The four Latin lives of St Laurence O Toole (with ancillary material) were critically edited for a doctoral thesis by Maurice Roche in 1981. Sadly Dr Roche died in an accident in 2003. The thesis went missing but photographs of it were made available to Mary Kelly and from these Charles Doherty and Mary produced this book. Contact was made with Dr Roche s relatives who were happy to see his work in print. It was a two volume thesis (now reduced to one). The first consisted of chapters on the life and career of Laurence and invaluable analyses of each of the lives revealing the relationships among them and highlighting the very diverse approaches of the hagiographers to their material. The second contains the critical editions of the lives . For the first time we have a complete dossier of the hagiography of the saint. Critical editions of documents concerning the canonisation and translation followed the lives . Finally, draft translations of the two most important lives (found by his relatives) are appended. The thesis is of fundamental importance for scholars working in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Irish, English and European history.
