Near the beginning of the Dialogus Miraculorum, his massive collection of exempla, edifying tales imparting spiritual and moral instruction, the thirteenth-century Cistercian monk and novice master Caesarius (c. 1180-c.1250), of the German Abbey of Heisterbach, reminisces about a journey to Cologne taken years earlier in the company of his future abbot, who is trying unsuccessfully to convince him to enter religious life. Finally Abbot Gevard relates an incident that reportedly took place during harvest time, in which a monk of his Order had a vision of the Virgin Mary, her mother St. Anne and St. Mary Magdalene, who appeared in the midst of the community busily at work and “wiped away the monks’ sweat and fanned them with their long sleeves” (1.103). Caesarius is so deeply moved by this recital that he decides on the spot to commit himself to a monastic vocation. The whole episode, an exemplum within an exemplum, suggests the superiority of story to abstract argument in touching the heart and moving the will.

Presumably this experience subsequently served as an important motivating factor prompting Caesarius to become an indefatigable collector of hundreds of striking, generally brief narratives about occurrences, both positive and negative, that provide insight into various central dimensions of the Christian life and could act as stimuli for personal reflection and transformation. Many of these stories were evidently used as part of the formation process of the novices under his care, and according to his prefatory comments it was at the urging of these young monks in training, as well as the encouragement of his own superiors, that during the years 1219-1223 Caesarius assembled all this material into what became one of the most popular and influential compilations of exempla of its time, including somewhere around 800 individual anecdotes and tales, totaling about 300,000 words. It had been preceded by a handful of similar texts of Cistercian origin, the best known of which are the Liber Miraculorum (c. 1178) of Herbert of Clairvaux, of which Caesarius makes some use, directly or, as in the case of the story of his conversion, indirectly, and the Exordium Magnum  of Conrad of Eberbach, a monk of Clairvaux who later transferred to an abbey in his native Germany, more historically oriented and chronologically organized, and written slightly earlier (c. 1190-1210), than Caesarius’ text.
Though not issued as a two-book set, Ronald Pepin’s excellent new translation of The Dialogue on Miracles, nearly a century after the only previous English version, has now appeared in a pair of volumes published simultaneously, corresponding to the author’s own division of the work into two equal parts, each consisting of six sections or “distinctiones.” The translated text is preceded in the first of these by a substantial introduction by the Benedictine scholar Hugh Feiss (1.1-74), which provides information on the genre of exempla from classical and early Christian times to the high middle ages, with particular attention to Cistercian texts written during the period 1170-1225, “the springtime of exempla collections” (1.5); on the monastery of Heisterbach from its founding in 1189-92 until its dissolution in 1803; on Caesarius himself, summarizing the relatively sparse biographical material available, and his fairly extensive corpus of writings, of which the Dialogus is by far the best known and most influential; and on the text, manuscripts, reception, structure, sources, style, major themes and key motifs of that work, culminating in capsule descriptions of its prologue and each of its twelve sections, followed by an appendix listing and briefly detailing important ecclesiastical figures of the period, Cistercian abbeys and Cologne churches mentioned in the text, and the crusades and other military campaigns of the time to which the author alludes. The prospective reader is thus well equipped to appreciate both the text itself and the various contexts, literary, religious and historical, in which it is situated. (Dom Hugh also provides in his brief Foreword [1.ix-xi] a charming tribute to the translator, his longtime friend and frequent collaborator.) This material is complemented by an extensive index of all the individual persons, as well as the places, appearing in the text itself as well as in the front matter, at the conclusion of the second volume (2.435-61). 

