Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

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.

This volume presents two complementary medieval anthologies containing lyrics by two outstanding Latin poets of the second half of the twelfth century. The collection is further augmented by verse as varied as Christmas poems and satires on the venality of the Roman Curia and immoral bishops.

For the first time in the history of Beowulf scholarship, the poem appears alongside the other four texts from its sole surviving manuscript: the prose Passion of Saint Christopher, The Wonders of the East, The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, and the poem Judith.

This second volume of a six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible presents the Historical Books of the Bible, which tell of Joshua’s leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, the leadership of judges and kings, Israel’s steady departure from many of God’s precepts, the Babylonian Captivity, and the return of Israel from exile.

This second volume of a six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible presents the Historical Books of the Bible, which tell of Joshua’s leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, the leadership of judges and kings, Israel’s steady departure from many of God’s precepts, the Babylonian Captivity, and the return of Israel from exile.

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 for both first-time readers and scholars of medieval history and language.

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 the lyrical nature poetry in Azarias.

Volume III in this six-volume edition 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.

The Satires of Amarcius unrelentingly attack both secular vices and ecclesiastical abuses of the late eleventh century. The Eupolemius is a late-eleventh-century Latin epic that recasts salvation history, from Lucifer’s fall through Christ’s resurrection, fusing Greek and Hebrew components within a uniquely medieval framework.

The Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer tells of synods and coronations, deception and espionage, battles and sieges, disease and death, and even the difficulties of travel.

The Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer tells of synods and coronations, deception and espionage, battles and sieges, disease and death, and even the difficulties of travel.

Miracles occupied a unique place in medieval and Byzantine life and thought. This volume makes available three collections of miracle tales never before translated into English. They deepen our understanding of attitudes toward miracles and display the remarkable range of registers in which Greek could be written during the Byzantine period.

Volume IV of the Vulgate Bible 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.

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.

Old English poetry offers a large number of shorter compositions, many of them on explicitly Christian themes. This volume presents twenty-nine of these shorter religious poems composed in Old and early Middle English between the seventh and twelfth centuries. These texts demonstrate the remarkable versatility of early English verse.

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.

Volume V in this 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.

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.

King Alfred’s circle of scholars boldly refashioned Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into Old English, bringing it to a vernacular audience for the first time. Verse prologues and epilogues associated with the court of Alfred fill out this new edition, translated from Old English by Susan Irvine and Malcolm R. Godden.

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.

Compiled and translated in large part by Saint Jerome, the Vulgate Bible influenced Western literature, art, music, education, theology, and political history through the Renaissance. Professors at Douay, then at Rheims, translated it into English to combat Protestant vernacular Bibles. Volume VI presents the entire New Testament.

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.

Other than his name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not even where or when he lived. Yet his Old English poems attest to a powerfully inventive imagination, deeply learned in Christian doctrine and traditional verse-craft. He reveals an expert control of structure and a flair for extended similes and dramatic dialogue.

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. It is the only Medieval Greek text to present a panorama of the city as it existed in the middle Byzantine period.

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 Latin beast epic Ysengrimus is one of the great comic masterpieces of the Middle Ages. It recounts the persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus—who represents a hybrid abbot-bishop—by his archenemy Reynard the fox. The narrative’s details are carefully crafted to make the wolf’s punishment fit the abbot-bishop’s crime.

Religious piety has rarely been animated as vigorously as in Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints. Ranging from lyrical to dramatic to narrative and showing great inventiveness, these ten anonymous poems vividly demonstrate the extraordinary hybrid that emerges when traditional Germanic verse adapts itself to Christian themes.

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.

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.

Henry of Avranches, professional versifier to abbots, bishops, kings, and a pope, displays pyrotechnical verbal skill and playfulness that rivals the Carmina Burana and collections of rhymed secular verse. Yet Saints’ Lives also stands as self-conscious heir to the great classicizing tradition of twelfth-century epic poets.

