T. D. Hemming – författare

Central to the Enlightenment is the ideal of the Secular City, in militant reply to the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. The essays in this volume, all by distinguished eighteenth century specialists, illustrate the elaboration of that vision, both in the planning and depiction of actual cities and in the speculation on social justice to which Voltaire in particular devoted himself. Yet even in him, secularization is never total, and the persistence of a displaced religious, even messianic strain in the Enlightenment is also illustrated in a variety of writers, culminating in the contradictions of the French Revolution.

This is the first critical edition of a neglected version of the Life of Saint Alexis found in a late twelfth century manuscript written in England containing several other saints’ lives, and now, after many adventures, in the Bibliothèque nationale. Whereas other versions often stress the saint’s role as a posthumous miracle worker Alexis is here presented as a model and an intercessor. The text will be of interest both to students of Old French and to students of medieval hagiography.