Benedictine Maledictions

"'May they be cursed in the chest and the heart, cursed in the stomach, cursed in the blood, cursed in the hands and feet and each of their members." Monks in medieval France lay flat before the altar as they intoned these maledictions laced with biblical quotations or paraphrases: "May their children be made orphans and their wives widows" (Psalm 108:9). In this long-awaited book, the result of more than a decade of research, Lester K. Little reconstructs and explores the phenomenon of official