Description: It is a demanding task to edit a Latin text of the patristic era according to strictly scholarly philological methods; in addition to theological, linguistic and paleographic skills, the editor must take into account the specific genre of the text to be edited. This complex situation becomes even more evident when one considers the different criteria by which the manuscript tradition of different texts must be judged. On the one hand, there are pieces of very high literary aspirations handed down in many manuscripts, as is the case with most of the Christian artistic poetry of the 4th and the 5th century. On the other hand, we have sermons like those of Augustine, which were preached to an audience of simple people. These sermons were at times delivered ex tempore, but were still well structured; their texts were taken down in shorthand and are preserved in even more manuscripts. The present volume contains fourteen articles in which philologists, theologians and church historians examine the topic indicated in the title. The articles are based on papers presented in February 2001 at an international meeting organised by the "Kirchenvaterkommission" of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
