Nigel of Longchamp, Speculum Stultorum. Ed. and trans. by Jill Mann. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2023, clxx, 475 pp.

In this exemplary book, Jill Mann shares her career-spanning expertise on one of the most celebrated poets of Angevin England: Nigel of Longchamp (ca. 1135–1198). A monk of the abbey of Christ Church in Canterbury active in the last two decades of the twelfth century, Nigel was a prolific author of verse hagiography and penned a prose screed against episcopal abuses. Jan M. Ziolkowski and Ronald M. Pepin have recently edited and translated three of his compositions – Miracula sancte Dei genitricis uirginis Marie uersifice; Tractatus contra curiales et officiales clericos; and Vita sancti Pauli primi eremitae – as Volume 75 of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series (2022), which appeared too late to be considered in the book under review. The focus of Mann’s study is Nigel’s most successful work among medieval readers: a satirical beast epic known as the Speculum stultorum (Mirror of Fools). Dedicated to the princely prelate William of Longchamp (of no relation to Nigel), this sprawling poem proved to be very popular, surviving in 41 manuscripts from the later Middle Ages. This volume offers a modern critical edition and translation of the Speculum stultorum, accompanied by a robust introduction to the author and his milieu as well as a comprehensive study of the textual history of the poem, its Latinity, and its manuscript witnesses.