The practice of continuous prayer has been known in the Christian church as early as the second century AD, well before the beginning of Christian monasticism. One of the ways early Christians practiced continuous prayer was through the repetition of short bible verses throughout the day. While this mode of prayer did not have any specific name until the twentieth century, its practice has always been characterized by the imagery of warfare and, more specifically, the use of arrows. It was probably this that gave rise to its name, the Arrow Prayer, on account of its brevity and its use to attack evil thoughts. However, most research on continuous prayer only focuses on the Jesus Prayer, and presumes that the Arrow Prayer and other prayer practices are extensions of it. In this book, Fr Anthony St Shenouda scrutinizes this conclusion by examining the sources that attest to any practice of continuous prayer, and the cultural backdrop that gave rise to these practices. Ultimately, he argues that the tradition of the Arrow Prayer is much older than the Jesus Prayer, and that it is the parent tradition out of which the Jesus Prayer arose.

A pioneering, comprehensive investigation into a major Italian monastery. The Benedictine abbey of Holy Trinity, Cava, has had a continuous existence since its foundation almost exactly a thousand years ago. From its modest beginnings, it developed during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries into one of the wealthiest and most influential monasteries in southern Italy. This path-breaking study, based on many years research into the, largely unpublished, charters of Cava, begins by examining the growth of the abbey's congregation and property, and its struggle subsequently to defend its interests during the troubled thirteenth century. But, in addition, it uses the extensive evidence available to study its benefactors and dependents, administration and economy, and through this material to analyse the social and economic structures of the principality of Salerno. There is also a re-evaluation of the problem of forgery, practised on a large scale at Cava during the thirteenth century, a factor which has complicated and discouraged previous study of this important institution. A major advance both in the study of the south Italian Church and of the medieval Mezzogiorno during the central Middle Ages, the volume presents a vivid and detailed picture of local society and its workings, and of the families and individuals who had dealings with the abbey.

Erik Varden published The Shattering of Loneliness in 2018. Now, with the world in the throes of uncertainty and turbulence, he helps us interpret the signs of the times, convinced that the perennial experience of monks and nuns has much to teach us. The principles of monasticism have become attractive to many, awakened as we are to the importance of integrity, the pursuit of peace, asceticism as a path to freedom, hospitality and contemplative seeing. After a deeply personal introduction, Varden invites us to consider what makes a monk. He then takes us on a pilgrimage through the Church's year, drawing on Scripture, tradition and literary and religious figures of our time. Varden lets the reader discover the generous breadth and depth of a monk's outlook on life. In so doing he provides inspiration, enjoyment and enlightenment in equal measure.

The Ordinal and Customary of Barking Abbey, one of a number of its liturgical manuscripts which survive, was written on the instructions of Sibille Fenton, who was abbess from 1394 to 1419, and the manuscript was presented to the abbey in 1404; its liturgical usages deal mainly with the functioning of the choir.

Much has been written about the Knights Templar in recent years. A leading specialist in the history of this legendary medieval order now writes a full account of the Knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon, to give them their full title, bringing the latest findings to a general audience. Putting many of the myths finally to rest, Nicholson recounts a new history of these storm troopers of the papacy, founded during the crusades but who got so rich and influential that they challenged the power of kings.

Histories of the German Dominican order have long presented a grand narrative of its origin, fall, and renewal: a Golden Age at the order's founding in the thirteenth century, a decline of Dominican learning and spirituality in the fourteenth, and a vibrant renewal of monastic devotion by Dominican "Observants" in the fifteenth. Dominican nuns are presumed to have moved through a parallel arc, losing their high level of literacy in Latin over the course of the fourteenth century. However, unlike the male Dominican friars, the nuns are thought never to have regained their Latinity, instead channeling their spiritual renewal into mystical experiences and vernacular devotional literature. In Ruling the Spirit, Claire Taylor Jones revises this conventional narrative by arguing for a continuous history of the nuns' liturgical piety. Dominican women did not lose their piety and literacy in the fifteenth century, as is commonly believed, but instead were urged to reframe their devotion around the observance of the Divine Office. Jones grounds her research in the fifteenth-century liturgical library of St. Katherine's in Nuremberg, which was reformed to Observance in 1428 and grew to be one of the most significant convents in Germany, not least for its library. Many of the manuscripts owned by the convent are didactic texts, written by friars for Dominican sisters from the fourteenth through the fifteenth century. With remarkable continuity across genres and centuries, this literature urges the Dominican nuns to resume enclosure in their convents and the strict observance of the Divine Office, and posits ecstatic experience as an incentive for such devotion. Jones thus rereads the "sisterbooks," vernacular narratives of Dominican women, long interpreted as evidence of mystical hysteria, as encouragement for nuns to maintain obedience to liturgical practice. She concludes that Observant friars viewed the Divine Office as the means by which Observant women would define their communities, reform the terms of Observant devotion, and carry the order into the future.

