The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004077737).

The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004077737).

This book condenses and updates the author's two-volume work, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues (Brill, 1987), surveying and clarifying the controversy which that work rekindled. It presents the internal and external evidence showing cogently that the famous book which is the sole source of knowledge about the life of St. Benedict was not written by St. Gregory the Great as is traditionally supposed, but by a later counterfeiter. It makes an essential contribution to the current reassessment of early Benedictine history. It also throws much new light on the life and times of St. Gregory, and confutes the age-old accusation that he was "the father of superstition" who by writing the Dialogues corrupted the faith and piety of medieval Christendom.

This book condenses and updates the cogent case showing that Gregory the Great did not write the famous "Dialogues" traditionally ascribed to him. It throws much new light on early Benedictine history and on the life and times of St. Gregory.

This book is a general and systematic study of the genre of dialogue in antiquity, investigating why dialogue matters.