The Great Beginning of Cîteaux

The Great Beginning of Cîteaux
Author: Konrad (Abbot of Eberbach)
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2012
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879071729

In the closing decades of the twelfth century the Cistercian Order found itself in a world rather different from the one in which it had been founded and began to thrive. The Order was justifiably proud of its achievements and unparalleled diffusion across Europe. It had become an important ecclesiastical and economic power in Europe and developed an institutional structure meant to sustain a large, widespread organization. Yet it had lost its influential spokesman, Bernard of Clairvaux, and as the century drew to a close, religious sensibilities were changing. The new mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and the impulses they embodied, were to shift the center of gravity in Christian religious life for centuries to come.

The Cistercian Fathers and Their Monastic Theology

The Cistercian Fathers and Their Monastic Theology
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2016
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879070420

These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963-1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Guiding his students through Bernard's Marian sermons, his treatise On the Love of God, his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the first half of the twelfth century and why he has remained one of the most influential spiritual theologians of Western Christianity from his own day until the present. As James Finley writes in his preface to this volume, "Merton is teaching us in these notes how to be grateful and amazed that the ancient wisdom that shimmers and shines in the eloquent and beautiful things that mystics say is now flowing in our sincere desire to learn from God how to find our way to God."

The Cistercian Fathers

The Cistercian Fathers
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2023-04-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3368165682

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

Monastic Sermons

Monastic Sermons
Author: Bernard of Clairvaux
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2016-08-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879071680

Saint Bernard was born in 1090 near Dijon, France. He joined the fifteen-year-old monastery of Cîteaux in 1113. In 1115 he became the founding abbot of Clairvaux Abbey, whence his name, Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Bernard was a gifted and prolific writer of theological treatises, Scriptural commentaries, letters, and many sermons. The sermons in the collection published here, styled Sermones de diversis (Sermons about Various Topics), lack the specific point of departure that characterizes his other sermons. That is, whereas the sermons on the Song of Songs are a verse-by-verse commentary on that biblical book and his Sermons for the Year follow the liturgical calendar, this collection of sermons deals with his various pastoral concerns. Since Scripture is always Bernard’s point of departure and inspiration, the sermons often read like a Scripture study, but what comes through equally is the voice of an understanding spiritual father who is a masterful student of Scripture, biblical language, and the needs of his monks.

Dialogue on the Soul

Dialogue on the Soul
Author: Saint Aelred (of Rievaulx)
Publisher: Cistercian Fathers Series
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1981
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Aelred of Rievaulx, like his Cistercian brothers, believed that the human person is created in the image and likeness of God. He analyzed the human soul therefore to understand by analogy something of the being of God. Possessing three faculties--intellect, memory, and will--the one, indivisible soul resembles the triune, simple Godhead. In that it is to some degree incomprehensible, the soul shares in the incomprehensibility of its Creator. By ascetic discipline and by training their innate spiritual faculties, the early Cistercians sought to restore persons to the perfection in which God had created them: to remember without forgetfulness, to know without error, to love without satiety.

Cistercian Fathers and Forefathers

Cistercian Fathers and Forefathers
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: New City Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre:
ISBN: 1565486722

This volume of previously uncollected studies makes a notable contribution to Merton's extensive and influential legacy. This volume includes pieces on eleventh- and twelfth-century mo­nastics by Thomas Merton, perhaps the most significant American Catholic spiritual writer of the twentieth century. The essays are difficult to locate elsewhere, the conference transcriptions are available only here.

The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux

The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux
Author: William of Saint-Thierry
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2015-12-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0879076925

The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux, traditionally known as the Vita Prima, originated to prepare the case for canonization of Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux. The work was begun by William of Saint-Thierry, continued by Arnold of Bonneval, and completed by Geoffrey of Auxerre. When the initial case put forth for Bernard was rejected by Innocent II, Geoffrey undertook a revision of the original vita (Recension A) and submitted another version (Recension B) to Pope Alexander III, who declared Bernard a saint in 1174. This work emphasizes the deep love in which Bernard was held during his life by his monks and the people of France and Italy as well as his role as a powerful public figure. This book contains the first English translation of Recension B, drawn from what is apparently the only manuscript of the work found today in a Cistercian monastery, Mount Saint Bernard Abbey. The introduction begins with the story of how this manuscript came to Mount Saint Bernard, so fixing this translation of the Vita prima within Cistercian life from the twelfth century to today.

Five Books on Consideration

Five Books on Consideration
Author: Bernard (Clairvaux, Abt, Heiliger)
Publisher: Cistercian Publications Books
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1976
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Always a vigorous champion of papal reforms, Bernard of Clairvaux toward the end of his life saw one of his own monks raised to the papal throne as Eugene III. While acting as the new Pope's political and spiritual counsellor, the Great Cistercian abbot was tireless in advancing Eugene's policies and in defending his authority and prestige. Both as a monk and as a strategist, Bernard realized that political astuteness needs the complement of sober and honest reflection. In Five Books on Consideration he defines 'consideration' for the Pope by examining the practical and the theological demands of the papal office.