Dialogue on Miracles

Ronald E. Pepin received his PhD from Fordham University. In addition to The Lives of Monastic Reformers, 1 and 2 (in collaboration with Hugh Feiss and Maureen O'Brien), his published translations include The Vatican Mythographers (Fordham, 2008), Anselm & Becket (PIMS, 2009), and Sextus Amarcius: Satires (DOML: Harvard, 2011). Hugh B. Feiss, OSB, is a monk of the Monastery of the Ascension in Jerome, Idaho. He earned MA and MDiv degrees from Mount Angel Seminary, licentiates in theology and philosophy from The Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in theology at Sant’Anselmo. He served as managing editor and contributor for the ten-volume series Victorine Texts in Translation (Brepols). For Cistercian Publications he has translated works of Peter of Celle and Achard of Saint Victor and collaborated on Saint Mary of Egypt: Three Medieval Lives in Verse, and The Lives of Monastic Reformers,1 and 2. He was co-editor and contributor of A Benedictine Reader, 530–1530 (Cistercian Publications, 2019).

• ContentsForeword    ixAcknowledgments    xiiAbbreviations    xiiiIntroduction, by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB    1Text and Translation, by Ronald E. Pepin    75The Dialogue on Miracles    77Prologue  79First Section: On Conversion    83Second Section: On Contrition    139Third Section: On Confession    203Fourth Section: On Temptation    273Fifth Section: On Demons    389Sixth Section: On Simplicity    465

"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