I have had that statement quoted back to me many different times. The fact of the matter is that we often spend a great deal of time and interest, I think it's natural, in studying periods of history at the by institutions when they reach their apogee, or even, of course, naturally look to those factors which lead to the apogee of a given institution, or look at the period of growth and expansion of a given age. And thus we also forget that very often one institution's units is another institution's decline, but one period's growth and expansion is another civilization's period of decadence.

[01:17]

I think we all see even more than this. Maybe. Our interest in history is sparked by our own today, our own time. our own circumstances. And that perhaps it is interesting to look at other periods of history when people saw themselves living at the end of an era, or at the end of a period, or at a time of transition, and they were at the tail end of one transition and living just before the beginning of another. And also because it is thought that interesting to notice what are the elements, or if it is possible to pick out elements of decay. Or maybe it's because I am mortal.

[02:21]

And I looked upon the historian not only as the detective, in the history of humankind, always looking for the, not only for the weapon, but also for the body. And always thinking that one must sit through the garbage heap to find the clues. But maybe two, because there should be no element the history of humankind, but one whose sizes are disdained as unworthy of interest. Those of you who have ever read the great work by Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian, entitled The Waning of the Middle Ages, might appreciate what it means

[03:29]

He studied in a very remarkable way. It was remarkable for the family. He wrote his work in the middle ages. what we often as monastic historians and historians of spirituality forget is that monasticism was existing at this time we often overlook in our interest of course in the early period of monastic history and the desert period and I in our fascination with the middle ages

[04:35]

that things were happening, because at a minimum it's decay, life goes on. Even at times of decline, the candle sometimes burns the brightest just before it fires out. And as far as the history of spirituality is concerned, it is extremely important, as embarrassing as it may be at times, it is extremely important because The 14th century was a century of many calamities. 1348, 1349, the Black Death. And as you know, it carried off a third of the population. I don't think that you can appreciate just exactly what it would mean to have in many areas, over a third, will disappear.

[05:48]

But that means in terms of the pure economic terms, that the workforce produces them. What I mean in terms of the demography, of course, it means that a large, perhaps, of many of those at childbearing age, are children. and a decline in a population growth that will take many, many years to start again. A dislocation, a terrible psychological dislocation as well as an economic dislocation. But it does to a mentality, a sense, a pervading sense of debt. We might transform that a little bit in our own day when we think of something like a country like Cambodia, where I don't know what the statistics are, but the enormous loss of population in that country and the dislocation of the period.

[06:55]

Or in terms of psychology, in our own age, those of us who are over a certain period of age and have known the period prior to the Second World War, and some of us know the period prior to the First World War, prior to the Second World War, in terms of living in a world which did not yet know that there was a capacity to destroy that world he'd won over. I mean, this is a question of mentality. We can imagine the 14th century with this kind of terrible decimation of the population within the country, when we are in the midst of that century. At the same time, it's a century which knows almost continual warfare, a hundred years' war, which takes up most of that century, gives up that next century, between England and France.

[08:03]

The Great Western Schism, from 1378 to 1415, when as far as the Western Church was concerned, no one really knew, not even sure they, who was a legitimate sovereign power. To grow up, to reach one's maturity, and perhaps to some many even dying, not even really knowing, understanding, who in turn was the legitimate successor of Peter, And the dislocation that occurred in many, many places, especially in the Rhineland, parts of the Empire, but in their low countries and so forth, of having a doubling of all of the But it isn't just, of course, what that entailed in terms of belief, but also what that entailed in terms of institutional structure, or what that entailed in terms of economics, again.

[09:33]

The economic structure was not important. Because, well, each pope needed money to battle. And in terms of just, again, of a psychic dislocation, of the very heart of one's faith. And the disasters of the 14th century flow over into the 15th century. They were not at all solved. Namely, with the attempt to arrive at a solution, taking drastic measures, the calling of the hoping to solve the problem of who was truly Pope, and doing so at a pragmatic level. And at the same time, some hundred years or so later.

