Peter Abelard After Marriage (Cistercian Studies, #211)
by Thomas Bell
Famous for their love affair and their letter exchange, Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete, and Abelard, monk and scholar, are less known for their on-going monastic relationship. Abelard's letters of direction to Heloise and her nuns were complemented by the liturgical music he composed for them. This study of Abelard as musician and spiritual director underlines the importance liturgical song has in forming the virtues of obedience, penitence, and humility as well as highlighting Abelard's maste...
This is an investigation of the retreat to the desert and the growth of monasticism in 4th-century AD Egypt, which has been recognized as a significant movement of early Christianity. The text focuses on the ways in which the desert saints interpreted and appropriated the Scripture. Drawing extensively on stories and sayings from the vast body of monastic literature, the author demonstrates that the Scriptures were a primary source of inspiration for the founders of early monasticism, and the sh...
The Nun in the Synagogue documents the religious and cultural phenomenon of Judeocentric Catholicism that arose in the wake of the Holocaust, fueled by survivors who converted to Catholicism and immigrated to Israel as well as by Catholics determined to address the anti-Judaism inherent in the Church. Through an ethnographic study of selected nuns and monks, Emma O'Donnell Polyakov explores how this Judeocentric Catholic phenomenon began and continues to take shape in Israel. This book is a cas...
Sermons on the Final Verses of the Song of Songs Volume I (Cistercian Fathers, #29)
by John of Ford
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 as a body whose members share in each other's treasure...
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian Studies, #59)
`Give me a word, Father', visitors to early desert monks asked. The responses of these pioneer ascetics were remembered and in the fourth century written down in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, and later Latin. TheirSayings were collected, in this case in the alphabetical order of the monks and nuns who uttered them, and read by generations of Christians as life-giving words that would help readers along the path to salvation.
Dict. Des Ordres Religieux, Ou Histoire Des Ordres Monastiques. T. 2 (Ed.1847-1863) (Religion)
by Helyot P
For fifteen centuries Benedictine monasticism has been governed by a Rule that is at once strong enough to instill order and yet flexible enough to have relevance fifteen hundred years later. This unabridged edition includes the Latin and English translation with commentary. The paperback version has facing page translation.
War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion)
by Katherine Allen Smith
An extremely interesting and important book... makes an important contribution to the history of medieval monastic spirituality in a formative period, whilst also fitting into wider debates on the origins, development and impactof ideas on crusading and holy war. Dr William Purkis, University of Birmingham Monastic culture has generally been seen as set apart from the medieval battlefield, as "those who prayed" were set apart from "those whofought". However, in this first study of the place o...
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 path forward into the future. Many of the key components...
From its origins in the fourth and fifth centuries, first in monastic circles and then in wider Christian communities, the story of Mary of Egypt was wildly popular. From early Christianity through the medieval periods, from Egypt to Scandinavia, verse lives in Greek, Latin, and vernacular languages portray her as the model of repentance. Continuously venerated in the liturgy and icons of the Orthodox Churches, she is now seldom known in the West. This modern verse life and the accompanying essa...
Using vignettes set in or near his monastery in downtown Newark, New Jersey, Benedictine monk Albert Holtz helps us to see that the Easter mystery, which can often seem abstract and distant, is in fact present all around us. As we accompany him through the fifty days of the Easter season, we listen in on his intriguing interactions with local street people and his inner-city high school students-an insider's look at what goes on in a monk's heart as he chants Vespers to the sound of police siren...
2021 Catholic Media Association Award third place award in English translation edition This book places the life of Aelred of Rievaulx, third abbot of the English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, within the hundred-year period from the Norman Conquest of England in October 1066 through Aelred's death in January 1167. While exploring what is known of Aelred's life from his own works and especially from the principal work of Walter Daniel, author of The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, Burton considers th...
Cloistered and inaccessible 'brides of Christ'? Or socially engaged women, active in the outside world to a degree impossible for their secular sisters? Nuns tells the fascinating stories of the women who have lived in religious communities since the dawn of the modern age - their ideals and achievements, frustrations and failures, and their attempts to reach out to the society around them. Drawing particularly on the nuns' own words, Silvia Evangelisti explores how they came to the cloister, h...
The Monks of the West (Vol 4) (Kiraz Theological Archive, #18)
by Charles comte de Montalembert
An indispensable reference for the history of monasticism in the western work, Montalembert's seven-volume masterpiece on the subject still reads with depth and conviction. Covering the monastic movement from its precursors to the period of the Venerable Bede, this set contains substantial information on a number of western saints.
Unter Beobachtung Der Heiligen Regel (Forschungen Aus Wurttembergisch Franken, #48)