Monastic Sermons

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.

This book demonstrates that monastic preaching was a diverse activity which included preaching by monks, nuns and heretics. The study offers a preliminary step in understanding how preaching shaped monastic identity in the Middle Ages.

"An extremely interesting and important book... makes an important contribution to the history of medieval monastic spirituality in a formative period, whilst also fitting into wider debates on the origins, development and impact of ideas on crusading and holy war." Dr William Purkis, University of Birmingham Monastic culture has generally been seen as set apart from the medieval battlefield, as "those who prayed" were set apart from "those who fought". However, in this first study of the place of war within medieval monastic culture, the author shows the limitations of this division. Through a wide reading of Latin sermons, letters, and hagiography, she identifies a monastic language of war that presented the monk as the archetypal "soldier of Christ" and his life of prayer as a continuous combat with the devil: indeed, monks' claims to supremacy on the spiritual battlefield grew even louder as Church leaders extended the title of "soldier of Christ" to lay knights and crusaders. So, while medieval monasteries have traditionally been portrayed as peaceful sanctuaries in a violent world, here the author demonstrates that monastic identity was negotiated through real and imaginary encounters with war, and that the concept of spiritual warfare informed virtually every aspect of life in the cloister. It thus breaks new ground in the history of European attitudes toward warfare and warriors in the age of the papal reform movement and the early crusades. Katherine Allen Smith is Assistant Professor of History, University of Puget Sound.

This book demonstrates that monastic preaching was a diverse activity which included preaching by monks, nuns and heretics. The study offers a preliminary step in understanding how preaching shaped monastic identity in the Middle Ages.

Aelred (1110–1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13–16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks. This volume contains the second half of Aelred's ninety-eight liturgical sermons from the Reading-Cluny collection, Sermons 134 through 182, as well as Aelred's sermon for the translation of Saint Edward the Confessor in 1163, from the critical edition by Peter Jackson first published in Cistercian Studies Quarterly. For the most part, the collection follows the liturgical year; this volume begins with a sermon for the birth of John the Baptist and ends with three sermons for the feast of All Saints. It contains sixteen Marian sermons as well as a sermon for the birth of Saint Katherine and a sermon for nuns.

The third Morton W. Bloomfield Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 1993.

This last small group of Bernard's sermons to be published in translation by Cistercian Publications rightly goes by the title De varii in the critical edition. While most of them treat feasts on the church calendar, they do so in a somewhat hit-or-miss fashion. Three sermons also deal with God's will, God's mercies, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Two sermons for the feast of Saint Victor are a response to a request to Bernard from the monks of Montiéramey; the Bollandist Life of Saint Victor appears here as a complement to those sermons. Besides the nine sermons normally assigned to the De varii, this volume also includes a sermon on the feast of Saint Benedict that was recently added to the collection in Sources Chrétiennes. The survival of this loose assemblage of sermons outside of the organized collections of Bernard's sermons provides a reminder of Bernard as preacher and writer, able despite all his other activities to turn his hand to preaching when called upon. While they treat of disparate themes, they allow us to encounter the quintessential Bernard-speaking of the life of desire, the true meaning of holiness, and the awakening of the spiritual senses in the search for God.