Since Peter of Blois has stubbornly resisted the assaults of past and eminent medievalists, it has required exemplary courage to launch a new attack on his personage. The obstacles have been twofold: the disorder of Peter's letters and the infuriating contradictions of his personality. Fortunately a band of scholars has recently sorted out the textual tradition of some 300 extant manuscripts, authenticating some 250 letters, of which 163 were collected and edited by Peter himself, leaving some sixty as spurious. John D. Cotts submits these letters to a systematic analysis by identifying the addressees and categorising the types. As a humanist, Peter exemplified the ars dictaminis and followed the humanist tradition of Hildebert of Lavardin and John of Salisbury in presenting his letters as models of elegant style. This encouraged him both to collect and to rewrite them as he saw fit. With this textual base reasonably established Cotts seeks to untangle the skein of Peter's life and thought. Despite ostensibly autobiographical passages, his letters are frequently misleading and self-serving. Born in Blois of Breton parentage, his career spanned the European continent from Sicily through Italy, France and into England. His studies comprised the arts in the Loire schools, theology in Paris and law in Bologna. He once asserted that he served two kings (of Sicily and England) and three archbishops of Canterbury, but actually he was closely involved with many more important figures. His major income was furnished by the archdeaconries of Bath and London. Dead by 1212, he never rose higher than a secular cleric of the Church, but in Cott's view his clerical status is the key to his complexity and frustrations. His studies in arts, theology and law (the last of which he conventionally disavowed) prepared him for the courts of secular lords and bishops, yet the incompatibility between the regnum and sacerdotium produced irreconcilable contradictions. He could militate against the curial clerics as did Walter Map and Nigel of Longchamps and support mutual collaboration as did Reginald of Salisbury. The true test came in the Becket contest where he tried to steer a middle course, defending the liberty of the Church as did the sainted archbishop or advocating cooperation between the two spheres as King Henry sought. At every juncture, Peter expressed frustration and doubt about his clerical condition. In his old age he turned to more spiritual and monastic concerns such as spiritual friendship (where he plagiarised Cicero and Aelred of Rievaulx), to preach the Third Crusade and to exhort confession and penance, again in conventional terms. Resisting the call to a monk's profession, he remained a clerical Martha to the monastic Mary. In the final analysis, therefore, he epitomised the fluidity and contradictions of the twelfth century by resisting the new currents of administrative centralisation and the revival of learning and by opting for a constant state of uncertainty and doubt. For the reader, however, who wishes to experience Peter's ‘clerical dilemma’ for herself or himself, Egbert Türk has rendered Peter's collection of letters into modern French (Pierre de Blois: ambitions et remords sous les Plantagenêts, Turnhout 2006). Elizabeth Revell has provided Peter's later letters with a new edition (1993), and Rolf Köhn promises a new edition of the whole corpus.