[10:48]

The constant feeling that one must somehow or other reform the Church. And with that, then, the meeting of the Council of Basel, 1431-1437, which was a council, again, called to try to ensure the reform and take positive steps now to implement a reform that hopefully many had hoped had begun the close of Constance, and figuring that the only way it could be realized was in instituting within the Church a parliamentary system. Instituting within the Church a parliamentary system, and the Council of Babel was, perhaps for the first time, that sort of pivotal moment where Maybe, as far as the historian is concerned, it might just have been the moment where the change of government, in terms of the Church of Israel, from a papal monarchy, which of course is a term that has a whole gamut in terms of meaning, to a parliamentary form of government.

[12:11]

And then you have the meeting then of a council, which very quickly became a sort of revolutionary parliament, a lump parliament, in the struggle for beauty in the court, almost to the point where the court is closure and they continue to seek and you almost have then the creation of a revolutionary in opposition to the papal system, including very, very, very important people, very outstanding theologians. Nicolás de Cusa, after all, started his career at Basel in Iran, Karajan. Now, they're very interesting people. All of this takes place, of course, before the Reformation. We have a tendency to think that everything that comes from

[13:15]

It's in the Reformation that's the source of all our problems. We can't even begin to understand what is happening in the Reformation unless we realize that it's in the 14th and 15th century that all of these, all of this, all of the causes were made. It didn't start just because a man was preaching indulgences. I'd like to add to that. And you can, I knew some people. It's a profound malaise. Profound malaise. And it's precisely in this period where you have a sort of a consciousness that begins the beginning, of course, of the European national consciousness, the Council of Constance meets in terms, the whole council is thought of in terms of nation-states. It's in this age of arriving nationalism, arriving national consciousness, it is in this time, in this time of consciousness, that a profound transformation also takes place in the domestic order.

[14:40]

Because, in a way, based on with the reality of a general decadence in monasticism. In most monastic houses, not universal, otherwise that has to be a relativized, it wasn't the same every place. And there were places where there was some flourishing going on. Nevertheless, faced with a kind of a life and a social Most, many, many monasteries and then by this time limited themselves only to sons of the nobility. way, but rather to be able to live some sort of life in the style in which they were accustomed.

[16:09]

So it is not at all new or surprising, therefore, that those who would be inmates of these monasteries, and it was precisely that's what we might best call an inmate of these monasteries, should continue to some extent as some of the amenities and some of the trust upon them. And so, for example, it is not at all unusual that the common refectory would become more or less a thing you did from time to time, but most of the time you did it partly in one department. To have one's own manservant and one's own maidservant had the peculiarity of your own cash flow. It was to to be able to come and go as you wish. It was, in other words, to lead the gentlemanly and ladylike existence that one's status in society entitles one to.

[17:21]

And it's in the midst of this that reforms begin. Reforms begin prior to the Reformation. And the character of these reforms was an attempt to deal with all of these kinds of problems in terms of economics as well as in terms of social makeup of the individuals and their social background. We mentioned earlier that the system of commandatory habits was a system that was became more and more universalized as we moved toward the end of the Middle Ages, and a system that was used by everyone, including kings and members of the nobility, as well as the papacy. It was a system whereby you almost saw the local monastery as a place, as a milking place, as any source of revenue.

[18:30]

that the nefarious results of this kind of system, the breakdown often of any kind of community identity because of the fact that the kings had recourse to what had been an ancient privilege, what had in French the title of I have a patient that continues to live like an old surrogate in the midst of the community. I need to be fed, supported, if you want supplies, and given a revenue. In fact, that was the origin of the hotel in Paris.

[19:43]

It was finally when the French monasteries, both men and women, decided that they'd had enough of having the royal army courted upon them, and maybe the best thing is that at least in one thing they would cooperate together. It was these little things that made it difficult to pull themselves up, to make it difficult to pull themselves out of these kinds of situations. One other thing that was done was to form congregations. Was the banding together of monasteries which had been separate, and of the congregation idea was not something actually new. That is exactly what Cuny formed with its dependent priory.

