In the half century since its first publication in English, this small book has become a classic of medieval theology. Directing his attention to 'perhaps the most neglected aspect' of Cistercian mysticism, the great French medievalist and philosopher Etienne Gilson directs attention to 'that part of [Bernard's] theology on which his mysticism rests', his 'systematics'.Cistercian Publications brings this important book back into print in celebration of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Saint Bernard, hoping that new generations of scholars will find it food for thought and further research.

These works by Sister Bartolomea Riccoboni offer an intimate portrait of the women who inhabited the Venetian convent of Corpus Domini, where they shared a religious life bounded physically by the convent wall and organized temporally by the rhythms of work and worship. At the same time, they show how this cloistered community vibrated with news of the great ecclesiastical events of the day, such as the Great Western Schism and the Council of Constance.
While the chronicle recounts the history of the nuns' collective life, the necrology provides highly individualized biographies of nearly fifty women who died in the convent between 1395 and 1436. We follow the fascinating stories that led these women, from adolescent girls to elderly widows, to join the convent; and we learn of their cultural backgrounds and intellectual accomplishments, their ascetic practices and mystical visions, their charity and devotion to each other and their fortitude in the face of illness and death.
The personal and social meaning of religious devotion comes alive in these texts, the first of their kind to be translated into English.

Here, the charming, mature stories from the internationallly beloved monk are accompanied by original art. Like the parables of Jesus, these tales repeatedly unfold new levels of meaning if we are willing to sit with them.

Another classic from the foremost Trappist scholar writing today. Fr. Michael Casey, in his usual compelling style, covers many aspects of spirituality, including discernment, spiritual direction, pastoral care, and living in community-- applicable to religious and lay people alike. His reflections on Benedictine spirituality are vividly presented and filled with remarkable insights and advice.

The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, "Krech is more than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European settlement of North America." "Offers a more complex portrait of Native American peoples, one that rejects mythologies, even those that both European and Native Americans might wish to embrace."-Washington Post "My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil ." So starts Cesar Aira's astounding "autobiographical" novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and oblivion, reality and fiction, Cesar Aira's How I Became a Nun retains childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of invention. A few days after his fiftieth birthday, Aira noticed the thin rim of the moon, visible despite the rising sun. When his wife explained the phenomenon to him he was shocked that for fifty years he had known nothing about "something so obvious, so visible." This epiphany led him to write How I Became a Nun. With a subtle and melancholic sense of humor he reflects on his failures, on the meaning of life and the importance of literature.

Written during the last decade of Merton's life, these articles reflect his mature thought on monastic life in community and in solitude. Appealing to the monastic dimension in al of us, his reflections have meaning for those living outside as well as inside monastery walls, fellow travellers on the same journey he took, aware of the fragility and imperfections, as well as the great potential for growth and love, within each human person.

A reissue of a classic of the Christian text from the founder of the Jesuit Order.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyla is the core work of religious formation for members of the Society of Jesus, the single largest religious order within the Roman Catholic Church. For four and a half centuries  in many thousands of editions in all languages, The Exercises have embodied fundamental spiritual principles essential to authentic Christian living.

The mystical insight informing Ignatius's own relationship with God--which he distilled in The Exercises--is that the divine love of God is providentially present in all the details of our existence. Here Ignatius shows how the faithful can be joined to God in all things, according to the Jesuit motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam, "For the greater glory of God."

This first published edition of the Latin cartulary of Godstow Abbey outside Oxford is an important text for the history of medieval religious women. Compiled in the early fifteenth century, and probably written by Godstow's prioress Alice of Eaton, it contains more than 900 documents written for and preserved by this well-known community of Benedictine nuns. The contents include a unique Anglo-Norman verse life of Ediva of Winchester, whose dreams prompted her to found the abbey in the early twelfth century. Numerous early charters in the cartulary identify other twelfth-century nuns and their relatives, and shed light on the founding of the abbey, its royal and private patronage, and its extensive real estate holdings. Other documents in the volume are excellent sources for women's literacy and culture, religious practices in the diocese of Lincoln, social relations between the nuns and the larger community, and the local urban and rural economy in Oxfordshire and nearby counties. The volume's introduction examines the founding of the abbey, dating it earlier than has previously been done, and provides new information about the abbesses of Godstow. In the text, documents dating from about 1225 or earlier are printed in full, in the original Latin, with English introductions and notes; later documents have been fully summarized in English, with complete witness lists. This is also an invaluable text for local history, topography, and genealogy. This text is the original of the Middle English translation that was published in the early twentieth century.

