Isaac of Stella was an English-born Cistercian who studied in the schools before entering monastic life and becoming abbot of Stella in 1147. His liturgical sermons inject a speculative philosophical inquisitiveness into imaginative meditations on scenes from Scripture. This present volume includes sermons 27-55, along with three fragments. In these sermons, while treating biblical passages corresponding to the major feasts of the Christian calendar, Isaac tackles weighty dogmatic issues such as predestination, the problem of evil, and Christ's two natures.

The work of Dom Adalbert de Vogue O.S.B. (1924-2011) serves as the basis of all serious study of the Rule of Benedict. In the first volume of this edition, Vogue uses literary criticism to show how the Rule of Benedict developed. He establishes the dependence of the Rule of Benedict on the Rule of the Master.

Father Matthew Kelty was an especially beloved monk at the historic Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Perhaps best known as Thomas Merton's colleague and confessor in the year prior to Merton's death, Father Matthew was also an enormously gifted spiritual writer in his own right, one whose homilies at Gethsemani attracted a wide following. This is the first book-length study of Matthew Kelty's life in relation to his spiritual writings and his profound reflections on the virtues of the monastic life in the modern age.