nine-book epic of unrhymed couplets, recounting the biblical tale of mankind from the creation to the present. Lawrence had been composing a metrical version of the Bible, though becoming a member of the episcopal court meant he was only able to compose 40 lines per day. He managed to get the work up to a good size when it disappeared one Christmas, stolen, Lawrence thought, by a maid-servant. The Hypognosticon, an improved version of what he could remember of this work, was written in the space of one month. Another major work, the Dialogi, has been hailed as Lawrence's "most original work". The work is a set of dialogues, in four books, averaging c. 550 lines of elegiacs. The dialogues feature Lawrence, Philip, another monk of Durham, and a Breton named Peter. In the first two books, where Lawrence and Philip are in exile, Lawrence describes his longing for the good times of Bishop Geoffrey's era, describes the great things of Durham, and disparages Cumin and the behaviour of his soldiers . In books iii and iv, when the two Durham monks have been allowed to return by Cumin, Lawrence recounts his own upbringing, and the characters debate various moral points. Another work attributed to Lawrence, the Consolatio de Morte Amici ["Consolation on the Death of a Friend"], is a prosimetrum of 15 metra and 16 prose sections, closely modelled on Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae. Lawrence, grieving over the death of his friend Paganus, is persuaded not to mourn by an interlocutor, who insists on the immortality of Paganus''' soul and God's love. Further, five speeches written in prose are extant: Laurentius pro Laurentio (attacking unjust allegations and tyranny), Pro in Malgerium (rebutting an allegation of sedition), Pro Iuvenibus (defending some men who looted a ship wreck), Pro Milone (defending a suitor of a noble girl) and Pro Naufragis (reprimanding the people of Durham for bad treatment of wrecked sailors). Among other works of Lawrence is the 56-line "Tempora nec Sexum Metuit", a reflection on mankind and the Fall written in the margin of one Hypognosticon'' manuscript; a 23-line rebuke of fickleness, "Aura Puer Mulier"; and a dialogue carried out in 109 rhymed stanzas where Cleophas, Luke, Thomas and the other Apostles, bemoaning the Crucifixion, get interrupted and reassured by Christ. Notes References Further reading 1154 deaths 12th-century English historians 12th-century Latin writers English Christian monks Hagiographers Medieval Latin poets