Two Lives of Saint Colette : With a Selection of Letters By, To, and About Colette

Two accounts of the life of Saint Colette of Corbie.

Saint Colette of Corbie (1381–1447) was a French reformer of the Franciscan Order and the founder of seventeen convents. Though of humble origin, she attracted the support of powerful patrons and important Church officials. The two biographies translated here were authored by Pierre de Vaux, her confessor and mentor, and Perrine de Baume, a nun who for decades was Colette’s companion and confidant. Both accounts offer fascinating portraits of the saint as a pious ascetic assailed by demons and performing miracles, as well as in her role as skillful administrator and caring mother of her nuns. This is the first English translation of two biographies in Middle French of the most important female figures of the Middle Ages. 
 

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 at the University of Pittsburgh. Her many publications include The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (1997), Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature (1997), Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (2006), and The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman between Demons and Saints (2015). With Bruce L. Venarde she published Two Women of the Great Schism in the present series (2010).