Description Servius and Commentary on Vergil is the fifth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS). This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious and intellectual periods. The Occasional Papers: Earlier Volumes Robert Hollander, Dante and Paul’s “Five Words with Understanding” (1992). Five words with understanding are preferable to “ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” With insight and wit, Hollander analyzes speeches of Nimrod (Inf. 31) and Plutus (Inf. 7) and other instances of garbled of mixed speech. Joan M. Ferrante, Dante’s Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God (1992). Beatrice leads Dante to see a feminine side in God, humanity, and himself. In Paradise, he learns to speak of the souls of men as female and the sould of women as male, and to see God as androgynous. Ferrante examines Beatrice’s roles of priest, confessor and teacher of theology, and as a Christ figure. Ciriaco Morón Arroyo, Celestins and Castilian Humanism at the End of the Fifteenth Century (1994). Arroyo addresses major questions which have challenged and divided Celestina scholars: the Jewish ancestry of its main author; the relationship of the overt moral intention to artistic character, and the location of the work at the cultural crossroads between Medieval and humanistic ways of thinking and writing. Thomas M. Greene, Besieging the Castle of Ladies (1994). Greene traces the mysterious motif of the castle defended by women across centuries, regions, and cultural expressions- e.g., and early chronicle, a staged game, the Roman de la Rose, English manuscript illuminations, French ivory caskets, and early modern versions. Each instance, like the entire series, poses questions about sexual politics and sexual control.