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. 1143–1146
Latin
Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus
Otto of Freising · c. 1114–1158
A world history on Augustine's plan by a bishop who was also an emperor's uncle, written in a mood of deep pessimism about the age.
c. 1148
Greek
Anna Komnene · 1083–1153
A daughter's history of her father's reign, including the arrival of the First Crusade described as an unwelcome flood of armed and unpredictable Latins.
1149
Latin
Anselm of Havelberg · c. 1100–1158
A record of debates held in Constantinople with a Greek archbishop on the filioque and papal authority, prefaced by an argument that the church legitimately changes over time.
c. 1147–1155
Old Church Slavonic
Kliment Smoliatich · 12th century
A metropolitan of Kyiv defends himself against the charge of vanity for citing Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, and argues for allegorical reading of scripture.
c. 1148–1153
Latin
De Consideratione
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Advice to a former monk now pope: the litigation will swallow you, you are not the successor of Constantine, and you must keep time for yourself or lose your soul.
c. 1150–1173
Latin
Scala Claustralium
Guigo II · d. 1188
Four rungs — reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation — described with a domestic image: reading puts food in the mouth, meditation chews it, prayer finds the flavour.
c. 1151
Latin
Ordo Virtutum
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
A sung drama in which a soul is pulled between sixteen Virtues, who sing, and the Devil, who can only shout because he has no music.
1141–1151
Latin
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Twenty-six visions of creation, redemption, and the church, each described and then explained by a voice from heaven, and illustrated under her direction.
c. 1152
Armenian
Hisus Ordi
Nerses Shnorhali · 1102–1173
Some eight thousand lines running from creation to the last judgement, written in a single rhyme and intended to teach the whole faith in verse.
1135–1153
Latin
Sermones super Cantica Canticorum
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Eighty-six sermons that never get past the second chapter, reading the Song as the soul's courtship by the Word and building from it a full account of humility, desire, and the degrees of love.
c. 1150–1158
Latin
Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae
Peter Lombard · c. 1096–1160
Doctrine arranged in four books — the Trinity, creation, the incarnation, the sacraments and last things — with the authorities marshalled under each question and a cautious verdict given.
c. 1140–1160
Latin
Anonymous
A young Englishwoman refuses the marriage her parents arranged, escapes disguised as a man, and lives hidden in a tiny cell for years before founding her own community.
c. 1150–1158
Latin
Physica
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Nine books on plants, elements, trees, stones, fish, birds, animals, and metals, giving the properties and medicinal uses of each.
c. 1155–1156
Latin
Peter the Venerable · c. 1092–1156
A refutation of Islam addressed, unusually, to Muslims themselves, arguing that they should be approached with reasons rather than arms.
c. 1150–1160
Latin
Causae et Curae
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
A medical handbook on the humours, digestion, sleep, conception, and remedies, including frank descriptions of sexual physiology from a woman's viewpoint.
c. 1150–1170
Latin
Symphonia
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Seventy-seven liturgical songs with soaring melodies of her own composition, in a Latin full of invented images — greenness, viridity, the fiery breath of the Spirit.
1159
Latin
John of Salisbury · c. 1120–1180
A defence of the study of logic and grammar against those who want students hurried to profitable subjects, with vivid recollections of the masters he studied under in Paris.
1159
Latin
John of Salisbury · c. 1120–1180
On the follies of courtiers and the duties of rulers, comparing the commonwealth to a body and arguing that a tyrant may lawfully be killed.
c. 1150–1165
Greek
Nicholas of Methone · d. c. 1165
A point-by-point answer to the Elements of Theology, defending creation from nothing against a Neoplatonist system of eternal emanation.
c. 1160–1165
Latin
De Spiritali Amicitia
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
A dialogue rewriting Cicero on friendship for the cloister, arguing that a friend is the guardian of love, and that God is friendship.
c. 1153–1162
Latin
Benjamin Major
Richard of Saint Victor · d. 1173
The ark of the covenant read as a diagram of contemplation, with six kinds of contemplative seeing rising from the senses to what exceeds reason.
c. 1152–1164
Latin
Elisabeth of Schönau · c. 1129–1164
Visions received in ecstasy and dictated to her brother, including revelations about the company of Saint Ursula that helped authenticate a vast relic discovery at Cologne.
c. 1160–1162
Latin
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
Written for his sister, enclosed as an anchoress: practical advice on visitors and servants, then a long meditation on entering the gospel scenes in imagination.
