Christian communities & monasticism books

Amadeus became a monk of Clairvaux in 1125, just about the time its abbot, Bernard, began to be noticed by the Church...  Read More >>

These are the letters of Adam of Perseigne, Spiritual director to kings and clerics, nuns and nobles and adviser...  Read More >>

The burgundian reformer abbot draws a picture of the perfect frontier bishop, and holds him up as a model for bishops...  Read More >>

The young abbot meditates on the singular role of the Virgin Mother of Christ 'to satisfy [his] own devotion', and...  Read More >>

The monk and the knight—the two quintessentially medieval European heroes—were combined in the Knights Templar,...  Read More >>

Taking up Saint Bernard's unfinished sermon-commentary, Gilbert ruminates on verse 3:1-5:10 in forty-eight sermons,...  Read More >>

Best known in the Middle Ages as a scriptural exegete, Bede here provides a running gloss on the Letters of James,...  Read More >>

Ancrene Wisse introduced through a variety of cultural and critical approaches which establish the originality and...  Read More >>

Syriac is particularly rich in poetry on Mary. Not only is some of this of great tenderness and beauty, but much...  Read More >>

In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, The Song of Songs was a favorite book of Cistercian monks. Bernard...  Read More >>

The son of Burgundian nobility, Bernard admitted after years of struggle that humility remained for him the most...  Read More >>

A scholar turned monk, Isaac combined the increasingly technical vocabulary of the cathedral schools with the spiritual...  Read More >>

This book tells the life of a saint by a saint. Malachy O'Morgair spent his life and considerable energies exhorting,...  Read More >>

Meditation on Christ's humanity and a letter of instruction on a disciplined spiritual life for his sister, epitomize...  Read More >>

William of Saint Thierry left all things in his search for God. He left his home in Liège (modern Belgium) to study...  Read More >>

Perhaps Bernard's most delightful tract, On Loving God posits that everything good in human persons is an expression...  Read More >>

His own experience of human weakness in a worldly life at the court of King David of Scotland made him sensitive...  Read More >>

A profound mystic, Bernard sought, above all and in all, to be with God and to bring all persons to the experience...  Read More >>

Aelred of Rievaulx was born in the borderlands of Northumbria was raised at the royal court of Scotland. In this...  Read More >>

Taking up Saint Bernard's unfinished sermon-commentary, Gilbert ruminates on verse 3:1-5:10 in forty-eight sermons,...  Read More >>

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Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and Stephen of Obazine  Read More >>

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Four Rules of Pre-Benedictine Monastic Life  Read More >>

Vincent is the great saint of the poor and yet his life story shows that his journey towards an option for the poor...  Read More >>