Voicing your Voice: The Fiction of a Life. Early Twelfth-Century Letter Collections and the Case of Bernard of Clairvaux

Abstract

In following the evolution of the ordering principles of letter collections of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, this contribution tries to demonstrate that a corpus epistolarum is much more than a collection of individual missives. The collection as a whole has a message to convey. Careful analysis of the arrangement of the letters and of the different accents it creates does not perhaps teach the modern reader much about events of the time but it does have a great deal to teach him or her about the compilers' qualities and the messages they wanted to convey. The article wants to achieve this aim by presenting the epistolary collections of Gerbert d'Aurillac, Hildebert of Lavardin, and Bernard of Clairvaux.