Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [120]-128).

This thesis provides a descriptive study of element-order (or word-order) within clauses in a corpus drawn from Ælfric's Catholic Homilies and Supplementary Homilies. A sample of 11,543 clauses has been analysed, divided into fourteen clause categories. A survey of element-order within each clause category is presented, with copious examples and full statistics. Attention is paid both to the order of single elements in relation to the verb phrase, and to patterns of clause order. An extensive description of the position of adverbial elements is included. Discussion includes a comparison of the rhythmic and non-rhythmic prose of Ælfric, showing that though there is broad similarity between the two styles, significant differences do exist. The results obtained reveal many regularities or marked tendencies in element-order, as well as a substantial measure of stylistic freedom.

The seventh century was a formative period in the history of western monasticism. It was during this period that a monastic culture became more entrenched on the Continent with the foundation of new monasteries that were more closely tied to royal and aristocratic power. The catalyst behind this development was the Irish abbot and monastic founder, Columbanus (c. 550-615), and his Frankish disciples, the Columbanians. Columbanus’s ascetical exile to the Continent in 590 and his founding of monasteries in the Vosges forests of Burgundy and at Bobbio in Lombard Italy had a deep impact on Frankish and Lombard societies. Luxeuil in Burgundy became the nexus of the Hiberno-Frankish monastic movement in Merovingian Gaul in the years following Columbanus’s death, while Bobbio became an important centre of Catholic orthodoxy and influence in Lombard Italy. This thesis considers our principal source for Columbanus and the Columbanian familia, Jonas of Bobbio’s Vita Columbani abbatis et discipulorumque eius, written between 639 and 642. This is arguably the most important hagiographical work produced in the seventh century and one of the most significant of the early Middle Ages. I propose that the work was principally a Bobbio production meant to re-vindicate Columbanus’s saintly reputation amongst the Frankish communities and to criticize the dissent and disunity that had led to a change in Columbanian practices a decade after the saint’s death. I also consider whether it was addressed to a wider royal and aristocratic audience in Merovingian Gaul and propose new insights into the structure of the work. In addition to a close textual study of the Vita Columbani and Jonas’s other, lesser-known saints’ Lives, the Vita Vedastis and the Vita Iohannis, I explore the career of Jonas himself, seeing him as an individual whose life reflected many of the changing political, cultural, and religious circumstances of his age.

The primary aim of the present study is to give a semantic/conceptual analysis to the genitive case in Old English (= OE) within a Cognitive Grammar (=CG) framework (specifically Langacker's version; Langacker 1987, 1991) and explain the diversity of its use (adnominal, adverbal, adjectival, prepositional, and adverbial), as constituting a coherent network, wherein all variants share a unified semantic structure. My analysis is partly based on Roman Jakobson's (1936/1971) study on the Russian case system, which is recast and updated within a CG framework. Pivotal to my analysis of the semantic structure of the genitive case is the notion of "deprofile", whereby an already profiled (i.e. most prominent) entity in a given predicate becomes unprofiled, to reduce the amount of attention drawn onto the designatum, making it conceptually less prominent. Specifically, the function of the genitive case in OE is to deprofile the profile of the nominal predicate to which the genitive inflection is attached. The crucial claim is that a genitive nominal is a nominal predicate, in that it still profiles a region in some domain, in accordance with the schematic characterisation of the semantic structure of a noun in CG. The nominal character of a genitive nominal means that it can occur in various syntactic contexts where any other nominal expression can occur, namely in a position for a verbal, adverbial, and prepositional complement, as well as in a modifier/complement position for a noun. This account ties in with the subsequent history of the genitive case after the end of the OE period, in which some of its uses became obsolete, especially the partitive function of adnominal genitive, and all functions of the adverbal, adjectival, prepositional genitives. The cumulative effect of this is that a genitive nominal ceased to be a nominal predicate, and its determinative character which had already existed in OE side by side with its nominal character, became grammaticalised during the ME period as a general function of a genitive nominal. Chapter l outlines the history of the genitive case from OE to early ME, to introduce the problems to be dealt with in this dissertation, particularly the diversity of the genitive functions. Reviews of some previous studies relevant to the problems are also provided. Chapter 2 and 3 introduce the framework of CG. Chapter 2 summarises some basic assumptions about grammar, and Chapter 3 focuses on how syntactic issues are dealt with in CG, based on the assumptions summarised in Chapter 2. Here I also introduce Langacker's (1991) and Taylor's (1996) account of a Present Day English possessive construction, using Langacker's reference point analysis, and examine its applicability to the OE genitive. As an alternative, the notion of deprofile will be introduced. Chapters 4 and 5 are the application to the actual examples of genitive nominals, taken from Ælfric's Catholic Homilies first series; Chapter 4 deals with adnominal genitive, and chapter 5 covers all the non-adnominal genitives. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses how the diversity of the genitive functions in OE and its subsequent history may be accounted for in the light of the findings in this study.