1158–1163
Latin
Liber Vitae Meritorum
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Thirty-five vices appear and speak in their own defence, each answered by the corresponding virtue, followed by a description of the punishments awaiting each.
c. 1157–1164
Latin
Rufinus of Bologna · 12th century
The first full commentary on Gratian, defining natural law and working out where custom, papal decree, and conscience each hold.
c. 1146–1179
Latin
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Nearly four hundred letters to popes, emperors, abbots, and ordinary people, rebuking Frederick Barbarossa and defending her nuns' right to bury an excommunicate.
c. 1147–1169
Latin
Isaac of Stella · c. 1100–c. 1178
Sermons of unusual philosophical seriousness on the soul, the church as the body of Christ, and the mercy owed to sinners by a community that shares their nature.
c. 1160–1170
Latin
Stephen of Tournai · 1128–1203
A lucid commentary on Gratian written for French students, later followed by a bitter letter complaining that theology students now argue about the Trinity in the street.
c. 1160–1180
Greek
Michael Glykas · 12th century
A world chronicle whose opening section on creation is packed with natural history, and whose author also wrote a prison poem in the vernacular.
c. 1150–1171
Syriac
Dionysius bar Salibi · d. 1171
Commentaries on the whole Bible giving both the literal and the spiritual sense, alongside treatises against Muslims, Jews, Armenians, and Chalcedonians.
1163–1170
Latin
Thomas Becket and his circle · c. 1120–1170
Hundreds of letters from the six-year quarrel over whether clergy accused of crimes could be tried in royal courts, preserved by both sides.
c. 1162–1173
Latin
Richard of Saint Victor · d. 1173
An argument for the Trinity from the nature of love itself: perfect charity cannot be solitary, and requires not only a beloved but a third with whom love is shared.
c. 1169–1173
Latin
Historia Scholastica
Peter Comestor · d. c. 1178
The narrative books of the Bible retold as continuous history, with pagan history synchronised alongside and difficulties explained as they arise.
1163–1174
Latin
Liber Divinorum Operum
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Ten visions on the cosmos and the human body as mirrors of each other, opening with a figure of Love holding the wheel of the world.
c. 1173–1175
Latin
William FitzStephen · d. c. 1191
The archbishop's career by a clerk who was present at the murder, prefaced by a famous description of London — its schools, cookshops, and boys skating on bone skates.
c. 1170–1180
Old French
Maurice de Sully · c. 1120–1196
Short model sermons in French for parish priests to deliver, explaining the gospel of the day in the plainest possible terms.
1179
Latin
The Third Lateran Council
Twenty-seven canons requiring a two-thirds majority for papal elections, a free school in every cathedral, and measures against usury, Cathars, and lepers' exclusion from churches.
c. 1175–1180
Latin
Baldwin of Forde · c. 1125–1190
A meditative rather than argumentative treatment of the eucharist, reading it through the Old Testament sacrifices and the church's unity in one bread.
c. 1170–1195
Greek
Theodore Balsamon · c. 1130–after 1195
A commentary on the whole body of church canons, reconciling them with imperial law and ruling on what remained in force.
c. 1180
Greek
Eustathius of Thessalonica · c. 1115–c. 1195
An attack on monks who sell their monastery's books, keep private property, and despise learning as a distraction from holiness.
41–80 of 98 matching · 1277 in the Library