Cistercian Studies

4 primary works

The Lives of the Desert Fathers

by Norman Russell and Benedicta Ward, SLG

Published 1 April 1981

Eyewitness accounts of the lives and teachings of the fourth-century Desert Fathers from the Historia monachorum in Aegypto.

Harlots of the Desert

by Benedicta Ward, SLG

Published 1 November 1987

Beauty consuming itself like incense burnt before God in solitude, far from the eyes of men, became the most stirring image of penance conceivable. Stories on conversion from extreme sinfulness to extreme holiness have always attracted humankind's attention, and this was especially so among the monks of the ancient and medieval world. In the literature of fourth-century Egypt, alongside the wise sayings of the desert fathers and the stories illustrating their way of life, there are also the accounts of the lives of the harlots, Pelagia, Maria, Thais, Mary of Egypt, and a number of lesser figures, all of which were copied, translated, and retold throughout the Middle Ages.

In this monograph, Benedicta Ward continues the work she began in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and The Lives of the Desert Fathers, commenting on early monastic texts by discussing the theme of Christian repentance. She begins with May Magdalene, the archetypal penitent, and goes on to examine the desert tradition, concluding each chapter with new translations of those lives which were most influential in the early Church and on countless generations afterwards.

The Venerable Bede

by Benedicta Ward, SLG

Published 1 January 1990

This text provides a comprehensive account of the writings of the Venerable Bede, locating them against his biography and the history of his age. It seeks to provide a rounded portrait of Bede as a monk and priest of Jarrow, as a loved master and teacher, and as a meditative student of the Bible. The study also traces his career as a mathematician, chronologist, Latinist and historian.

High King Of Heaven

by Benedicta Ward, SLG

Published 1 April 1999

It was not until after the conversion of the English to Christianity that any sustained information was written down about Christian life in these islands. This was done in the eigth century by the monk Bede, and it is mostly through his writings that it is possible to be in touch with the first Christians in England and to know about what they thought and did. Ward looks at this "golden age" of English Christianity, how it ended with the attacks of the Vikings and the "golden age" of faith and culture which followed in the tenth century.