In 16th and 17th century Ireland religion and nationality fused together in a people’s struggle to survive.  In that struggle the country’s links with Europe provided a life line.  Members of religious orders, with their international roots, played an important role. Among them were the Irish Jesuits, who adapted to a variety of situations – from quiet work in Irish towns to serving as an emissary for Hugh O’Neill in the south of Ireland and in the courts of Rome and Spain, and then founding seminary colleges in Spain and Portugal from which young Irishmen returned to keep faith and hope alive. In the seventeenth century persecution was more haphazard.  There were opportunities for preaching and teaching and, at time, especially during the Confederation of Kilkenny in the 1640s, for the open celebration of one’s religion. This freedom gave way to the savage persecution under Cromwell, which resulted in the killing of some Jesuits and others being forced to find shelter in caves, sepulchres, and bogs, the Jesuit superior dying alone in a shepherd’s hut on an island off Galway. There followed a time of more relaxed laws during which Irish Jesuits publicly ran schools in New Ross and, for Oliver Plunkett, in Drogheda, but persecution soon resumed and Oliver Plunkett was arrested and martyred. At the end of the century, as the forces of King James II were finally defeated, some Jesuits lived and worked through the sieges of Limerick and then nerved themselves to face the Penal Laws in the new century.

Translated here for the first time are four works written by Stephen for his monks: A Mirror for Novices, A Threefold Exercise, On the Recitation of the Divine Office, and Meditations on the Joys of the Blessed Virgin. Each expresses the devotion of his day and provides an insight into the inner life of an early thirteenth century Cistercian monastery.  A monk at Fountains Abbey and later abbot of Sawley, Stephen in his Meditations on the Gospel, on the Virgin, and on the Divine Office, delicately expresses the monastic devotion of the early thirteenth century.

Brian O’Leary, an Irish Jesuit, has been researching and writing on Ignatian spirituality since the 1970s. Over that period he has authored five books, the last of which (God Ever Greater, 2018) was a selection of his lectures and talks. His new offering, To Love and To Serve, is also a selection – this time of essays that have appeared in spirituality journals in a number of countries. Since these are not easily accessible, O’Leary made the decision to gather together the best of his work in this genre into one book, so making that work more widely available. The essays vary considerably in content, purpose, and style. Some are short and aimed at a popular readership, others tend to be more academic or written with practitioners of Ignatian spirituality in mind. All are eminently readable and display great clarity of style.   Ignatian spirituality is most commonly associated with the Spiritual Exercises. Consequently these figure largely in O’Leary’s writings. However, the Exercises do not represent the totality of Ignatian spirituality and so there are a number of pieces on the Jesuit Constitutions – a spiritual classic that is surprisingly relevant outside its original context.  The Constitutions are frequently quoted today in the context of spiritual formation and of leadership. And then there is spiritual direction – is there a specifically Ignatian model of this ministry? There are also intriguing questions around St. Ignatius Loyola himself, perhaps most of all around his mysticism. And what would such mysticism look like if lived out in the post-modern world? The range of topics is remarkable.

Himalayan Hermitess is a vivid account of the life and times of a Buddhist nun living on the borderlands of Tibetan culture. Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration, defied tradition, and composed one of the most engaging autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition.
The Life of Orgyan Chokyi is the oldest known autobiography authored by a Tibetan woman, and thus holds a critical place in both Tibetan and Buddhist literature. In it she tells of the sufferings of her youth, the struggle to escape menial labor and become a hermitess, her dreams and visionary experiences, her relationships with other nuns, the painstaking work of contemplative practice, and her hard-won social autonomy and high-mountain solitude. In process it develops a compelling vision of the relation between gender, the body, and suffering from a female Buddhist practitioner's perspective.
Part One of Himalayan Hermitess presents a religious history of Orgyan Chokyi's Himalayan world, the Life of Orgyan Chokyi as a work of literature, its portrayal of sorrow and joy, its perspectives on suffering and gender, as well as the diverse religious practices found throughout the work. Part Two offers a full translation of the Life of Orgyan Chokyi. Based almost entirely upon Tibetan documents never before translated, Himalayan Hermitess is an accessible introduction to Buddhism in the premodern Himalayas.

Based on new translations of Pali texts and rare sources, Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns analyses the portrayal of women in the Pali canon and commentaries. Focusing on the differences between canonical and commentarial literature, the author goes beyond the practice of using the commentaries to merely enhance the understanding of the Pali canon; she emphasizes the differing social and historical milieus out of which these genres of literature were born. Assessing each genre on its own terms, the work demonstrates that the Pali canon, contrary to how it has been presented previously, is more favourable to women. The first part of the volume contains biographies of the six best-known Buddhist nuns who were considered to have been direct disciples of the Buddha. These biographies throw light on gender relations as they evolved in the early centuries of Buddhism in India. The life stories also serve as the foundation for discussion of Buddhist women in the second part. From notions of beauty and adornment to family, class, and marriage, various themes in the biographies are explored in this work, and through this exploration the changing form of Buddhism in early India is captured.