This is an extremely attractive and ambitious publication, devoted to the miracles of St Gilles, an obscure Provençal hermit. These were set down first by a local author, Pierre Guillaume, to whom other works can be attributed, and then in the third quarter of the twelfth century by an anonymous continuator or continuators. The present publication consists of a Latin text based on the earliest and most complete of the two manuscripts of the miracles, that is Paris, BN, ms lat. 13779, collated with the other, Wolfenbüttel, Helm. 1049, which is both later and less complete. The edition has a full scholarly apparatus to the highest standards. The facing French translation is clear and easy to use, and it is equipped with a full set of footnotes explaining as far as is possible the context of the miracles and the places and people mentioned in them. There then follows a detailed commentary on the miracles, dealing with their authorship and date, the motives and circumstances of their composition, the context provided by the churches of the abbey of St Gilles (there are also plates and plans to clarify this), and analyses of what can be learned of the pilgrims, their offerings and of the miracles themselves. A detailed bibliography and a full index complete the volume. This is the first time that the miracles have been edited in their fullest form, and the first time in any form that they have appeared in translation. Their interest is considerable, partly because the disappearance of the archives of St Gilles makes them crucial evidence for the history of pilgrimage to what was at least before its decline from the fourteenth century onwards a very important shrine, but also because very strikingly they concern miracles supposed to have taken place across Europe, from the coast of Spain to Haithabu in the north and Poland in the east (one of the miracles involves Polish bison). The fact that St Gilles was an important staging post on one of the routes to Santiago de Compostella makes all this especially worthy of attention. The editors of this volume are to be congratulated on such a distinguished contribution to the materials available for the study of pilgrimage and saints' cults and for such thoughtful and detailed commentary on them.
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