Cistercian Monk Research Articles

Collecting empires: Dominik Bilimek and early subterranean zoology between politics and field research

The Moravian Cistercian monk and collector Dominik Bilimek (1813–1884) is considered one of the earliest European naturalists to conduct zoological research on subterranean fauna in Latin America. During the second French invasion of Mexico, from 1861 to 1867, he accompanied Maximilian of Habsburg, the newly enthroned emperor of Mexico, to the region. There, he explored the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa near Taxco de Alarcón, comparing its fauna to his earlier discoveries in Postojnska jama in Carniola (Slovenia). After the victory of the Mexican republican forces and Maximilian’s execution, Bilimek retained his role as curator of the emperor’s collections, which he took back with him to Europe and exhibited at Miramare Castle near Trieste. Prior to his Mexican venture, Bilimek had embraced the imperial goals and intellectual agendas of the Viennese central administration while teaching at the monarchy’s military institutes. Following the revolutions of 1848/49, extensive research undertakings—including geoscientific, biological, and archaeological surveys—were initiated to preserve the Habsburg monarchy as a supranational entity amidst internal and external crises, and to legitimize its territorial framework as both a natural and cultural unit. These developments coincided with the initial surge of zoological interest in Carniolan caves, which spurred efforts to gather similar findings in other karst regions of the monarchy. Drawing on historical sources, this article explores the intersection of political concepts and fieldwork practices in the early study of cave biology. Special attention is given to the sites, networks, and modes of collecting during this transformative period.

Galand z Reigny o małżeństwie, rodzinie, wspólnocie w "Libellus proverbiorum"

This article presents what and how the Cistercian monk Galand of Reigny, who lived in the 12th century, wrote about the family in his short work Libellus proverbiorum, dedicated to the famous St Bernard of Clairvaux. The Book of Proverbs and its author are almost completely unknown in Poland. However, Libellus is a research-interesting example of the ‘light’ religious literature of the time written at a ‘medium’ level. The paper first introduces Galand and the monastic community to which he belonged and briefly discusses his literary work and the nature and diverse content of the work in question. In the second part, it discusses those passages of the Libellus proverbiorum in which the author addresses the theme of marriage, and family – in the literal sense, as well as in relation to the community of monks or to the Church as a whole. Firstly, the references in Galand’s text to biblical figures of spouses and families (Adam and Eve, Isaac and Rebecca and their sons, among others) are pointed out, then to well-known figures from Greek mythology (Orpheus and Eurydice), then to references to the life of ordinary families known to the author: to spouses, to mothers, widows and mothers-in-law, sons and daughters, and finally to comparisons of the life of a monastic and ecclesiastical community to a family united by love. Galand evokes the image of the family both in the proverbs themselves and in his (literal or allegorical) explanations, glosses them. His work carries, in an accessible, simple, and sometimes humorous form, moral instructions to deepen the religiousness and spirituality of both the monk and the layperson. The article includes excerpts from the Book of Proverbs translated by the author of this paper. The translation is based on the 1998 edition of Galand’s text in the Sources chrétiennes series (SC 436).

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim. By Martha Newman

Engelhard of Langheim, the Cistercian monk, may not be a household name—all the more reason then to welcome Martha Newman’s monograph on what she calls Engelhard’s ‘sacramental imagination’, as vividly displayed in the collection of stories he wrote in the late twelfth century for the community of Franconian nuns of Wechterswinkel (a community formally recognized as Cistercian in the early thirteenth century). These are stories which remind us that, strident and powerful though it was, St Bernard’s was but one of the many Cistercian voices to be heard within twelfth-century cloisters. The collection is notable not only for being ‘the earliest extant text that a Cistercian monk dedicated to Cistercian nuns’ (p. 2) but also for the particularities of Engelhard’s imagination. Engelhard confines himself to stories of events he has himself seen or of which he had first-hand knowledge (‘I wrote nothing for which I either did not give or could not give witnesses’, p. 65), but this hardly proves a limitation; Cistercian chapters provided plentiful times when stories could be collected, swapped, and passed on, and it is clear Engelhard knew how to keep his ear to the ground. It is also clear that there were times when, despite his protestations, he could not resist the odd embellishment, since, as he himself admits, ‘this is allowed to writers’ (p. 62).

Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America

Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America

The Great Divorce: A Dream by C.S. Lewis: A Comeback of the Medieval Genre

It is universally acknowledged that the Renaissance has exerted a great influence on modern literature and art. This view has been so overwhelming that it has ousted other possibilities, as a result, the influence of medieval literature has been grossly underestimated. In the current article I want to show the role of the “dream vision” genre in shaping the modern genre of spiritual philosophical fiction elaborated in the works by C.S. Lewis, specifically in his exceptionally original novel The Great Divorce. The aim is to examine systematically and expose the intrinsic affinity of Lewis’ work with the ground breaking works of the father of the genre, a French Cistercian monk Guillaume de Deguileville (1295-1358). Separated by time and culture, the works display a remarkable congruity of both form and content including the narrative structure, themes and motifs, allegorical representations and symbolism. The discovered similarities are not accidental because they draw upon the same epistemological position concerning understanding and interpretation of essential properties of the Christian doctrine. Keywords: dream vision, pilgrimage, cardinal sins, comparative analysis

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Українські ікони «Богородиця Мати Милосердя» (нова іконографічна інтерпретація традиційного сюжету)

Baroque trends, which have been extended in the Ukrainian religious art of the late 17th – early 18th centuries, contributed to the expansion of its thematic composition, stylistic changes and the emergence of new iconographic plots. The icons Theotokos Mother of Mercy, or the Cossack Intercession, as they are also called, are a clear example of the renewal of themes in Ukrainian religious art during the Baroque period. This iconographic version of the Intercession, apparently, is borrowed from Western European painting; it is correlated with the compositional type of the image of the Intercession of the Theotokos – Madonna della Misericordia – popular in Italian art. It is supposed, that the image of the Blessed Virgin, covering the parish with the mantle, has been inspired by the vision of the Cistercian monk, theologian and writer Caesar of Geisterbach, who describes it in his Dialogus Miraculorum (1221). Formation of the iconography Madonna della Misericordia in Western European art has started in the 13th century. The Virgin usually stands on the early images. The Christians staying under the protection of the Virgin Mary are depicted on their knees and in a much smaller scale. The icons Madonna della Misericordia have been often ordered by specific groups of believers, such as fraternities, professional guilds, monasteries and abbeys. The theme of the Intercession of Theotokos of the iconographic version Theotokos Mother of Mercy has taken a special place in the Ukrainian iconography of the Baroque period. The image of the Patroness, blessing and covering the faithful with her mantle, has attracted Ukrainian masters with the realism and majesty of the compositional plan. The popularity and rapid dissemination of this iconographic variety of the Intercession have been caused also by the fact that it presents individualized images of people from different layers of the that time society with special penetration. Contemplating the icons of the Intercession in the temples, the believers have seen obviously a powerful and merciful patroness in the image of the Mother of God. Ukrainian icons Theotokos Mother of Mercy of the 17th – early 18th centuries are filled with the search for a new artistic expressiveness, reveal the nature of the transition period and the peculiarities of the process of formation of a new stylistic system of sacred painting.

The Nun, the Monk, and the Lay Brother: Emotional Anthropology and Affective Community in the Hagiography of Goswin of Bossut (1230s)

During the Middle Ages the monastery served as a sort of laboratory dedicated to creating the ideal Christian life. It is therefore not surprising that it was at the heart of the “emotional turn” of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries that mediaeval historians have often noted. That turn was marked by a newly emotional way to think of the figure of Christ; his life on earth became a model to imitate and to identify with emotionally. This article measures the ways in which these transformations made their imprint on monastic life by focusing on the hagiographical writings of Goswin of Bossut, a Cistercian monk at Villers-en-Brabant. The three vitae written by Goswin in the 1230s—one of a nun (Ida of Nivelles), another of a lay brother (Arnulf of Villers), and the third of a monk (Abundus of Villers)—allow us to investigate the transformations in the emotional anthropology of the thirteenth century, cross-gender relationships, and the ways in which the monastery was conceived of as an “affective community” within its social context.

