William of Saint-Thierry - Böcker

The Meditations, written over a period from 1125 to 1137, are a personal account of William of Saint-Thierry’s ascent into Trinitarian intimacy. Writing to the monks of Mont Dieu sometime around 1144, he proposed the Meditations as helpful in forming minds in prayer. These Meditations, with their accompanying commentary, are now presented as helpful in forming an intimate relationship with the triune God.

The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux, traditionally known as the Vita Prima, originated to prepare the case for canonization of Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux. The work was begun by William of Saint-Thierry, continued by Arnold of Bonneval, and completed by Geoffrey of Auxerre.  When the initial case put forth for Bernard was rejected by Innocent II, Geoffrey undertook a revision of the original vita (Recension A) and submitted another version (Recension B) to Pope Alexander III, who declared Bernard a saint in 1174. This work emphasizes the deep love in which Bernard was held during his life by his monks and the people of France and Italy as well as his role as a powerful public figure.This book contains the first English translation of Recension B, drawn from what is apparently the only manuscript of the work found today in a Cistercian monastery, Mount Saint Bernard Abbey. The introduction begins with the story of how this manuscript came to Mount Saint Bernard, so fixing this translation of the Vita prima within Cistercian life from the twelfth century to today.

William of Saint Thierry left all things in his search for God. He left his home in Liage (modern Belgium) to study in France. He left the schools to enter benedictine monastic life at Rheims. And late in his life he left the Benedictines to enter the more austere, recently founded cistercian abbey of Signy in the Ardennes forest. What he did not leave was his keen intellect and his vehement love of Truth.

Perhaps no book was more central to medieval spirituality and mysticism," writes Bernard McGinn, "or more problematic to contemporary readers, than the Song of Songs. . . Lingering Victorian attitudes towards the opposition between sex and religion find the Song's frank erotic language embarrassing and even distasteful." But in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Song of Songs was a favorite book of Cistercian monks. Bernard of Clairvaux, Gilbert of Hoyland, and John of Ford, as well as William of Saint Thierry, read it as a dialogue between Christ the Bridegroom and the human soul, the Bride.William of Saint Thierry began composing his commentary soon after entering the Cistercian abbey of Signy in 1135. Having left behind a busy life as a Benedictine abbot and author of theological treatises, he turned to writing meditations on Scripture as the means of listening to the voice of the Beloved. It is therefore ironic that he broke off his commentary on the Song, never to return to it, to alert the Church in France to the teaching of Peter Abelard and then to compose two treatises correcting what he deeply believed were Abelard's theological errors."

The Epistle to the Romans was a favorite text of medieval commentators, especially in an age concerned with the theology of grace. William of Saint Thierry's Exposition is a thoroughly monastic text. In it the twelfth-century monk is concerned, not with dialectic or scholastic disputation, but with something far more personal: humility of heart and the recovery of the image of God in fallen humankind. Only when a person is open to God's grace can growth occur. William is convinced of this. He hopes to convince us of it. He sings the praises of God's grace. He combs Scripture for insights on the workings of grace. Several times in the course of the commentary, he shifts from narrative to address God directly. In doing so, he adds a personal, intimate touch to a literary genre which was soon to become settled in the impersonal methodology of the Schools.

William of Saint Thierry wrote The Mirror of Faith and The Enigma of Faith shortly after he read the Theology of Peter Abelard. Writing at the cistercian abbey of Signy, which he entered in 1135 after fifteen years as a benedictine abbot, he tried to correct what he considered Abelard's failure to root his theology in the faith revealed by Christ in Scripture and explained by generations of Church Fathers. Unless we choose to believe, he was convinced, we will never understand rationally or love truly the triune God who calls us to the full 'recognition which is mutual to the Father and Sone[and] is the very unity of both, the Holy Spirit'.

ON CONTEMPLATING GOD, PRAYER, and MEDITATIONS were written while William was abbot of the benedictine monastery of Saint Thierry, within sight of the royal city of Rheims. The works reflect his deepening spiritual life, and the impatience and the hope, the frustrations and the joys he met. It is in the Meditations that the reader becomes acutely aware of the difficult personal struggle which had overtaken Abbott William and which would lead him to resign his office and to enter the more austere and contemplative life of the Cistercians.

The Golden Epistle