The Life of Saint Clement presents the first translation of the Vie de seint Clement, an early-thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman verse narrative which combines versions of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones and Epistola Clementis ad Iacobum and of the Passio Petri et Pauli of Pseudo-Marcellus.
With its stirring account of the separation and reunion of the family of Pope St Clement I, and of his adventures in the company of St Peter as he battles against the heretical necromancer Simon Magus, The Life of Saint Clement stands as one of the longest and most memorable vernacular hagiographical texts composed in medieval Britain.
The translation is the first into English of La Vie de seint Clement.
Reviewers praise Burrows’s style as appealing. The introduction he provides is noted for giving a wide-ranging and enterprising account of the poem, including a summary of the text.
The work is of interest to scholars of medieval hagiography, of Anglo-Norman literature (French in England), of Christian legend/lives of saints, and of how texts draw together different source traditions
