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John R. Sommerfeldt's love of medieval scholarship and his commitment to the encouragement of young scholars are reflected in his teaching and his published works on Bernard of Clairvaux, and in the annual Kalamazoo International Medieval Studies Congress. Initiated in 1962 as a small regional conference, the Congress now draws some three thousand medievalists from around the world each year. Colleagues, former students, and friends made during Congresses across the years offer their work in his honor.
Christian persons today might seek spiritual development and ponder the benefit of mindfulness exercises but also maintain concerns if they perceive such exercises to originate from other religious traditions. Such persons may not be aware of a long tradition of meditation practice in Christianity that promotes personal growth. This spiritual tradition receives a careful formulation by Christian monastic authors in the twelfth century. One such teaching on meditation is found in the treatise De consideratione written by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) to Pope Eugene III (d. 1153). In textual passages where St. Bernard exhibits a clear concern for the mental health of the Pope (due to nume...
A study of the changes in religious thought and institutions c. 1180-c. 1280.
Brill's Companion to Aelred of Rievaulx explores the life, works, and thought of Aelred, Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx Abbey from 1147 to 1167. As well as introducing the three genres of his works —sermons, spiritual teaching, and history— scholars survey such central topics as Marian devotion, love and friendship, the sacramental nature of community, lay spirituality, and saints’ lives. The work also includes the first supplement to the Bibliotheca aelrediana secunda, listing publications by and about Aelred from between 1996 and 2015. Aelred is rapidly becoming one of the best-known and most loved of the 12th-century Cistercians; this book provides welcome new insights into his contributions to the spiritual and political concerns of his place and time. Contributors are Damien Boquet, Pierre-André Burton, Marsha L. Dutton, Elizabeth Freeman, Daniel M. La Corte, Marie Anne Mayeski, Domenico Pezzini, John R. Sommerfeldt, and Katherine Yohe.
In Theologizing Friendship, the author aims to revitalize Jean Leclercq's defense of monastic theology, while expanding and qualifying some of the central theses expounded in Leclercq's magisterial The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. The current work contributes to a revised and updated status quaestionis concerning the theological relationship between classical monasticism and scholasticism, construed in more systematic and speculative terms than those of Leclercq, rendered here through the lens of friendship as a theological topos. The work shares with Ivan Illich's In the Vineyard of the Text the conviction that the rise of the Schools (Paris, Oxford, etc.) constitutes one of the...
In addition to being a prolific spiritual writer and the abbot of the premier Cistercian monastery in northern England, Aelred of Rievaulx somehow found the time and the stamina to travel extensively throughout the Anglo-Norman realm, acting as a mediator, a problem solver, and an adviser to kings. His career spanned the troubled years of the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda and reached its zenith during the early years of the reign of Henry II. In this work, Jean Truax focuses on the public career of Aelred of Rievaulx, placing him in his historical context, deepening the reader’s understanding of his work, and casting additional light on his underappreciated role as politician, mediator, and negotiator outside his abbey’s walls.
Comprehensive and learned translation of these texts affords insight into Abelard's thinking over a much longer sweep of time and offers snapshots of the great twelfth-century philosopher and theologian in a variety of contexts.
Collected Works Vol. 1: The Two-Fold Knowledge: Readings on the Knowledge of Self and the Knowledge of God Vol. 2: Pater Bernhardus: Martin Luther and Bernard of Clairvaux Vol. 3: Luther's Catholic Christology According to His Johannine Lectures of 1527
This new edition offers fascinating insights into one of the most celebrated love affairs of the Middle Ages. A new chapter charts the debate about the letters and offers fresh evidence to attribute them to Abelard and Heloise. The complete Latin text is reproduced with an annotated translation by Chiavaroli and Mews.
2021 Catholic Media Association Award third place award in English translation edition This book places the life of Aelred of Rievaulx, third abbot of the English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, within the hundred-year period from the Norman Conquest of England in October 1066 through Aelred's death in January 1167. While exploring what is known of Aelred's life from his own works and especially from the principal work of Walter Daniel, author of The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, Burton considers the influence of both English and church history on Aelred's personality and purpose as Christian, abbot, and writer. He emphasizes the place of the crucified Christ at the center of Aelred's life while calling spiritual friendship—not only personal but cosmological—the "hermeneutic key" to his teaching.