The Library
1277 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1101–1200
98 works
c. 1098–1101
Latin
Honorius Augustodunensis · c. 1080–c. 1154
A pupil asks and a master answers: on God, on creation, on why infants die, on what the damned suffer, on whether the blessed will see their friends in hell.
c. 1100–1110
Greek
Gregory the Cellarer · 11th century
A stylite near Ephesus who lived on a pillar for decades, receiving visitors, arbitrating disputes, and quarrelling with his own monks about the food.
c. 1106–1108
Old Church Slavonic
Daniil the Pilgrim · 12th century
An abbot from Rus travels to Jerusalem under crusader rule, measures distances between holy sites, and is allowed to place a lamp on the tomb for his own people.
c. 1110
Greek
Euthymios Zigabenos · 12th century
A commissioned survey of every heresy from the ancient sects to the Bogomils and Islam, each described and answered from the fathers.
c. 1113
Old Church Slavonic
Povest' vremennykh let
Attributed to Nestor the Chronicler · c. 1056–c. 1114
The history of the Rus from the flood to 1110, including the envoys sent to compare religions who reported that in Constantinople they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth.
c. 1112–1125
Latin
Eadmer of Canterbury · c. 1060–c. 1126
A secretary's record of his archbishop's conversation, temper, table talk, and exile, taken down while Anselm was alive and hidden when he ordered it destroyed.
c. 1115
Latin
De Vita Sua
Guibert of Nogent · c. 1055–c. 1124
An abbot's account of his mother, his own sexual temptations and bad dreams, a murdered bishop, and a communal revolt at Laon, written in imitation of Augustine.
c. 1117
Old Church Slavonic
Vladimir Monomakh · 1053–1125
A prince's testament to his sons: do not kill the innocent or the guilty without cause, honour guests, learn languages, and never let the sun find you in bed.
c. 1112–1117
Latin
Rupert of Deutz · c. 1075–1129
The whole of scripture read as the successive work of Father, Son, and Spirit, in forty-two books following the Bible from Genesis to the last judgement.
c. 1119–1125
Latin
Guibert of Nogent · c. 1055–c. 1124
An attack on fraudulent relics and invented saints, prompted by a monastery claiming to own one of Christ's milk teeth, and asking how anyone could verify such a thing.
c. 1121–1128
Latin
Consuetudines
Guigo I · 1083–1136
The written form of Carthusian life: the cell, the hair shirt, the weekly walk, the books each monk is lent, and the instruction to copy manuscripts as preaching with the hands.
c. 1120–1122
Latin
Sic et Non
Peter Abelard · 1079–1142
A hundred and fifty-eight theological questions with the authorities set out for and against each, and a prologue on how apparent contradictions in the fathers should be resolved.
c. 1121–1124
Latin
William of Saint-Thierry · c. 1085–1148
A short prayer-treatise on the desire to see God, insisting that love itself is the faculty of knowing him and that the Spirit is the love between Father and Son given to us.
c. 1121–1125
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Benedict's twelve steps of humility read in reverse as twelve steps of pride, each a recognisable social type from the monk who fidgets to the one who rebels openly.
c. 1110–1130
Georgian
Ioane Petritsi · 11th–12th century
A translation of and commentary on Proclus, arguing that Neoplatonic metaphysics can be reconciled with Christian doctrine.
c. 1125–1136
Latin
Guigo I · 1083–1136
Private notes of extraordinary bleakness and precision on self-deception, on wanting to be thought good, and on the difference between loving God and loving one's feelings about God.
c. 1125
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
An attack on monastic luxury that turns on carved cloisters: what are these ridiculous monsters doing where the brothers read, and would the money not be better given to the poor?
c. 1125
Latin
William of Malmesbury · c. 1095–c. 1143
English history from the Saxon settlement to his own day, written by a librarian who compared his sources and said so when he doubted them.
c. 1126–1141
Latin
De Diligendo Deo
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Why God should be loved, and how much: through four degrees, from loving oneself for one's own sake to loving oneself only for God's sake.