Orthodox Christians today have no lack of resources on monastic spirituality. And yet startlingly little has been done to critically engage the monastic tradition and adapt its ancient wisdom for the Orthodox faithful living in today's complex society. A Layman in the Desert aims to bridge this crucial gap. Working with the Conferences of St John Cassian, Opperwall constructs a kind of relationship handbook that shows us how the desert saints of old can help us build healthy, Christ-centered relationships with our spouses, children, friends, and coworkers.

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 case study in Catholic perceptions of Jews, Judaism, and the state of Israel during a time of rapidly changing theological and cultural contexts. In it, Polyakov listens to and analyzes the stories of individuals living on the border between Christian and Jewish identity-including Jewish converts to Catholicism who continue to harbor a strong sense of Jewish identity and philosemitic Catholics who attend synagogue services every Shabbat. Polyakov traces the societal, theological, and personal influences that have given rise to this phenomenon and presents a balanced analysis that addresses the hermeneutical problems of interpreting Jews through Christian frameworks. Ultimately, she argues that, despite its problems, this movement signals a pluralistic evolution of Catholic understandings of Judaism and may prove to be a harbinger of future directions in Jewish-Christian relations. Highly original and methodologically sophisticated, The Nun in the Synagogue is a captivating exploration of biographical narratives and reflections on faith, conversion, Holocaust trauma, Zionism, and religious identity that lays the groundwork for future research in the field.

In the dark and turbulent centuries after the Roman occupation of Britain, and during the Anglo-Saxon colonisation, the light of heaven still shone through the work and witness of the monastic communities, 'villages of God', which dotted the land. One of the most remarkable figures of those times was Hilda of Whitby. Born and reared amid warring pagan tribes, through the influence of Celtic saints and scholars she became a dominant figure in the development of the British Church, above all at the famous Synod where Celtic and Roman Churches came together. Until recently, though, the story of this extraordinary woman has not received much attention. Published to coincide with the 1400th anniversary of her birth, this book not only explores the drama of Hilda's life and ministry but shows what spiritual lessons we can draw for Christian life and leadership today.

What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.

'Mario Aguilar makes a convincing case in arguing that the silence of the cloister can speak powerfully and prophetically to the world at large. His book on Thomas Merton is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the twentieth century's most influential Christian monk.' Lawrence S. Cunningham, John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, USA

`A wise, learned, gracefully written account of the Anglo-Norman world and its most remarkable chronicler.' SPECULUM Orderic Vitalis, born near Shrewsbury in 1075 and sent as a child oblate to the Norman abbey of Saint-Evroult, wrote one of the most vivid and important medieval chronicles. His world encompassed Shropshire in the aftermath of theConquest, Normandy in civil war and at peace, and, briefly, the wider French perspective of the priory of Maule. Saint-Evroult was open to all the cross-currents of a changing society, and Orderic witnessed fundamental changes inchurch organisation, patterns of aristocratic inheritance, attitudes towards knighthood, and Christian militancy towards non-Christians. This book is concerned with monastic life and culture and its interaction with the life of courts and Norman families. It also describes the life of Orderic himself, and an appendix gives a translation of his own moving account of his life, an epilogue to the Historia.MARJORIE CHIBNALL is a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She has written many booksand articles about the Anglo-Norman world, including an edition of Orderic's Ecclesiastical History.

In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingia-a politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities. Rather than a "dark age" in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous decline of their intellectual and spiritual life, Vanderputten finds that the post-Carolingian period witnessed a remarkable adaptability among these women. Through texts, objects, archaeological remains, and iconography, Dark Age Nunneries offers scholars of religion, medieval history, and gender studies new ways to understand the experience of women of faith within the Church and across society during this era.

This is the first book-length study of children in one of the birthplaces of early Christian monasticism, Egypt. Although comprised of men and women who had renounced sex and family, the monasteries of late antiquity raised children, educated them, and expected them to carry on their monastic lineage and legacies into the future. Children within monasteries existed in a liminal space, simultaneously vulnerable to the whims and abuses of adults and also cherished as potential future monastic prodigies. Caroline T. Schroeder examines diverse sources - letters, rules, saints' lives, art, and documentary evidence - to probe these paradoxes. In doing so, she demonstrates how early Egyptian monasteries provided an intergenerational continuity of social, cultural, and economic capital while also contesting the traditional family's claims to these forms of social continuity.