Dans le contexte des chocs de la première modernité et de la Réforme catholique qui suit le concile de Trente (1545-1563), Cîteaux, qui est à la fois une abbaye et un chef-d'ordre, a été exemptée de la commende. Cette exemption conserve les abbés réguliers et leur permet de diriger et de réformer l'ordre en adaptant ses institutions aux exigences réformatrices. Au centre de la direction se place donc le problème complexe des rapports entre l'abbé de Cîteaux, le chapitre général, les quatre premiers pères, les abbayes-filles, et les différents pouvoirs extérieurs, à la fois religieux et politiques. L'abbé général doit diriger un ordre troublé par l'autonomie croissante des congrégations nationales et la formation de l'étroite observance. En effet, l'ordre cistercien conserve des abbayes dans toute l'Europe demeurée catholique. La crainte d'un schisme interne à l'ordre aboutit à la redéfinition des pouvoir institutionnels au profit des vicaires généraux et des présidents de congrégations. L'étude du rôle de l'abbé de Cîteaux se fait au double point de vue du pouvoir, celui de la direction et celui de la réforme de l'ordre. Le problème posé est celui de l'évolution du gouvernement abbatial, et ne se réduit pas à un prisme biographique. Métaphore de l'unité de l'ordre, l'abbé réunit en lui une autorité fonctionnelle et personnelle. Malgré les déchirements, le souhait du maintien de l'unité repose au XVIIe siècle sur la notion du bien commun à tous les fragments monastiques cisterciens : la famille autour du Novum monasterium de Cîteaux et de son père-abbé. / In the context of the clashes of the first modernity and of the Catholic Reformation after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Cîteaux, which is both an Abbey and a chief of Order, is exempt from being hold in commendam, allowing the regular abbots to govern and reform the order while adapting its institutions to the reformative demands. Hence, at the heart of the leadership lies the complex problem of the relationship between the abbot of Cîteaux, the General Chapter, the four first fathers, the daughter-abbeys, and the various different external powers, both political and religious. The general abbot is confronted to controlling an order that is disturbed by the growing autonomy of the national Congregations and the formation of the Strict Observance. Indeed, the Cistercian Order maintains a number of abbeys throughout all parts of Europe that have remained catholic. The fear of an internal schism within the order leads to a redefinition of the institutional powers for the benefit of vicar-generals and congregation presidents. My study of the role of the abbot of Cîteaux is conducted from the dual point of view of power, that of the leadership and that of the reformation of the order. The problem that I raise is that of the evolution of the abbatial government and it cannot be restricted to a biographical prism. As a metaphor for the order's unity, the abbot gathers both a functional and a personal authority. In spite of the various rifts, the wish for maintaining unity persists in the 17th century around the notion of a common good shared by all the Cistercian monastic fragments : the family gathered around the Novum monasterium of Cîteaux and its father abbot.