Henry of Avranches, professional versifier to abbots, bishops, kings, and a pope, displays pyrotechnical verbal skill and playfulness that rivals the Carmina Burana and collections of rhymed secular verse. Yet Saints’ Lives also stands as self-conscious heir to the great classicizing tradition of twelfth-century epic poets.

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.

Laonikos was one of the Greek historians of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He viewed Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and his Histories of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

Laonikos was one of the Greek historians of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He viewed Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and his Histories of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

Amalar of Metz’s On the Liturgy—one of the most widely circulated texts of the Carolingian era—addresses Christian worship from prayers to vestments to bodily gestures of celebrants. This volume adapts the text of Jean-Michel Hanssens’s 1948 edition and provides the first complete translation into a modern language.

Amalar of Metz’s On the Liturgy—one of the most widely circulated texts of the Carolingian era—addresses Christian worship from prayers to vestments to bodily gestures of celebrants. This volume adapts the text of Jean-Michel Hanssens’s 1948 edition and provides the first complete translation into a modern language.

As a didactic explanation of pagan ancient Greek culture to Orthodox Christians, John Tzetzes’s Allegories of the Iliad is deeply rooted in the mid-twelfth-century circumstances of the cosmopolitan Comnenian court. As a critical reworking of the Iliad, it is part of the millennia-long global tradition of Homeric adaptation.

Having studied with pioneers in philosophy and science, Bernardus Silvestris became a renowned teacher of literary and poetic composition. His versatility as scholar, philosopher, and scientist is apparent in this collection, particularly his masterpiece the Cosmographia, which has been compared to the poetry of Lucretius and Giordano Bruno.

Gregory of Tours, acclaimed as “the father” of French history, also wrote extensively about holy men and women, and about wondrous events—miracles. The conversational stories in Lives and Miracles relate what Gregory viewed as the visible results of holy power, direct or mediated, at work in the world.

Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. Holy Men of Mount Athos presents the Lives of five holy men who lived there at different times, from the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century.

In the fourth century CE, Calcidius translated into Latin an important section of Plato’s Timaeus, complemented by commentary and organized into coordinated parts. Its organization subsequently informed the sense of macrocosm and microcosm—of the world and our place in it—which is prevalent in western European thought in the Middle Ages.

The Latin psalms—translated into Old English—figured prominently in the lives of Anglo-Saxons, whether sung by clerics, studied as a textbook for language learning, or recited in private devotion by lay people. The complete text of all 150 prose and verse psalms is available here in contemporary 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.

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.

The Menologion by Symeon Metaphrastes, among the most important Byzantine religious and literary works, is a culmination of a well-established tradition of Greek storytelling. This edition excerpts six Christian novels, each featuring women who defy social expectations, translated for the first time into English.

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.

The Life of Saint Neilos of Rossano is a snapshot of a distinctive moment before the schism between the churches of Rome and Constantinople. Neilos lived in both hermitages and monasteries, torn between solitude and community. This edition provides the first English translation with a newly revised Greek text.

Carmina Burana, the largest surviving collection of secular Medieval Latin verse, features poems on subjects ranging from sex and gambling to crusades and corruption. This new, two-volume presentation of the medieval classic makes the anthology accessible in its entirety to Latin lovers and English readers alike.

Carmina Burana, the largest surviving collection of secular Medieval Latin verse, features poems on subjects ranging from sex and gambling to crusades and corruption. This new, two-volume presentation of the medieval classic makes the anthology accessible in its entirety to Latin lovers and English readers alike.

The 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.

Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad helps trace the persistence of old clichés 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Ælfric (Aelfric), portrays an array of saints—including virgin martyrs, kings, soldiers, and bishops—whose examples modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance at a turbulent time when England was under severe Viking attack.

Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Ælfric, portrays an array of saints—including virgin martyrs, kings, soldiers, and bishops—whose examples modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance at a turbulent time when England was under severe Viking attack.

Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Ælfric, portrays an array of saints—including virgin martyrs, kings, soldiers, and bishops—whose examples modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance at a turbulent time when England was under severe Viking attack.

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.

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.

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.