Abbeys and Priories of Medieval Wales is the first comprehensive, illustrated guide to the religious houses of Wales from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. It offers a thorough introduction to the history of the monastic orders in Wales (the Benedictines, Cluniacs, Augustinians, Premonstratensians, Cistercians, the military orders and the friars), and to life inside medieval Welsh monasteries and nunneries, in addition to providing the histories of almost sixty communities of religious men and women, with descriptions of the standing remains of their buildings. As well as a being a scholarly book, a number of maps, ground plans and practical information make this an indispensable guide for visitors to Wales's monastic heritage.

Margaret of Oingt was born around 1240 into a noble family in the French Beaujolais region, and became prioress of the Carthusian charterhouse of Poletains; visionary and mystic, her writings are intelligent and humorous. Included here are the Page of Meditations, on sin and salvation; the Mirror, a vision of Christ; the Life of the Virgin Saint Beatrice of Ornacieux, an exemplary text; and letters and stories, including comments on her problems as prioress. They are translated from the Latin and Francoprovencal with an introduction, notes, and interpretative essay.BR> Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is Chair, Department of French and Italian, and Professor of French, at the University of Pittsburgh.

The 15th century was a time of dramatic and decisive change for nuns and nunneries in Florence. In the course of that century, the city's convents evolved from small, semiautonomous communities to large civic institutions. By 1552, roughly one in eight Florentine women lived in a religious community. Historian Sharon T. Strocchia analyzes this stunning growth of female monasticism, revealing the important roles these women and institutions played in the social, economic, and political history of Renaissance Florence. It became common practice during this time for unmarried women in elite society to enter convents. This unprecedented concentration of highly educated and well-connected women transformed convents into sites of great patronage and social and political influence. As their economic influence also grew, convents found new ways of supporting themselves; they established schools, produced manuscripts, and manufactured textiles. Strocchia has mined previously untapped archival materials to uncover how convents shaped one of the principal cities of Renaissance Europe. She demonstrates the importance of nuns and nunneries to the booming Florentine textile industry and shows the contributions that ordinary nuns made to Florentine life in their roles as scribes, stewards, artisans, teachers, and community leaders. In doing so, Strocchia argues that the ideals and institutions that defined Florence were influenced in great part by the city's powerful female monastics. Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence shows for the first time how religious women effected broad historical change and helped write the grand narrative of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The book is a valuable text for students and scholars in early modern European history, religion, women's studies, and economic history.

In the fourth century, the deserts of Egypt became the nerve center of a radical new movement, what we now call monasticism. Groups of Christians-from illiterate peasants to learned intellectuals-moved out to the wastelands beyond the Nile Valley and, in the famous words of Saint Athanasius, made the desert a city. In so doing, they captured the imagination of the ancient world. They forged techniques of prayer and asceticism, of discipleship and spiritual direction, that have remained central to Christianity ever since. Seeking to map the soul's long journey to God and plot out the subtle vagaries of the human heart, they created and inspired texts that became classics of Western spirituality. These Desert Christians were also brilliant storytellers, some of Christianity's finest. This book introduces the literature of early monasticism. It examines all the best-known works, including Athanasius' Life of Antony, the Lives of Pachomius, and the so-called Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Later chapters focus on two pioneers of monastic theology: Evagrius Ponticus, the first great theoretician of Christian mysticism; and John Cassian, who brought Egyptian monasticism to the Latin West. Along the way, readers are introduced to path-breaking discoveries-to new texts and recent archeological finds-that have revolutionized contemporary scholarship on monastic origins. Included are fascinating snippets from papyri and from little-known Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopic texts. Interspersed in each chapter are illustrations, maps, and diagrams that help readers sort through the key texts and the richly-textured world of early monasticism. Geared to a wide audience and written in clear, jargon-free prose, Desert Christians offers the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to early monasticism.

