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Ventresca, Robert A. Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

"Here they do nothing other than dance, night and day, in private homes and in public places.  The newspapers are filled with advertisements of dancing classes...of cafes and clubs for dancing....Just like the decadence of the Roman Empire: panem et circenses" - Pope Pius XII (58)

Pope Pius XII is most likely the most controversial modern Pope, particularly among non-Catholics.  The arguments surrounding his actions and inactions during the lead up to WWII are vociferous enough to be referred to as the "Pope Pius Wars."  From that frame of reference, Ventresca's biography attempts to neither condemn nor canonize, but present the entire life story of Eugenio Pacelli, the man who became Pope Pius XII.  In his major goal, he is successful, the Pius who emerges is neither the Quisling nor the prophet, but a man who tried led the Roman Catholic church through turmoil and upheaval, and who sometimes failed, but not the malicious "Nazi Pope" of some other portraits.  

With some minor complaints, I highly recommend this book, it provides a detailed explanation of the world from which Pacelli emerged, the so-called Black Aristocracy of Rome during the years of the Resurgimento.  This, and the time he spent as Papal Nuncio in intra-war Germany are critical influences on his behavior in the lead-up WWII.  As we get to the rise of Naziasm one oddity, a written tic almost, appears: the German government is never referred to as "German" from 1933 until 1945; it is the "Hitler Government" or the "Nazi Government", but never once the "German Government."  

Throughout the book, Ventresca provides what is lacking from the debates over Pius' wartime conduct, nuance and background.  It is also helpful that the book covers the postbellum period, the 13 years after 1945 figure less in the fighting about his legacy, but are important to create a complete portrait.   They are also influential in another way, it was his longevity that influenced the choice of John XXIII as his successor, which has proven to have been a momentous choice.

Dumbarton Oaks is a weird branch of Harvard.  Based in Georgetown, Washington DC, it supports research into Byzantine art, Pre-Columbian art and landscape design with a library, funding and space for scholars and a public museum and gardens.  We were there to study Byzantine art, so we didn't get to look at the pre-Columbian stuff and the rain kept us inside.  That said, they were preparing a small exhibit on Byzantine manuscript copies of the New Testament, and they let us take a look. (Note that all captions were transcribed from the texts in the display cases and are not my text)

Psalter and New Testament Dumbarton Oaks MS3 Middle Byzantine, Constantinople(?). ca. 1084, on Vellum The miniature on display (folio 80v) depicts the Annunciation in the upper register and the seated Virgin below. Under the illumination, the text begins with the initial letter 'M', in which the Visitation is nestled. The particular aspect of this composition is the seated Virgin. She gestures to an open book that contains her canticle, seemingly providing guidance for the devotional use of the text. This representation is unique to the DO manuscript.
Canon Table Gospel Book Dumbarton Oaks MS5 Middle Byzantine, Constantinople(?), late 11th C. The book contains the four gospels, written in dark brown ink as a single column of twenty lines. It is closely related to a group of more than a dozen manuscripts that were produced in Constantinople over a period of a few decades. The scribes of these books specialized in the production of illuminated luxury lectionaries and gospels for wealthy patrons. Ten lavishly decorated canon tables--concordances of the four gospels--are paired on the first five pages. Each pair is distinct, yet bears similar decorative motifs. One such motif is the presence of fleshy acanthus leaves with flame-like flowers. This book is open to canon table IV (folio 4r)
Start of Luke from a Gospel Lectionary Dumbarton Oaks MS1 Middle Byzantine, Constantinople (?), Late 11th to 12th C Vellum, tempera gilding BZ.1939.12 A Gospel Lectionary -- different from a Gospel book -- contains passages (lections) of the four Gospel arranged in the order that they are read during the Byzantine liturgial year. This luxurious manuscript is thought to have been produced between the mid-eleventh and twelth centuries, mostly likely in a scriptorium in the capital city of Constantinople. The lectionary is peculiar because, while the first 42 folios were written in double columns, the following 107 were scribed in a cruciform shape. Few other lectionaries exist with the text written in a cruciform format. The book is opened to the beginning of the readings from Luke (folios 64v and 65r)
Lectionary Leaf Middle Byzantine, Constantinople(?), early 11th C BZ.1979.31 The full page portrait of the evangelist Mark is a leaf from a lectionary. The book contained a dedication, indicating that it was presented by Empress Catherine Comnene to the Holy Trinity monastery of Chalki in March of 1063.

While there they also brought out a single leaf from an Armenian manuscript of the Alexander Romance, probably about 17th Century, that is in their collection. This illumination shows Alexander attaching a letter to his mother, Olympias, to a bird to send back to her. Though it is on paper, not parchment, and less costly, the iconography is pretty similar to the Alexander Romance in the John Rylands Library.