[20:47]

There were other instances, other examples of powerful monasteries forming a kind of satellite houses around them, or the houses that they reformed. There was Cheval Benoit in the south of France, another example. Even the idea of Beth formed a kind of small congregation. In other words, this was not something entirely new. But what was new that begins in the 15th century was the forming of congregations precisely with a different kind of constitution in order to avoid the sort of institutional realities that could not be changed rather than being the question of reality. to the Reformation within the Church.

[21:55]

He becomes a nobleman. He's made a commendatory habit of St. Justina in the city of Padua. Only a couple of monks there. He would exclude buildings, land holdings, and he decides to begin to live the regular monastic life, and gradually acquires disciples. He also begins, then, to have a reform of the monastery And then they decide that in order to release these monasteries from the parasitic abbot named by an external force, Papacy or other, to revamp the whole notion of autonomous monasteries. Common as issue, constitution, common property, And if you kept it, and the Congregation of Saint Josemaria kept the title of African if you came in march, but only if you elected only for one year, the governing body was the general chapter.

[23:01]

Now this constitutional format would be then adopted by other places with various changes as time would go on. But the important thing was, it is now, in a certain sense, a parliament, even if only a mini-parliament. by an insurgent parliamentary group, the same sort of phenomenon that was taking place, that took place because of the conferring of the Council of Basel, and whether the Council of Basel had been in the Council of Basel, it was to be introduced into the monastic system. Monte Cassino joined this congregation in 1505, and the things that may have been found in the present congregation still exist, no longer have existed. Oh, my God. And so he would constantly, whenever he got off the site, talking about the privileges of the Swiss-American congregation, going back to the congregation of St.

[24:45]

Justine and so forth. But it is very interesting, because the congregation of St. Justine becomes sort of, in a sense, the congregation type for the new development. The development of other congregations, the ones that we know the best, is of course the congregation of St. Bon, which is established in Lorraine. All of them being characterized, getting rid of the epics, and being governed by a general chaplain of one kind or another, a representative governor.

[25:46]

Now why do I, why am I stopping? What does this have to do with spirituality? What is the history of spirituality? Mainly because the two men I want to talk about are two men belonging to the spirit Although neither one of them belongs to any of these important congregations. The Abbot Cisneros and the Abbot Glorzius. Both. Cisneros becomes Abbot of Montserrat in 1499. Glorzius becomes Abbot of Lyfti, a very small monastery, in Lorraine in 1498. It is precisely at this period of a concerted effort to revitalize the monastic order through the establishment of various congregations where these men do their work. There is another reason, too, of course, of the background, namely, to characterize the spirituality of these mason congregations, the congregation of St.

[26:49]

Justina, much less the congregation of St. Morbus, this particular congregation of St. Justina, And various other monasteries, and particularly in terms of these two men, was a new type of spirituality that was to be found in all of the Reformed, many of the Reformed circles of that age. And one cannot understand the background of diversity in Montana unless one also remembers that it takes its rise in this period of decadence, if you will, and of apprehensiveness, and of general disintegration. Who composed the general chapters? Well, it differed from place to place.

[27:53]

Usually it would be an election in each house. and then the congregation as a whole would act. That's more or less how it worked in the congregation of St. Justina. But in the end, as far as the congregation of St. Justina was concerned, it was the notion of monastic autonomy more or less disappeared, and a monk is a member of the congregation in general. It is a general chapter which, in the beginning, met once a year, and then every three years, was composed as the periods of all the monasteries.

[28:55]

everything in the congregation. They named the superiors in all the congregations, the superiors and officials in each monastery. Most important, they owned the property. The property, in other words, was no individual land owned by the monastery. That way, you could eliminate the possibility of creating a commendatory abbot who had a right to revenue. Because no house had any revenue anymore. It was the congregations. That was necessary. They also chose a president and four or five visitors. It was important to have visitation to strengthen that so that each house could be regularly visited and hopefully with the reform movement any kind of abuse could be nipped in the bud by an outside force. The other thing that was very important and which I didn't mention but has been characteristic of monasticism as it moved into the late Middle Ages, is that the official is in a house.

