| Date | Author | Title | Source | Quotation by Merton |
| 1939/10/00 | Thomas Aquinas | De Ente et Essentia |
Ltrs: RtoJ p. 151
| One of the most extraordinarily difficult things I have ever tried to do is understand St. Thomas' De Ente et Essentia. But it's sure fine when I can manage to make something of it. |
| 1939/11/02 | Thomas Aquinas | De Ente et Essentia |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 84
| The value of the distinction in De Ente et Essentia, cap. II, where Plato's separate forms are attacked and disposed of, I think, conclusively. At any rate it appears that way to me, although I do not follow the whole thing as clearly as I might. Distinction between a metaphysical and a logical definition. First and second intention. The first, metaphysical, deals with things as they are, in fact: the second, logical, treats them as they are, abstractly, in the mind. In other words, a metaphysical definition is stated in terms of act and potency and a logical definition in terms ofgenus and species, which are second intentions. They are the means of understanding things but not the things we understand. |
| 1940/01/04 | Henry Osborn Taylor | Medieval Mind: A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 122
| A New Year-it feels like a New Year: a new decade. In his book about The Medieval Mind [Note 27: Henry Osborn Taylor (1856-1941), The Medieval Mind: A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1911).] which I have been reading, Henry Osborn Taylor can tolerate practically everything in a Christian philosopher except the interest in numbers. Augustine, fascinated by the symbolic meaning of numbers, drives Taylor wild. Alcuin, or someone else, following after him, drivesTaylor crazy again. You could collect book-review blurbs about it: preoccupation over numbers gives us passages which represent, says Taylor, "Augustine at his worst." etc. |
| 1940/05/21 | Francis, Saint | little flowers of St. Francis. The mirror of perfection. The life of St. Francis |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 220
| Most of the time wrote and wrote: a Journal, longhand, in a ledger. A novel that has perplexed three publishers without any result. And also I read. Pascal, The Little Flowers and Rule of Saint Francis; Lorca; Rilke; Imitation of Christ; Saint John of the Cross and also William Saroyan, when I was too tired to read the hard stuff. |
| 1940/05/21 | Thomas a Kempis | Imitation of Christ |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 220
| Most of the time wrote and wrote: a Journal, longhand, in a ledger. A novel that has perplexed three publishers without any result. And also I read. Pascal, The Little Flowers and Rule of Saint Francis; Lorca; Rilke; Imitation of Christ; Saint John of the Cross and also William Saroyan, when I was too tired to read the hard stuff. |
| 1940/10/21 | Bonaventura | Commentarius in secundum librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 240-41
| [After several quotations from S.Bonaventura commentaria in librum secuncum sententiarum] Visio beatifica: the two notions are inseparable: Saint Thomas places the emphasis on visio; Saint Bonaventure on beatifica. The creation, exemplarism, and the Word-according to Saint Bonaventure. For Saint Thomas, creation less active than as conceived by Scotus. Creative power inseparable from God's essence: an aspect of it. For Duns Scotus, a free act. For [William] Occam a completely free act, so free it can be misinterpreted as arbitrary. For Saint Bonaventure - the Divine mind contains not so much static Platonic archetypes as activesignificationes of all things. |
| 1940/10/26 | | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 243
| read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight again today and it is one of the best books in the world, the gayest and the most healthy. Men in my class, realizing confusedly in an exam that it had so much more value than Beowulf, and was therefore truer in an ideal sense, groping for an explanation of this experience, could only catch on to the one criterion they knew, and described it as if it were truer in the literal sense, andmore naturalistic and realistic... But even better than Sir Gawain is the Book of Tobias: these two are, at present, my two favorite stories, but the Book of Tobias leaves me, every time, breathless, with all the depth of its symbols and analogies. |
| 1940/11/02 | Bonaventura | Commentarius in secundum librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 247-48
| "Infinitum dicitur dupliciter, scilicet per privationem perfectionis; et sic materia dicitur infinita, et talis infiniti non est finire, sed potius finiri indiget, secundum quod est possible. Alio modo infinitum dicitur per privationem limitationis; et quod sic infinitum est, proprie habet finire quoniam ultra ipsum, cum non sit maius cogitare, non contingit aliquid appetere. Unde talis infinitas convenit ultimo fini, quae maxime habet finiendi rationem." ["Infinity is understood in two ways. First, through the privation of perfection. In this way, matter is called infinite, and of such infinity there is no end, since it is lacking an end, being only possibility. Secondly, infinity is understood as the privation of limitation; what is thus considered infinite, is already completed, since there is nothing beyond it. Since nothing greater can be thought of, it does not desire anything beyond it. It is this kind of infinity that is proper to the ultimate end, which has the greatest power to motivate."] Saint Bonaventure I. Sent. I. III.I. a3. |
| 1941/01/16 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Proslogion |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 291-295
| [Eleven quotations of Saint Anselm Proslogion Cap. I, c. 226-236] d.d. januari 14-16, 1941 |
| 1941/02/11 | Bonaventura | Itineris Mentis in Deum |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 307
| Long quotation of S. Bonaventura Itineris Mentis in Deo. Cap. II.7. |
| 1941/03/11 | Bonaventura | Itineris Mentis in Deum |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 320-21
| Long quotations from S. Bonaventura Itin. Ment. in Deum. Cap III. |
| 1941/03/26 | Bonaventura | Commentarius in secundum librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 328
| Saint Bonaventure on the problem of the relation of the intellect, memory and will, to the substance of the soul. Are they three separate substances, of which the soul is made up? Can that be? No. Are they three accidents of one substance as Saint Thomas thinks? No. When he says they are accidents, he has to immediately qualify them as accidents in no ordinary sense, because the substance of the soul cannot be considered apart from them. Hereafter two quotations from I. Sent. 3.2. 1.3. Concl. T-I. p.86. and II. Sent. 21.1.2.1. ad 8th T.II. p.562. |
| 1941/04/08 | Thomas a Kempis | Imitation of Christ |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 337
| And they must; that is part of His kindness: for if church windows and psalms and hymns always filled us, every time, with the same consolation, the deception, then, would be real and terrible: for then we should mistake them for God, and turn to them from Him, just as we are apt to turn to human love, from His love, and be deceived in that, also. "I would not have any such consolation as robbeth me of compunction; nor do I wish to have such contemplation as leadeth to pride. For all that is high is not holy; nor is every pleasant thing good; nor every desire pure; nor is everything that is dear to us pleasing to God." Imitation of Christ, 2. 70. |
| 1941/04/18 | Etienne Gilson | Spirit of Medieval Philosophy |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 356
| Leaving Gethsemani was very sad....I went to the Cathedral [of Louisville], then to the Public Library: there I read a chapter-the one on Free Will-in Gilson's Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. In the Public Library I didn't even feel like reading any of Evelyn Waugh's fine travel book They Were Still Dancing which I read between trains there before. |
| 1941/05/09 | P. Mandonnet | Dante le Theologien. Introduction à l'intelligence de la Vie, des Oevres et de l'Art de Dante Alighieri |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 364
| Then I was less happy reading Mandonnet's "Dante le Theologien." It makes you slightly unhappy to read a guy want to write in such a way about Dante and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and making so many smug statements about Saint Thomas being the Truth Itself; and if every line of Dante is not based on Saint Thomas, the only reason is he was not able to get hold of enough of Saint Thomas' books, and had to be content with theories from someone else |
| 1941/05/14 | Etienne Gilson | Spirit of Medieval Philosophy |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 366
| An argument I had with Bill Fineran in the Gold Rail Bar, in 1936; I was attacking the Church, and said the existence of God couldn't be proved at all. An extreme position, I took. But I had been reading Gilson's Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, without understanding it very well. I had heard, from that, of Saint Bernard; and mentioned him, but Fineran hadn't heard of him. |
| 1941/06/21 | George Gordon Coulton | From Saint Francis to Dante |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 376
| I just refrained from heaving out the window the only book I've tried to read in weeks except stuff about Dante, Coulton's From Saint Francis to Dante. It contained some fine material, all drowned in Coulton's opinions-argument after argument to vindicate his Victorian optimism, his love of moderate progress, etc. and his belief that asceticism is simply impossible and that saints are really only gentlemen, saints in a nice dull way, not in a mad crazy 13th century way. |
| 1941/10/10 | | Mabinogion |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 435
| What is being talked about in the Mabinogion is more like Homer than Keats or Hugo, and therefore it is Romantic in a very different sense from Endymion. It has a sense of desolation, but desolation like that of the Old Testament prophets. It is the Religious desolation of real myth, and experience, and not the sentimental desolation of a fake myth and a vicarious experience-which is all the regular romantics, mostly, achieved. |
| 1941/11/27 | Etienne Gilson | Spirit of Medieval Philosophy |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 455
| I spent maybe the whole afternoon writing a letter to Aldous Huxley and when I was finished I thought "who am I to be telling this guy about mysticism" and now I remember that until I read his Ends and Means just about four years ago, I hadn't known a thing about mysticism, not even the word. The part he played in my conversion, by that book, was quite great. Just how great a part a book can play in a conversion is questionable: several books figured in mine. Gilson's Spirit of Medieval Philosophy was the first and from it more than any other book I learned a healthy respect for Catholicism. Then Ends and Means from which I learned to respect mysticism. Maritain's Art and Scholasticism was another-and Blake's poems; maybe Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism although I read precious little of it. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist got me fascinated in Catholic sermons (!) What horrified him began to appeal to me! It seemed quite sane. Finally, G. F. Lahey's life of G. M. Hopkins. |
| 1941/11/27 | Jacques Maritain | Art and Scholasticism |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 455
| I spent maybe the whole afternoon writing a letter to Aldous Huxley and when I was finished I thought "who am I to be telling this guy about mysticism" and now I remember that until I read his Ends and Means just about four years ago, I hadn't known a thing about mysticism, not even the word. The part he played in my conversion, by that book, was quite great. Just how great a part a book can play in a conversion is questionable: several books figured in mine. Gilson's Spirit of Medieval Philosophy was the first and from it more than any other book I learned a healthy respect for Catholicism. Then Ends and Means from which I learned to respect mysticism. Maritain's Art and Scholasticism was another-and Blake's poems; maybe Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism although I read precious little of it. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist got me fascinated in Catholic sermons (!) What horrified him began to appeal to me! It seemed quite sane. Finally, G. F. Lahey's life of G. M. Hopkins. |
| 1945/19/27 | Jan Ruusbroec | Oeuvres de Ruysbroeck l'admirable / Jan van Ruusbroec ; trad. du flamand par les Benedictins de Saint-Paul de Wisques par Ernest Hello |
Ltrs: RtoJ p. 20
| I read much Duns Scotus, who when it comes to psychology, at any rate, fills in certain big gaps that leave you unsatisfied with St. Thomas. You would like very much John Ruysbroeck, "the admirabl""”and if you see any extra copies floating around a bookstore, tell them to send them here, with a bill, and we will give them its weight in gold, as we have practically nothing. |
| 1946/10/00 | Jan Ruusbroec | Oeuvres de Ruysbroeck l'admirable / Jan van Ruusbroec ; trad. du flamand par les Benedictins de Saint-Paul de Wisques par Ernest Hello |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 18
| Father Timothy [Vander Vennet] remarked to us, in the course of a philosophy class, how much Reverend Father seems to enjoy the Lenten reading and indeed he does. At that time he always comes to the Scriptorium and reads with the community; he always seems extremely interested and intent on what he is doing. The last fifteen minutes, as the Usages permit, he devotes to prayer in the Church. He likes Father [Frederick William] Faber: other books I remember him recommending to me are: Pseudo-Dionysius, the Divine Names"”of course all of St. Bernard-Walter (?) on the Psalms (in Sermon) and, when I told him about Ruysbroeck (in the French of E. Hello) he was very interested and got the book, which he liked very much. |
| 1946/12/10 | Johannes Duns Scotus | Opus Oxoniense |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 31
| I have been reading Duns Scotus's Oxoniense III, distinction 18, on Christ's will and His love. Scotus is really simple once you get through the barricade of distinctions that are so hard to understand. His underlying thought is beautiful, coherent, and he is always working for simplicity, elimination of non-essentials. |
| 1947/03/10 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 42
| Tomorrow I begin the retreat. Yesterday I read a couple of chapters of The Cloud of Unknowing. Every time I pick up anything like that-including especially St. John of the Cross, I feel like the three wise men when they came out of Jerusalem and once more saw the star. |
| 1947/05/00 | Jan Ruusbroec | Oeuvres de Ruysbroeck l'admirable / Jan van Ruusbroec ; trad. du flamand par les Benedictins de Saint-Paul de Wisques par Ernest Hello |
Ltrs: RtoJ p. 170
| The autobiography [The Seven Storey Mountain] comes along slow. Haven't seen page proofs. Bob Giroux must be very busy. I was reading T. S. Eliot"”"East Coker," etc. & this time I liked him a lot. I got those books by Ruysbroeck"”in French. He is wonderful. I'd like to do an edition of him for N. Directions. As it is I am going to do John of the Cross' Dark Night for them in English & Spanish with notes"”using Peers' translation & not doing one of my own. Also I am doing a book of more or less disconnected "thoughts" & aphorisms [Seeds of Contemplation] about the interior life also for N. Directions. |
| 1947/10/26 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 128
| The only thing that gave me any relief today was when I looked in The Cloud of Unknowing for a moment at the chapter on the "lump" theory of the interior life (c. 36?), in other words, vague intuitions left without analysis-"sin"-"God"- all I can do today. |
| 1947/11/06 | Deodat Basly, de | Deux grandes ecoles catholiques de B. Duns Scot et de S. Thomas |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 130
| The last two days or so I have been reading Deodat de Basly [Les deux grandes ecoles catholiques de B. Duns Scot et de S. Thomas (Paris, 1906)] and not sure whether I like it, and I was going to toss him away, but the texts from Scotus in the footnotes prevented me. Even if he is an enthusiast and gets too excited and as shrill as Fr. [Frederic William] Faber in spots [Growth in Holiness, 1854], yet I like him for the sake of the Scotus. And God comes and dwells in me there in the sun, and I look at the woods and everything obscurely begins to sing with a vivid silence, with the deep energy of absorption His love brings. |
| 1947/11/06 | Frederick William Faber | Growth in Holiness |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 130
| The last two days or so I have been reading Deodat de Basly [Les deux grandes ecoles catholiques de B. Duns Scot et de S. Thomas (Paris, 1906)] and not sure whether I like it, and I was going to toss him away, but the texts from Scotus in the footnotes prevented me. Even if he is an enthusiast and gets too excited and as shrill as Fr. [Frederic William] Faber in spots [Growth in Holiness, 1854], yet I like him for the sake of the Scotus. And God comes and dwells in me there in the sun, and I look at the woods and everything obscurely begins to sing with a vivid silence, with the deep energy of absorption His love brings. |
| 1947/11/10 | Johannes Duns Scotus | Opus Oxoniense |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 131
| For the first time I really saw into something of the import of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity in lines from the4th C.[hapter] of the Prologue of the Oxoniense, on the end of theology. How is the knowledge of the Trinity practical, i.e. how does it serve to further our love, our union by love with God? |
| 1947/12/16 | Johannes Duns Scotus | Reportationes Parisiensis / o.f.m. |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 146
| Reading Duns Scotus' Reportationes III on the Incarnation. |
| 1948/02/22 | Jean Berthold Mahan | Ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, des origines au milieu du XIIIe siecle (1098-1265) |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 172
| I looked at the new history by Jean Berthold Mahan [L'Ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle (1098-1265). Paris, 1945], who was killed fighting in Italy in 1944. It is very business like and looks tremendously solid. I felt flattered that this extremely capable historian belonged to my own generation (born in 1911 in Paris). And also it struck me: these people with their minds and their appetite for structure and solidity, they find things that satisfy them in twelfth century Cîteaux. [Etienne] Gilson, too. Henri Pirenne, too. And when I see Cîteaux as they saw it, I begin to find out something else about the way God's love works in the world. |
| 1948/03/04 | Marbodus Redonensis | Opuscula |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 175
| Yesterday I discovered that there were marvelous poets in the 12th century. I never knew it except by vague hearsay. But for the first time I read Marbod of Rennes and he is wonderful. Such skill! What he can do with meters and rhymes. He is very slick and very sure of himself and his poetry is above all alive. It is just as much a living medium as classical Latin and somehow younger than classical Latin. Plenty of delicacy and energy at the same time. Serious in such a way that he is as stimulating as if he were being funny, and his poems make you dance and laugh and make you very happy. |
| 1948/09/20 | Bonaventura | Itinerarium |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 233
| Day and night I think about St. Francis and about poverty as I re-read the seventh chapter of St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium. |
| 1949/04/14 | Johannes Tauler | Sermons de Tauler : traduction sur les plus anciens manuscrits allemands / par les RR. PP. Hugueny, Thery, O. P. et A. L. Corin |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 302
| There are also a lot of good things in [Johannes] Tauler whom I like very much-when he is explained by notes like Fr. Hugeny's [Sermons de Tauler, 3 volumes, Paris, 1927-35]. |
| 1949/05/13 | William of St. Thierry | Golden Epistle |
Ltrs: RtoJ p. 192
| I am busy trying to learn how to say Mass. My health is all right, except that I have a vile cold at the moment. That poor book is simply on the shelf until after our centenary. I get many little errands to do. A Benedictine in Belgium now has me checking variants in our manuscript of William of St. Thierry's Golden Epistle. "Do unto others "¦" I cannot refuse these services. Besides, I have the example of your devoted care in sending me copies of so many valuable notes. |
| 1949/07/21 | Johannes Tauler | Sermons de Tauler : traduction sur les plus anciens manuscrits allemands / par les RR. PP. Hugueny, Thery, O. P. et A. L. Corin |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 339-40
| I have found many good things in Hugeny's Theological Introduction to his translation of Tauler [Sermons de Tauler, 3 volumes]. He is especially good on the psychological factors in contemplation and on natural contemplation. I have never read anything so clear and so sensible on the subject. At the center of contemplation is this complete, global comprehension of a truth, not in its details but in its wholeness, not as an abstract matter of speculation, but apprehended in all that appeals to our affective powers so that it is appreciated and prized and savored. |
| 1949/12/30 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 390
| I like Kenneth Patchen's Dark Kingdom, but it does not do anything beyond interesting the surface of my mind. It does not make a deep impression and it cannot because it is only poetry. The only books that move me deeply are the Bible, St. John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing, and a few others like that: Tauler, St. Augustine-parts of St. Bernard-St. Gregory of Nyssa. |
| 1950/01/21 | Bernardus of Clairvaux | Sermones de Diversis |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 401
| St. Bernard's Sermon 110, De Diversis, which I stumbled on just now by accident when I set out to look for the Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of November, is an interesting commentary on La Mort de Jean Madec. He laments the poverty of man. We are so indigent, we even need words. (Consequence: the more words we need, the greater our poverty.) We need them not only to communicate with others, but also with ourselves. For we are not ourselves. We are divided, exiled from ourselves. We have to communicate with the self from which we are separated. |
| 1950/03/01 | | Song of Roland |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 413
| So [Book of] Josue is my favorite epic. I like it better than The Iliad, infinitely better than Virgil or the Song of Roland. It is a clean book, full of asceticism. |
| 1950/04/22 | Jean Leclercq o.s.b. | St. Bernard mystique |
Ltrs: SofC p. 20
| That is why I feel that your works are so tremendously helpful, dear Father. Your St. Bernard Mystique is altogether admirable because, while being simple and fluent, it communicates to the reader a real appreciation of St. Bernard's spirituality. You are wrong to consider your treatment of St. Bernard superficial. It is indeed addressed to the general reader but for all that it is profound and all-embracing, and far more valuable than the rather technical study which I undertook for the Collectanea and which, as you will see on reading it, was beyond my capacities as a theologian. The earlier sections especially, in my study, contain many glaring and silly errors"”or at least things are often very badly expressed there. If I write a book on the saint I shall try to redeem myself, without entering into the technical discussions that occupy M. Gilson in his rather brilliant study [The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard]. But there again, a book of your type is far more helpful. |
| 1956/09/01 | Helen Waddell | Wandering Scholars |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 77
| The Cistercians of the 12th. century were forbidden to write not only rhyming verse, as Helen Waddell records, but any verse. And then, she has Serlo of Wilton always in a cowl, not only after his conversion, but before. [Note 9: Serlo of Wilton (1110?-1181) was a writer of erotic verse who later entered the monastic life, eventually becoming abbot of the monastery of L'Aumone near Chartres, France.] |
| 1958/01/14 | Miguel Covarrubias | Indian Art of Mexico and Central America |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 155
| I have [Miguel] Covarrubias' new book [Indian Art of Mexico and Central America] from the Louisville library. Great Olmec heads in the jungle-this not so interesting. Football players with helmets. But the fantastic little pre-classical figurines of clay. A lovely slate mask of Teotihuacan style-the style I like best. Classical and pure and full of spiritual light. (Toltecs) |
| 1958/04/04 | Jean Leclercq o.s.b. | Amour des lettres et le desier de Dieu. Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du moyen age |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 188
| I had been reading Dom Leclercq's new book L'Amour des lettres et le Desir de Dieu which is very fine, and I spent most of the time in a meditatio of psalms 85 and 86 saying them over and over by heart in the depths of my being. These were the ones I have recited scores of times before without ever seeing them. How long it takes us to discover some of the psalms. |
| 1959/12/02 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 350
| Knowles on the English mystics. How much I love the 14th. century and how truly it is my own century, the one whose spirit is most mine, in many ways, or so I like to think (Rolle-The Cloud of Unknowing-etc.). |
| 1959/12/02 | David Knowles o.s.b. | Religious Orders in England |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 350
| Knowles on the English mystics. How much I love the 14th. century and how truly it is my own century, the one whose spirit is most mine, in many ways, or so I like to think (Rolle-The Cloud of Unknowing-etc.). |
| 1960/01/15 | Nicholas of Narbonne | Ignea Sagitta (The Flaming Arrow) |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 369
| Getting back read the Ignea Sagitta [The Fiery Arrow] again-in view of article on Carmelite ideal. It is clear to me that I have simply been fooling myself and looking for consolation and recreation in sensual and secular ways which is all very foolish. This document may be extreme, but it is passionately sincere and always moves me to compunction. |
| 1960/08/05 | Giulio Basetti-Sani | Mohammed et Saint-Francois |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 26
| A passionate and convinced book by a Franciscan [Giulio Basetti-Sani, Mohammed et Saint François, Ottawa, 1959] on Mohammed and St. Francis, so far a survey of the incapacity for dialogue between Christians and Moslems - and pointing to the need for it. |
| 1960/08/10 | Giulio Basetti-Sani | Mohammed et Saint-Francois |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 30
| L. Massignon believes that the "nocturnal ascension" of Mohammed brought him to the threshold of mysticism but he would go no further, and that therefore mysticism was barred, under pain of death to all other Moslems. (Though some got away with it.) I think Fr. Giulio Basetti-Sani is a little romantic when he asserts that St. Francis, having offered himself for martyrdom at Damiette, became a substitute for Mohammed and went the whole way on Mount Alvernia. Isn't this a bit arbitrary? |
| 1960/09/04 | Giulio Basetti-Sani | Mohammed et Saint-Francois |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 279
| As you know, Herbert has been here. He was telling me that you were going to Moscow, etc., and I did not write to you. I hope your trip was not too wearisome, but very fruitful. I have read the fascinating book on St. Francis and Mohammed [by Fr. Giulio Bassetti-Sani, published in Montreal in French]. It is very clear, very original. We need books like this and I found some magnificent sentences from the Koran. |
| 1960/09/16 | Karl Barth | Christmas / translated by Berhard Citron |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 49
| Opposites: Karl Barth and Gemistus Pletho.15 I do not mean to be facetious. Gemistus (who attended the Council of Florence, from Greece) also wanted to revive the Olympian gods-who anticipated the Positivist Pantheon of A[uguste] Comte, who will doubtless be loved by magicians since he sounds like on"¦Pitiful, symptomatic, symbolic figure of the humanist renaissance. But Barth with his earnest, reforming Christianity, and his insistence that the Incarnation makes it impossible to invent even a Christian god-or to reach into "the infinit" to select our own concepts (idols) of them. Two extremes, but Barth is salutary. There is so much truth there, so much of the Gospel. |
| 1961/04/02 | Johan Huizinga | Waning of the Middle Ages |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 105
| "There is not a more dangerous tendency in history than that of representing the past as if it were a rational whole and dictated by clearly defined interests," says [J.] Huizinga. What about the present? An even greater error. |
| 1961/04/07 | Nicolas of Cusa | Vision of God |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 106
| Trying to finish Nicholas of Cusa's Vision of God, but he verbalizes too much. Influence of Augustine. |
| 1961/05/07 | Jean Baptiste Porion | Hadewijch d'Anvers. Ecrits mystiques des Beguines |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 117
| Have finally after five - no, seven, years got down to work on the remarkable little book of Dom [Jean-Baptiste] Porion on Hadewijch. The introduction is full of information and of sagacious remarks. A really new and clear perspective. I am more and more fascinated by the mysticism of the late Middle Ages, with its defects and its qualities. The whole scope of the vast movement going back to the Cistercians, Joachim [de Fiore], St. Francis, the Beguines, the Cathari, the Spirituals, assimilated fully by the Church in the great Rhenish mystics"¦We have not even begun to understand all this, or appreciate its purport. |
| 1961/05/13 | Titus Burckhardt | An introduction to Sufi doctrine |
Ltrs: HGL p. 49
| After reading Burckhardt, I have glimpsed many interesting relationships and problems. The question of Tawhid is of course central and I think that the closest to Islam among the Christian mystics on this point are the Rhenish and Flemish mystics of the fourteenth century, including Meister Eckhart, who was greatly influenced by Avicenna. The culmination of their mysticism is in the "Godhead" beyond "God" (a distinction which caused trouble to many theologians in the Middle Ages and is not accepted without qualifications) but at any rate it is an ascent to perfect and ultimate unity beyond the triad in unity of the Persons. This is a subtle and difficult theology and I don't venture into it without necessity "¦ One of the chapters I like best in Burckhardt is that on the renewal of creation at each instant, and also that on the dhikr which resembles the techniques of the Greek monks, and I am familiar with its use, for it brings one close to God. |
| 1961/05/15 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Ltrs: HGL p. 341-42
| I have heard of The Mirror of Simple Souls. It is attributed to Marguerite Porete, an unfortunate Beguine who was burned for some very innocent statements. I would like to get to know this book. Which is the new Penguin version of the Cloud? I have read one that was printed in America by a man called Progoff. If this is not the one that has been put out by Penguin, I should be delighted to see it. |
| 1961/06/10 | J. B. Mahn | Pape Benoit XII et les cisterciens |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 125-26
| Interesting book of J. B. Mahn on Benedict XII and the Cistercians. And the question of studies (The College of St. Bernard was not a cause of the decline or even one of its symptoms). Yet one wonders at all the expense and effort put into this, and for what? Perhaps it contributed to the general stultification of the Order, or perhaps on the contrary it was necessary to hold the Order together in the lean years"¦Two aspects of inertia. From one point of view it can be regarded as stability. Yet it would perhaps be a myth to say the Order was ever really inert. There must have been also a real underlying faithfulness, as in the Benedictines also, witness Knowles' sketch of Thomas de la Mare, abbot of St. Alban's |
| 1961/08/19 | | Theologica Germanica |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 153
| The library has bought a copy of the Theologia Germanica, which I began today. |
| 1961/08/26 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 156
| Finally, three wonderful chapters in the Cloud of Unknowing on Martha and Mary, ending with this, which is everything: "Therefore you who set out to be a contemplative as Mary was, choose rather to be humbled by the unimaginable greatness and incomparable perfection of God than by your own wretchedness and imperfections. In other words look more to God's worthiness than to your own worthlessness. To the perfectly humble there is nothing lacking, spiritual or physical. For they have God in whom is all abundance and whoever has Him needs nothing else in this life." (ch. 23) |
| 1961/08/27 | | Theologica Germanica |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 157
| Theologia Germanica on the heaven and hell we carry about within us, and how it is good to experience within one or the other of these, for there one is in God's hands. But when one has neither a heaven or hell, one is alone in indifference of the lessons of the II Nocturn today (IV Sun. of Aug.) from St. Gregory. |
| 1961/10/03 | Henry Corbin | Imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d'Ibn 'Arabi |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 167
| The Corbin book on Ibn al' Arabi is in ways tremendous. The plays and changes on the theme of the divine compassion, on the "sympathy" of the spirit and God, on God seeking to manifest Himself in the spirit that responds to a "Nam" which it is meant to embody in its life. Compare the medieval Cistercians with their births of Christ in us. Need for compassion and tenderness towards the infinite fragility of the divine life in us which is real and not an idea or an image (as is our conception of God as "object"). This could and should lead me more and more to a new turning, a new attitude, an inner change, a liberation from all futile concerns to let Him emerge in His mystery and compassion within me. Yielding to the inexplicable demand of His presence in weakness. To be very careful and timid now about those innumerable self-affirmations that tend to destroy His weakness and littleness in me-fortunately indestructible. This mustard seed, His kingdom in me. The struggle of the very small to survive and change my self-affirmations. |
| 1961/10/23 | Julian of Norwich | Revelations of Divine Love |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 173
| Etta Gullick-along with wonderful letters from the Adriatic, for she was at Istanbul to see the Patriarch and at Patmos also-sent Watkin's book Poets and Mystics. She wants me to read especially the Essay on [Augustine] Baker. I have begun instead with Julian of Norwich, because all this year I have been more and more attracted to her. Now the immense wonder of her is opening up fully. The doctrine on sin. The parable of the servant. Tremendous! How great a joy and gift! |
| 1961/12/04 | Guigo II | Scala Claustrarum |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 184
| Reading Clement still, and the Scala Claustralium (for the novices) and began today The Causes of World War III by C. Wright Mills. Clear and forthright, one of the best of the good books on peace that are being written, for this country truly has a conscience and I am inspired by the fact. Life of Fr. Joseph Metzger, executed by the Nazis for his peace efforts. It is deeply moving, and suggests many reflections, as I myself may end up that way, and I can think of worse ways of dying. I do not account myself worthy of such a death. |
| 1962/03/30 | Paul Molinari | Julian of Norwich: The Teachings of a Fourteenth Century Mystic |
Ltrs: HGL p. 351
| "¦ Where did I see, the other day, something about a new edition of The Mirror of Simple Souls, and definitely ascribed to Marguerite Porete? Perhaps it was somewhere in the new Molinari book on Julian of Norwich, which I have only begun and then had to set aside for more urgent matters. If there is a new one out, I will wait to get that instead of borrowing the Orchard edition. But I could also probably get an old copy of that from Tom Burns at Burns Oates. |
| 1962/04/00 | Alacantara Mens | Oorsprong en betekenis van de Nederlandse begijnen - en begardenbeweging. Vergelijkende studie XII-XIII eeuw |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 49
| When Rev. Dom Edward was here I did indeed speak to him about my interest in the Beguines in the Low Countries and their relation both to the Cistercians on the one hand and to the Rhenish mystics on the other. He advised me to write to you, but as I had little or no time to pursue the study further, I failed to do so. But now it is a great pleasure to receive your letter, which came several weeks ago, I regret to say"”I am behind with all my correspondenc"”and then the splendid book of Fr. Mens on the Beguines. I have never tried reading a whole book in Flemish before and this will be a kind of challenge. But I am most grateful for your gift and deeply appreciate it "¦ |
| 1962/05/10 | Mircea Eliade | Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 218
| Fascinating books by Mircea Eliade. Finished (two days ago) Image and Symbol and began today the new one, Forge and Crucible, about alchemists. Opening up the meaning of myth in primitive technology which is always mystical. Why engineers are happy without religion? |
| 1962/05/19 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 219
| Rereading The Cloud-working over the essay on the English Mystics. Why? I hardly know. At first I thought it was for the Reader. (Much trouble with the Reader.) "Instead you should sit completely still as though you had fallen asleep, worn out by crying and sunken in your sorrow. This is true sorrow. This is perfect sorrow. To achieve this sorrow is a very great thing." p 161, Cloud of Unknowing |
| 1962/09/29 | John of Salesbury | Metalogicon |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 251-52
| This morning, in John of Salisbury, ran across a quote from the Georgics which has entered into the deepest part of my being since I learned it thirty years ago at Oakham-and was moved by it then, studying I think one June morning before the Higher Cert[ificate Examination], by a brook behind Catmose House. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. [Happy is he who can have known the causes of things, and has placed under his feet all fears and inexorable fate and the rumbling of greedy Acheron.] Inexhaustible literary, spiritual, moral beauty of these lines: the classic ideal of wisdom. What a gift to have lived and to have received this, as though a sacrament, and to be in communion of light and joy with the whole of my civilization-and my Church. This is indestructible. Acheron (whose strepitus [rumbling] was never so full of ominous rumblings) has nothing to say about it. And John of S[alisbury]-glossing this with words about faith as a way to the highest truth, adds: Impossibile est ut diligat et colat vanitatem quisquis et toto corde quaerit et amplectionem veritatis. [Merton's emphasis] [It is quite impossible for someone to seek and foster vanity and wholeheartedly at the same time seek also for the embrace of truth.] |
| 1962/10/07 | Joseph Marie Parent | Doctrine de la Creation dans l'Ecole de Chartres. Etude et textes |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 254
| A book has come (from the U. of Minnesota library, borrowed for me by Ray Livingston) La Doctrine de la Creation dans l'Ecole de Chartres. I am really fascinated by these people. I have been trying to read the Timaeus and find it sometimes impossible. Yet what they have made of Plato, these men of Chartres! Also reading the II Book of the Summa Contra Gentiles [St. Thomas Aquinas]. |
| 1962/10/07 | Marguerite Porete | Mirror of Simple Souls |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 254
| And the Mirror of Simple Souls which Etta Gullick sent. What a charming and wise book! Yet I think it is Marguerite Porete who wrote it, and she was burned. What sad, impossible things have happened in this holy Church! |
| 1962/10/08 | William of Conches | Moralium Dogma Philosophorum |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 254
| The Moralium Dogma Philosophorum of Wm. of Conches is an utterly delightful book. Clear, full of wisdom, full of strength. Magnificent structure of moral virtues in a unity built on justice. I think he is a great man, too long unknown. |
| 1962/10/10 | R.L. Poole | Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury's Time |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 256
| After dinner-reading about Abelard, in R. L. Poole. I have an enormous amount of sympathy and pity for Abelard. And a profound admiration for the human greatness of Heloise (not brought out in Poole, but evident in Gilson). Abelard suffered far more than Bernard ever did (if one can estimate such things!). If suffering makes the greater saints then, perhaps"¦oh, what have I nearly said! But it is true, dear diary. After all these years I have a greater liking for Abelard than for St. Bernard. I understand him better, am closer to him. His weaknesses were great, his character had terrible flaws, he was vain and impressive. He did not control his vanity as Bernard did. It ruined him. |
| 1962/10/11 | John Holberg (ed.) | Moralium dogma philosophorum |
Ltrs: SofC p. 148
| For some time I have been very interested in the 12th-century School of Chartres. The more I come to know of these Masters, the better I like them and the more I am convinced that I ought to work on them quite seriously. I have read a great deal of John of Salisbury in Migne, of course, but I am also getting into William of Conches, through the texts in Parent's book, La Doctrine de la Creation "¦ and also in Moralium Dogma (Holberg). I am acquainted with the more accessible sources, like R. L. Poole, Huizinga's "Essay on John of Salisbury," and so on. I can also get Clerval from a nearby Protestant seminary. |
| 1962/10/11 | Joseph Marie Parent | Doctrine de la Creation dans l'Ecole de Chartres. Etude et textes |
Ltrs: SofC p. 148
| For some time I have been very interested in the 12th-century School of Chartres. The more I come to know of these Masters, the better I like them and the more I am convinced that I ought to work on them quite seriously. I have read a great deal of John of Salisbury in Migne, of course, but I am also getting into William of Conches, through the texts in Parent's book, La Doctrine de la Creation "¦ and also in Moralium Dogma (Holberg). I am acquainted with the more accessible sources, like R. L. Poole, Huizinga's "Essay on John of Salisbury," and so on. I can also get Clerval from a nearby Protestant seminary. |
| 1962/10/30 | Thierry of Chartres | Hexameron |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 262
| I have been having good discussions in the evening, once a week with Dan Walsh, on the School of Chartres, using such texts as are available. And quite a few are. Wm. of Conches on the Timaeus and Boethius, Thierry of Chartres on the Hexameron, and so on. I think Wm. of Conches is a real discovery: his tremendous philosophy of nature and emphasis on secondary causes, an anticipation of Thomism. Or perhaps an inspiration of it. But more than that, his contemplative sense of esse in his doctrine on formal causality and "wisdom." |
| 1962/10/30 | William of Conches | Moralium Dogma Philosophorum |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 262
| I have been having good discussions in the evening, once a week with Dan Walsh, on the School of Chartres, using such texts as are available. And quite a few are. Wm. of Conches on the Timaeus and Boethius, Thierry of Chartres on the Hexameron, and so on. I think Wm. of Conches is a real discovery: his tremendous philosophy of nature and emphasis on secondary causes, an anticipation of Thomism. Or perhaps an inspiration of it. But more than that, his contemplative sense of esse in his doctrine on formal causality and "wisdom." |
| 1962/11/13 | William of Chonces | Philosophia Mundi |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 264
| Finishing Wm. of Conches' Philosophia Mundi [Philosophy of the World]-the plan is interesting, and having discussed the world, then man's body, then the soul, he ends with man's education. Beautiful little chapter on the Teacher. I was very moved by it. I usually ignore this element in my own vocation, but obviously I am a writer, a student and a teacher as well as a contemplative of sorts, and my solitude etc. is that of a writer and teacher, not of a pure hermit. And the great thing in my life is, or should be, love of truth. |
| 1963/03/27 | Patrick Dolan | Unity and Reform: Selected Writings of Nicholas of Cusa |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 306
| After dinner began a book on Nicholas of Cusa recently requested by the library-(Dolan, introduction and selections). He is someone to whom I am much attracted. I have only read the De Visione Dei and that only in translation, and found it dry. Nevertheless something tells me to keep trying. His manly idealism fascinates me. And there are so many conflicting judgments about him that I want to arrive at one of my own! |
| 1963/06/18 | R.W. Southern | Life of St. Anselm, Archbisshop of Canterbury |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 334
| I finished my article on St. Anselm and the ontological argument but am still reading the R. W. Southern book, which is excellent, and very interesting with all its material on Canterbury. |
| 1963/07/19 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Proslogion |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 166
| The following are the questions, with Merton's answers: 1. Name the last three books you have read. The Platform Scripture of Hui Neng, translated by Wing Tsit Chen The Proslogion by St. Anselm of Canterbury A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley 2. Name the books you are reading now. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by John Huizinga Ratio Verae Theologiae (The Real Meaning of Theology) by Erasmus The Historian and Character by David Knowles 4. Books that have influenced you. Poetic Works of William Blake Plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Sermons of Meister Eckhart De Doctrina Christiana, Confessions, and Sermons on Psalms of St. Augustine Rule of St. Benedict The Bhagavad-Gita The Imitation of Christ, etc. 5. Why have these books been an influence on you? These books and others like them have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and meaninglessness of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passivities fostered by a culture in which sales are everything. 6. Name a book everyone should read. Besides the Bible (taken for granted and not included above) and such classics as The Imitation of Christ, I would select a contemporary book which I consider to be of vital importance and which I think everyone should read at this time: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 7. Why this book? This is the most forceful statement about a crisis that is of immediate importance to every American, and indirectly affects the whole world today. It is something that people have to know about. The Negro has been trying to make himself heard: in this book he succeeds. |
| 1963/07/19 | David Knowles o.s.b. | Historian and Character and other Essays |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 166
| The following are the questions, with Merton's answers: 1. Name the last three books you have read. The Platform Scripture of Hui Neng, translated by Wing Tsit Chen The Proslogion by St. Anselm of Canterbury A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley 2. Name the books you are reading now. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by John Huizinga Ratio Verae Theologiae (The Real Meaning of Theology) by Erasmus The Historian and Character by David Knowles 4. Books that have influenced you. Poetic Works of William Blake Plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Sermons of Meister Eckhart De Doctrina Christiana, Confessions, and Sermons on Psalms of St. Augustine Rule of St. Benedict The Bhagavad-Gita The Imitation of Christ, etc. 5. Why have these books been an influence on you? These books and others like them have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and meaninglessness of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passivities fostered by a culture in which sales are everything. 6. Name a book everyone should read. Besides the Bible (taken for granted and not included above) and such classics as The Imitation of Christ, I would select a contemporary book which I consider to be of vital importance and which I think everyone should read at this time: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 7. Why this book? This is the most forceful statement about a crisis that is of immediate importance to every American, and indirectly affects the whole world today. It is something that people have to know about. The Negro has been trying to make himself heard: in this book he succeeds. |
| 1963/07/28 | R.W. Southern | Life of St. Anselm, Archbisshop of Canterbury |
Ltrs: HGL p. 361
| I have been reading a very fine book of R. W. Southern on St. Anselm. I suppose you must know Southern. I think he did a very good job. I took this occasion to get into St. Anselm a little, too. I had always been put off him by the standard philosophy textbooks, but I find him fascinating. And am reading Erasmus too, since we have his collected works in one of those photo-offset editions of the old folios. This all doesn't sound much like Canfield, does it? Well, I do have a humanist and philosophical side. And Anselm was a mystic, certainly. I don't believe in being professionally anti-intellectual, as though the mind as such were an obstacle to contemplation. I think this is a big mistake, and the effects of it are unfortunate. |
| 1963/10/17 | Zoe Oldenbourg | Massacre at Monsegur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 24
| The last time I was in Louisville to see the Doctor I got two books on the Albigensians by Zoe Oldenbourg [Destiny of Fire and Massacre at Montsegur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade]. I have just finished Massacre at Montsegur-a deeply disturbing and moving book. One could find fault with it, in details, I suppose. But what would be the point? In general it is very honest and convincing and I think serious statement about the Church and the Inquisition, made without rancor, by someone whose real love for the Cathars makes her no doubt a bit partial. Is there any getting away from the fact that the Dominicans invented the methods of the modern police state? The secret trial, with secret evidence, making it profitable for the witness to save his life by accusing as many other people (secretly) as possible-retaining his anonymity, etc. The denunciations that remain anonymous-same complaint today against the Holy Office. |
| 1963/10/17 | Zoe Oldenbourg | Massacre at Monsegur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade |
Ltrs: CforT p. 41
| I have been thinking of Toulouse, as I have come across some rather interesting books about the Albigensians (Zoe Oldenbourg). What a tormented history that country of "min" has, for that is "my" part of France. I love it still, and always shall. I still think of towns like Cordes with the greatest fascination "¦ |
| 1963/10/18 | Zoe Oldenbourg | Massacre at Monsegur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade |
Ltrs: HGL p. 363
| Have you read any of Zoe Oldenbourg's books about the Albigensians? Very moving and disturbing. She is right in many ways, yet you cannot call the Cathars "perfect Christians." I do not hesitate to add that the Inquisition is certainly no more perfectly Christian than the Cathars"”probably a lot less!! |
| 1963/10/22 | Zoe Oldenbourg | Destiny of Fire |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 25
| The book Destiny of Fire, a novel, is far more powerful and "bouleversant" ["upsetting"] than the history. A fantastic religious Eros is at work there: this is her genius. It is her own self that is in the book, the beauty and fascination of her own religious aspirations. Really, there is all this passion-and nothing much after all of God: this sounds like an invidious judgment. Yet what you have is the beauty of religious passion in people hunted to death for heresy. And I have the feeling that God is very remote from that whole war, from either side of it. What mattered were the different kinds of passion. God was gone from it. Or no? |
| 1963/10/28 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Cur Deus Homo? |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 28
| I have suddenly grasped the magnificent Chapter I.9 of Cur Deus Homo? [by St. Anselm]. Read it in the hospital and marked some of the right lines, but they had not struck deep. Here again, as in the Proslogion, Anselm's argument means little without an inner light that is spiritual rather than dialectical. Here it is a question of realizing that the Father did not drive the Son to death. Jesus was not "commanded to di" or "condemned to death" by the Father. He came into the world, was made man in order to love as man, to do all that was right. And to save His brothers. In doing "all justice," he comes to be condemned unjustly. |
| 1963/10/28 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Proslogion |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 28
| I have suddenly grasped the magnificent Chapter I.9 of Cur Deus Homo? [by St. Anselm]. Read it in the hospital and marked some of the right lines, but they had not struck deep. Here again, as in the Proslogion, Anselm's argument means little without an inner light that is spiritual rather than dialectical. Here it is a question of realizing that the Father did not drive the Son to death. Jesus was not "commanded to di" or "condemned to death" by the Father. He came into the world, was made man in order to love as man, to do all that was right. And to save His brothers. In doing "all justice," he comes to be condemned unjustly. |
| 1963/11/05 | Eadmer | Life of St. Anselm / ed. R.W. Southern |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 31
| There is a wonderful therapeutic atmosphere about Eadmer's life of Anselm [The Life of St. Anselm, ed. R. W. Southern, 1962] because of the healing, tender, "motherly" quality of Anselm's concern. The dying monk who hated him found himself "in the arms of two wolves with their teeth at his throat." It is a grotesque medieval manuscript illumination! The two human wolves are dispelled by Anselm who is called from the cloister where he was correcting books while others were at their siesta. |
| 1963/11/12 | Nicholas of Cusa | Opuscula |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 33
| On the other hand I think that reading Sartre's L'Être et le néant is going to be important for me. (However, I did not read it.) Also, translating some opuscula [short works] of Nicholas of Cusa (if I can keep at it. He gets away from me when he seems too intellectual and dry). I will not abandon translations (hope of translation) of a few letters of Anselm, and maybe the article on Grimlaicus |
| 1963/11/14 | Nicholas of Cusa | Opuscula |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 34
| Nicholas of Cusa: opening up. Magnificent discovery. I have been on to him for a while, but not realizing how much was there! |
| 1963/11/20 | Anselmus of Canterbury | De Casu Diaboli |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 36
| Began Anselm's De Casu Diaboli - not because of yesterday, but I have been interested to get to it for a long time. Very profound book on freedom, grace and sin. |
| 1963/12/01 | Anselmus of Canterbury | De Casu Diaboli |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 41
| The seventeenth chapter of De Casu Diaboli brings up a very modern question - our creativity, that is, the creative power of our liberty is perhaps, as far as we ourselves [are] concerned, a non-destructiveness. If we can accept creation we concur in creating because we have the "power" to destroy. Our power to create is a power to consent in creation, or to work in common with the creative will that transcends both our freedom and our world. Our power to destroy seems more ours (and it is so) and more of a power. What is happening now is that we concentrate more and more on the power which is a rejection. Yet paradoxically, to have the power to destroy and not destroy is to "make." In this sense, by not destroying the world we seem to be creating it. We are said to make something "cum possumus facere utnon est et non facimus" ["when we could make something not be, and we don't do it"]. |
| 1963/12/03 | Anselmus of Canterbury | De Casu Diaboli |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 42
| I finished De Casu Diaboli. If a first reading can be said to finish such a book. Must go through it again. Especially for the difference between real freedom and mere determination. Perhaps the devil's sin was after all merely to substitute (arbitrarily and out of his own will) one for the other. Freedom is God's. He wills us to share it by rectitudo-willing according to the principle that is in reality itself-but the devil willed to have it regardless of rectitudo and reality, by his own arbitrary fiat. |
| 1964/01/18 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Opera Omnia / ed. by Franciscus Salesius Schmitt o.s.b. |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 63-64
| I wonder if anyone reads the monastic letters, etc. of Abelard. They are full of fine traditional material, in the manner of Jerome, clear, precise, and among the best monastic writings of the twelfth century. I am reading them now for the course on Bernard, in connection with De Conversione. Ought to do an article on them but I don't have time. Unable to buy [Franciscus Salesius] Schmitt's edition of Anselm. We have two volumes on interlibrary loan from West Baden-I have them until Easter and went to work on some of his letters too. A question of order, and of making time. |
| 1964/01/18 | Petrus Abaelardus | Epistolae |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 63-64
| I wonder if anyone reads the monastic letters, etc. of Abelard. They are full of fine traditional material, in the manner of Jerome, clear, precise, and among the best monastic writings of the twelfth century. I am reading them now for the course on Bernard, in connection with De Conversione. Ought to do an article on them but I don't have time. Unable to buy [Franciscus Salesius] Schmitt's edition of Anselm. We have two volumes on interlibrary loan from West Baden-I have them until Easter and went to work on some of his letters too. A question of order, and of making time. |
| 1964/01/19 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Orationes et Meditationes |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 65
| Then this morning in Anselm's Meditations and Orations-I find his "Digne, certe, digne!" ["Fitting, certainly, fitting!"] (Med. 2). Anselm's meditations and prayers are musical compositions. He can use his themes without inhibition. Themes on which we are condemned to be inarticulate, for if we tried to say what he says we could not be authentic. Those forms have been worn out by tired monks and no longer say what he wanted them to say. Yet how close he comes to existentialist nausea for instance in prayer 8 (on St. John Baptist!). Yet there is always the hope, the presence of the compassionate Christ (not permitted to the existentialist!). I love Anselm. I love these prayers, though I could never attempt to use such language myself. |
| 1964/01/25 | Caesarius of Arles | Epistolae |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 67
| Still on Anselm's Letters-and now too Caesarius of Aries. |
| 1964/02/01 | Bahya ibn Pakuda | Introduction aux devoirs des coeurs / transl. André Chouraqui, 1943 |
Ltrs: HGL p. 538
| "¦ Zwi Werblowsky has sent Bahya Ibn Paquda and a couple of good books by Vajda on medieval Jewish mysticism. This is right up my alley and very helpful. I like this material very much. |
| 1964/02/13 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Opera Omnia / ed. by Franciscus Salesius Schmitt o.s.b. |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 76
| St. Anselm, to a monk-to meditate on death and then: "Ab inceptis ergo nulla lassitudine deficias, sed potius quae tibi expediunt et quae nondum es agres-sus, in spe superni auxilii pro amore beatipraemi incipias, ut ad sanctorum beatum consortium Christo ducente pervenias." ["Do not let laziness stop you from what you have begun; rather, begin doing what you need to do, and what you have not yet done, out of love for a blessed reward, and in hope of divine help, so that, with Christ as your guide, you may arrive at the blessed fellowship of the saints."] (Epistle 35.Schmitt III.143) |
| 1964/02/14 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Opera Omnia / ed. by Franciscus Salesius Schmitt o.s.b. |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 76-77
| "Adeo namque vilis mens mea quasi quadam naturali arctatur angustia bonaeque voluntatis languet imbecilitate, ut uni quamlibet parvae curae ceteris exclusis tota non sufficiat, et cuislibet oneris tentationisque gravedine victa succumbat." ["My poor mind is, as it were, shut up by some natural anguish and languishes in the weakness of good will, so that my entire mind does not suffice, all other things being neglected, even for those matters of small moment, and my mind has succumbed to the pressure of every burden and temptation."] (Anselm, Epistle 50, [Schmitt] p. 163) I feel the same "naturalis angustia" ["natural tension"], not that I am as busy as Anselm. Fasting clears the head and lessens the angustia, also brings order into one's life. |
| 1964/03/04 | Anselmus of Canterbury | Opera Omnia / ed. by Franciscus Salesius Schmitt o.s.b. |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 90
| I finished the letters of St. Anselm this morning (volumes of Schmitt to go back to West Baden). |
| 1964/03/14 | C.H. Talbot | Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth Century Recluse |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 90
| Am reading the life of Christina of Markyate (recluse near St. Albans in the twelfth century) and find it marvelous [The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth Century Recluse, 1959]. |
| 1964/05/22 | Nora Kershaw Chadwick | Age of the Saints in the Early Celtic Church |
Ltrs: HGL p. 366
| The book I have on my mind and like very much is Nora Chadwick's lectures on the Celtic Church. This is really first-rate, and especially interesting to me as I really intend now to do something on recluses and the Irish started all that, or so it seems, at least in Europe (though the ones Gregory of Tours talks of in Gaul seem to have had an independent origin??). Certainly the recluses of the English Middle Ages were very characteristic of the English Church, and I am getting back to the Ancren Riwle, Aelred's Rule for his sister, and so on. |
| 1964/05/26 | Louis Gougaud | Celtic Christianity |
Ltrs: SofC p. 217
| I have begun some work on medieval recluses, and am of course very interested in finding out more about the Irish sources of this movement on the continent. I see you quote Marianus Scotus, and there are all sorts of interesting suggestions in your book that seem to lead in the direction which interests me. I have Gougaud's Ermites et Reclus and Celtic Christianity, and have run into the standard works on recluses in England. Can you give me any other good leads for Ireland? I am especially eager to get at the poetic material in Kuno Meyer, which I have never seen before, and probably will find a thing or two there. But I would greatly appreciate if you would give me some good leads for Irish hermits and recluses and their influence on the continent. |
| 1964/05/26 | Louis Gougaud | Ermites et Reclus |
Ltrs: SofC p. 217
| I have begun some work on medieval recluses, and am of course very interested in finding out more about the Irish sources of this movement on the continent. I see you quote Marianus Scotus, and there are all sorts of interesting suggestions in your book that seem to lead in the direction which interests me. I have Gougaud's Ermites et Reclus and Celtic Christianity, and have run into the standard works on recluses in England. Can you give me any other good leads for Ireland? I am especially eager to get at the poetic material in Kuno Meyer, which I have never seen before, and probably will find a thing or two there. But I would greatly appreciate if you would give me some good leads for Irish hermits and recluses and their influence on the continent. |
| 1964/05/26 | Nora Kershaw Chadwick | Age of the Saints in the Early Celtic Church |
Ltrs: SofC p. 217
| Having just read, and greatly enjoyed, your book The Age of Saints in the EarlyCeltic Church, I am emboldened by my friend [Eleanor] S. Duckett to write you a note about it. Speaking as a monk, I can hardly say how much I have responded to your ideas and theses. As I am not enough of a scholar to find reasons why they might not be perfectly correct, I am happy to agree with you throughout. So your book has come along just when I was about to start on Celtic monasticism with my novices and students at this Abbey. I also used your Poetry and Letters in Sixth Century Gaul with them last year and will, no doubt, use it again. One of my students reviewed it also for our little magazine which perhaps you have seen. If not, please let me know and I will have a copy sent to you. The magazine is called Monastic Studies. |
| 1964/05/26 | Nora Kershaw Chadwick | Poetry and Letters in early Christian Gaul |
Ltrs: SofC p. 217
| Having just read, and greatly enjoyed, your book The Age of Saints in the EarlyCeltic Church, I am emboldened by my friend [Eleanor] S. Duckett to write you a note about it. Speaking as a monk, I can hardly say how much I have responded to your ideas and theses. As I am not enough of a scholar to find reasons why they might not be perfectly correct, I am happy to agree with you throughout. So your book has come along just when I was about to start on Celtic monasticism with my novices and students at this Abbey. I also used your Poetry and Letters in Sixth Century Gaul with them last year and will, no doubt, use it again. One of my students reviewed it also for our little magazine which perhaps you have seen. If not, please let me know and I will have a copy sent to you. The magazine is called Monastic Studies. |
| 1964/05/29 | William Johnston S.J. | Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing |
Ltrs: HGL p. 440
| Thanks for your letter of the 13th. Your project on The Cloud and Zen sounds interesting, and so, though I have made all kinds of resolutions to refuse this kind of thing, I want to make an exception and at least glance at your ms. The rest is up to the Holy Ghost: and time. I will send whatever comment is possible in the circumstances, long or short, and you will have to take your chance on it being either intelligent or idiotic. At present I am reading Fr. Enomiye Lasalle's book in German with very great interest. Naturally I enjoyed Fr. Dumoulin's book as you and he know. I wrote a rather longer and more detailed article published in a more or less unknown new magazine, and I will send it along. I felt that Fr. Dumoulin had been a little unreceptive to Hui Neng, but I think that goes naturally with his instinctive preference for Soto Zen (The Cloud, too, is more like Soto). |
| 1964/06/16 | | Teaching of Maelruain |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 114
| Read the Teaching of Maelruain (Rule of Tallaght) and some Irish poems. |
| 1964/06/17 | Auguste Jundt | Amis de Dieu au quatorzième siècle |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 117
| Coming home. Taking off over the Atlantic, clouds over New Jersey, read a bit of [Auguste] Jundt on Les Amis de Dieu [Les Amis de Dieu au quatorzième siècle, 1879] which I had borrowed from the Columbia Library. |
| 1964/06/23 | Kenneth H. Jackson | Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 121
| Blazing hot, stuffy air, barely moved by a little breeze here in the woodshed. What a day it is going to be! Even the woods will be an airless furnace. It calls for one of those nature poems, a kerygma of heat such as the Celts never had. (Finished Kenneth Jackson's excellent book on Early Celtic Nature Poetry before Prime as the fierce sun began to burn my field.) |
| 1964/06/26 | Auguste Jundt | Amis de Dieu au quatorzième siècle |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 121
| I finished the old Jundt book on Les Amis de Dieu which I borrowed from the Columbia Library. (Will not forget reading the chapter on the book of the mine rocks while flying over the Appalachians.) Must find out more about Rulman Merswin. This afternoon-wrote a note on Kabir [One Hundred Poems of Kabir, 1962] for the Collectanea [Cisterciensia]. |
| 1964/07/08 | Alan Orr Anderson | Adamnan's Life of Columba / and Marjory Ogilvie Anderson, editors and translators |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 124
| I am reading Adamnan's Life of Columba [1962], one of the great Vitae. Full of a very special character and spirit of its own: not the general aim of Latin hagiography. (For instance the two chapters about the whale, and those about men shouting across the strait for a boat to the Island.) |
| 1964/07/12 | Alan Orr Anderson | Adamnan's Life of Columba / and Marjory Ogilvie Anderson, editors and translators |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 126
| Deeply moved by Adamnan's extraordinary life of St. Columba. A poetic work, full of powerful symbols, indescribably rich. Through the Latin (which is deceptive- and strange too) appears a completely non-Latin genius, and the prophecies and miracles are not signs of authority but signs of life, i.e., not signs of power conferred on a designated representative (juridically)-a "delegated" power from outside of nature, but a sacramental power of a man of God who sees the divine in God's creation. |
| 1964/07/18 | | Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 128
| The Navigatio S. Brendani came yesterday from Boston College. I began it this morning, studying it as a Tract on the monastic life-the myth of peregrinatio, the quest for the impossible island, the earthly paradise the ultimate ideal. As a myth it is, however, filled with a deep truth of its own. |
| 1964/07/21 | | Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 130
| Finished first reading of the Navigatio Brendani this morning. Interesting monastic vocabulary. The geography-a liturgical mandala? I have to check back on the significance of directions. North is liturgical hell here too, and the Promised Land is West (except that in reference to the Paradise of the Birds it is east (liturgical)). Two traditions perhaps. |
| 1964/07/22 | Dame Margaret Gascoigne | Devotions |
Ltrs: SofC p. 222
| Today two books arrived, beautifully bound: the Spiritual Anker and the Treatise on Discretion. Thanks very much indeed. I will read them and take good care of them and send them back safely. Meanwhile I have received others, some time ago, and I don't remember having acknowledged them. I am very ashamed of myself. What I received was Dame Margaret Gascoigne which is excellent, and I have noted some excerpts that could be used. These will come to you when I have also thought of others from the other mss. Then there is the Catholic Record Society material, as well as Dame Barbara Constable's Considerations for Priests. These are very good but as they are more of a compilation I do not think we can use them, do you? |
| 1964/08/12 | David Knowles o.s.b. | Historian and Character and other Essays |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 135
| Last night I dreamed that Dom James suddenly announced that we would have funeral and quasi-military "parades for the dead" along with every office of the dead now... I have a suspicion that this is more than a dream and that we are in for arbitrary measures-more and more as he gets older. For instance, although everyone is now tired of Daniel Rops, having finished one book of his we immediately take up another, and a third is waiting after that! No use asking for anything else. I tried to get some essays from [David] Knowles' Historian and Character read, but no use!! |
| 1964/08/20 | Nicholas of Narbonne | Ignea Sagitta (The Flaming Arrow) |
Ltrs: SofC p. 228
| I love the Carmelite spirit, I mean especially that of the first Carmelites and the Ignea sagitta (a rare but very moving document on the solitary life). |
| 1964/08/21 | James Midley Clark | Abbey of St. Gall as a Centre of Literature and Art |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 138
| Another nice letter from Nora K. Chadwick yesterday. Her sister was a Carmelite at Waterbeach for sixty years or so. Am finishing two excellent books Nora K. Chadwick recommended. [James Midley] Clark on St. Gall [The Abbey of St. Gall as a Centre of Literature and Art, 1926] and Dudley Simpson on the Celtic Church in Scotland (demythologizing St. Columba's mission-restoring others to importance). Have been reading about the Hebrides (G[eorge] Scott- Moncrieff [The Scottish Islands, 1952])-would like to see them someday. Astonishing number of monastic settlements used to be there-exactly the place for small, eremitical communities! Many especially on Tiree. I wonder why? Will I ever see the place? |
| 1964/11/22 | Jean Leclercq o.s.b. | Otia Monastica: Etudes sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen âge |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 168-69
| Adam the Carthusian (Scotus) in a fine text on quies claustralis [quiet of the cloister] (published by Leclercq in Otia Monastica) sums it all up, simply and adequately, the need for quies, not bothering with concerns foreign to our life. I want to give up the retreats. Yet already a letter has come from the Baptist Seminary begging me not to stop my talks. I was touched by it. No one could be more sincere and less political than Glenn Hinson, who wrote it. |
| 1964/12/05 | Kenneth H. Jackson | Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 175
| So many good books around and in the woodshed after dinner. Pasternak once. Lately Ellul, and Felix Green's Curtain of Ignorance (good information on the bad reporting about China), Stevie Smith, Françoise Henri on Irish art, Auden "The Enchafed Flood," and last summer Kenneth Jackson's Early Celtic Nature Poetry. Also Nora Chadwick, etc., etc. (I got a charming letter from the Carmelites of Waterbeach, her friends). And of course recently Ionesco-Rhinoceros, The Future Is in Eggs, etc. I am still busy with his Notes et contre-notes. |
| 1964/12/08 | | Cloud of Unknowing |
Ltrs: SofC p. 254
| "¦ In such solitude as I have now I have been renewing my contact with Lancelot Andrewes, not as a steady diet, but his precis for the evening are very wholesome and rich, and I am quite drawn to his spirit. But also to the other and more profound spirit in the English tradition, that of Lady Julian, the Cloud, etc. I have an interesting ms. from a Jesuit in Japan treating the Cloud in its relation to Zen. In fact I also met Dr. Suzuki this summer, and this was a helpful contact indeed, because he really understands what interior simplicity is all about and really lives it. That is the important thing, because without contact with living examples, we soon get lost or give out. |
| 1964/12/08 | Julian of Norwich | Revelations of Divine Love |
Ltrs: SofC p. 254
| "¦ In such solitude as I have now I have been renewing my contact with Lancelot Andrewes, not as a steady diet, but his precis for the evening are very wholesome and rich, and I am quite drawn to his spirit. But also to the other and more profound spirit in the English tradition, that of Lady Julian, the Cloud, etc. I have an interesting ms. from a Jesuit in Japan treating the Cloud in its relation to Zen. In fact I also met Dr. Suzuki this summer, and this was a helpful contact indeed, because he really understands what interior simplicity is all about and really lives it. That is the important thing, because without contact with living examples, we soon get lost or give out. |
| 1965/03/26 | Jan Ruusbroec | Oeuvres de Ruysbroeck l'admirable / Jan van Ruusbroec ; trad. du flamand par les Benedictins de Saint-Paul de Wisques par Ernest Hello |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 221
| Decided to take some bread with coffee this morning instead of fasting (on coffee only) until dinner. The rye bread was good, so was the coffee. And I read Ruysbroeck, thinking of him in terms of Zen. His "essential union" is quite like Prajna [wisdom], and "Suchness." Theological differences great-but the phenomenology is close. |
| 1965/05/10 | Henri Lubac, De | Exegèse medieval: les quatre sens de l'Ecriture |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 246
| Already a most beautiful week of May has gone by. For part of it I was ill again, with the same bug that had me in the infirmary at the beginning of Holy Week. It was a good thing, for this time Father Eudes gave me an antibiotic which seems to have cleared it up properly. Last time it really stayed with me (my stomach remained quite upset even though I was "well"). So for a couple of days I lay around in the warm green shade of the end room, with no desire for any food, and read Martin Ling's book which he sent me (Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions), a good chunk of De Lubac's Exegèse medievale (Vol. 1) and the early part of Herbert Read's Green Child. The most exciting for me was De Lubac. |
| 1965/05/25 | Henri Lubac, De | Exegèse medieval: les quatre sens de l'Ecriture |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 251
| For Meditation-part of the morning on the Sapiential books (Vulgate) and in the evening some of the time I spend on the Apocalypse in Greek. Have a good little book on Camus for light reading, finished Volume I of De Lubac's Exegèse medievale (and enjoyed it immensely). Still haven't finished Tertullian on the Resurrection |
| 1965/08/10 | Anselmus of Canterbury | De Casu Diaboli |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 278
| (I am frightened by the awful clarity of Anselm's argument in De Casu Diaboli. A view of liberty that is essentially monastic, i.e., framed in the perspective of an entirely personal vocation and grace.) The need to pray-the need for solid theological food, for the Bible, for monastic tradition. Not experimentation or philosophical dilettantism. The need to be entirely defined by a relationship with and orientation to God my Father, i.e., a life of sonship in which all that distracts from this relationship is seen as fatuous and absurd. How real this is! A reality I must constantly measure up to, it cannot be simply taken for granted. It cannot be lost in distraction. Distractedness here is fatal-it brings one inexorably to the abyss. But no concentration is required, only being present. And also working seriously at all that is to be done-the care of the garden of paradise! By reading, meditation, study, psalmody, manual work, including also some fasting, etc. Above all the work of hope, not the stupid, relaxed, self-pity of acedia [sloth]. |
| 1965/08/11 | Catherine of Siena | Dialogo breve sulla consumata perfezione / Saint Catherine of Siena ; ed. di Aldo Buonomini |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 278-79
| "When you are serving others you are apt to be a hypocrite; but when you are serving heaven it is difficult to be a hypocrite." This is Suzuki paraphrasing a line of Chuang Tzu. It applies perfectly to the solitary life. However, I have been completing this kind of view with others, the clear, reasonable, logical yet mystical little tract of Catherine of Siena, Dialogo Breve sulla Consumata Perfezione (which actually comes to the same thing-seeking nothing but to do God's will in everything, to please Him alone, to be perfectly united to Him in love by the renunciation of our own will). And Anselm's rectitudo-stare in veritate [standing in the truth]. It all comes to the same, but the approach is different, and I am still strongly devoted to medieval reason and wisdom. |
| 1965/09/06 | Beryl Smalley | Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 291
| I am reading Beryl Smalley's Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. A very delightful book-in which for the first time I have managed to get a little information on Anselm of Laon. He emerges as a rather attractive scholar type with a very important circle of disciples, and doubtless had a considerable impact on the first Cistercians, his contemporaries. |
| 1965/10/30 | John (abbot) of Ford | Wulfric of Haselbury |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 310
| Brother Alberic got (rare) copy of [John of] Ford's life of Wulfric of Haselbury [Wulfric of Haselbury, 1933] from the Library of Congress and, having finished, passed it on to me. I find it very rich indeed. Must work on it. Will get pictures of parts of it. A great theology of mystical life-and solitary life-fine, balanced, optimistic, Biblical. How much I need it! |
| 1965/11/01 | John (abbot) of Ford | Wulfric of Haselbury |
Ltrs: HGL p. 373
| I am reading the life of an anchorite in Devon, or rather Somerset I think, St. Wulfric of Haselbury. It is written by John of Ford (Cistercian abbey). You must know that area rather well, though it is perhaps a bit far south for you. Could you possibly lend me an ordnance map of that bit of Devon and Somerset? Around Haselbury, Crewkerne, and wherever Ford Abbey is. It is all within fifty miles of Exeter. I just want to borrow the map and get my bearings. I may do a couple of articles on this. |
| 1965/11/03 | Isaac of Stella | Sermones |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 311
| The comet! I heard about it yesterday in the monastery, went out to see it this morning, and went just at the right time. It is magnificent, appearing just at the ineffable point when the first dim foreshadowing light (that is not light yet) makes one suspect the sun will rise. Precisely the point vierge [virgin point]! This great sweep of pure silent light points to the sun that will come-it takes in a good area of sky right out over the valley in front of the hermitage. I walked down the path to see it well. It was splendid. I interrupted reading Isaac of Stella's Fourteenth Sermon on God's light and His joy in His creation. |
| 1965/11/04 | John (abbot) of Ford | Wulfric of Haselbury |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 311-12
| Turned in Wulfric of Haselbury yesterday. There were fine things in it, and I want pictures of some of it. On the other hand this business of skipping through miracles with a suspended judgment and an eye open for historical sidelights is emptying and deadening. And I am not up to a completely devout and credulous acceptance of all in a medieval saint's life on its own terms. The battle over his body (with the Cluniac monks breaking down the walls of his anchorage and tossing out the corpse) is enough indication that this was a different world, and one in which we certainly no longer live (for better or for worse). |
| 1966/01/15 | | Rule for Recluses |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 6-7
| A Rule for Recluses edited by Olgin in Antonianum came on interlibrary loan from St. Bona's [St. Bonaventure University]. Though it is rather pedestrian yet it means a great deal. (English Rule of 13th century, or later.) There is no question that documents like this really speak to me and move me. I am completely attuned to them and to that time (Isaac of Stella, for instance). Lately with all the emphasis on being "contemporary" I have perhaps felt a little guilt about my love for the Middle Ages. This a foolish and rather servile feeling, really! "You have been bought with a great price - do not become the slaves of men!" (I Cor. 7:23) Where is my independence? That is the meaning of solitude, to be free from the compulsion of fashion, dead custom etc., and to be really open to the Holy Spirit. I see, once again, how muddled and distracted I am. Not free! |
| 1966/04/06 | Johannes Tauler | Book of the Poor in Spirit |
Ltrs: HGL p. 375
| In the hospital I have read a lot of Eckhart and am more and more convinced of his greatness. Before coming I went back to Kelley's translation of The Book of the Poor in Spirit. This is the kind of thing I am going to stay with now that I am "fre" and do not have to bother with nonsense that does not really interest me (politics). |
| 1966/08/07 | Johannes Tauler | Book of the Poor in Spirit |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 113
| I walked out in a broad open field in the East Farm (Linton's) and watched the high cool clouds, and said aloud several times the word "Revolution" to see how it sounded. Then I read in the Book of the Poor in Spirit [by Johannes Tauler] how by many deaths we must come to see God. |
| 1967/04/15 | Johannes Tauler | Book of the Poor in Spirit |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 218
| On the other hand I know where my roots really are - in the mystical tradition, not in the active and anxious secular city business. Not that I don't have any obligation to society. Etc. But - [am] reading Mircea Eliade and a book on Ibn al Arabi, and the Book of the Poor in Spirit again. |
| 1967/05/12 | William Johnston S.J. | Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 332
| I am at present reading a most revealing book by a Japanese scholar, Toshihiko Izutsu, comparing the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi with Taoists. The first volume only, on Ibn Arabi, is available, I believe. Others will follow which will show the resemblances. This is very important. If you do not know it already I recommend it to you, and it is easily accessible to you, being published by Keio University. Now, you may have received my new book, Mystics and Zen Masters. It is very sketchy and imperfect, but it may perhaps have some useful material in it. If you do not know the treatise on the "Cloud of Unknowing" I think the remarks in my book will indicate that it would interest you. A friend of mine [William Johnston] has written a study of it with some reference to Zen [The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing, 1967]. It ought to appear soon. I wrote a preface to it. I will send you a copy of the book if and when I get one. |
| 1967/10/3 | James W. Douglas | Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace |
Ltrs: HGL p. 166
| I am doubly sorry for having delayed about your chapter"”the last one ["Christians and the Stat"] ... This last chapter is one of the best and makes some splendid points. You have stated better than anyone recently the whole point of the "render under Caesar" business and I think your final sentence caps it perfectly. It is a very good chapter, but I do have one complaint about it. It seems to me that there is one very thin patch, around p. 21, when you slide over the Constantinian transition with the greatest of ease. A thousand and two thousand years of history are it seems to me dismissed with little hint of their enormous complexity. I don't say "dismissed" fairly, of course, because you cannot be expected to go into all that. Yet it is central to your argument. At the same time, do we really yet know what really went on, what kind of a shift really took place in the thinking of the Church, when "Christendom" went into business? I think it yet remains to be studied. And then too there are so many subtleties about the Dark Ages, about the "truce of God" in the tenth century, about the First Crusade as a means of peace, by uniting warring Westerners not in an attack on Jerusalem but in defense of Byzantium (thus helping reunite the two Churches then breaking apart). And all that. I think your treatment needs to at least hint at all these complexities which make the thing more mysterious and more real at the same time. |
| 1968/07/09 | Gordon Leff | Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250 - c.1450 |
Jnl 7 ('67-'68) p. 140
| Strange thing, this morning: after Mass (St. Albert"”hermit) [Feast Day], and coffee and light breakfast and article on Panama Canal inBulletin [of the] A[tomic] Scientist, tried to work on Gordon Leff and the Franciscan poverty business (Heretics in Late M[iddle] A[ges]) and couldn't keep my eyes open. Fell asleep on it. Went and lay down dopey for ½ hour, then got up and looked for something new. |