Medievalists have long taught that highly emotional Christian devotion, often called 'affective piety', appeared in Europe after the twelfth century and was primarily practiced by communities of mendicants, lay people and women. Emotional monasticism challenges this view. The first study of affective piety in an eleventh-century monastic context, it traces the early history of affective devotion through the life and works of the earliest known writer of emotional prayers, John of Fecamp, abbot of the Norman monastery of Fecamp from 1028-78. Exposing the early medieval monastic roots of later medieval affective piety, the book casts a new light on the devotional life of monks in Europe before the twelfth century and redefines how medievalists should teach the history of Christianity. -- .

[This] exemplary interdisciplinary approach to Aethelwold and his impart on the cultural, religious and political life of southern England in his own day is to be applauded. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AEthelwold's life and his political and ecclesiastical importance in the 10th-century reformation receive thorough scholarly scrutiny in this appraisal of his life and work. The studies include a comparison of AEthelwold's career with that of other European monastic reformers; a study of AEthelwold's foundation at Abingdon; and of his involvement with the political crises of the 10th century. AEthelwold's skills as a scholar are assessed through surviving Latin and Old Englist texts, and as a teacher from the writings of his pupils. The scholarly work of his foundations is highlighted by a detailed study of the text of the Benedictional of St AEthelwold; other essays look at themusic and sculpture performed and produced at AEthelwold's foundations. Contributors: PATRICK WORMALD, ALAN THACKER, BARBARA YORKE, MICHAEL LAPIDGE, ANDREW PRESCOTT, MARY BERRY, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH

One day, two men with a wheelbarrow settled on this block of land and laid out a farm, built a small house and planted some vines.170 years later, one of the outstanding wineries in the region and historic buildings that include a gracious church and spiritual retreat centre are the results of their efforts.This book tells the story of their struggle and their legacy. It is about Sevenhill Cellars in the Clare Valley of South Australia, as well as the Jesuits and their mission at Sevenhill, which once extended for hundreds of kilometres and now reaches beyond Australia.

Born in the dark days of the great crusades, the warrior monks of the Knights Templar vowed to defend pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Yet strangely, there are few historical records of the Templars ever fulfilling this task. Instead, their history is one of bloodshed and conquest, wealth and power, dark secrets and conspiracies. Today, the story of the Knights Templar is intimately linked with the story of the Holy Grail. But what exactly is this ancient artifact, and how has it been used to manipulate history for the last one thousand years? This book, based on the notes of the recently deceased historian, Dr. Emile Fouchet, attempts to unlock the secrets of the Knights Templar. It begins with an examination of their historical origins, their growth in the early middle-ages, and their supposed destruction under the charges of heresy. From there, it uses the clues left by the Templars themselves to reconstruct their secret journeys as they moved the Holy Grail from Europe to the New World and back. It also charts the secret, three-way war that is still being fought between the Templars, the Freemasons, and the Catholic Church. Finally, the book reveals the greatest of all Templar conspiracies, the attempt to found a new world order under the auspices of the European Union.

'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

In early medieval Europe, monasticism constituted a significant force in society because the prayers of the religious on behalf of others featured as powerful currency. The study of this phenomenon is at once full of potential and peril, rightly drawing attention to the wider social involvement of an otherwise exclusive group, but also describing a religious community in terms of its service provision. Previous scholarship has focused on the supply and demand of prayer within the medieval economy of power, patronage, and gift exchange. Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the Time of the Carolingian Reforms is the first volume to explain how this transactional dimension of prayer factored into monastic spirituality. Renie S. Choy uncovers the relationship between the intercessory function of monasteries and the ascetic concern for moral conversion in the minds of prominent religious leaders active between c. 750-820. Through sustained analysis of the devotional thought of Benedict of Aniane and contemporaneous religious reformers during the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, Choy examines key topics in the study of Carolingian monasticism: liturgical organization and the intercessory performances of the Mass and the Divine Office, monastic theology, and relationships of prayer within monastic communities and with the world outside. Arguing that monastic leaders showed new interest on the intersection between the interiority of prayer and the functional world of social relationships, this study reveals the ascetic ideal undergirding the provision of intercessory prayer by monasteries.

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.

