The astonishing and exiting story of Julie Billiart, the French peasant woman who founded the Sisters of Notre Dame out of the aftermath of the French Revolution. Myra Poole has been a Notre Dame sister for more than forty years. For much of that time was a teacher of history and a headteacher, taking early retirement to study women's theology in the USA, Holland and London. She has been instrumental in founding numerous women's groups including Catholic Women's Network; Catholic Women's Ordination and the British and Irish School of Feminist Theology.

J. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a twenty-year-old sophomore when he was introduced to fellow student Robert Lax (1915-2000) in the Columbia University cafeteria in 1935. They were brought together by an admiration for each other's writing in the college humor magazine. Upon graduation in 1938, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism; Lax began graduate study in English and took a job at the New Yorker. Three years later, Merton entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, and he and Lax saw each other only four more times. Yet their friendship was sustained for the next thirty-three years through an amazing correspondence.

Their letters show Merton as an irreverent and often hilarious critic of presidents and popes. He also turned to serious issues, such as the war in Vietnam and the dangers of nuclear holocaust. Merton and Lax's correspondence is filled with reminiscences of friends and faculty from their years at Columbia, including Mark van Doren, Lionel Trilling, Ad Reinhardt, Edward Rice, and Jacques Barzun. These letters of two poets and solitaries betray a giddy delight in wordplay, unconstrained by rules of grammar or conventions of spelling. Puns, portmanteaus, and inside jokes abound. The thirty-year exchange began when Merton dashed off a note on June 17, 1938, after spending a week with Lax's family.

The final epistle in this extraordinary correspondence was written by Lax on December 8, 1968. Merton died in Bangkok five days later and never received it. Arthur Biddle spent nearly ten years collecting every letter known to exist between Merton and Lax, a total of 346, two thirds of which have never been published. Biddle provides chronologies of their lives and places events and people in context within the letters. This volume also includes the text of a rare interview with Lax.

Arthur W. Biddle is professor emeritus of English at the University of Vermont.

The prominent role of monasteries in the early medieval period is explored in detail in this study of the relations between monasteries and the nobility in Lotharingia in the ninth and tenth centuries. The book focuses on three renowned monasteries during this period of monastic reform in Europe. The author challenges accepted views of the monasteries' role and explores the complex links with kings, bishops, and noble families which gave monasteries a central place in politics and society.

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The world-renowned Monks of New Skete have distilled their collective spiritual wisdom into a book that explains how the elements of a monk's life — self-discipline, solitude, prayer, acts of love and forgiveness — are pathways that anyone can follow to achieve true happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

Based on a treasure trove of letters, this fascinating book tells the history of a seventeenth-century nun in a convent in Leuven and how her complaints-of sexual harassment, fears of demonic possession, alliances among the other sisters against her-led to her banishment from the convent on two occasions. Highly acclaimed when it was first published as a revealing look at female religious life in early modern Europe, the book is now available in an abridged paperbound version with a new preface by the author. Reviews of the clothbound edition: "A window to the past. . . . I loved, just loved, this book."-Carolyn See, Washington Post "The world Mr. Harline uncovers is a fascinating one. . . . The story of Sister Margaret gives an extra dimension of humanity to a turning point in the history of ideas."-Sonia Gernes, Wall Street Journal "Better-than-fiction social history. . . . This is a glimpse into diaries, letters, hearts, minds, hatreds, and hopes; it will enthrall."-Christian Century "Harline's graceful writing allows the women and men in this religious community to breathe, gossip, pray with tears. . . . The Burdens of Sister Margaret helps us see the familiar Reformation in a fresh way."-Kevin A. Miller, Christianity Today "Microhistory at its best."-Larissa Taylor, Renaissance Quarterly

In Desiring Life, Norvene Vest brings the insights of Benedict s Rule to the wisdom tradition. Desiring Life is the third book in her series on Benedictine spirituality for people living in the world today. Vest asks questions of pressing concern today, such as: What is the good life we seek? How can we learn to live with integrity and compassion, despite the growing gap between public ethics and narrow self-interest? How can we live fully and well? What sort of people should we as Christians try to be? In sections on wisdom, virtue, and ethics Vest describes these contemporary questions and addresses them through passages from Benedict s Rule. Through the recovery of insights from the past, Vest believes, we can draw closer to the heart of our desire for life in all its fullness union with God.

Dr. McNally critically examines well over 150 years of Oblate and general Catholic history in Canada's western-most province with special emphasis on the Native people and Euro-Canadian settlers. It is the first survey history of the Catholic Church in British Columbia.

In this book the renowned medievalist G.R. Evans provides a concise introduction to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a figure of towering importance on the twelfth-century monastic and theological scene. After a brief overview of Bernard's life, Evans focuses on a few major themes in his work, including his theology of spirituality and his theology of the political life of the Church. The only available introduction to Bernard's life and thought, this latest addition to the Great Medieval Thinkers series will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of history and theology.