"There is no shortage of good days," writes Annie Dillard. "It is good lives that are hard to come by." Reflecting on what makes a "good life," Robert Benson offers a warmhearted, humorous guide to enriching our lives with the wisdom of Benedict, a 6th century monk. Each chapter is shaped around a Benedictine principle: prayer, rest, community, and work, and reveals the brilliant and infinitely practical ways that Benedictine spirituality can shape our lives today. Benson is honest and wise, sharing his own failings and the constant tension that he feels between the demands of the temporal and the spiritual. For anyone who feels caught in a web of conflicting priorities, or who finds the pace of modern life more draining than fulfilling, A Good Life will come as a welcome treat for the soul.

This major 2006 history of monasticism in early Anglo-Saxon England explores the history of the Church between the conversion to Christianity in the sixth century and a monastic revival in the tenth. It represents the first comprehensive revision of accepted views about monastic life in England before the Benedictine reform. Sarah Foot shows how early Anglo-Saxon religious houses were simultaneously active and contemplative, their members withdrawing from the preoccupations of contemporary aristocratic society, while still remaining part of that world. Focusing on the institution of the 'minster' (the communal religious community) and rejecting a simplistic binary division between active 'minsters' and enclosed 'monasteries', Foot argues that historians have been wrong to see minsters in the light of ideals of Benedictine monasticism. Instead, she demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon minsters reflected more of contemporary social attitudes; despite their aim for solitude, they retained close links to aristocratic German society.

Between 350 and 850 Constantinople emerged as both the greatest city of the Mediterranean world and a monastic centre of unparalleled importance. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including a rich body of hagiographical evidence, this study documents the historical relationship between the city and its monks during this crucial formative period. Monks and nuns played a key role from the beginning. In 350 their numbers were few, yet their impact on local politics and the church was significant. By 850 their presence was felt everywhere - from the world of the imperial court and church, to the local economy, elite culture, social services and popular piety. This dramatic rise in the influence of local monasticism was the result of its impressive numerical growth over time, and hard-won success in adapting the singular call of the monastic life to the challenges of the great medieval metropolis and imperial capital.

Women have long been active supporters and promoters of Buddhist rituals and functions, but their importance in the operations of Buddhist schools has often been minimized. Chin'ichibo (?-1344), a nun who taught male and female disciples and lived in her own temple, is therefore considered an anomaly. In Tracing the Itinerant Path, Caitilin Griffiths' meticulous research and translations of primary sources indicate that Chin'ichibo is in fact an example of her time-a learned female who was active in the teaching and spread of Buddhism-and not an exception. Chin'ichibo and her disciples were jishu, members of a Pure Land Buddhist movement of which the famous charismatic holy man Ippen (1239-1289) was a founder. Jishu, distinguished by their practice of continuous nembutsu chanting, gained the support of a wide and diverse populace throughout Japan from the late thirteenth century. Male and female disciples rarely cloistered themselves behind monastic walls, preferring to conduct ceremonies and religious duties among the members of their communities. They offered memorial and other services to local lay believers and joined itinerant missions, traveling across provinces to reach as many people as possible. Female members were entrusted to run local practice halls that included male participants. Griffiths' study introduces female jishu who were keenly involved-not as wives, daughters, or mothers, but as partners and leaders in the movement. Filling the lacunae that exists in our understanding of women's participation in Japanese religious history, Griffiths highlights the significant roles female jishu held and offers a more nuanced understanding of Japanese Buddhist history. Students of Buddhism, scholars of Japanese history, and those interested in women's studies will find this volume a significant and compelling contribution.

The Templars' and Hospitallers' daily business of recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping and communal life explored alongside their commitment to crusading. The military and religious orders of the Knights Templar (founded 1120) and Knights Hospitaller (founded c.1099) were a driving force throughout the long history of the crusades. This study examines the work of the two orders closely, using original charters to analyse their activities in their administrative heartland in south-west France, and sets them in the context of contemporary religious life and economic organisation. Recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping, and communal life are all touched upon, and the orders' commitment to crusading through control and supply of manpower, money, arms and supplies is assessed. Dr Selwood shows the orders at the centre of religious life in Occitania, highlighting their success compared with other new orders such as the Cistercians, and looking at their relationships with the secular and monastic Church. Other themes addressed include the orders' relationshipto Occitanian society and to the laiety, their involvement with pilgrimage to Jerusalem, their innovative administrative structures, and their logistical operations. DOMINIC SELWOOD gained his Ph.D. at Oxford; he is now a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, and practices from chambers in the Inner Temple.