enough for sacrilege) as to discredit the popular name of Danes' Skins' altogether, associated as the stories almost invariably are with medieval doors for which the fourteenth century is a generous date to concede as the extreme of antiquity? (4) What is the proof for any single example being really Danish? And when did the Danish tradition first find itself on record? (5) Does not the type indicate a time when the offender was -not, as in the Danes' time, a public enemy in heavy force,—but a criminal whose punishment in this respect, akin to gibbeting, was a public ignominy and a public warning, like the fates of evasive ticketless passengers which used to be recorded in wayside railway stations? In the ninth and tenth centuries were heathen Danes in their thousands to be deterred from their raids, their slaughters of saints and destruction of shrines by plastering the doors of churches-sometimes not yet built-with Danish hides? (6) In a word, is the thing itself not eloquent of a time when the church has become not only a sanctuary according to its lights, but a universally recognized centre of the legal peace of the land? Mr. Gray tells us he cannot trace any English enactment which inflicts the penalty of flaying on any offender. He will find an instance in the Leges Henrici Primi; (lxxv. § 1). It was one of the humanities akin to some countenanced by Roman law (Cod. lib. ix. tit. xviii. leg. 7); it was practised in the East, and Europe followed suit. Notorious on the list of cases was that of the knights flayed alive by Philippe le Bel in 1307eschorchez tontz vifes as the Scalacronica phrases it. In Scotland the murderer of James I. in 1437 was subjected to much the same torture in a form which suggests a Roman precedent. But it will readily be owned that it is difficult to establish a chain of medieval instances. Meantime it may serve a useful purpose to doubt and scout some picturesque stories and to set the modern Vikings upon their enquiry, lest too many of their ancestors have been discredited by alleged tradition which may well happen to be little more than a folk-word of no antique origin. British WHEN, in 1904, Professor A. G. Little, to whom Franciscan Studies in this country owe so much, published his Initia of writings ascribed to the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries1 he stated in the preface that the compilation was originally Studies. undertaken as a preliminary to the drawing up of a catalogue of Franciscan MSS. in Great Britain. That work discloses the great extent of Franciscan early literary effort in Britain-a field still largely unexplored. Thus we welcome the recent formation of the British Society of Franciscan Studies, one of many indications of this growing interest with which the life of St. Francis and the history of the Order founded by him is at present viewed. Among other good things, the Society promises the early publication of a Liber Exemplorum preserved at Durham described as compiled in the thirteenth century by an English Franciscan, who knew Roger Bacon at Paris and passed much of his life in Ireland.' 1 Initia Operum Latinorum quae saeculis xiii, xiv, XV attribuuntur. Manchester: At the University Press. 1904. A hitherto unknown fragment of Roger Bacon's Opus Tertium has recently been discovered by a French savant in the Bibliothèque nationale when making researches into the history of Astronomy. The erroneous title of the manuscript-Liber Tertius Alpetragii (having been ascribed to the Arab astronomer Al Bitrogi), has up till now misled scholars and students of Bacon's works. The discoverer, Professor Duhem of Bordeaux, contemplates an early publication of an annotated edition. Among other points of interest for the history of physical science, he mentions in a paper contributed to the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (fasc. ii. and iii. p. 238) that it sets at rest the oft-debated question whether Roger Bacon was really acquainted with the composition of gunpowder. In the fragment now discovered the words occur Exemplum est puerile de sono et igne, qui fiunt in mundi partibus diversis per pulverem salis petrae, et sulphuris, et carbonum salicis.' THE Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, a quarterly publication issued by the Fathers of the College of Saint Bonaventure, near Archivum Florence, and devoted to Franciscan documents and history, Francisof which the first three numbers have appeared, contains various canum attractive items from a Scottish standpoint. We note from an Historicum. article on the Series of Provinces of the Friars Minors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the statement of the independent position of Scotland as a distinct province' during the years 1232-39 when Brother Elias was Minister-general of the entire Order, and John de Kethene was provincial minister of Scotland. Its re-union with England in 1239 did not meet with royal approval, for at the instance of the Scottish King, Pope Alexander IV. wrote to the Minister-general and General Chapter held at Narbonne in 1260 enjoining them to institute a Provincial Minister in Scotland. This, however, was not done. In a catalogue of Provinces, Custodies and Vicariates of approximately the year 1340 the Vicariate of Scotland is set down as having six convents. We know that (Berwick being excluded) these were Roxburgh, Dumfries, Lanark, Haddington, Inverkeithing, and Dundee. In the same number (fasc. i. p. 94) among the Documenta a transcript appears of a letter of date thirteenth December, 1449, addressed from Rome by Brother James de Marchia to Brother John de Capistrano, Vicar-general of the Cismontane Observantine Franciscans. The editor's estimate of its value-'pretiosissima epistola'-as throwing light upon the pangs attending the birth of the Observantines is not greatly exaggerated. Jacobus de Marchia was evidently in a mood for unburdening his soul to his friend and correspondent, and he gives a vivid picture of his trials in the defence of the 'familia et Bullae,' dwelling upon his four journeys to Rome in frigore, pluviis, caloribus, sitibus per vias insuperabiles et lutosas' and upon his successful demands for audiences of the Supreme Pontiff and Cardinals, which were so long protracted that frequently he did not return to the Convent until the hour of night sine cibo et potu. He declares 1 Typographia, Directio et Administratio ad Claras Aquas prope Florentiam (Quaracchi, near Florence), 1908. ‘et tot labores, et angustias, et angarias, et molestias innumerabiles passus sum, quas certe calamo explicare et lingua fari non sufficeret. Quid lucratus sum, Pater, mecum particeps, nisi a falsis fratribus, in quibus est perditio magna, infamationes multas? Truly a zealous Saint and a racy correspondent! We have space to notice only very shortly the paper upon the Leggenda Versificata of St. Francis (fasc. ii. and iii. p. 209). This, one of the oldest legends of the Saint, is probably the work of Henry de Burford, an early English Friar and precentor at Paris, whose verses beginning Qui Minor es, noli ridere, tibi quia soli Convenit ut plores; jungas cum nomine mores are well known. It is claimed that a collation of this legend with the other lives would be very useful, as it supplies omissions, and gives variants of facts handled in a different manner elsewhere. Wyntoun's THE Scottish Text Society may be congratulated on the completion of the text of Wyntoun's Original Chronicle in volume vi. Chronicle. of the work just issued. Mr. Amours has pursued his editorial course with a fidelity and zeal which not only the society but all students of history will gratefully appreciate as a high service to our historical literature. His exemplary industry and his business-like method are guarantees that the general Introduction and the Notes, Glossary and Index will ere long furnish a great medieval chronicle, alike for historical and philological purposes, with a full equipment of annotation on the highest modern plane. The editorial commentary on Wyntoun offers fine scope for the unique learning of Mr. Amours, and we offer him our word of cheer as he now approaches the close of his long but splendid task. |