This book is the first publication of a very early set of Christian monastic rules from Roman Egypt, accompanied by four preliminary chapters discussing their historical and social context and their character as rules. These rules were found quoted in the writings of the great Egyptian monastic leader Shenoute. Designed for a federation of monks and nuns who banded together about 360 CE-forming the so-called "White Monastery Federation"-the rules date back to the fourth and fifth centuries. New historical evidence is presented for the founding of the Federation. Providing almost the earliest evidence for Christian communal (cenobitic) monasticism, the rules depict many intimate aspects of ascetic practice. Details of monastic daily life are mentioned in passing in the rules, and the author uses these details to describe their picture of monastic life under five general topics: the monastery as a physical plant, the human makeup of the community, ascetic observances, the hierarchy of authority, and the daily liturgy. The book includes a clear English translation of the rules accompanied by the original Coptic text, amounting to five hundred and ninety-five entries.

In the modern world, angels can often seem to be no more than a symbol, but in the Middle Ages men and women thought differently. Some offered prayers intended to secure the angelic assistance for the living and the dead; others erected stone monuments carved with images of winged figures; and still others made angels the subject of poetic endeavour and theological scholarship. This wealth of material has never been fully explored, and was once dismissed as the detritus of a superstitious age. Angels in Early Medieval England offers a different perspective, by using angels as a prism through which to study the changing religious culture of an unfamiliar age. Focusing on one corner of medieval Europe which produced an abundance of material relating to angels, Richard Sowerby investigates the way that ancient beliefs about angels were preserved and adapted in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Between the sixth century and the eleventh, the convictions of Anglo-Saxon men and women about the world of the spirits underwent a gradual transformation. This book is the first to explore that transformation, and to show the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons tried to reconcile their religious inheritance with their own perspectives about the world, human nature, and God.

Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community draws on the spiritual practices of Northern Ireland's longest established peace and reconciliation organisation. For over fifty years, it has been bringing fractured communities together and resourcing others in the work of healing conflict. At the heart of its life is a simple pattern of daily worship. This prayer book captures the essence of the Corrymeela prayer experience to help you incorporate its spirituality into your practice of prayer. Structured over 31 days, it offers a daily Bible reading with accompanying prayer by Padraig O Tuama. as well as an introduction to the spirituality that sustains Corrymeela's remarkable work.

This volume contains Latin texts, facing translations, and full commentary on four texts which are key to an understanding of the development of monasticism in early medieval Northumbria: Bede's History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, his Homily on Benedict Biscop, and his Letter to Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, together with the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith. The texts are based on a fresh collation of all available manuscripts, and a complete apparatus criticus is included. The translation is as close to the original as possible while communicating its sense clearly. A series of essays in the introduction examines the importance of the texts, the picture they paint both of Bede and his monastic milieu, and the Latinity of the texts included in the volume. As the major texts on the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, these works are vital for our understanding both of the context in which Bede was writing and also of the nature of monasticism in Northumbria in the pre-Viking period.

Enlightened Monks investigates the social, cultural, philosophical, and theological challenges the German Benedictines faced between 1740 and 1803, and how the Enlightenment influenced the self-understanding and lifestyle of these religious communities. It had an impact on their forms of communication, their transfer of knowledge, their relationships to worldly authorities and to the academic world, as well as on their theology and philosophy. The multifaceted achievements of enlightened monks, which included a strong belief in individual freedom, tolerance, human rights, and non-violence, show that monasticism was on the way to becoming fully integrated into the Enlightenment. Ulrich L. Lehner refutes the widespread assumption that monks were reactionary enemies of Enlightenment ideas. On the contrary, he demonstrates that many Benedictines implemented the new ideas of the time into their own systems of thought. This revisionist account contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.

The mendicant orders-Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, and several other groups-spread across Europe apace from the early thirteenth century, profoundly influencing numerous aspect of medieval life. But alongside their tremendous success, their members (friars) also encountered derision, scorn, and even violence. Such opposition, generally known as antifraternalism, is often seen as an ecclesiastical in-house affair or an ideological response to the brethren's laxity: both cases registering a moral decline symptomatic of a decadent church. Challenging the accuracy of these views, Geltner contends that the phenomenon exhibits a breadth of scope that on the one hand pushes it far beyond its accustomed boundaries, and on the other supports only tenuous links with Reformation or modern forms of anticlericalism. Drawing from numerous sources, from theological treatises to poetry and criminal court records, Guy Geltner shows that people from all walks of life lambasted and occasionally assaulted the brethren, orchestrating detailed scenes of urban violence in the process. Their myriad motivations and diverse goals preclude us from associating antifraternalism with any one ideology or agenda, let alone allow us to brand many of its proponents as religious reformers. At the same time, he demonstrates the friars' active role in forging a medieval antifraternal tradition, not only by deviating from their founders' paths to varying degrees, but also by chronicling their suffering inter fideles and thus incorporating it into the orders' identity as the vanguard of Christianity. In doing so, Geltner illuminates a major chapter in Europe's social, urban, and religious history.

