"Gregorian" Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine Monasticism

This book condenses and updates the author's two-volume work, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues (Brill, 1987), surveying and clarifying the controversy which that work rekindled.It presents the internal and external evidence showing cogently that the famous book which is the sole source of knowledge about the life of St. Benedict was not written by St. Gregory the Great as is traditionally supposed, but by a later counterfeiter.It makes an essential contribution to the current reassessment of early Benedictine history. It also throws much new light on the life and times of St. Gregory, and confutes the age-old accusation that he was "the father of superstition" who by writing the Dialogues corrupted the faith and piety of medieval Christendom.

'For the last twenty years a British scholar named Francis Clark has carried out a relentless and effective attack on the Gregorian authorship of the Dialogues. I think he has proven his point….As might be expected, Clark has met with determined opposition in his revision of the received wisdom…' Dom Terrence Kardong, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 2004.

Francis Clark, D.D. (1959), formerly Professor of Theology at Heythrop College and the Gregorian University, and Reader in Religious Studies at the Open University, now Fellow of Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, has published many works on the history of religion, including Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation (3rd edit. 1981) and The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues (Brill, 1987).