Cistercian Publications imprint: 72 books
Unity of Spirit
Studies on William Of Saint-Thierry in Honor of E. Rozanne Elder
Language: English
Release Date: October 13, 2015
William of Saint-Thierry (ca. 1080–1148) became abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Thierry in about 1119, holding that office for about sixteen years and writing a large number of works, some for the guidance of the monks of his abbey and others as theological treatises. But during that same...
Cistercian Spirituality
An Ashram Perspective
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2011
Cistercian Spirituality: An Ashram Perspective is a spiritual directory written by Fr. Francis Acharya for the monastic community that he founded at Kurisumala (Kerala, India). As the editor, Fr. Michael Casey, relates in the introduction:
This book is offered to a wider world in the hope that it...
Lives Of Monastic Reformers, 1
Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and Stephen of Obazine
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2010
The period between 1025 and 1150 was a time of creativity and new beginnings in monastic life. Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and Stephen of Obazine established two very successful monastic families in the neighboring regions of the Auvergne and Limousin respectively. La Chaise-Dieu became the head of a...
Medieval Cistercian History
Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 9
Language: English
Release Date: March 28, 2019
Thomas Merton’s deep roots in his own Cistercian tradition are on display in the two sets of conferences on the early days of the Order included in the present volume. The first surveys the relevant monastic background that led up to the foundation of the Abbey of Cîteaux in 1098 and goes on to...
In the Valley of Wormwood
Cistercian Blessed and Saints of the Golden Age
Language: English
Release Date: October 24, 2013
Shortly after entering the monastic life in December 1941, a relatively unknown Trappist monk called Frater Louis-who would later be known to the world by his given name, Thomas Merton-began to pen biographical sketches of early Cistercian blessed and saints. These were initially collected, printed,...
The Great Beginning of Citeaux
A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2012
In the closing decades of the twelfth century, the Cistercian Order had become an important ecclesiastical and economic power in Europe. 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 Cistercian Fathers and Their Monastic Theology
Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 8
Language: English
Release Date: May 12, 2016
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...
Charter, Customs, and Constitutions of the Cistercians
Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 7
Language: English
Release Date: June 9, 2015
As master of novices for ten years (1955–1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton’s conferences on ancient and contemporary...
The Holy Workshop Of Virtue
The Life of John the Little by Zacharias of Sakha
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2010
Saint John the Little was a monk and hegumen of Scetis (Wadi Natrun) during the first great period of early Egyptian monasticism. The Apophthegmata preserve some fifty sayings by or about him (see CS 59, 85 '96). In addition, Zacharias, eighth-century Bishop of Sakha, wrote his Life, more than seventy...
by Aelred of Rievaulx
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2010
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2010
Spiritual Friendship is today the best known and perhaps most influential of the thirteen surviving works of Aelred, abbot of the great English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 '1167. During his abbacy he built Rievaulx into a place of spiritual welcome and physical prosperity, desiring to make...
A Not-So-Unexciting Life
Essays on Benedictine History and Spirituality in Honor of Michael Casey, OCSO
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2017
This volume, written by eighteen monks, nuns, and lay scholars from seven countries and four continents, aims to recognize the contribution that Michael Casey has made to Cistercian and Benedictine life over the past forty years. Acclaimed as one of the most significant writers in the Benedictine...
The Sun at Midnight
Monastic Experience of the Christian Mystery
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2012
The Sun at Midnight offers a splendid, easily accessible summary of mystical theology in the Cistercian school. Bernardo Olivera, a master of both the theology and the practice of the spiritual life, analyzes this tradition first in its rich human, biblical, and doctrinal connotations, and then according...
Saint Bernard's Three Course Banquet
Humility, Charity, and Contemplation in the De Gradibus
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2013
Saint Bernard’s famous work, The Steps of Humility and Pride (in Latin, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae), is a short book consisting of a mere fifty-seven paragraphs. In it, the Abbot of Clairvaux unpacks the doctrine of the very crucial chapter 7 of Saint Benedict’s sixth-century Rule for...
Aelred the Peacemaker
The Public Life of a Cistercian Abbot
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2017
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....