This is an excellent addition to the series Classiques de l'Histoire au Moyen Âge. The edited Life is preceded by an informative introduction, and accompanied both by a French translation and by copious annotation. At the end there are short essays on important themes in the text. Everything possible has been done to make the text accessible to modern readers. It offers on the first level a fairly conventional life of an abbot regarded by later monks of Saint-Victor as the refounder of their house. A certain amount of this Life can be corroborated by reference to surviving charters, which show Isarn to have been abbot of Saint-Victor by 1021. It is clear, both from the Life and from charters, that Isarn was an itinerant abbot, constantly on the move between the various possessions and priories of Saint-Victor across Provence. The text is interesting on the problems caused for the monks of the mother house by his prolonged absences. Isarn's journeyings meant that his horse was of great importance to him; it emerges from the text as almost a second hero, always obedient to his master but determined not to be ridden by anyone else, especially not by a horse thief, of whom there were many in Provence. On the second level, the Life is a carefully crafted piece, designed by its author in the 1070s to serve the interests of Saint-Victor at a time when the monks were defending against lay critics what had grown into a sizable and reasonably homogeneous lordship. In this context Isarn the miracle-worker emerged as a powerful defender of monastic possessions. The various wicked lay lords who tried to steal from the abbey or limit its jurisdiction all came to a bad end. In the course of the narrative, Isarn was compared with St Martin of Tours and with the prophet Elisha, neither of whose achievements were as fine as his. On the third and final level, Isarn was made into a martyr. Although seriously ill, he allegedly went to Spain to purchase the release of monks from the monastery of Lérins who had been captured in a Saracen raid. His death after his successful return was a sacrifice similar to that made by Christ. There is some corroborating evidence for a raid on Lérins in 1046, the year before Isarn's death. Was the author of the Life relating an historical episode or appropriating to Isarn the credit for suffering that would otherwise have belonged to the newly released monks of Lérins?