Intended primarily, though not exclusively, for a monastic, especially a Cistercian, audience, the book is composed mainly of incidents occurring in the recent past, the majority involving monks and nuns but also nobles (even royalty), knights, merchants, pilgrims, parish clergy, saints, sinners and strugglers, a treasure trove for researchers interested in that era. By and large they are communicated by word of mouth either directly to Caesarius himself or through some knowledgeable witness or intermediary, frequently various superiors stopping at his abbey in their travels. He takes meticulous care to provide the provenance of each and every example he relates, frequently identifying his source by name, at other times providing less specific information for the sake of confidentiality, but always maintaining the trustworthiness and reliability of the informant. When a literary source is used, that fact is at least generally indicated. One gets the impression that his project soon became fairly common knowledge, among Cistercians at least, so that he did not have to go in search of more tales – people with stories to tell were coming to him so regularly that one might almost imagine them lined up outside his cell. He strongly affirms that none of the stories are invented, and there is no reason to question his word, though of course this does not mean that every detail must be accepted as objectively factual, nor that his interpretation is necessarily to be regarded as definitive. It quickly becomes evident that for Caesarius the supernatural realm, both good and evil, is constantly intersecting and interacting with the earthly, and he relishes every available bit of testimony concerning these interactions.

     The uniqueness of Caesarius’ work is signaled in its title – it is presented in the form of a dialogue between “Monk” – clearly, as already indicated, Caesarius himself – and “Novice” (given the name “Apollonius” in early printed editions of the text). It has been suggested (see 1.20-21) that Caesarius may have been influenced by the model of Gregory the Great’s four books of Dialogues (including the famous life of Benedict that comprises the second of these) to adopt this method of presenting his material, which largely functions as a convenient structural device, as “Novice” repeatedly expresses his appreciation, his deepened comprehension and/or his desire for further clarification and so prompts “Monk” to explain certain points in more detail or to move on to the next story. The obvious artificiality of this literary device is apparent from the frequent references by one or the other interlocutor to previous appearances of characters or to similar incidents by precise citations of specific sections and chapters (occasionally even ones still to come!), which would not only require a prodigious memory but the assignment of particular numbers to segments of ostensibly oral conversation. On the other hand, while this format does not lead to any extended intellectual inquiries as in a Platonic dialogue, or expressions of spiritual struggles like those Germanus reveals to the various desert fathers in Cassian’s Conferences, or the deeply personal relationships found in Aelred of Rievaulx’ Spiritual Friendship, it is a simple but effective way to reflect, at least schematically, the pedagogical approach taken by the actual novice master with those he is charged both to inform and to transform, and to transpose it into a comparable literary form for an audience within and beyond the Cistercian Order.

The other term in the title is used in a very broad sense throughout the text, referring to supernatural incidents of all kinds, not just, or mainly, physical and spiritual healings, though there are plenty of those, or events transcending the natural order. Apparitions, both positive and negative, are probably the most numerous events recorded, with the latter probably outnumbering the former: appearances of Christ, saints and angels are frequent, but those of demons are rife. It is interesting that one of the work’s twelve sections is itself entitled “On Miracles,” which seems redundant, but it is focused particularly (though not solely), on marvelous happenings associated with each of the four elements, followed by tales involving various creatures: birds, fish, oxen, wolves, toads and snakes. As such a list suggests, Caesarius has a strong structural sense and organizational skill, both on a macro and micro level. The sequence of his dozen sections proceeds logically as well as numerologically (though more often than not the explanation for a particular topic corresponding to a specific number may strike a modern reader as somewhat obscure or convoluted). Moreover, as Caesarius himself informs the reader in his Prologue (1.80), the progression of initial letters of the section titles also forms an acrostic spelling out “Cesarii munus” (“work or product of Caesarius”), evidence of a playful side of his personality.