From the deserts of Egypt to the emergence of the great monastic orders, the story of late antique and medieval monasticism in the West used to be straightforward. But today we see the story as far 'messier' - less linear, less unified, and more historicized. In the first part of this book, the reader is introduced to the astonishing variety of forms and experiences of the monastic life, their continuous transformation, and their embedding in physical, socio-economic, and even personal settings. The second part surveys and discusses the extensive international scholarship on which the first part is built. The third part, a research tool, rounds off the volume with a carefully representative bibliography of literature and primary sources.

A concise and accessible history of four of the monastic orders in the middle ages. In 1274 the Council of Lyons decreed the end of various "new orders" of Mendicants which had emerged during the great push for evangelism and poverty in the thirteenth-century Latin Church. The Franciscans and Dominicans were explicitly excluded, while the Carmelites and Austin friars were allowed a stay of execution. These last two were eventually able to acquire approval, but other smaller groups, in particular the Friars of the Sack and Pied Friars, were forced to disband. This book outlines the history of those who were threatened by 1274, tracing the development of the two larger orders down to the Council of Trent, and following the fragmentary sources for the brief histories of the discontinued friaries. For the first time these orders are treated comparatively: the volume offers a total history, from their origins, spirituality and pastoral impact, to their music, buildings and runaways. FRANCES ANDREWS is Professor in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews.

Ancrene Wisse introduced through a variety of cultural and critical approaches which establish the originality and interest of the treatise. The thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse is a guide for female recluses. Addressed to three young sisters of gentle birth, it teaches what truly good anchoresses should and should not do, offering in its examples a glimpse of the real life women had in England in the middle ages. It is also important for its evidence for the continuation of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of prose writing, being produced in the West Midlands where Old English writing conventions continued to develop even after the Norman conquest. The Companion addresses the cultural and historical background, the affiliations of the versions, genre, authorship and language; the various approaches also includea feminist reading of the text. Contributors: ROGER DAHOOD, RICHARD DANCE, A.S.G. EDWARDS, CATHERINE INNES-PARKER, BELLA MILLETT, CHRISTINA VON NOLCKEN, ELIZABETH ROBERTSON, ANNE SAVAGE, D.A. TROTTER, YOKO WADA, NICHOLAS WATSON.

Why do the powerful mediaeval Knights Templar, the famed warriors of the Crusades, still intrigue many today? A secret society long shrouded in mystery, the Templars were believed to conduct mystical rituals, to guard the Holy Grail, and to possess the priceless treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem. Did they bring their treasure to North America, as some legends say? This discussion of the Templars and their presumed hidden knowledge addresses many such questions with photographs included from the Rosslyn Chapel Museum in Scotland.

If you liked Call the Midwife, you will love Kicking the Habit! What makes a fun-loving teenager turn her back on a life of parties, boys and fun, to become a nun in a French convent? And what later leads her to abandon the religious life, to return to the big wide world and later marry? At the age of 18, Eleanor Stewart goes to France to enter a convent. After four years of struggling with the religious life, she becomes a nun, and then trains as a midwife in a large inner-city hospital in Liverpool. While Beatlemania grips the nation, she attempts to coordinate the reclusive demands of the religious life with the drama, excitement and occasional tragedy of the hospital world. Written with honesty and affection, this is a wonderful and intimate portrait of convent and hospital life.

HISTORY / SECRET SOCIETIESWhen the Vatican condemned the Order of the Temple in 1312, many of those who escaped took to the sea. Their immediate objective was to take revenge on the Church. Recent discoveries confirm that ships of the Templar fleet that went missing at La Rochelle later reappeared--first in the Mediterranean and later in the Atlantic and Caribbean--to menace the Church's maritime commerce. These Templar vessels often flew the famed Jolly Roger, which took its name from King Roger II of Sicily, a famed Templar who, during a public spat with the Pope in 1127, was the first to fly this flag.Opportunistic buccaneers saw that vast wealth could be gained in pursuing the Templars' harassment of the Pope's interests on the high seas, and they spread a reign of terror across the shipping lanes of the New World. Some unaffiliated pirates, in admiration of the Templar egalitarian ideals, even formed their own secret societies, and together with the Templars were part of the ferment that gave rise to independence movements in France and the New World and contributed to the growth of Freemasonry.The Templar Pirates is the story of the birth and actual conduct of piracy on the seas of the New World and of the influence the Templars had on their constituents and, by their wealth, on the governments of nations old and new.Ernesto Frers is an author specializing in medieval history who has investigated enigmatic and occult subjects for many years. He has published widely in his field. He lives in Spain.