{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029556650246305417, 'fraction_numerical': 0.014020462296324365, 'mean_word_length': 4.6050955414012735, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Aldhelm: the prose works . Translated by Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren. Pp. vi + 210. The Boydell Press, 1979. £11.50.

complete text and 33 containing excerpts. His most original contribution to the establishment of the text is to collate indirect witnesses to it, ranging from St Augustine's own Retractions through Eugippus and verbal quotations up to the early ninth century, using MSS where there is no critical edition of the writers who quote. After the early Middle Ages the Catena aurea has an important place; St Thomas Aquinas is the only indirect witness at all for a number of passages. The manuscript tradition in general is surprisingly uniform, except that the titles and numbering of the Quaestiones, carefully set out by Augustine after his prologue to book 1 and before book H, have been confused by omission or conflation. The number of surviving MSS and mutual contamination make it impracticable to draw up stemmata; the editor contents himself with dividing his chosen MSS into five groups. His Introduction describes the genre and genesis of the Quaestiones: St Augustine aimed at solving difficulties which troubled his hearers or readers on texts of Matthew and Luke that he had not explained elsewhere, as in his De Sermone Domini in Monte. Direct Augustinian authorship of the Quaestiones XVI in Malthaeum has been doubted on the ground that Augustine does not mention them in his Retractationes. The editor finds no difficulty in accepting them as genuine; they are quite homogeneous. He suggests instead that they may have been added to the original set without the author's knowledge. He dates the Quaestiones Evangeliorum c. 400-e. 415 and the Appendix c. 400-possibly 411. The elusive question of Augustine's sources, which he never names, is answered as far as it can be: St Jerome's commentary on Matthew (a reason for the terminus post quern c. 400), Optatus, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose on Luke, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Irenaeus, Cyprian: Augustine knew rather than quoted them. He drew mainly on Latin sources, but seems to have had some direct access to Greek. As his editor notes, he does not differentiate between a literal and spiritual interpretation of his texts, giving now one, now another; 'allegory' is only mentioned twice (pp. 27, 87). One reward to a historically minded reader is that he sees what sort of problems Augustine had put to him in his circle at Hippo. The level must have been low in some cases, since he corrects the error of brothers who beat their breasts when the word Confiteor was read out in the Gospel, even where it meant 'proclamation of praise' (pp. 123-4).