In these articles Professor McGuire explores the riches of the Cistercian exemplum tradition. These texts are made up of brief stories, often with a miraculous content, which provided moral support for novices and monks in Cistercian abbeys all over Europe in the High Middle Ages. The Cistercians have been seen mainly in terms of their great writers like Bernard of Clairvaux and the impressive buildings they left behind. But Cistercian literature also provides us with more humble insights from daily life, shedding light on questions of sexuality, anger, depression, and bonds of friendship, also between monks and nuns. They bring a freshness of insight and immediate experience, and their seeming naivety lets us be aware of monks' commitment to each other in individual and community bonds. In Cistercian storytelling, the Gospel's message meets an historical context and bears witness to a transformation of Christian life and idealism, while at the same time allowing us precious insights into how ordinary men and women, not just monks and nuns, lived and thought.

"The Classics series, which has inspired many less successful imitations over the years, has fulfilled its promise and given us an invaluable resource of the soul." The Catholic Historical Review Jean Gerson: Early Works translated and introduced by Brian Patrick McGuire preface by Bernard McGinn "However much advanced scholarship and great learning in God's law may be quite suitable for the person who wishes to come to the height of contemplation, nevertheless sometimes such knowledge blocks this pursuit. Learning is not in itself a problem. Rather, it is the arrogance and the self-inflation that the learned person derives from his knowledge. For it is clearly impossible to reach true contemplation except through humility, as the Apostle teaches (1 Cor 3:18). For if anyone, he says, seems wise in this world, he must become a fool in order to be wise. In other words, he should take on humble understanding and consider himself a fool with regard to God's wisdom. From The Mountain of Contemplation [2] Jean Gerson (1363-1429), chancellor of the University of Paris from 1395 until his death, was one of the outstanding theologians and preachers of his time. Today he is all but forgotten, except in terms of his role in resolving the schism of the Western Church. Gerson deserves to be seen as a man of great passion and learning. He sought to map the path to the contemplative life in a way that made it accessible to groups outside the universities. Partly because of continuing closeness to members of his family, especially his sisters, Gerson insisted on writing many of his works in French. His Mountain of Contemplation is a major event in the history of language and in terms of gender relations in the religious life. Gerson knew how innovative his approach was, for he opened his treatise with the words: "Some persons will wonder and ask why, in a matter so lofty as that of the contemplative life, I choose to write in French rather than in Latin, and more to women than to men." Thanks to Gerson's personal letters, translated here for the first time, it is possible to get close to the doubts and pain of a man who sought the vision of god and yearned for affective bonds. Gerson's life and writings can be seen as a search for unity in the midst of a rich and chaotic age whose spirituality we are only now beginning to appreciate. In giving advice to confessors, attacking the Romance of the Rose, preaching on the feast of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, discerning between true and false revelations, and in outlining his Practical Mystical Theology, Gerson emerges as one of the most articulate voices of a Christian spirituality that transcends the Middle Ages and speaks to our time.

In this intimate portrait of one of the Middle Ages' most consequential men, Brian Patrick McGuire delves into the life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to offer a refreshing interpretation that finds within this grand historical figure a deeply spiritual human being who longed for the reflective quietude of the monastery even as he helped shape the destiny of a church and a continent. Heresy and crusade, politics and papacies, theology and disputation shaped this astonishing man's life, and McGuire presents it all in a deeply informed and clear-eyed biography. Following Bernard from his birth in 1090 to his death in 1153 at the abbey he had founded four decades earlier, Bernard of Clairvaux reveals a life teeming with momentous events and spiritual contemplation, from Bernard's central roles in the first great medieval reformation of the Church and the Second Crusade, which he came to regret, to the crafting of his books, sermons, and letters. We see what brought Bernard to monastic life and how he founded Clairvaux Abbey, established a network of Cistercian monasteries across Europe, and helped his brethren monks and abbots in heresy trials, affairs of state, and the papal schism of the 1130s. By reevaluating Bernard's life and legacy through his own words and those of the people closest to him, McGuire reveals how this often-challenging saint saw himself and conveyed his convictions to others. Above all, this fascinating biography depicts Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as a man guided by Christian revelation and open to the achievements of the human spirit.

The Companion to Jean Gerson provides a guide to new research on Jean Gerson (1363-1429), theologian, chancellor of the University of Paris, and church reformer. Ten articles outline his life and works, contribution to lay devotion, place as biblical theologian, role as humanist, mystical theology, involvement in the conciliar movement, dilemmas as university master and conflicts with the mendicants, views on women and especially on female visionaries, participation in the debate on the "Roman de la Rose", and the afterlife of his works until the French Revolution. Some of the contributors are veterans of gersonian studies, while others have recently completed their dissertations. All map the relevance of Gerson to understanding late medieval and early modern culture, religion and spirituality.

"I assume that historical sources can convey human feeling, even though it is fruitless to psychologize individual friends or to reach complete explanations about their motives. I simply accept that because medieval Christians believed in friendship and felt the need for it, some of them both practiced and lived out friendships." from the new Introduction

Human beings have always formed personal friendships. Some cultures have left behind the evidence of philosophical discussion; some have provided only private or semipublic letters. By comparing these, one discerns the effect exercised by the society in which the writers lived, its opportunities, and its restrictions. The cloistered monks of medieval Europe, who have bequeathed a rich literary legacy on the subject, have always had to take into account the overwhelming fact of community. Brian Patrick McGuire finds that in seeking friends and friendship, medieval men and women sought self-knowledge, the enjoyment of life, the commitment of community, and the experience of God.

First published in 1988, Friendship and Community has been widely debated, inspiring the current interest among medievalists in the subject of friendship. It has also informed other fields within medieval history, including monasticism, spirituality, psychology, and the relationship between self and community. In a new introduction to the Cornell edition, McGuire surveys the critical reaction to the original edition and subsequent research on the subject of medieval friendship."