John of Garland’s Parisiana poetria, first published about 1220, expounds medieval poetic theory and summarizes contemporary thought about writing. The long account of rhymed poetry included here is the most complete that has survived. This volume presents the most authoritative edition of the Latin text alongside a fresh English translation.

Old English Legal Writings is the first publication to bring together Archbishop Wulfstan’s works on law, church governance, and political reform that shaped the political world of eleventh-century England. This volume presents new editions of the Old English texts alongside new English translations.

The Byzantine Sinbad collects The Book of Syntipas the Philosopher, originally a Persian story, and the sixty-two tales of The Fables of Syntipas—both translated from Syriac in the late eleventh century by Michael Andreopoulos. This volume is the first English translation to include these texts alongside the Byzantine Greek originals.

The eleventh-century monk Ekkehard IV’s Fortune and Misfortune at Saint Gall chronicles the 880s to 972, near the end of the famous Swiss monastery’s two-century-long golden age, bearing witness to the struggles of the tenth-century church reform movement. This volume publishes the Latin text alongside its first complete English translation.

Wordplay has been at the heart of Western literature for many centuries, and medieval riddles provide insights into the extraordinary and the everyday. The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition assembles, for the first time ever, an astonishing array of riddles composed before 1200 CE that continue to entertain and puzzle.

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.

Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean is a treasure-trove of widely translated stories on how to conduct oneself and succeed in life. The new Byzantine Greek text and English translation presented here is based on a twelfth-century work that contains unique prefaces and reinstates stories omitted from the earliest Greek version.

Biblical and Pastoral Poetry was written by Alcimus Avitus, bishop of Vienne, in the late fifth or early sixth century. This volume presents new English translations alongside the Latin texts of the Spiritual History, his most famous work which narrates biblical stories, and verses addressed to his sister, In Consolatory Praise of Chastity.

Nigel of Canterbury’s Miracles of the Virgin, the oldest Latin poem about miracles performed by Mary, features lively tales illustrating her boundless mercy. Tract on Abuses rails against ecclesiastical corruption. Alongside authoritative editions of the Latin texts, this volume offers the first translations of both works into English.

In the tenth century, an anonymous scholar crafted an Old English version of Saint Augustine’s Soliloquia, which explores the nature of truth and immortality of the soul. This volume presents the first English translation of the complete Old English Soliloquies to appear in more than a century accompanied by a unique edition of Augustine’s work.

John Geometres’s Life of the Virgin Mary, a work of outstanding theological sophistication animated by deeply felt devotion to the Mother of God, remains largely unknown today. This new edition of the Byzantine Greek text and the first complete translation in a modern language presents a masterpiece of early Marian writing to new audiences.

The legends collected in Saints at the Limits, despite sometimes being viewed with suspicion by the Church, fascinated Christians during the Middle Ages—as cults and retellings attest. These Byzantine Greek stories, translated into English here for the first time, continue to resonate with readers seeking to understand universal fears and desires.

Jewel of the Soul unveils the meaning behind the sacred texts, objects, music, and ritual of the Roman Mass and Divine Office for young initiates. It remains key to understanding medieval allegorical approaches to worship. These volumes offer the first complete translation into a modern language of this foundational Latin text on Christian liturgy.

Jewel of the Soul unveils the meaning behind the sacred texts, objects, music, and ritual of the Roman Mass and Divine Office for young initiates. It remains key to understanding medieval allegorical approaches to worship. These volumes offer the first complete translation into a modern language of this foundational Latin text on Christian liturgy.

Medical Writings from Early Medieval England presents vernacular texts on health and healing—unique local remedies and translations of late antique Latin treatises—and offers insights into the history of science and medicine, scribal practices, and culture. This is first comprehensive edition and translation from Old English in more than 150 years.

Written in about 1340 by the Benedictine preacher Pierre Bersuire, The Moralized Ovid was a highly influential interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the High Middle Ages. It contains descriptions of the gods followed by allegorical interpretations of major myths. This edition presents a new English translation and an authoritative Latin text.