Peter Damian: Letters 61-90

Peter Damian (1007-1072), an 11th-century monk and man of letters, left a large and significant body of correspondence. This third volume of "The Letters of Peter Damian" is an annotated translation of Letters 61-90. These letters reveal the author's concern with the contemporary need for reforms, centering on clerical, especially episcopal, celibacy and on the "heresy" of simony which involved the purchase of ecclesiastical offices. Because Damian's Latin was a living language that surpasses the ability of classical Latin lexicography to cope with it, all disciplines that make use of medieval thought will welcome this English translation. Owen J. Blum's notes to each letter indicate the vocabulary problems he encountered and how they were resolved. This third volume, like its companions, uses Damian's thought to understand an important and gripping period in the history of church and state.