A Pilgrimage to Purgatory

Telling the story of the exceptional penance of an Irish knight, the twelfthcentury Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii contends that it was possible to go on a bodily pilgrimage to purgatory. The Cistercian monk H. of Saltrey wrote his Tractatus at a historical moment when the fate of souls after death felt particularly urgent and important evidence for the afterlife was provided by spirits traveling back and forth between this life and the next. Insisting on a bodily experience of a spiritual space, rather than a visionary one, the knight Owein provided powerful eyewitness testimony about posthumous penance. This article uncovers how the Latin Tractatus engages the worries of its audience about the feasibility of the knight’s embodied visit to the afterlife by marshaling familiar narrative patterns from vernacular genres, including chansons de geste and romance. It shows that the Tractatus is an intricately designed text that uses these generic features to dispel doubt, thereby positioning Owein’s pilgrimage as a licit and potentially replicable penitential activity.

The Master

The Master Kathryn Weld (bio) Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, The Teachings, The Legacy Roger Lipsey Shambhala Publications www.shambhala.com/gurdjieff-reconsidered.html 284 Pages; Print, $24.95 Roger Lipsey, insightful biographer of figures such as the metaphysician and historian of Indian art, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy; economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld; and Cistercian monk and author Thomas Merton, invites us to reconsider the life and legacy of Greek-Armenian George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. For many, the title may surprise. Reconsider? Who now has considered Gurdjieff, even once? Now referred to as "the Work," the way of Gurdjieff, based on inner study rather than on faith, has fallen out of the public eye. Born (circa 1870) in Armenia, the young Gurdjieff spent some twenty years traveling—from Greece to Egypt, to the Caucasus and Tibet—with a small band of companions in search of esoteric knowledge. Much of what we know about these years derives from Gurdjieff's semi-fictional autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963), on which Peter Brook based his eponymous film (1979). By 1912, Gurdjieff was teaching in Moscow and St Petersburg. In 1917, forced to flee the revolution, he made his way with followers to Essentuki, Georgia. In 1919, he and his pupils fled again, across the Caucasus and eventually to France, where Gurdjieff resided, first at the Prieuré at Fontainebleau, and later in a small apartment in Paris, until his death in 1949. Gurdjieff's pupils found, in the master's work and in his presence, personal hope and meaning despite brutal conditions—revolution, depression, holocaust, and world war. At the same time, as shared by Gurdjieff with his French pupils during the war, Gurdjieff's great aim is ultimately a work for one's neighbor: "I swear to myself that this will never be for my personal profit, but to help others. I wish to be, to help others. This is to be understood as a vow." In her forward, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, For those unfamiliar with this teaching, I might describe it as an early run-up on what we would now call "mindfulness training," combined with an even more intricate metaphysics. … But the Work also has extraordinary heart, carried largely in the aforementioned sacred [End Page 21] dances (or "Movements," as they are more widely known), which provide not only a powerful integrative counterbalance to the intellectual content but also a de facto liturgical expression of searing emotional intensity. As Lipsey points out, the word "reconsidered," "promises either the refinement of an existing reputation or a radical break from received opinion." With the same friendly, almost intimate tone he used so successfully in his work on Hammarskjöld and Merton, Lipsey is a helpful guide with a sensitive touch. A senior member of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, he is very able to provide insight. His extensive use of primary sources, both published accounts and unpublished manuscripts held in public libraries and private archives, vividly evokes both the man and his community of pupils. Lipsey avoids expounding the teaching, trusting that as a lived practice, the teaching will appear in each reported exchange. There are a few exceptions—for example, an extensive discussion of the key concept "being." To those impatient with the extensive terminology introduced by Gurdjieff in his early teaching period in Russia, the "theory" decade, Lipsey offers this comparison: For the anonymous fourteenth century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a perfectly stunning guide to progressive exploration of the inner life, the diligent and fortunate seeker comes upon zones of experience that can only be described metaphorically. Slowly, a portrait emerges that is deeply nuanced and humane. In the chapter on the Prieuré, an abundance of vignettes about the life of the community places the teaching in context. It is a rich tapestry, with colorful personae: Katherine Mansfield, A. R. Orage, T. Tchekhovitch, the De Salzmann's, and all the children who lived at the châteaux, to name only a few, and Gurdjieff himself, frequently playing the role of provocateur. Lipsey finds kinship with Pythagoras and imagines Gurdjieff as spiritual heir of Diogenes the Cynic. Here is Katherine Mansfield, from...

Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England ed. by Marleen Cré et al.

Reviewed by: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England ed. by Marleen Cré et al. Alexandra Barratt Cré, Marleen, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey, eds, Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England (Medieval Church Studies, 41), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; cloth; pp. xii, 464; 3 colour plates; R.R.P. €120.00; ISBN 9782303503574776. This anthology discusses minor religious texts that have long been the wallflowers of medieval English literature: here they hold the floor. Part I offers Vincent Gillespie on the Speculum Christiani, Ralph Hanna on The Three Arrows on Doomsday, Ian Johnson on biblical texts as 'heterarchic' (randomly structured compilations), Annie Sutherland on A Talkyng of the Love of God, and Margaret Connolly on early readers of the Pore Caitif and the Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God. Part II addresses manuscript transmission: Diana Denissen on the Pore Caitif and the Contemplations again, Sarah Macmillan on the ascetic treatises Life of Soul and Book of Tribulation, and Marleen Cré on four abbreviated and anomalous texts in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.6.40. Part III relates compilation to devotional practice: Mami Kanno on an unusual, female-oriented, version of the South English Legendaries in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, Nicole R. Rice on 'small-l lollard' (p. 449) versions in London, British Library, Additional MS 30897, of the Pore Caitif (again) and Book to a Mother, Sheri Smith on self-examination and confession in the Cistercian monk John Northewode's trilingual miscellany, and Brandon Alakas on the Brigittine Richard Whitford's final publication, Dyuers Holy Instrucyons (1541), as hints on survival for recusants. Part IV discusses mystical texts in compilations. Denis Renevey examines Richard Rolle's devotion to the Holy Name and his influence (acknowledged and unacknowledged) on The Chastising of God's Children and Disce mori, Michael Sargent writes on the uses of 'affection', 'devotion', and 'feeling' in Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection, and that text's incorporation into compilations, and Naöe Kukita Yoshokawa studies the reworking of Mechtild's mystical revelations as collections of prayers in London, British Library, Harley MS 494. In the last section, Laura Saetveit Miles focuses on a fifteenth-century multivocal miscellany, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.15.42, containing a neglected Marian text, Meditaciones domini nostri, and on the Contemplations (again); Anne Mouron on a short, illustrated poem, the (probably) Carthusian Desert of Religion; and A. S. Lazikani rereads The Chastising and its search for the absent/present bridegroom alongside three medieval wall paintings. The editors provide a deft summary of the contents in their introduction, and Nicholas Watson concludes by reconsidering the meanings of compilatio(n). [End Page 274] Alexandra Barratt University of Waikato Copyright © 2021 Alexandra Barratt

Fray Agustín de Otero. Monje cisterciense y arquitecto en la Galicia del Barroco

Fray Agustín de Otero (ca.1675-1730) fue un monje cisterciense perteneciente al monasterio de Santa María de Sobrado (A Coruña) que ejerció como arquitecto y aparejador en Galicia durante el primer tercio del siglo XVIII. Inició su carrera de lego constructor trabajando para su propio cenobio. En 1717 fue reclamado en Mondoñedo por el obispo fray Juan Muñoz y Salcedo para diseñar la renovación de la fachada de la catedral. A partir de entonces el prelado le confió otros proyectos en la ciudad como la reforma del palacio episcopal, la traza de una traída de aguas y de una fuente monumental, y también la de su propio sepulcro. Puesto que su figura apenas resulta conocida por la historiografía, en el presente trabajo abordaremos su biografía, carrera profesional y personalidad artística.