(see the rest of the trip)

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Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 1100-1525. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 1980

This is an exhaustive introduction to the Northern Crusades, the centuries when the Teutonic Knights and others fought for control of the land, and occasionally souls of the southern Baltic region, modern Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Finland, Poland and probably parts of Belarus.  It's a massive topic, and Christiansen provides a lively introduction, though occasionally scattered: it's mostly chronological, but not quite always.  The text occasionally falls to "look how clever I am", i.e. "Like Nicholas I, they put their trust in generals Janvier and Fevrier" (p. 165), but not enough to be off-putting. His command of small, bizarrely amusing, details is excellent, "The terrible Johann von Gilberstedt of Halle had been so vigorous in secular life that even after receiving the last rites he had been moved to rape his nurse" (p. 85).  Overall, it's a slow read, but an interesting one, and provides even the most ignorant of readers (as I was), a coherent introduction to an important and mostly ignored phase of the Crusades.

One piece of advice, if you're thinking of reading the book, make photo-copies of the various maps at the front.  I was not at all familiar with the geography, either topological or political, of the area and found myself having to flip over to the maps quite often

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Gazing on the Deep: Ancient Near Eastern and Other Studies in Honor of Tzvi Abusch. Jeffrey Stackert, Barbara Nevling Porter and David Wright, Ed. Bethesda, Md: CDL Press. 2010.

West, M. L. Indo-European Poetry and Myth.  Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
Hardcover
Paperback

   What this book tries to do is trace elements of epic stories through the Indo-European prehistory, from Hittite and early Indian epics to late-medieval eastern Europe.  The book is organized into 12 rather large chapters (overall text is just over 500 pages), each is then broken into subsections.  The subsectional breakdown is not regular, sometimes it's by topic (i.e. Chap 11: Kings, The Queen, King and Horse, etc) and sometimes it is by region (Chap 7: Nymphs, Indian Nymphs, Iranian, etc.).  The overall conclusions about thematic elements, which are truly Indo-European, which belong to a subgroup and which came from outside sources, are conservative enough to not come across as "ooh, I found a thing somewhere else, must be a pattern" and well defended.  The author has command of a wide range of sources, translating all but the most obscure (primarily the Nartic tales and early Lithuaian works) himself.  The one weakness of this approach is it doesn't always provide a immediate reference if one is looking for the context of a quote.  A larger problem with the primary-source use is that it expects, at a minimum, a knowledge of Latin, French and the ability to read ancient Greek.  Familiarity with Russian, at least the alphabet, would have helped with a few sections as well.  
     Occasionally, throughout the text, West lets his "cleverness" run away from the direction of the text.  These pieces would probably be amusing in the context of a spoken lecture, but in the text they are an odd digression, eg. "The ancient (H)rego...was a rector, a director, a corrector..." (p. 413) or in a discussion on the slaying of dragons, "Now, of course, dragons are a protected species and it is illegal to harm them...." (p. 430).  These don't add much to the argument but interrupt the flow of the text.   These complaints are minor in the context of the excellent, if weighty, work and do not give me pause in praising it. It's not only interesting for the subject matter, but the primary sources are so wide ranging that, when one can read them, they provide previously unknown mythologies.  This book would be especially of interest to one writing in the style of earlier epics, as the topical organization provides a ready reference for form and content.  
     It suffers from Oxford University Press disease, the paperback edition is $85, but if you can find it in a library, I highly recommend it

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Apparently he's as trite a poet as he was verbose as a writer.  The illustration, signed J. H. W, isn't too impressive either.


Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Earl of, 1831-1891.
Lucile : manuscript, [not before 1860]
MS Am 889.433
 http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:...

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Amjad Jaimoukha, The cycles of the Circassian Nart Epic Amman Jordan: Sanjalay Press. 2004.

I was hoping for a book of the Nart Epics, and this did, technically, fit the bill,  The book itself is 68 pages, single-sided in a plastic binding and not of high technical quality (it seems one page of foot-notes is missing, some of the footnotes start numbering at 0, etc.).  It starts with an introduction to the Circassians and the Narts, which also seems to summarize some of the tales.  It is not really a scholarly text, the author states facts with no point of reference outside the mythic corpus (i.e. that the Narts killed their elderly at a specific age).  A bit more background information on the different ethnic groups within the overall community would have been welcome, as would a pronunciation guide. 

The bulk of the book consists of the translated myths, and that is of much higher quality. Where possible Amjad has included the original text in both Cyrillic and transliterated into the Latin alphabet alongside the translations and he provides some useful footnotes (e.g. where divergent spellings refer to the same character.  One omission of note, there are several times retellings of the same tale and no clear explanation as to why the divergent forms exist. 

Overall not a great book, but not a bad introduction to a rarely-seen Indo-European culture through their mythic corpus

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ps this is a great example of how the Harvard Libraries have EVERYTHING

I know it has been done before, but that doesn't make Mark Laita's ""Serpentine":http://":http://www.marklaita.com/serpentine.html, a book of 122 photos of snakes any less impressive

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From the British Library's Medieval Manuscript blog, the calendar page for July from their Isabella Breviary, produced in the late 1480s in Bruges (Feckin' Bruges).



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