Two Lives of Saint Colette – With a Selection of Letters by, to, and about Colette
Pierre De Vaux author Sister Perrine De Baume author Renate Blumenfeld–kosi author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Iter Press
Published:10th Jun '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Two accounts of the life of Saint Colette of Corbie.
Saint Colette of Corbie (1381–1447) was a French reformer of the Franciscan Order and the founder of seventeen convents. Though of humble origin, she attracted the support of powerful patrons and important Church officials. The two biographies translated here were authored by Pierre de Vaux, her confessor and mentor, and Perrine de Baume, a nun who for decades was Colette’s companion and confidant. Both accounts offer fascinating portraits of the saint as a pious ascetic assailed by demons and performing miracles, as well as in her role as skillful administrator and caring mother of her nuns. This is the first English translation of two biographies in Middle French of the most important female figures of the Middle Ages.
“Saint Colette of Corbie is one of the most important reformers of the late-medieval and early modern period, one of the most influential of all pre-modern European women in terms of institutional impact, and a fascinating French figure in the era of the Hundred Years War. She has never quite received her historiographic due, very likely because her two French ‘lives’—the second of the two authored by a woman—have not been available in English translation, while even the French edition is difficult to access. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, one of America’s great medievalists and leading specialists in medieval French, is just the right scholar to make these compelling lives of Saint Colette available to a contemporary audience.” -- Sean L. Field, Professor of History, University of Vermont
Winner -- SSEMWG 2022 Award for a Scholarly Edition in Translation
ISBN: 9781649590664
Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 19mm
Weight: 476g
308 pages