Two Lives of Saint Colette – With a Selection of Letters by, to, and about Colette

Pierre de Vaux was a Franciscan friar. He was the companion and confessor of Saint Colette of Corbie, as well as her biographer. Sister Perrine de Baume was a Colettine Poor Clare. Her memoirs serve as a testimony to the life of Saint Colette of Corbie. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is distinguished professor of French emerita at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims and Christine de Pizan.

“Saint Colette of Corbie is one of the most important reformers of the late-medieval and early modern period, one of the most influential of all pre-modern European women in terms of institutional impact, and a fascinating French figure in the era of the Hundred Years War. She has never quite received her historiographic due, very likely because her two French ‘lives’—the second of the two authored by a woman—have not been available in English translation, while even the French edition is difficult to access. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, one of America’s great medievalists and leading specialists in medieval French, is just the right scholar to make these compelling lives of Saint Colette available to a contemporary audience.”

• Acknowledgments Illustrations Introduction Saint Colette in Her World Schism and Division The Franciscans and Reform A Brief Biography of Colette of Corbie The Sources Early Life and Religious Exploration Franciscan Reformer Colette and Ecclesiastical Politics Colette in Her Cloister—and on the Road Writing and Living Reform Devotional Life Illnesses Miracles Demons, Ghosts, and Other Apparitions The Life of Saint Colette, by Pierre de Vaux The Life of Saint Colette, by Sister Perrine de Baume Letters by, to, and about Colette Map Chronology Bibliography Index