Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition

Santha Bhattacharji is Senior Tutor at St Benet's Hall, and a member of the English Faculty at the University of Oxford, UK.Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth) is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK. He was formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, UK, and was Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 - 2012. Dominic Mattos is a publisher and writer, and studied Theology at the University of Oxford, UK.

• List of IllustrationsList of Contributors Introduction - Santha Bhattacharji1. Re-thinking the History of Monasticism East and West: A Modest tour d’horizon - Columba Stewart, O.S.B.2. Not by Bread Alone: St Brendan meets Paul, the Irish Spiritual Hermit - Eamonn O’Carragain3. Theology and the Paschal Controversy: Bede’s Case Against the British Church - Rowan Williams4. Bede’s view of the place of the Eucharist in Anglo-Saxon Life: the evidence of the Histroia ecclesiasticus gentis Anglorum - Thomas O’Loughlin5. Women, Prayer and Preaching in the Early English Church - Sarah Foot6. What Was Supposed to be Going on in the Minds of Monks When they Prayed the Psalter in Carolingian times? - Henry Mayr-Harting 7. ‘The brother who may wish to pray by himself’: Sense of Self in Carolingian Prayers of Private Devotion - Renie Choy8. St Boniface Monk and Missioner - Henry Wansbrough O.S.B.9. Turning the World Upside-Down: St Peter Damian’s Theology of the Spiritual Life - Gordon Mursell10. John of Fécamp and Anselm of Bec: A New Language of Prayer - Brian McGuire11. ‘Minds Wandering’ and ‘Monastic stability’ in the Early Monastic Letters of Anselm of Bec - G.R. Evans12. Between Dialectic and the Sacred Scripture: Anselm of Canterbury and the Bible - Giles Gasper13. Miracles and the Crusading Mind: Monastic Meditations on Jerusalem’s Conquest - Jay Rubenstein14. Reading Saints’ Lives in the Light of John of Forde’s Life of Wulfric of Haselbury - Pauline Matarasso15. The Eye of Reason – The Eye of Love: ‘Divine Learning and Affective Prayer’ in the thought of William of St Thierry - E Rozanne Elder16. Concerning Academic Translation and the Latin of Conrad of Eberbach - Paul Savage 17. ‘Desire for the Eternal Country’: the Laity and the Wider World of Monastic Prayer in Medieval England - Brian Golding18. Universities: Friend or Foe? - Alexander Murray19. Late Medieval Mysticism: visionary writing as a mode of thought - Santha Bhattacharji 20. John Wesley and William Law: the founding of two contrasting religious communities in the Eighteenth Century - Ralph Waller21. The Beloved: the Messianic Figure in the Song of Songs - Sister Edmée S.L.G.22. Sr Benedicta Ward in a few words: Nun, Scholar, Teacher - Dominic MattosSelect Bibliography of Works by Sr Benedicta Ward S.L.G. M.A. D. Phil Indexes

I cannot here do justice to all the essays in this book. However, all in all, this is a very fitting tribute to a gracious lady who by her work as a medievalist and a translator has done so much to further research in the early monastic tradition ... These 21 essays, each by experts in their own fields, offer the reader a rich feast of writings on various aspects of monastic learning in fields such as history, prayer, theology, spirituality, hagiography, and liturgy, and the volume deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in these or in any aspect of early English monastic life.