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"Communities in Translation: History and Identity in Medieval England" argues that moments of identity formation in translated texts of the Middle Ages are best understood if translation is viewed as a process. Expanding on Brian Stock's idea that texts organize and define real historical communities, I argue that medieval translations--broadly considered as textual artifacts which relate received narratives--create communities within their narratives based on religious, ethnic, and proto-nationalist identities. In my first chapter, I assert that the Old English Orosius--a translation of a fifth-century Latin history--creates an audience that is forced to assume a hybrid Roman-English identity that juxtaposes a past Rome with a present Anglo-Saxon England. In chapter two, I argue that the inclusion of English saints among traditional Latin ones in Ælfric of Eynsham's Lives of the Saints stakes a claim not only for the holiness of English Christians but for the holiness of the land itself, thus including England in a trans-temporal community of Christians that depended on English practice and belief for its continued success. In my third chapter, I turn to Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, and read it alongside its historical source by Nicholas Trevet in order to demonstrate Chaucer's investment in a multicultural English Christianity. These arguments inform my reading of Beowulf, a poem which, while not itself a translation, thematizes the issues of community raised by my first three chapters through its engagement with the problematic relationship between communities and narrative. When Beowulf's characters and narrator present an inherited narrative meant to bolster community, they more often reveal the connections to outside forces and longer histories that render its textual communities exceedingly fragile. Where previous studies of translation focus on the links of vernacular writings to their source texts and their Latin past, I suggest that these narratives envision alternative presents and futures for the communities that they create.

The subject of the thesis are the documents of the canony of Teplá, as well as some aspect of the administration of the monastery in the Middle Ages, namely under the abbot Sigismund Hausmann (1459-1506). It contains, besides the introductory chapter, three main parts, treating the history of the monastery in the Middle Ages, its documents and its administration, respectively. In the introduction, the basic secondary literature and primary sources for the topic are introduced. In addition, the structure and the methodology of the thesis are outlined. The history of the canony from its foundation up to the year 1526 is given in the first part. The following turning points are chosen for the periodization: 1420, 1459, and 1507. The presentation is based mostly on primary sources and it is focused mainly on the later Middle Ages. The second section, devoted to the medieval diplomatics of the monastery, begins with the typology of the diplomatic material of the Premonstratensian canonies in Bohemia and Moravia. The treatment of the documents of Teplá is divided according to the extant types of material (charters, letters pattent, letters missive, cartularies, registers and the remaining official books). External as well as internal features of every diplomatic type are followed in three periods: to the...

Summary: The thesis focuses on a piece of work in the form of a monastic rule which considerably influenced the whole Christian world, significantly contributed to the formation of spirituality of monastic communities, shaped the European culture and has much to say even today. The rule derives its name from its author, St. Benedict of Nursia. Given the considerable impact of his work on shaping the subsequent history of monasticism, St. Benedict is rightly called the Father of Western Monasticism. The first part introduces the Rule of Saint Benedict (Regula Benedicti). It refers to the period of its creation when certain common foundations of monastic life existed but lacked any solid anchoring. Despite the existence of other monastic rules, the Rule of Saint Benedict became the leading one thanks to its clarity and brevity. The second part deals with the Rule of the Master (Regula Magistri), an anonymous collection of monastic precepts which played a significant role as a source material for the Rule of Saint Benedict. St. Benedict took a large number of rules from it while he edited some of the original rules and intentionally omitted others. He moderated the strict text of the Rule of the Master since he was aware of human weakness. He infused the precepts with love. The third part, the longest in its...

The diploma work deals with the history of the male Augustinian order in Bohemia and Moravia, i.e. both canons and eremites. The main concern of the first part is the personality of St. Augustin and general history of the order in Europe. The history of the order in Bohemia and Moravia follows and at the end the history of individual Bohemian and Moravian cloisters is elaborated.