Like all the volumes in this series, this was a fascinating book containing the extant works of three Church Fathers from what is now Spain and Portugal. Most of the pieces are by Martin of Braga. First of his is a 'Sayings of the Egyptian Fathers', a translation into Latin of a variety of sayings and short narratives from Egyptian monasticism. Martin also wrote a short treatise about 'Driving Away Vanity', followed by a treatise about avoiding pride, one about the importance of humility, and another about the dangers of anger. All of these contain a number of excellent moral exhortations, such as his remark, "There is nothing more praiseworthy than to exchange anger for friendship. Is someone angry? Challenge him with kindness instead" (De ira 8, on page 67). After this comes a treatise called 'Reforming the Rustics', essentially a long sermon Martin intended to be used to correct Christians who still flirted with idolatry and superstition. In one striking section, one can't help but reminded that, while today we give no heed to the meaning of the names we gave to days of the week, this was not always so: "What madness it is for a man baptized in the faith of Christ not to honor the Lord's Day, on which Christ rose, but to say that he honors the days of Jupiter and Mercury and Venus and Saturn, who have no day, but were adulterers, soothsayers, and wicked men who had come to a bad end in their own country!" (De correctione rusticorum 9, on page 76). Martin also, interestingly, mentions "ignorant rustics" who believe "that the first day of January is the beginning of the year, which is completely false" (ibid. 10, on page 76). The fifteenth section of this treatise gives some clear insights into the baptismal process in sixth-century Iberian Christianity. Martin's next treatise, his 'Rules for an Honest Life', is perhaps his most famous, as it gives advice regarding the four cardinal virtues - both on how to behave in accordance with them and how to avoid going overboard and finding vice in excess. Next followed a letter to another bishop, 'Triple Immersion', which deals with the reason why, on the one hand, baptism is performed with three immersions rather than one, and on the other hand, baptism is performed in the singular 'name' of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, rather than in their 'names'. After this came a very fascinating last treatise, 'Easter', in which Martin offered a summary of the sort of reasoning by which the church eventually produced a system for setting a date for Easter each year. The process as Martin tells us is certainly... interesting... and involves, among other things, deciding what day of the year the universe was created. The volume also included Paschasius of Dumium's 'Questions and Answers of the Greek Fathers', another rendering of monastic quotes and anecdotes. As with much monastic counsel, some is excellent moral advice and some goes ridiculously overboard in its asceticism. Finally, the volume ends with two works by Leander of Seville, the older brother of the more famous Isidore of Seville. The first, addressed to his sister who was a nun, was a monastic rule he crafted for her. Some of it represents the worst tendencies in monasticism to denigrate marriage and ordinary human life; on the other hand, there was some good counsel at certain points, and this offered an interesting comparison with monastic rules devised for men. The second work, a much shorter piece, was a sermon Leander delivered after the Visigoths were converted from Arianism to Catholic Christianity. In it, he makes some interesting remarks on the nature of heresy and schism. ( )