Face to Face: the Growth of the Self in Thomas Merton

The late Trappist monk and prolific author, Thomas Merton was intensely concerned with the self – or to be more precise, with a desire to break free from the tyranny of the self he took to be his identity. His early years in France and England were marked by a sense of loss and dislocation. After leaving Cambridge for Columbia, his subsequent life in America and decision to be baptised a Catholic at the age of 23 eventually led to his taking vows as a Cistercian monk. Given the name Frater Louis, the ‘world’ with all its temptations and unresolved issues had been left safely behind along with his old identity. Or so he thought. In fact, Merton’s years as a Trappist would lead to a best-selling autobiography written under obedience to his abbot with many more books to follow. Compared at the time of its publication to St Augustine’s Confessions, it would lead to his international renown as Thomas Merton. He voiced his disquiet over what he called ‘this shadow, this double, this writer who […] followed me into the cloister … I cannot lose him.’
 In time, Merton came to the realisation through lived experience and his voracious reading of the Bible, St Augustine, the mystics, the individuation process propounded by Jung, Zen Buddhism and others that the ‘self’ he was trying to escape was, in fact, largely a ‘false’ self driven by the ego. This paper traces Merton’s journey from the that self to the authentic self which is found in God, in transcendence. Obsession with ‘the self’ as understood in the 21st century makes a study of Merton’s path to selfhood that much more vital. The advent of the ‘Selfie’, the self-promotion that social media affords and the examples of narcissistic individuals in positions of power gives the lie to lives where self-consciousness is confused with self-realisation. Nothing, as Merton discovered, could be further from the truth.
 

Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relational Anthropology in Socio-Historical and Religious Context

The Cistercian monk, Aelred of Rievaulx, is unique in his emphasis on relationship with others. While Aelred’s socio-historical context—that of a twelfth-century Renaissance, Cistercian community, with its increased emphasis on friendship—contributed to his relational anthropology, I argue that Aelred possessed his own relational vision, and out of passionate love was active in pursuing unity between his secular and religious communities, and also with other persons in his communities. This relational vision and action, which is highly consonant with contemporary anthropology, is embedded in the theological anthropology of his writings, where he confirms that the essence of the human being is relational.

Guillaume de Deguileville: Le Pèlerinage de l'âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul) trans. by Eugene Clasby

Reviewed by: Guillaume de Deguileville: Le Pèlerinage de l'âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul) trans. by Eugene Clasby Hilary Maddocks Clasby, Eugene, trans., Guillaume de Deguileville: Le Pèlerinage de l'âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul) (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 471), Tempe, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017; hardback; pp. xxii, 154; R.R.P. US$56.00; ISBN 9780866985246. French Cistercian monk Guillaume de Deguileville (c. 1295–1358) was the author of a popular trilogy of allegorical poetical works: Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (The Pilgrimage of Human Life), Le Pèlerinage de l'âme (The Pilgrimage of the Soul), and Le Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist (The Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ). This trilogy of devotional narratives in rhymed, octosyllabic couplets provided its lay audience with an entertaining spiritual guide for how to live a moral Christian life. The first two works in particular were widely read and translated during the Middle Ages and have been cited as major influences on Langland, Chaucer, Bunyan, and others. Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine was translated into modern English prose in 1992 by Eugene Clasby, who has now made the second work of this important trilogy available in English with his clear and engaging prose translation. The Pilgrimage of the Soul continues the allegorical dream vision narrative of the Pilgrimage of Human Life. In the first work, the narrator/pilgrim describes his resolution to travel to the celestial city of Jerusalem. Guided by the beautiful Grace Dieu, the hapless pilgrim embarks on his journey through life, making many foolish errors and falling prey to a series of fearsome, misshapen hags, personifications of the seven deadly sins. Finally, he meets Death, only to be woken from his reverie by the bell for Matins. His journey post-death is resumed in the Pilgrimage of the Soul. Again falling asleep, the narrator finds himself high in the air, looking down on his 'foul and disgusting' body (p. 1). Guilty of many sins and weaknesses during his lifetime, he must now suffer the consequences. He teeters on the cusp of eternal damnation as his guardian angel and the Devil argue over his soul. Finally, he is led before the heavenly tribunal for judgement before St Michael with Justice, Reason, Truth, and Mercy as witnesses. The devil also calls on Synderesis, his conscience, a 'monstrous and hideous old hag' with a long, thick worm-like tail (p. 13). Justice, Reason, and Truth agree that the soul should be condemned; Mercy alone supports him. On great scales, St Michael weighs the case for and against: of course, the damning evidence grossly outweighs the positive and the soul seems doomed to an eternity in hell. It is only when Mercy produces a document from Jesus Christ himself that the scales tip in the soul's favour and he is consigned instead to Purgatory for cleansing. The narrator carries the burden of his sins to Purgatory in the form of a pack containing 'horns, claws, teeth and plenty of other filthy things that I will not describe because they were so foul' (p. 31). In Purgatory he is scorched and roasted, the agony relieved only by the soothing ointments of a woman, Prayer. Taking him by the hand, his angel instructs him on the nature of Purgatory, Hell and Paradise and shows him the ghastly punishments meted out for various vices. [End Page 191] For example, those guilty of sloth are roused from their torpor by being bound to a wheel and smashed so hard against a pillar that their brains are dashed out and eyes burst from their sockets. After the angel digresses at length on various complex theological subjects including original sin and the fine distinctions between the soul and the body, the pilgrim finds his torments easing. He realizes that the Trinity is 'like a peacock's tail, three colours in one, red, gold and green' (p. 130) and that the many mansions of heaven, as described to him by the angel, are 'great comfort, great delight, great joy everlasting, so marvelous that the heart cannot conceive it and the tongue may not tell of it. It...

