The Dialogue on Miracles: Caesarius of Heisterbach, vol. 1
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Caesarius was a monk at the Cistercian monastery of Heisterbach in Germany, where he served as Master of novices. For their instruction and edification, he composed his lengthy Dialogue on Miracles in twelve sections between 1219 and 1223. The many surviving manuscripts of this and other works by Caesarius attest to his stature in the history of Cistercian letters.
This volume contains sections one through six of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles, the first complete translation into English of an influential representation of exempla literature from the Middle Ages. Caesarius’s stories provide a splendid index to monastic life, religious practices, and daily life in a tumultuous time.
- Contains sections one through six of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles.
- Shows the first complete translation into English.
- Provides a splendid index to monastic life, religious practices, and daily life in a tumultuous time.
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB
- Text and Translation, by Ronald E. Pepin
- The Dialogue on Miracles
- Prologue
- First Section: On Conversion
- Second Section: On Contrition
- Third Section: On Confession
- Fourth Section: On Temptation
- Fifth Section: On Demons
- Sixth Section: On Simplicity
At times, the working of the medieval mind seems very foreign and strange. Yet the very strangeness of these stories have illuminated my faith. As a working priest, I have found these sermon stories from Heisterbach slipping into my everyday conversations with parishioners. We talk about some illustration or notion found in the Dialogue on Miracles, and then fall into a contemplative silence for a moment, full of wonder and delight.
—The Rev. Karl Stevens, Rector, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio
Written in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum is a major work of the Middle Ages. A treasure trove of Cistercian exemplary stories, the Dialogue offers many avenues to deepen our understanding of medieval life, both inside and outside of the cloister. Ronald Pepin deserves all our gratefulness for taking upon himself the daunting task to translate this long work: his lively and accurate new rendition finally makes the Dialogue available to a larger public. General readers, students and scholars alike will also greatly benefit from Hugh Feiss’ highly readable and stimulating introduction. Together with Victoria Smirnova’s recent volume on Medieval Exempla in Transition, this volume brings new and well-deserved attention to a master storyteller, Caesarius, and to the central role of narratives in the Medieval world.
—Stefano Mula, Middlebury College
This volume will be a good source of spiritual reading and insight into medieval (and especially Cistercian) spirituality and practice.
—The Downside Review