This is a case study of one pietist religious group, the Bruderhof. A Christian brotherhood founded on Anabaptist and evangelical pietist doctrine, they practice community of goods, seeking to emulate the vision of the Apostolic church and fulfill the ethic of brotherhood taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Rubin offers compelling accounts of the lives of Bruderhof apostates who foundered over issues of faith, and relates these crises to the central tenets of Bruderhof theology, their spirituality, and community life.

In this book the renowned medievalist G.R. Evans provides a concise introduction to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a figure of towering importance on the twelfth-century monastic and theological scene. After a brief overview of Bernard's life, Evans focuses on a few major themes in his work, including his theology of spirituality and his theology of the political life of the Church. The only available introduction to Bernard's life and thought, this latest addition to the Great Medieval Thinkers series will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of history and theology.

This book is the first major study in English of a group of late twelfth-century religious enthusiasts, the early Humiliati, who were condemned by the Church as heretics in 1184 but--in a remarkable transition--were reconciled seventeen years later and went on to establish a highly successful religious order in northern Italy. Using a wide range of sources, the nature of the early movement and its processes of institutional development are reconstructed. The book also includes a Bullarium Humiliatorum, a list of papal and episcopal letters and privileges.

Between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries Italians frequently joined "confraternities" that made them symbolic brothers and sisters to one another. These kin groups launched extensive charitable programs, directed civic and religious rituals, and socialized members in class and gender roles. These essays examine how medieval religious and political values shaped early ritual kinship, how sixteenth-century social change and religious reform transformed confraternities, and how these altered groups became key agents in achieving the more rigid social order of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This lively narrative, written by a monk, relates the history of the abbey of Saffron Walden from its foundation around 1136 to the year 1203. Its characters include the English kings, the earls of Essex, and other local landowners, large and small, as well as the monks and other ecclesiastics. Its interest extends far beyond the local: the editors' introduction and notes establish the chronicle's position as a valuable historical source.

This is the first detailed scholarly study of the Order of Fontevraud's English monastic houses. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Order was notably prestigious and autonomous, renowned both for the prayerfulness of its members and for their independent management of their affairs. The huge following of Robert Arbrissel (d. 1116) included many women - not at first the aristocrats who later dominated the Order of Fontevraud, but prostitutes, beggars, and other representatives of the dregs of society. Urged by Church authorities to stabilize his women followers, Robert gave them a Rule which was, in essentials, that of St Benedict, but he introduced men as chaplains, clerks, and lay-brothers for the nuns. Uniquely, however, for contemporary houses for women, the men were placed firmly under the direction of the nuns and remained there throughout the Order's history. Sister Berenice Kerr's study of Fontevraud's English establishments: Amesbury, Nuneaton, and Westwood (Grovebury, the Order's fourth foundation, was never more than administrative centre) opens up a wide range of insights and information about monasticism and religious life for women in the middle ages. Dr Kerr examines the endowment of each house, and its subsequent acquisition of property and its administration; monastic observance; domestic economy, including expenditure on food and drink; the scale and layout of conventual buildings, and the exploitation of new assets, such as salt-pans, markets, and appropriated churches.

This study of the books of Reading Abbey covers not only the whole history of the Abbey from its foundation, but also charts the subsequent dispersal of its book collection. In doing so, the author illustrates intellectual life in a medieval English monastery and, in particular, valuable insights into the fate of monastic books after the Dissolution of the monasteries.

Inspiring moments in Franciscan life where everything is transformed.

Christians of all denominations are looking today to the ancient discipline of a rule of life to strengthen their sense of living in Christ and participating in a wider community. For the first time the brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist are making their rule-completely rewritten and revised-available to the church at large. The book is composed of 49 short chapters that develop classical monastic themes of hospitality, poverty, celibacy, and obedience, exploring what these might mean to men and women living at the end of the millennium. And because this is a modern rule, it provides guidance and reflection in less traditional areas, too-leadership, conflict, the use and abuse of authority, work, the need for rest and silence, vocation, and fellowship with the poor. Therefore it has much to teach Christians in other kinds of communities, including the family, the parish, and the workplace. Concluding chapters give suggestions for meditating on the Rule and for its use as an aid to discernment and spiritual growth for prayer groups and parish life committees.

In this second book in her series on Benedictine spirituality, Norvene Vest brings the insights of Benedict's Rule to the world of work. A gifted interpreter of Benedict's wisdom, Vest examines with empathy and clarity the plight of men and women who wish for their work to be life-giving, a service to others, and the place where they can experience the presence of God. Vest brings Benedict's perspective to three areas of work discontent today: the stress of performance, overproduction, and acquisitiveness. To these she opposes three Benedictine principles: vocation, or being called to what we do; stewardship, or taking care of what we are given; and obedience, or serving one another. Her emphasis is on the words of Benedict's primary text and its application for people today. Each chapter concludes with extensive spiritual exercises and food for thought.

