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• Anmerkungen zu den Beziehungen der mittellateinischen und der ungarischen Textraditionen der Vita Margarite de Hungaria Ordinis Predicatorum

  217–225

  Ilona M. Nagy

  Views:

  38

  The oldest Latin legend of Saint Margaret of Hungary (legenda vetus, LV, about 1275) survived in only one manuscript, a copy found in Bologna, dated to the beginning of 15th century (1409-10). The text of the legend in the manuscript is in many places debased and to some extent shortened. This paper deals with the question how the Medieval Hungarian legend of Saint Margaret (the only surviving copy from 1510), which contains almost the complete text of LV in vernacular translation, can help in correcting the manuscript and reconstructing the original text of the oldest Latin legend. Medieval German translations of LV are also referred to. Some special problems of the edition (1937) are mentioned in this connection as well.

• Review of Scholarship on the Admonitions of King Saint Stephen of Hungary

  151–158

  Előd Nemerkényi

  Views:

  85

  The purpose of the following discussion is to demonstrate that the philological study of the fortuna of the Admonitions of King Saint Stephen of Hungary provides important contributions to the characteristic stages of the development of Latinist scholarship from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance until today. The Admonitions, a mirror of princes composed in the eleventh century and attributed to the first Christian king of Hungary, has attracted pious and scholarly attention for a millennium – including the hagiographic tradition of medieval Hungary and the legal tradition of the Corpus iuris Hungarici. Based on its late manuscript tradition, hypercritical scholars suggested that the Admonitions was a humanist forgery or at least an interpolated and stylistically polished text. From the Renaissance on, philologists and editors have addressed various issues of textual criticism such as the problem of dating and authorship, grammatical features (orthography, morphology, and syntax), stylistic devices (vocabulary, prose rhyme and rhythm), and textual parallels (Biblical, Classical, and Carolingian Latin). The way scholars have studied the Latinity of the Admonitions against the standards of Classical, Medieval, and Humanistic Latin for centuries reveals a great deal about their own approaches to their Latinist trade in particular – and therefore about Neo-Latin studies in general.

• Characters and magic signs in the Picatrix and other Medieval magic texts

  69–77

  Benedek Láng

  Views:

  311

  The word „characters” covers a number of different phenomena in the Middle Ages. It might refer to a list of incomprehensible signs and astrological symbols inscribed in a talismanic sigil, to a series of Latin letters used for magical purposes, and also to a written form of verbal incantation, a written charm. Characters were often used in the field of talismanic or celestial magic in order to name spiritual beings. The paper reviews the use of characters in various medieval sources: textual amulets, necromantic manuals, texts on talismanic magic and the most famous medieval magical summary, the Picatrix.

• The charaktêres in Ancient and Medieval Jewish magic

  25–44

  Gideon Bohak

  Views:

  216

  This paper examines the different magical signs found in Jewish magical texts and artifacts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. These include especially the Graeco-Egyptian “charaktêres” (ring-letters, Brillenbuchstaben), the Arabic “string letters” (or Siegel), and the Latin sigilla or figurae, to which one may add a few other types of magical signs. This paper surveys their appearance in Jewish magical texts of different times and places, and analyzes their function within the magical texts where they are found.