Back to the Library
The Medieval Church · c. 1195
On the Misery of the Human Condition
De Miseria Condicionis Humane
Lotario dei Segni · 1160/61–1216
Read elsewhere
What it is
An unrelenting catalogue of human wretchedness — birth, appetite, ambition, decay — written by a cardinal who promised a companion volume on human dignity and never wrote it.
Why it lasted
One of the most copied books of the later Middle Ages, and its author became Innocent III three years later.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next