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There were two Bernards of Clairvaux. The first was the genuine Bernard who lived from 1090 to 1153, and wrote letters, sermons, and treatises that are of major consequence in the history of the twelfth century. The second is a host of writers, most of whom have not been identified, who wrote treatises attributed to the genuine Bernard, but that were not from his pen. This volume, the first complete translation in more than three hundred year...

Adam of Perseigne, Spiritual director to kings and clerics, nuns and nobles and adviser to Richard the Lion-hearted, Adam also found favor at the witty court of the Countess of Champagne.

A monk and a scholar generally recognized as the keenest philosophical and theological mind of his time, Anselm, abbot of Bec, found himself forcibly and unwillingly invested as Archbishop of Canterbury on 6 March 1093. It was the first of many sharp differences between the Norman King and an archbishop who considered the reform of the church and the improvement of the moral conduct of the kingdom his prime tasks. Among his chief weapons in fi...

The literacy and education of medieval nuns has been a subject of dispute and study in recent years. In his third Index of medieval libraries, David Bell presents a comprehensive list of all manuscripts and printed books which have been traced with certainty or high probability to english nunneries. A systematic listing of the books available to english nuns, and in the process an indication of the wealth, the intellectual level, and the spiri...

In the gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus is "Emmanuel, " God-with-us, or, as Jesus himself puts it, he is "I-Desire, " "Coming-I-Will-Heal, " and "I-Am-with-You-Always." The brief commentaries collected here, initially presented by Cistercian abbot Mark A. Scott in a series of chapter talks to his monastic community, will welcome the reader into an intimate encounter with the love of Jesus, as the evangelist Matthew presents him in chapters four...

The Meditations, written over a period from 1125 to 1137, are a personal account of William of Saint-Thierry's ascent into Trinitarian intimacy. Writing to the monks of Mont Dieu sometime around 1144, he proposed the Meditations as helpful in forming minds in prayer. These Meditations, with their accompanying commentary, are now presented as helpful in forming an intimate relationship with the triune God.

This study follows the transmission and reception of Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum (1219-1223), one of the most compelling and successful Cistercian collections of miracles and memorable events, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It ranges across different media and within different interpretive communities and includes brief summaries of a number of the exempla.

What does it mean to live for God alone? "Prefer nothing to the love of Christ", "My God and my all", "God alone suffices"--these statements from the saints express the single desire that unified their hearts and gave direction to their lives. "God alone" was the constant theme of Saint Rafael Arnaiz (1911-1938), the expression of the search for God that informs any monastic vocation. Saint Rafael was profoundly and thoroughly a monk, even tho...

Taking up Saint Bernard's unfinished sermon-commentary, Gilbert ruminates on verse 3:1-5:10 in forty-eight sermons, leaving the task to be finished by John of Ford. This volume contains sermons 16 through 32. To encounter a person who makes holiness attractive is an enviable experience. Such a person was Gilbert of Hoyland, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Swineshead in Lincolnshire, a friend of Aelred of Rievaulx, and the continuator of t...

In completing the sermon-commentary begun by Bernard and continued by Gilbert of Hoyland, John 'emerges as a lively and original commentator, writing sensitively from a deep experience of the spiritual and monastic life. Carrying on where his great predecessors, including Saint Bernard, left off, John knows grace and its counterpart humility, are central to all Christian spirituality, he also has an exceptionally keen awareness of the church a...

Translated here for the first time are four works written by Stephen for his monks: A Mirror for Novices, A Threefold Exercise, On the Recitation of the Divine Office, and Meditations on the Joys of the Blessed Virgin. Each expresses the devotion of his day and provides an insight into the inner life of an early thirteenth century Cistercian monastery.

Armand-Jean de Rancé (1626-1700), the reforming abbot of la Trappe, was a prolific writer in a verbose age. Until he was in his thirties, he enjoyed the life of a young man about town, but then, after experiencing a dramatic conversion, he left the world forever for the silence and austerity of la Trappe. To read all that he wrote when he governed the abbey would take a great deal of time, but in 1703, three years after Rancé's death, Jacques ...

Aelred (1110-1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13-16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks. This volume contains the second half of Aelred's ninety-eight liturgical ser...

Saint Rafael Arnaiz was born in Burgos, Spain, on April 9, 1911. When he was twenty-one years old, he left behind the comforts of his wealthy family and an unfinished degree in architecture to join the Trappist-Cistercian abbey of San Isidro de Dueñas. A sudden onset of diabetes and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) turned his monastic journey into an unusual one. In these unfavorable circumstances and despite the shortness of...

Thousands and Thousands of Lovers examines the spiritual significance of community to the Cistercian nuns of Helfta--a concern that lies at the heart of the monastery's literature. Focusing on a woefully understudied resource and the largest body of female-authored writings in the thirteenth century, this book offers insight into the religious preoccupations of a theologically expert and intellectually vibrant cloister to reveal a subtle inter...

After sixty years of living in a Cistercian community, Michael Casey combines his down-to-earth observations about the joys and challenges of living in community with an appreciation of the deeper meanings of cenobitic life, taking into account the changes in both theory and practice that have occurred in his lifetime. He invites his readers, especially monks and nuns, to reflect on their own experiences of community as a means of seeing a pat...

In this book, David N. Bell explores what Cistercian writers and preachers have said about Mary from the time of the founding fathers of the Order to Armand-Jean de Rancé, who introduced the Cistercian Strict Observance and who died in 1700. This work is divided into three parts. The first part presents some selective background material on Mary that is necessary for understanding where the Cistercian writers are coming from and the sources an...

This book invites the reader to a spiritual odyssey. It opens before the reader an itinerary for venturing forth with God, aided by the astonishing writings of seventh-century Isaac the Syrian. Long-lost manuscripts have recently been discovered, translated, and published in scholarly works, this book aims to make them accessible to readers who want to experience their wisdom personally and so progress in a spiritual adventure. Isaac's writing...

Jacob Panhausen stands as a major but little-studied figure in the renewal of the Premonstratensian Order during the crucial decades of the sixteenth century when the very survival of religious life hung in the balance. His career (1540-1582) as abbot of Steinfeld in Germany spanned the whole era of the Council of Trent and its aftermath, and he died the same year that Saint Norbert was officially canonized.This volume presents the first Engli...

Aelred (1110-1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13-16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks. This volume contains the first half of Aelred's ninety-eight liturgical serm...