The Great Beginning of Citeaux: A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order Volume 72 Contributor(s): Ward, Benedicta (Translator), Savage, Paul (Translator), Elder, E. Rozanne (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0879071729 ISBN-13: 9780879071721 Publisher: Liturgical Press OUR PRICE: $53.96 Product Type: Hardcover Published: May 2012 Annotation: Conrad, a monk of Eberbach in Germany, weaves both documentary history and edifying |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Religion | Institutions & Organizations - Religion | Christianity - Catholic - Religion | Monasticism |
Dewey: 271.12 |
LCCN: 2011052980 |
Series: Cistercian Fathers |
Physical Information: 1.7" H x 5.7" W x 8.6" (1.89 lbs) 664 pages |
Themes: - Religious Orientation - Catholic - Religious Orientation - Christian |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In the closing decades of the twelfth century, the Cistercian Order had become an important ecclesiastical and economic power in Europe. Yet it had lost its influential spokesman, Bernard of Clairvaux, and as the century drew to a close, religious sensibilities were changing. The new mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and the impulses they embodied were to shift the center of gravity in Christian religious life for centuries to come. It was in this transitional period that Conrad of Eberbach gradually--between the 1180s and 1215--compiled the Exordium magnum cisterciense: The Great Beginning of C teaux. It is a book of history and lore, often with miraculous stories, meant to continue a great spiritual tradition, and it is also a book meant to justify and repair the Order. The Exordium magnum was in part an effort to provide a historical and formative context for those who were to be Cistercians in the thirteenth century. Conrad's combination of a historical sensibility and the edifying exempla makes the Exordium magnum a remarkably innovative book. Its unique combination of genres--narratio and exempla--is conceivable only within the intellectual world of the twelfth or early thirteenth centuries, before exempla collections came to be complied solely for edification or use in sermons. The Great Beginning of C teaux is a revealing book and an excellent place to begin more detailed study of the Cistercian Order between 1174 and the middle of the thirteenth century. |
Contributor Bio(s): Ward, Benedicta: - Benedicta Ward is Reader in the History of Christian Spirituality in the University of Oxford. Her most recent book is Anselm of Canterbury: His Life and Legacy (SPCK 2009). She is a member of the Anglican monastic community of the Sisters of the Love of God.Savage, Paul: - Paul M. Savage holds a PhD in medieval history from the University of Notre Dame. He teaches history and economics in Salt Lake City, UT.Elder, E. Rozanne: - E. Rozanne Elder is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Cistercian and Monastic Studies at Western Michigan University. |