Introduction: Translation and Reception of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century French Literature

IntroductionTranslation and Reception of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century French Literature Marta Marfany The articles published in this volume emerge from a day of seminars entitled "Traduction et réception: La littérature française des xive et xve siècles" that took place at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, in July 2016. This special issue focuses on French language, literature, and translation, and explores the translation and reception of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French texts, especially in the Crown of Aragon and within Catalan culture. The following essays also look across Europe at the translation and reception of texts in other languages during this period; it looks at translations from French, adaptations, and influences. We believe that the following articles will be of interest to the readership of Digital Philology given their comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, combining medieval French literature with related fields such as medieval Catalan literature, medieval Italian literature, and medieval translations. We take a broad view of literature, exploring historical works (Livy and his translator into French, Pierre Bersuire); manuals of chivalry (such as that of the great philosopher Ramon Llull); a popular fourteenth-century allegorical work (the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine by a French Cistercian monk); as well as the great texts of medieval French literature, for example, the poems of Guillaume de Machaut, the works of Alain Chartier (compared with those of Dante), the Roman de la Rose, and Paris et Vienne. We also analyze political and philosophical texts and include reflections on language and translation as seen in the works of Nicolas Oresme and Jean Juvénal des Ursins. Under the overall heading of French literature and with the aid of some representative examples, the range of topics covered in this special issue provides a broad view of translation during the fourteenth and [End Page 135] fifteenth centuries. Considered as a way of transferring doctrinal content from one cultural context to another, translation played a central role in the dissemination of knowledge and the appropriation of scholarly and learned discourse by Romance vernacular languages. Translations from Latin therefore were key in the culture of the Late Middle Ages, as they provided access to classical and scholastic works to an educated audience possessing insufficient or no knowledge of Latin. Translations, therefore, lie at the roots of the literary innovations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the Late Middle Ages, in addition to the usual legal, biblical, and generally religious texts, there were translations of historical, philosophical, and doctrinal texts, largely classical Latin texts and medieval texts on classical subjects. In broad terms, the increase in types of texts translated caused translation to become a discipline in its own right and to develop its own tradition, its own approaches and certain theoretical elements that generated a range of different ideas and practices. Translation prologues are an example of this, as they provided translators with an opportunity to reflect on the difficulty of translating Latin into the Romance languages, to consider the linguistic toils of translation, and to comment on the noble and arduous task of transferring content from a higher culture to a lower one. All these issues appear in the first of the three sections of articles in our collection, which deals with general reflections on translation and reception in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially around concepts of translatio imperii and translatio studii. These reflections are exemplified in the work of two great French figures of the period: the polymath Nicolas Oresme, one of the best known official translators for Charles V of France, and the politician Jean Juvénal des Ursins, who was writing in the early fifteenth century. The first article, entitled "Nicole Oresme's Cultural Translatio in Question," is by Anne-Hélène Miller. Although Oresme's translation of Aristotle is among his most celebrated works, it only represents a part of his overall written production. Miller suggests viewing these official works of translation within the context of Oresme's philosophical thought and literary culture. This enables a study of the cultural inheritance (studii) of his works in the light of the political inheritance (imperii). In the second article of the first section of...

