Preface

In memoriam John Brückmann

The majority of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference on medieval coronations and related rituals held in February 1985 in Toronto. The meeting was to commemorate the untimely death of John Brückmann, a beloved teacher of medieval history at Glendon College and an original scholar who had concentrated his research on coronation ordines . Having studied at Harvard College, the University of Toronto (with Bertie Wilkinson), and the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies where he regarded himself a pupil of Father J. R. O'Donnell, C.S.B., Brückmann wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1964 on English coronations between 1213–1318. Besides an article on the "Second Recension" of the royal coronation ordo —in the Wilkinson-Festschrift—he also published a checklist of liturgical manuscripts (in Traditio ), both prolegomena to his great project, the edition of coronation ordines of medieval England. This plan remains a desideratum, for John died after a brief illness in December 1983. It is to his memory that this volume is dedicated.

The conference was generously supported by several universities, colleges, and institutes in Toronto and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Without their assistance and the collegial cooperation of the organizers at Glendon College, York University, and the Pontifical Institute it would not have been possible to bring together such an international gathering of like-minded scholars and—ultimately—this volume. It is an honor for us that this volume has been cosponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA, which helped to subsidize the cost of the illustrations.

I translated the contributions submitted in German, French, or Italian (with the exception of Professor Le Goff's, which was originally translated by Nora Scott) and wish to acknowledge my debt for assistance in polishing the

translations to Professors Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Diane Owen Hughes, and Margerie Sinel, as well as to Eva Gieysztor-Stucki. I am also grateful for the critical remarks of the anonymous readers and the presenter of the manuscript, and for the expert editorial assistance of the staff of University of California Press. With their help, I have done my best to standardize the many different styles and forms of reference used by the authors who belong to several schools and national conventions. However, just because of this variety of observances, that was not always possible. I also regret that financial considerations forced us to accept the placing of the notes after the single essays and not at the bottom of the pages; I hope that the attentive reader will be able to find them.

Finally, I should like to note that many articles were submitted soon after the meeting in 1985. If some authors may seem not to have taken account of the most recent literature, the fault is mine. Preparing the volume for print took longer than I had anticipated.

J. M. B.
VANCOUVER, CANADA
SPRING 1989