S. Harrison Thomson

Grosseteste's Topical Concordance of the Bible and the Fathers

date from about the same period. Times of disorder and dismay are the very times for prophesying. The author was an ardent Scot, a fearer of England and Norway, and very likely a monk; as a writer was not without skill in design, and was seemingly better than the writer or writers of the ending, but matter-of-fact, verbose, and incorrect in verse; he was not highly endowed with either education or genius. This last is true of most prophecy-mongers. The poem is of a type which, as Matthew Arnold might say, fills one with a painful giddiness and terror. But the mediaevals felt a little less necessity than we for deciding between what they believed or denied, and prophecies were the one respectable species, outside religion, of what we call the preternatural. They were the political and war propaganda of the middle ages; trusted by the ignorant and superstitious who were on their side, feared by those who were not, and repeated by the educated with interest but probably often without complete belief or denial. The origin of such works, like their strong appeal, was doubtless partly in politic design; partly in hope and fear, or a desire to vent the spleen; sometimes in the self-assertion of the weak, even in the outflowings of lunacy; occasionally perhaps in a spirit of irresponsible romanticism, or even of fun of a sort. Regnum Scotorum is found in the manuscripts chiefly in collections of prophecies, sometimes including Geoffreys prophecies from the Ilistoria. It is by no means so imposing as Geoffreys; but an insight into the background, origin, and psychology of such works affords a standpoint for viewing the Prophecies of Merlin, enlightening in more ways than can be shown here.

Three Unprinted Opuscula of John Wyclif

IN the apportionment of various tracts of John Wyclif to different editors, the Wyclif Society, which has but recently (1924) terminated its official existence, not unlnaturally overlooked some of the Reformers minor works. Yet it is only just to say that of the work of the later years of Wyclif, with the exception of his Commentary on the New Testament, nothing has been left unprinted that is of any great or startling import. But the text of three minor pieces, here published for the first time, may not come amiss to those who are interested in the life and the period of the Doctor Evangelicus. I

Kronika O Alexandru Velikém: A Czech Prose Translation of the Historia de Preliis, Recension J

At S is now generally understood, the Natiuitas et Victoria Alexandri,1 a mid-tenth-century t anslation into Latin by a Neapolitan Archpresbyter, Leo, from a (lost) so-called 8-group MS. of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes,2 thrice underwent expansion and elaboration. These expanded versions of Leos work pass commonly under the generic title Historia de Preliis and exist in three main recensions: J1, the earliest, was twice independently reworked, yielding recensions J23 and J3 (ante 1150); J3a (ca. 1150) designates a recently discovered derivative of J3, apparently local to England.4 The J3 recension is of special interest to bibliophiles since, in an abbreviated form, it was utilized for most of the famous Historia de Preljis incunabula, notably those printed at Strassburg.o Although Latin texts of recensions J1 and J2 have already been edited,6 we