A book of moral and religious reflections written by a Carolingian noblewoman for her teenage son in the middle of the 9th century. Intended as a guide to right conduct, the book was to be shared in time with William's younger brother. Dhuoda's situation was poignant. Her husband, Bernard, the count of Septimania, was away and she was separated from her children. William was being held by Charles the Bald as a guarantee of his father's loyalty, and the younger son's whereabouts were unknown. As war raged in the crumbling Carolingian Empire, the grieving mother, fearing for the spiritual and...

Contemporaries hailed the preacher and reformer Robert of Arbrissel (c 1045-1116) as a thunderclap of holy eloquence that lit up the Church - or they castigated him as a sponsor of sexual license. Robert has remained a controversial figure ever since, seen as a missionary to all manner of Christians, a heretic, a feminist, a founder of the ideal of courtly love, or a libertine. His preaching was so renowned that he was invited to speak before Pope Urban II; many were inspired to take up religious life after exposure to his charismatic asceticism and evangelical gifts. Best known as the...

Agnellus' Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, written in the ninth century, is a source for the study of Italian history from the fourth to the ninth centuries. Agnellus seems to have been a well-born priest in the church of Ravenna, and his work is strongly coloured by his personal experiences. He wrote the book to demonstrate two strongly-held opinions. One was the apostolicity and independence of the Ravennate archbishopric; the other was the moral decline of recent bishops and their erosion of clerical rights. Using the framework of a series of biographies of the bishops of his...

The six sermons presented here cast light on Pope Innocent III's concept of what his duties. They include: the inaugural sermon of Innocent's consecration, the opening sermon of Lateran Council IV, two Roman Synod sermons, and another on the constitution of the priesthood.

"The Romantic Tale" of Peter Abelard and Heloise has been widely known for centuries. The legend relates in part to the letters exchanged between the two, years after Abelard had been castrated at the behest of Heloise's vindictive uncle, Fulbert. These "personal" letters form the basis for bestselling compilations of works by Abelard and Heloise in translation, such as the recently revised Penguin "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise" or the new Hackett Abelard and Heloise, "The Letters and Other Writings". They hold fascination for the light they shed on the relationship between the man and...

This modern english translation of all the surviving literary compositions ascribed to Liudprand, the bishop of Cremona from 962 to 972, offers unrivaled insight into society and culture in western Europe during the "iron century." Since Liudprand enjoyed the favor of the Saxon Roman emperor Otto the Great, and traveled to Constantinople more than once on official business, his narratives also reveal European attitudes toward the Byzantine Empire and the culture of its refined capital city. No other tenth-century writer had such privileged access to the high spheres of power, or such acerbic...