfth centuries about locally venerated saints like the abbess Seaxburh, as well as familiar ones like Nicholas and Michael the Archangel. This volume presents new Old English editions and modern English translations of twenty-two unattributed saints' Lives.

On Morals or Concerning Education is a manual of proper living and ethical guidance and the importance of education by the prolific late-Byzantine author and statesman Theodore Metochites. This volume provides the full Byzantine Greek text alongside the first English translation of one of Metochites's longest works.

The pseudonymous Appendix Ovidiana-which includes nature, erotic, and religious poetry-reflects different understandings of an admired Classical poet and expands his legacy through the Middle Ages. This is the first comprehensive collection and English translation of these medieval Latin verses ascribed to Ovid.

The Old English History of the World, produced around the year 900, is an anonymous translation and adaptation of Paulus Orosius's immensely popular Latin history known as the Seven Books of History against the Pagans. This volume offers a new edition and modern translation of an Anglo-Saxon perspective on the ancient world.

Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain-the earliest book to detail the legendary foundation of Britain and life of King Arthur-was widely read during the Middle Ages. This volume presents the first English translation of what may have been his source, the anonymous First Variant Version, attested in just a handful of manuscripts.

Old English Shorter Poems offers tantalizing insights into the Anglo-Saxon mental landscape. These poems and charms find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. Wisdom also emerges as folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf.

This volume presents translations from the Greek of two crucial primary sources published together for the first time-Michael Panaretos's On the Emperors of Trebizond and Bessarion's Encomium on Trebizond-providing enlightening perspectives on Byzantine identity and illuminating views of this major trading hub along the Silk Road.

Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad helps trace the persistence of old cliches as well as the evolution of new attitudes toward Islam and its prophet over five centuries in Western culture. This volume brings together a highly varied and fascinating set of Latin narratives and polemics never before translated into English.

Poems of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous collects the varied Byzantine Greek verses of these witty and vibrant poets their epigrams, satires, encomia, polemics, and more in English for the first time.

Progymnasmata, exercises in the study of declamation, were the cornerstone of elite education from Hellenistic through Byzantine times. The Rhetorical Exercises of Nikephoros Basilakes, translated here into English for the first time, illuminate teaching and literary culture in one of the most important epochs of the Byzantine Empire.

Volume V of a projected six-volume Vulgate Bible presents the twelve minor prophetical books of the Old Testament, as well as two deuterocanonical books, 1 and 2 Maccabees. The major prophets' themes of judgment and redemption are further developed here by the minor prophets. Influential martyrdom narratives anticipate Christian hagiography.

The Vulgate Bible was used from the early Middle Ages through the 12th century in the Western European Christian (and, later, Catholic) tradition. This volume elegantly and affordably presents the text of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It is the first volume of the projected six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible.

Volume III in this six-volume translation of the Vulgate Bible begins with Job's argument with God and continues with the Psalms and the Canticle of Canticles. Its seven Poetical Books mark the third step in a thematic progression from God's creation of the universe, through his oversight of historical events, and into the lives of his people.

Homilies collects seven sermons delivered by Sophronios during his short tenure as patriarch of Jerusalem, which coincided with the Holy City's capitulation to the Arab army in 638 CE. Based on a completely new edition of the Byzantine Greek text, this is the first English translation of the homilies of Sophronios.

This volume collects one hundred of the most important and beloved Late Antique and Medieval Latin hymns from Western Europe. Ranging from Ambrose in the late fourth century to Bonaventure in the thirteenth, the authors meditate on the ineffable, from Passion to Paradise, and cover a broad gamut of poetic forms and meters.

The Well-Laden Ship is an eleventh-century Latin poem composed of ancient and medieval proverbs, fables, and folktales. It was one of the few surviving works from the Middle Ages written explicitly for schoolroom use. Most of the content derives from the Bible, especially the wisdom books, from the Church Fathers, and from the ancient poets.

The twelfth-century Byzantine scholar, poet, and teacher John Tzetzes composed the verse commentary Allegories of the Odyssey to explain Odysseus's journey and the pagan gods and marvels he encountered. This edition presents the first translation of the Allegories of the Odyssey into any language alongside the Greek text.

Johannes de Hauvilla's satirical allegory Architrenius, completed in 1184, follows the quest for moral education of its eponymous protaganist, the "arch-weeper," who confronts the vices of school, church, and court. This edition brings together the most authoritative Latin text with a new English translation of an important medieval poem.

Saints of Ninth- and Tenth-Century Greece collects a variety of funeral orations, encomia, and narrative hagiography that illuminate the roles of holy men during one of the most obscure periods of Greek history. This volume presents Byzantine Greek texts written by locals in the provinces and translated here into English for the first time.

Venantius Fortunatus, a master of the short praise poem and a canonical Christian Latin poet, wrote eleven volumes of hymns, epigrams, elegies, and other religious and epistolary verses addressed to kings, bishops, and abbesses. This volume presents for the first time in English translation all of his poetry, apart from a single long saint's life.

In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East. By 1079 it was a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal. This translation, based on the most recent critical edition, includes notes, maps, and glossary.

The Apocalypse informed medieval expectations of the end of the world, responses to strange and exotic invaders, and the legend of Alexander the Great. An Alexandrian World Chronicle represented the early Christian chronicle tradition that would dominate medieval historiography. Both crossed the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity.