St. AEthelwold (904/9 -984), abbot of Abingdon and bishop of Winchester, made the first translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict into English (or, indeed, into any vernacular language) as part of the tenth-century English Benedictine Reform. This movement dramatically affected the trajectory of religious life in early medieval England and influenced the ways in which secular power was conceived and wielded in the kingdom. AEthelwold's translation into Old English reworks Benedict's Latin text through numerous silent additions, omissions, and instances of explanatory material, revealing an ...
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Useful Servanthood introduces English-speaking readers to Abba Ammonas, disciple and successor of Saint Antony of the Desert and a prominent figure of fourth-century Egyptian monasticism. As a director of souls, Ammonas's approach to spiritual formation was a creative example of the spiritual gift of discernment. By examining Ammonas's writings and his ecclesial and political milieus, Dr. McNary-Zak shows how discernment functioned both in the abba-disciple relationship of the desert monks and in the life of the wider Christian community. Thus, Ammonas serves as a model for spiritual...
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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 to its most typical expressions as they are lived among Cistercian mystics, with reference also to other Christian men and women. Olivera explores the rich testimony of the monks of the twelfth century as well as the lesser-known nuns and holy women of the thirteenth century.

T...
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The pearlers we meet in this book were early monks of Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Persia (Iran), They saw themselves as pearl-divers and pearl-merchants searching, through asceticism and prayer, for the precious pearls of mystical experience. Their quest led them into the wilderness, to a state of silent solitude in remote caves and hermitages. Working from Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum and the Vatican Library, and from the Greek monastery of Saint Catherine in the wilderness of Sinai and the Coptic monastery of the Syrians (Der es-Suriani) in the Egyptian desert, Brian E. Col...
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