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Love in Twelfth-Century France: A Failure in Synthesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
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Near the end of the twelfth century, the scholar and statesman Peter of Blois felt compelled to bring together the wisdom of ancients and moderns on the subject of love and friendship. He was reluctant to publish his synthesis, for he was afraid that his reliance on other authors would bring charges of fraud. Sure enough, it has. Unfortunately, he relied too heavily on one modern in particular, St. Ailred of Rievaulx; and, like many undergraduate papers, his treatise is a better example of plagiarism than of synthesis.
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1 This paper was presented in an earlier form at the Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in March, 1966. I wish to thank Hofstra University and the Frank L. Weil Institute for Studies in Religion and the Humanities for the financial assistance which made my research possible.Google Scholar
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