St. Radegunde of Poitiers’ "Treatise of Consolation to Lepers"

Chris Synodinos earned a BA from the University of Athens, Greece. He received his doctorate in Classics from Boston University and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Language, Literature, and Culture at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Synodinos has applied his expertise in the distinct forms of Latin characteristic of the early medieval West to great effect. Equally admirable is his decision to detail and justify his translation philosophy (57-62), in a section that merits the attention of scholars in its own right. Grounded in Classical thought, and formed with much consideration, Synodinos’s approach is a model for other translators confronted with a text that is difficult to render with precision in English idiom.[...]Historians will be keenly interested in the arguments put forward in the introduction, which attempt to locate the text beyond its manuscript context. Synodinos provides phonological, syntactical, and morphological indications that the provenance of the text is to be sought in the Vulgar Latin milieu of early medieval Gaul, most likely during the sixth century.[...]The more modest arguments in favour of authorship within sixth-century Gaul, rather than Radegund in particular, are strong enough to give historians confidence that the DCA can be included within scholarship on the world of Radegund, and for that Synodinos deserves full credit. Judged as an edition, translation, and linguistic study of a work that deserves to be made accessible to wider scholarship, this book must be considered a triumph of ambitious scholarship and a model for future work.

• DedicationAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction Preface to the TranslationDe consolatione in adversis—Latin TextOn Solace in Tribulation—TranslationBibliography