Georges Minois

A comprehensive biography of the Treatise of the Three Impostors, a controversial nonexistent medieval book. Like a lot of good stories, this one begins with a rumour: in 1239, Pope Gregory IX accused Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, of heresy. Without disclosing evidence of any kind, Gregory announced that Frederick had written a supremely blasphemous book—De tribus impostoribus, or...