The initial half dozen distinctiones focus in turn on conversion (43 chapters), contrition (35), confession (53), temptation (103), demons (56) and simplicity (37). The conversion stories are almost exclusively devoted to decisions to enter monastic life, for which “conversio” is almost a technical term – some of them actually only pseudo-conversions that eventually fail. The section on contrition cast a wider net, including positive and negative examples not only of monks (a pair of apostates in particular) but bishops, a student, a knight, a count, a canon, various women (a number of them Jewish), and a succession of usurers, for Caesarius a particularly noxious vice. The next section includes examples not only of sacramental confession but, in exceptional circumstances, an unburdening of conscience to any available party, which seems to be sufficiently efficacious; a number of stories also highlight the belief that confessed sins are no longer remembered by demons, which often serves as a prime motivation for seeking absolution. The longest section, on temptation, groups the exempla according to the traditional seven deadly sins, with multiple examples of each, again contrasting those who resist and those who succumb. The appearance of demons is hardly restricted to the fifth section, but here their machinations are the main focus, featuring encounters in visions, various means of warding them off, forms of possession and molestation, demonic influence on heretics, some of the stories highly amusing, particularly when the demons are eventually routed, though often they are not. The final section of the first part features both the innocent whose single-mindedness renders them less susceptible to the lures of world, flesh and devil, and the foolish for whom the converse is true, though examples are also given of “holy fools” who may seem to belong to the latter category but actually are living embodiments of purity of heart, while other stories reveal that the appearance of wisdom can sometimes be a mask for deviousness and duplicity.

  The second half begins after a very brief Prologue (2.3) with a section “On Holy Mary” (59 chapters), followed by “On Diverse Visions” (97), “On the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood” (67), “On Miracles” (72), “On the Dying” (65) and finally – appropriately enough – “On the Rewards of the Dead” (59). The section on Mary that begins the second half of the book highlights her compassion and commitment to those devoted to her, the powerful efficacy of the “angelic prayer” (i.e. the Hail Mary) and her particular favor toward the Cistercian Order, culminating with what becomes a celebrated image of her sheltering members of the Order beneath her capacious cloak. The section on visions uses the image of an eight-runged ladder corresponding not only to the eight beatitudes but to the various parts of the Body of Christ, represented by angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins and widows, with corporeal and spiritual visions forming its vertical sides. The Eucharist is considered in the next section in three dimensions: the sacramental elements of bread and wine, the real presence of body and blood of Christ under these sacramental forms, and the non-sacramental (in the strict sense) reality of the Church as the one Body of Christ; various miraculous appearances of actual body and blood in the Eucharistic elements are related, and extensive attention is given to the importance of holiness in priests as sacramental celebrants. After the section on miracles with its various organized groupings, the penultimate section on the dying sorts people into four categories: those who live and die well; those who have lived well yet die badly; those who have lived badly but die well; and those who both live and die badly. Despite its completely positive title, the final section progressively moves from stories of those who end up in hell to those who undergo the purifications of purgatory to those brought straight to “the heavenly Jerusalem and the glory of the saints” (2.432), as the final chapter is entitled, where they experience the sevenfold eternal rejoicing of the elect.  

Bringing this 746-chapter, nearly 900-page conversation to its close, “Monk” addresses his interlocutor with an invitation to shared prayer: “Since we must put an end to our dialogue, let us together beseech Christ, who is the end of every end, that all that we have discussed because of your questions and my responses may be beneficial and meritorious to those reading and listening to them, so that the edification of those close to us may be the fruit of our labors.” The prayer itself is both a petition that Christ “deign to vouch for us” and an expression of “praise, honor, and dominion” to Father, Son and Spirit (2.433-34).

Even a summary overview of this massive compilation makes clear that the sensibilities of Caesarius and his age are very different from those of most present-day readers (though successors of such tales, particularly of the sort where gruesome fates are the deserved comeuppance for various types of evildoers, were not uncommon among parochial grammar-school religion classes in the immediate pre-Vatican II period). On might be inclined to wonder if the significance of such a collection is strictly antiquarian. Yet without applying in too strict a fashion the Pauline distinction between the letter that killeth and the spirit that giveth life, one might suggest that while on the literal level the Dialogue provides valuable insights into personal, cultural, sociological and historical dimensions of its period, the spiritual insights it provides have perennial value. Encountering the story of the three biblical women passing among the monastic reapers is likely to draw few if any readers or listeners to enter a monastery today; but its underlying thematic message, the mysterious presence and activity of grace, of transcendent compassion bestowed and received even without conscious awareness, not only in explicitly spiritual contexts but in the midst of the ordinary tasks of daily life, along with comparable lessons found in many other of these exemplary tales, still has power to edify and to instruct, to stimulate and to inspire, power that has now become more readily and more widely accessible through this sprightly new translation.