c. 1125–1130
Latin
Hugh of Saint Victor · c. 1096–1141
What to read and in what order, dividing all knowledge into theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical, and insisting the mechanical arts belong in the scheme.
c. 1128
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Free choice makes an act ours; grace makes it good. Bernard distinguishes freedom from necessity, from sin, and from sorrow, and gives the first only to the will.
c. 1100–1200
Latin
Glossa Ordinaria
The school of Laon and later hands
Patristic comment set in the margins and between the lines of the Bible itself, so that text and interpretation were read together on the page.
c. 1132
Latin
Historia Calamitatum
Peter Abelard · 1079–1142
A letter of consolation to a friend recounting his own career: the humiliation of his teachers, the affair with Heloise, his castration, the burning of his book, and his flight from one monastery after another.
c. 1132–1135
Latin
Heloise · c. 1100–1164
An abbess writes to the man she loved: that she would rather be his mistress than an empress, that she obeys him and not God, and then asks him for a rule for her nuns.
c. 1130–1137
Latin
Hugh of Saint Victor · c. 1096–1141
The whole of doctrine arranged as the work of creation and the work of restoration, with the sacraments as the medicines applied in the second.
c. 1133–1137
Latin
Peter Abelard · 1079–1142
A commentary containing his account of the atonement: that Christ's death works by kindling love in us rather than by paying a price to God or to the devil.
c. 1138–1139
Latin
Scito Te Ipsum
Peter Abelard · 1079–1142
An argument that sin lies in consent rather than in the deed or even the desire, so that those who crucified Christ without knowing who he was did not sin in doing it.
c. 1132–1152
Latin
De Avibus
Hugh of Fouilloy · c. 1100–c. 1172
Birds read as figures of the spiritual life — the dove, the hawk, the pelican wounding itself to feed its young — written for lay brothers who could not read easily.
c. 1139–1150
Latin
Decretum Gratiani
Gratian · 12th century
Nearly four thousand canons arranged as cases and questions, with the contradictions between them argued out and reconciled rather than merely listed.
c. 1140
Latin
De Contemptu Mundi
Bernard of Cluny · 12th century
Three thousand lines of savage satire on a corrupt age in a demanding metre, opening with the world's last hour and the coming of the judge.
c. 1120–1146
Latin
Adam of Saint Victor · d. c. 1146
Liturgical sequences in tightly rhymed accentual verse, dense with typological images drawn from the Old Testament.
c. 1114–1141
Latin
Orderic Vitalis · 1075–c. 1142
Thirteen books ranging far beyond its monastery, taking in the Norman conquest, the crusades, and a celebrated vision of a procession of the dead seen by a priest at night.
c. 1142
Latin
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
Written at Bernard's insistence, on charity as the sabbath of the soul, and including a grief-stricken passage on the death of a friend.
c. 1141–1144
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Which parts of a monastic rule bind absolutely, which may be dispensed, and what a monk owes an abbot who commands something foolish but not sinful.
1143
Latin
Lex Mahumet Pseudoprophete
Robert of Ketton · 12th century
The first translation of the Qur'an into any European language, made in Spain for the abbot of Cluny as part of a whole dossier on Islam.
c. 1144
Latin
William of Saint-Thierry · c. 1085–1148
A letter to the Carthusians of Mont-Dieu tracing the ascent from the animal state through the rational to the spiritual, where the soul loves as it is loved.
c. 1140–1150
Greek
John Zonaras · 12th century
A world history from creation to 1118, preserving long stretches of Roman historians whose own texts have since been lost.
1145–1146
Armenian
Nerses Shnorhali · 1102–1173
The city of Edessa speaks in her own voice, mourning her fall to Zengi and reproaching the Christian powers who did not come.
c. 1119–1153
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Over five hundred letters running the affairs of Europe from a monastery — preaching a crusade, hounding Abelard, defending Jews against a preacher inciting massacre, and reproaching kings.
c. 1144–1149
Latin
Abbot Suger · 1081–1151
An account of rebuilding the abbey church of Saint-Denis, with the reasoning behind its light-filled choir: the dull mind rises to truth through material things.
1–40 of 98 matching · 1277 in the Library