[30:19]

The obedientia is, in other words. You see this most clearly in a very amusing way, if you look at the style. Well, the obedientiary system was, of course, these were the officials in the monastery. These were usually known as the cuny, found in every house. They made them the men who were involved in the temporalities of the house. So the cuny was called the chamberlain, and the salera, and each one had his assistant, and the sacristan, for example, and so forth. Now, how did this work? terms of economics, namely, each one had his own source of revenue.

[31:20]

Each officer, Saxton, would have certain land affected to the office of Saxton, and that would be the source then for the money in order to run the Saxton and whatever department he was responsible for, but held for each office. But what did it mean? It meant that as you moved into the late middle ages, The individual monk had this for life. It was his. It was as much his benefit as there was a canon rate. And he could not be in the end, he could not be removed very easily. And also he would have his assistance and so forth. It also meant that he had, it would be what he said, he would have one's own checking account. He would have his own source of money and he could use it. And he did. In other words, one could be set up for life. And by the end of the Middle Ages, you're a ready source of revenue and your own bank account.

[32:24]

Of course, when it was mismanaged, it often meant that you didn't have any money there at all. This is often a good one, describes a good covenant. What happens in the financial dealings of the Manukas, a very wealthy monastery in the late 18th century, when the Sox didn't spend money where they shouldn't, and everyone was in debt. That meant, in other words, the other danger that these congregations struggled with, very seriously, namely the setting up of a beneficiary system within the community to do away with people who had titles and a source of revenue for life. In that way, that's why the congregation involved all the officials. That's why it was a congregation held that we no longer have the lands of the civilized universe. And so all of these were very kind of pragmatic means to deal with the evils.

[33:25]

The other thing, of course, is that many of these people, like Ndudu Rikodako, are dealing with recruits, all with men who have been in the military. It was kind of draconian, the way they were instituted at the time. and Divier de la Cour, where our institutes were formed there, with the help of the bishop of that time. We had a handful of old monks that did not wish to be formed, so they were finally told, okay, you've got that corner of the monastery, we don't want to see you. And he started saying, we're going to move you. And finally, they got more and more of a process of, well, you're going to have to move out, we're going to move you to another place, the old man, and you'll stay there. And also they were told that if any of them had presented challenges and had too much, you know, too much talent, they were going to deal with you in a rather harsh way. But that was in that attempt to sort of start again.

[34:29]

Now dealing with these men, a new kind of pride was imposed, and that was the use of the lesson of violence. In other words, they used them to try to educate Spiritually, a group of people, the kind of techniques, the larger the person, the better the technique, to give them a spiritual formation. And it's the beginning now of such practices as your half-hour meditation, half-hour spiritual reading, the kind of things that, of course, we take for granted in the house, in our regular monastic life. And, uh, he works in Montana. He got to, again, go to the 14th country, and he got to go to one man, who himself is a very interesting character, and that is Gerard Goethe.

[35:32]

Well, the Dutchman. He was born at Devonter and Holland in 1320. And he died relatively young in 1384. His mother had been a victim of the Black Death. She died in 1350 of the plague. So about that time also, In other words, he becomes a poet. In other words, he is conscious. But of course, there's always a difference of opinion, you know, foyer and foyer.

[37:01]

But this is a normal practice. It's a normal practice. He was a normal student. In other words, he lived a kind of, you know, lowly life. That's right. He was into everything. and it was only in 1374 that he suddenly converts. He converts, he renounces all his beneficence to the devil, and he becomes a deacon in 1377 so that he can preach. And he becomes a fiery preacher, and very radical, and so fiery and so radical that the hierarchy in the city of Delandry begins to live a kind of a common life with his disciples who gather around him. And it's particularly with one man who was a canon of Utrecht, Utrecht being the spiritual capital of Florence.