Thomas Merton's Unfinished Journey in Dialogue with Buddhism

Thomas Merton's Unfinished Journey in Dialogue with Buddhism John P. Keenan Thomas Merton was many things—literary critic, poet, author of immensely popular spiritual books, social critic, proponent of dialogue with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews. But throughout, he remained a Cistercian monk who longed to reform monastic life, aspired somehow to be a public hermit, and focused unwaveringly on the central importance of contemplative prayer and renewal. Because he was so multifaceted and so widely known and admired, Merton still attracts attention and praise—even the very public praise of Pope Francis speaking before the US Congress in September 2015. And because Merton was so malleable, he has been portrayed by others in many different ways: as an exemplar, a heretic, a confused man, a deeply committed monk, and a representative of all that was beginning to happen in the wake of Vatican II.1 And because, more than most humans, he lived in so many dimensions, it is difficult to write about him. The views and values—even the life experiences—of anyone who attempts to evaluate the contributions of Thomas Merton soon become apparent. Thus it is with some hesitation that I offer here my reading of Merton's dialogic engagement with Buddhism. I speak from the perspective of a Christian who has long been committed to that endeavor and who, through the convergence of many causes and conditions, has become schooled in the history and doctrine of Buddhism. When asked, I often identify myself as a Mahāyāna Christian. By that I mean that I live and think my Gospel faith in terms of Mahāyāna philosophy rather than the archaic metaphysical patterns of Greek theology, and as a result I have come to what I believe is a more modest and contextual theology of faith. Through my years of study and work in Japan and the United States, my perspective has been honed and enriched through lively and wide-ranging discussions with Buddhist scholars and practitioners, and indeed with mentors and colleagues of many persuasions. By the karmic happenstance of now residing in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, I am not presently in direct, personal dialogue with Buddhists; my engagement today is primarily with Buddhist texts and philosophies and my own ponderings on how those may aid us in the tasks of enunciating the Christian faith. When I pray, I do so in the name of Jesus. Beginning with the 1948 publication of his bestselling autobiographical work The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton inspired countless people through his [End Page 103] numerous theologically astute books on spiritual practice.2 As a widely read and admired author, he exercised immense influence in the turbulent world of Catholic thinking in the 1960s. Others had begun to write about Zen Buddhism in those years: in 1963 Dom Aelred Graham, a Benedictine monk of Portsmouth Abbey, published a book titled Zen Catholicism in which he recommended that Zen be embraced within Catholic spiritual traditions. Graham's book was well received but quietly read and set aside, and it was instead the better-known Merton who did the most to popularize Zen among Catholics and other Christians. Indeed, it was Thomas Merton's writings, together with those of Zen thinkers like D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, that introduced me to Buddhism during my years as a Roman Catholic seminarian and later curate in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Merton was certainly not the first Westerner, or the first Christian, to have been drawn to a great Asian religious tradition. Many Christians were already engaged in reconceptualizing the Gospel vis-à-vis Buddhist and Hindu religious thought. After Nostra aetate—the Vatican Council's declaration that non-Christian religions enjoy both grace and truth—numbers of Catholic theologians and missionaries around the world began to move from trying to convert benighted pagans to engaging in respectful dialogue with other ancient world traditions. Benedictines Bede Griffiths and Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda) were deeply immersed in Hindu meditation and lived in their own ashrams in India, attracting students, teaching contemplative practice grounded both in the Gospel and the Upanishads, and envisioning a new Christian theology informed by Hindu teachings. In...

