"For the first time, the complete works of Gonzalo de Berceo are available to the English reader. Originally written in the Old Spanish of the 13th century, this translation preserves the medieval flavor and imagery of the poems while retelling them in a contemporary language."--BOOK JACKET.

In Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin, Patricia Timmons and Robert Boenig present the first English translation of a twelfth-century Latin collection of miracles that Berceo, the first named poet in the Spanish language, used as a source for his thirteenth-century Spanish collection Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Using the MS Thott 128, close to the one Berceo must have used, Timmons and Boenig provide both translation and analysis, exploring the Latin Miracles, suggesting how it was used as a sacred text, and placing it within the history of Christians' evolving understanding of the Virgin's role in their lives. In addition, this volume explores Berceo's reaction to the Latin Miracles, demonstrating that he reacted creatively to his source texts as well as to changes in Church culture and governance that occurred between the composition of Latin Miracles and the thirteenth century, translating it across both language and culture. Accessible and useful to students and scholars of medieval and Spanish studies, this book includes the original Latin text, translations of the Latin Miracles, including analyses of 'Saint Peter and the Lustful Monk,' 'The Little Jewish Boy,' and 'The Jews of Toledo.'

Miracle tales, in which people are rewarded for piety or punished for sin through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, were a popular literary form all through the Middle Ages. Milagros de Nuestra Sehora, a collection of such stories by the Spanish secular priest Gonzalo de Berceo, is a premier example of this genre; it is also regarded as one of the four most important texts of medieval Spain. Difficulties in translating this work have made it unavailable in English except in fragments; now Spanish-language scholars Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash have made the entire work accessible to English readers for the first time. Berceo's miracle tales use the verse form cuaderna via (fourfold way) of fully rhymed quatrains—which Berceo may even have invented—and are told in the language of the common man. They were written to be read aloud, most likely to an audience of pilgrims, and are an outstanding example of oral religious narrative. The total work comprises twenty-five miracles, preceded by a renowned Introduction that celebrates the Virgin in rich symbolic allegory. Mount and Cash's translation is highly readable, yet it retains the original meaning and captures Berceo's colloquial style and medieval nuances. An introduction placing the miracles in their medieval context and a bibliography complement the text.

The thirteenth-century poet Gonzalo de Berceo is the first named author of Old Spanish letters and the most prolific contributor to the emergence of the body of learned vernacular verse known as the mester de clerecía. In the Doorway of All Worlds focuses on the four hagiographies Berceo produced as a unified body of poetic expression and world-building. Robin M. Bower traces the poet’s intricate juxtaposition of contraries to shed light on a poetic world that will innovate a deceptively simple poetic vernacular and elevate its capacity to express nuance, power, and mystery. The book examines the entanglements that bind formal and lexical choices, the inscription of performance sites and audiences, and problematic source authority. It argues that Berceo’s elaboration of a poetic vernacular was wholly enmeshed in the immediate human, experiential world and the diverse cultural, religious, linguistic, and literary contexts that framed it. The book also highlights how Berceo invented a literary vernacular that befits the spoken idiom not only for the crafting of learned fictions, but for giving linguistic shape to the ineffable. In the Doorway of All Worlds ultimately reveals how Berceo freed the meanings trapped in relics, shrines, and the impenetrable texts from which he translated the saints to circulate in a new time.

A Benedictine Reader shares the treasures of the Benedictine traditionthrough the collaboration of a dozen scholars. It provides a broad and deep sense of the reality of Benedictine monasticism using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and originally written in six different languages. The introduction to each of the chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. This second volume of A Benedictine Reader looks at Benedictine monks and nuns from many angles, as founders, reformers, missionaries, teachers, spiritual writers and guides, playwrights, scholars, and archivists. In four centuries, they went from Bavaria to North America and Africa, from England and Spain to Australia, adapting to new environments. Committed to the liturgy by their profession, they played an important role in the liturgical renewal that culminated at Vatican II. Rooted in God, church, and their surroundings, they showed remarkable resilience in the face of wars, confiscations, suppression, and exile. Their impact has been deep and stabilizing, and their story is a microcosm of the history of the church in modern times.

Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority, and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century provides a multifaceted account of Jewish life in Europe and the Mediterranean basin at a time when economic, cultural, and intellectual encounters coincided with heightened interfaith animosity.

The last decade has witnessed a striking upsurge of interest in Iberian hagiography. In painting and the fine arts through to poetic and narrative treatments composed in Castilian and Catalan, the legacies of Christ, Mary, and the saints have been approached from a range of perspectives and subjected to detailed critical scrutiny. This book, which focuses specifically on the application of theoretical and methodological approaches to analysis, asks what scholars of early Iberian hagiography can bring to the analysis of the sacred past and how the study of the discipline can be taken forward innovatively in the future. Its fourteen essays, each focusing on a different aspect of composition, seek in particular to explore interdisciplinary methodologies and the ways in which they intersect with broader discourses in other branches of research. Contributors are Carme Arronis Llopis, Fernando Baños Vallejo, Andrew M. Beresford, Sarah Jane Boss, Sarah V. Buxton, Marinela Garcia Sempere, Ryan D. Giles, Ariel Guiance, Lluís Ramon i Ferrer, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, Connie L. Scarborough, and Lesley K. Twomey.