Florilegium: Chronica Quondam et Futura

Jointly edited by Roger Blockley and Douglas Wurtele, the first volume of Florilegium appeared in 1979, with the subtitle “Carleton University Annual Papers in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” The fourteen papers in the volume included a piece on Trotula by Beryl Rowland (later the honorand of volume 6 of the journal, and later still an honorary consulting editor), a consideration by Connie Hieatt (now an honorary member of the Canadian Society of Medievalists) of Vincent of Beauvais as a source for the Old Norse Karlamagnús Saga, and a piece on the Distichs of Cato and medieval parody by Bruno Roy (later the first plenary speaker at the newly-formed Société canadienne des médiévistes, and the only plenary speaker to date to have served a return engagement for the CSM/SCM). George Rigg was on the Editorial Board, as he has been ever since. A few things, however, have changed. The editors encouraged submissions in English, French, or Latin; today's Florilegium, part of a less learned era, can only accept submissions in Canada’s two languages. The journal was described as “an annual devoted to the ancient and medieval cultures of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East” and in the preface the editors explicitly encourage “papers which take a cross-cultural or inter-disciplinary approach to history, literature, and other relevant areas of study, which explore the continuities between the ancient and the mediaeval world, and which try to develop new methodologies or adapt those developed by other disciplines.” The most recent issue of the journal open to general submissions has the more succinct “an annual publication devoted to studies of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” Finally, the editors comment on the typing and layout of the journal, indicating their use of an IBM Selectric, which requires the use of unresolved righthand margins. Today the journal requires the use of Adobe FrameMaker, an array of fonts and special characters, and it rejoices in an idiosyncratic layout which is precisely half the size of an 8½" X 14" page. Like the journal’s first iteration, this layout, too, “may offend purists...moreover, it halves the cost of production, an important consideration in a period of stringency.” Also offending purists, but making it easier to recognise volumes during packaging, is the constantly-changing (but always not pastel) colour of the cover.