Thomas Merton's Deep Christian Learning across Religious Borders

Thomas Merton's Deep Christian Learning across Religious Borders Francis X. Clooney SJ In his September 2015 address to the US Congress, Pope Francis evoked the memory of Thomas Merton, who, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day, captured the modern Christian and Catholic consciousness: A century ago, at the beginning of the Great War, which Pope Benedict XV termed a "pointless slaughter," another notable American was born: the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton. He remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people. In his autobiography he wrote: "I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God, and yet hating him; born to love him, living instead in fear of hopeless self-contradictory hungers." Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions. It was not entirely surprising that the pope should invoke Merton, for so long so well known a figure in American religious culture. In the postwar era, when America dominated the world stage, Merton offered a powerful witness to the best of Catholic values, and he did so in a way in keeping with his times—and ahead of them. William Shannon explained well the kind of prophet Merton was: "The prophet is not necessarily one who has the correct response to everything; he is one who knows, at a precise moment in history, the true problems which humanity has to face, the goals to be sought, the real questions to be put."1 Merton rose to the opportunities and challenges of his precise moment in history, and in that way marked off a fresh perspective on how world and Church might positively relate. But then too we ought not to expect Merton to be a prophet for our times, any more than other figures of the 1960s would be expected to address directly what concerns us. We in the West know, or can know, much more about the religions of Asia than did Merton's generation, and our learning experience, amid today's pluralism, raises new questions and pushes us in different directions. But we—whichever our home tradition, and whichever other traditions we study—share with him the same [End Page 49] overall challenge: a renewal of the contemplative life grounded at home, yet also truly open to other traditions as well. For those of us who are Christian, the challenge is not all that different: to deepen our Christian contemplative practice while learning all the more deeply from the contemplative traditions around us. In the next pages, I will reflect on the core of Merton's legacy, the enrichment of the Christian contemplative life by integral learning from other religions. merton's theological disposition At first ahead of his times, and then in keeping with the spirit of Vatican II, Merton highlighted the value of interreligious learning. Already in his 1962 essay, "Christian Culture Needs Oriental Wisdom,"2 for instance, he was clear in his diagnosis regarding the spiritual crisis of his times and its remedy: "It is absolutely essential to introduce into our study of the humanities a dimension of wisdom oriented to contemplation as well as to wise action. For this, it is no longer sufficient merely to go back over the Christian and European cultural traditions. The horizons of the world are no longer confined to Europe and America. We have to gain new perspectives, and on this our spiritual and even our physical survival may depend."3 But he is careful enough to ask, "Does this mean that the suggestion given in our title is strictly true? Does Christian culture need Oriental wisdom? It would certainly be rash to state this without further qualification."4 He explains how this is so. On the one hand, "the 'universality' and 'catholicity' which...

Chrystian – biskup Prus i jego dzieło w kontekście cysterskiej misji chrystianizacyjnej

This article describes the role of Bishop Christian in the evangelization of the Prussians. Christian – a Cistercian monk continued his mission of converting Prussia to Christianity from Pomezania, Warmia and Lubawa, which began in 1207. Christian as Bishop of Prussia in agreement with the Pomeranian princes and Danish king Valdemar II pursued the policy of a peaceful mission, and it is also possible that he tried to subjugate the lands where he succeeded to the Holy See. Proof of the tribute paid to the Pope by the Prussian lands - terra Lubavia and terra Lansania, is provided by two bulls of 1216, in which the representatives of these lands after a prior agreement give themselves over to the care of the papacy. After 1216 the situation became increasingly difficult. There was a retaliatory action against the pagan regions of Prussia. Christian tried to organize with the Pope a crusade against the Prussians. Despite several military expeditions, they did not achieve much success. It was only after the arrival of the Teutonic Order who used Christian’s abduction and imprisonment by Prussian Sambians that the lands of the pagans were successfully conquered. After being freed, Christian tried to oppose the actions of the knights of the Teutonic Order, siding with the duke of Pomerania Swietopełk who was fighting against them and supporting the Prussian uprising of 1242–1249.