Overview

Nicholas of Clairvaux started his career as a Benedictine but ended up at Clairvaux where he was the secretary of St Bernard. He later became known as 'the black sheep of the Cistercian order' and was expelled from Clairvaux on a charge of fraudulent letter writing. During his life he was responsible for at least two letter collections, which are contained within this volume, with facing-English translation and scholarly commentary. The letters are of great scholarly interest not only for the writer's proximity to historical events in the early twelfth-century, but also for the insights he provides into monastic culture.

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9780199671519

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In all, this book is a valuable and thought-provoking resource for scholars of medieval and Reformation history. It showcases diverse medieval verdicts on some fascinating moral cases that should also be of current interest for philosophers or theologians concerned with deceptive speech, moral dilemmas, or pastoral counsel... And the appendices include brief translations from manuscript of some seminal texts that are a welcome addition to the literature. * Matthew Kent Siebert, Belmont Abbey College, Speculum * This fine critical edition of an important text, elegantly translated and meticulously annotated by Lena Wahlgren-Smith, is a most welcome addition to the Oxford Medieval Texts series. * Julian Haseldine, University of Hull, English Historical Review *

In all, this book is a valuable and thought-provoking resource for scholars of medieval and Reformation history. It showcases diverse medieval verdicts on some fascinating moral cases that should also be of current interest for philosophers or theologians concerned with deceptive speech, moral dilemmas, or pastoral counsel... And the appendices include brief translations from manuscript of some seminal texts that are a welcome addition to the literature. * Matthew Kent Siebert, Belmont Abbey College, Speculum * This fine critical edition of an important text, elegantly translated and meticulously annotated by Lena Wahlgren-Smith, is a most welcome addition to the Oxford Medieval Texts series. * Julian Haseldine, University of Hull, English Historical Review * In short, what we have here is an excellent study of a fascinating and complex character - a grey sheep, if not an entirely black one - and a bilingual edition which is everything a bilingual edition should be. Wahlgren-Smith can only be congratulated and thanked for making this wealth of material available to us. * David N. Bell, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *

Author Information

Lena Wahlgren-Smith is a Research Fellow in English at the University of Southampton. She studied History and Classics at the University of Gothenburg, and completed her doctoral thesis in Latin at the Classics department of Gothenburg University in 1993. Since her arrival at Southampton University in 1995, she has been responsible for the provision of Latin teaching for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

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