This book studies the life and thought of the Christian monks of 4th and 5th century lower Egypt, whose views have been influential at many points in the subsequent history of Christianity.

When Edward Sorin left France in 1841 to lead the first band of missionaries sent by the Congregation of Holy Cross to the New World, the rule of the young community required him to keep and send back to France an annual account of the significant events in the life and work of the men and women on the American mission. Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac contains this running account of the history of the University of Notre Dame--from its foundation in 1842 through the end of the Civil War--written by the man honored as its founder and whose vision for this now world-famous Catholic university is still invoked today. Through crippling snow storms, devastating fires, and epidemics of cholera and typhoid, the men and women of Holy Cross persisted in their mission to build a college on "this property [that] was then known as St. Mary of the Lakes ... half a league from South Bend; one league from the northern boundary of Indiana; about twelve leagues from Lake Michigan." With warmth and humor Sorin discusses their humble beginnings, "A single room was placed at the service of the priests, and the Sisters had to themselves the ground floor below the chapel, where they spent nearly two years. Except for the fact that there was only one window, and in consequence of the close atmosphere there was a large stock of lice and bed bugs, they were, as they say in America, pretty comfortable." Sorin's judgments of people and events are recorded with a blunt frankness, including his conflicts with various bishops and his own superior general back in France. If his biases are revealed in these chronicles, so, too, is his commitment to the projects that shaped his life and work.

Monasteries are one of the few types of communities that have been able to exist without the family. In this intimate, first-hand study of the daily life in a Trappist monastery, Hillery concludes that what binds this unusual and highly successful community together is its emphases on freedom and agape love. "The Monastery" reintegrates sociology with its allied disciplines in an attempt to understand the monastery on its own terms, and at the same time link that with sociology. Hillery delves into the history, the importance of the Rule of Benedict, the strictness of the Trappist interpretation, and the significance of the Second Vatican Council. Throughout, he uses a holistic anthropological approach.

The work begins with a detailed sociological analysis of freedom, love, and community. Other topics include ways in which candidates enter the monastery, their relation to their families, economic activities, politics, prayer, asceticism, recreation, illness, death, and deviance. Comparisons are made with nine of the other eleven Trappist monasteries in the United States. Anthropologists and sociologists, especially those interested in community, comparative analysis, and religion are challenged by "The Monastery" to move beyond the arbitrary limits they have placed on themselves, which maintain that all knowledge must be capable of being physically perceived and statistically measured.

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis has been called `the greatest of all medieval chronicles'. Written in Normandy between 1114 and 1141, it is a detailed history of the Norman people and their conquests, full of vivid, often penetrating portraits of the lives and characters of kings and queens, lords and bishops, simple knights, and humble villagers. The chronicle gives a unique, authentic picture of feudal society during a period of rapid change in church and state which saw the emergence of the Anglo-Norman realm, the spread of new forms of monasticism, and the launching of the Crusades. Published in 1968, volume II of Marjorie Chibnall's six-volume edition of the Ecclesiastical History is now available for the first time in paperback. `a superbly edited Latin text and a unique English translation of the work of a major historian' American Historical Review `Mrs Chibnall is giving us ... her edition of a classical medieval text which will itself become a classic of medieval scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement

The Life of Christiana of Markyate gives an exceptionally vivid account of the struggles of a young girl, vowed at an early age to celibacy, to escape the matrimonial snares set by her parents and her friends. She was born of well-to-do burgesses of Huntingdon in the opening years of the twelfth century, who succeeded in betrothing her to a local nobleman. But the marriage was not consummated, and eventually she escaped, became a recluse and a nun, and the prioress of a small community at Markyate in Hertfordshire, under the patronage of the abbot and monks of St Albans, who made the famous St Albans' Psalter for her. The Life, written by one of her chaplains largely from her own reminiscences, was discovered, or rediscovered, by C.H. Talbot in a Cotton Manuscript in the British Library. First published by the Clarendon Press in 1959, it is now reissued. It is one of the remarkable discoveries of our time, and a classic of historical literature.

The Book of St Gilbert was written by a canon of the Order of Sempringham and is presented here in its first, full, critical edition. It contains all the documents of the canonization process of St Gilbert and his life, including a dossier of letters concerning a major crisis of his rule, the revolt of the lay brothers; a detailed account of the canonization process; and two collections of his miracles. The book is especially revealing of the procedures of canonization at a crucial stage in its formation and provides a central body of material for the history of the Order in its first sixty years.