[38:13]

Well, potentially, the weather will move out, and above all else, there are likely to be months of rain, a drought will be likely in the next few months, and you want to be concerned with that. As far as he was concerned, that was a factor of the decadence and of the decay and of the corruption, if you happen to read out of the church. were engaged in preaching, educated youth, educated clerics, works of education, and many of them had the rudiments of also a new humanism throughout the period of the Renaissance, of a new humanism. But, Girard wrote, steerism into a certain type of spirituality. A spirituality that which he felt was needed at the time, namely, that was turned away from all the subtleties of theological discussion and distinction and so forth that would be found in the next book.

[39:45]

It steered its way from theologians and philosophers, but went to, again, to the scriptures and went to the warmth, personal warmth, of Jesus himself. And a notion of getting back to basics, what is right, what is wrong, the fact of a positive in the virtues. And above all else too, for there I go with my life. None of this mystical business, getting away from business. All this, all this, all this. Let's be simple, let's be direct, let's relate to Jesus. and instrumentically, but has tried to stir up within us, as we read the scripture, not to try to study it, but to stir up within us feelings, feelings, feelings of love, love, so forth.

[40:57]

Girard, who had died in 1384, and his work continues on a lot of lines, but the influence of Girard And then there's others who take up what he does, including a young German priest, who had become a member of what was an offshoot, and he was a holler of horrors, but they weren't regulars, they weren't monks, but they were canon regulars, the foundation of canon, the largest union canon of the congregation of winter time. And the man was Thomas Akempis, who died in 1471. And one of the things that Thomas Akempis the whole devotional movement, namely the Invocation of Christ. He writes it, and the work, of course, is an immediate success. But it sums up in a remarkable way, a remarkable book, it sums up the whole spirit, the whole orientation of what Gerard Gros had begun.

[42:03]

Namely, this devotion to Christ, this turning away from any sort of intellectual speculation, of intellectual concerns, heart felt warm, by Jesus, and he constantly to us. Cisneros, however, is important, most important in the history of spirituality, because not only did he revive, or is he really responsible for the present day flourishing of the Abbey of Montserrat, in Catalonia, in Spain, but also because it is on rising, the influence of which is greater than any we would like to admit.

[43:05]

This net was of a great Spanish family related to the famous Cajon Jimenez, friend and advisor and statesman, Ferdinand Isabella. which I'll skip for a while. Cisneros was not a monk originally of Montserrat, he was sent to Montserrat when they decided to reform that very small community, a very small community, by a great Christian center, a monastery, and it goes back at least to the 12th century. Cisneros had been a monk of the congregation of Ayadoli, The Foundation of Valladolid, as this panel would be glad to know... I'm not going to take time. No, no, [...] no

[44:12]

Monks were allowed under the name of strict enclosures. Absolute and total strict enclosures. They were called the Cross-Straw Lads. They were as enclosed as any of the normal-like nuns. Which, of course, was a good affair that couldn't last too long. And, in fact, I don't know exactly how long they maintained their quality, quite some time or other, of almost absolute and total withdrawal, and not being able to get out at all. But it was part of every form of movement. But gradually it became more and more, and also a kind of a severe, the monastery, I believe, had almost a iron-like grip on all the houses that it belonged to submit to its jurisdiction.

[45:18]

It was, in fact, two iron files, two rigid, and it was something that had to be changed and didn't cease to be as rigid as Simon Peering's reformed efforts as it was in the beginning. But it is out of this that Cisneros comes and goes to Montserrat. Strictly speaking, Montserrat did not become a member of the Convocation for long and became a flourishing abbey. What we remember Cisneros for, however, we came out of Montserrat only in 1499. We wasn't there for a long time. But what we do now remember him for is that it was at Montserrat He wrote a famous work, a spiritual work, which he gave to his monk, and which his monk continued to use. And the memoir for that is a pilgrimage center, which meant going and coming to many different people.

[46:27]

The work that he wrote was known as the Book of Exercises, the Spiritual Exercises of the Spiritual Life. and then a short directory on the canonical hours. This work embodies in a magnificent way, I think, the essence of the diversity of modern spiritual life adapted for monasticism. Let me read you a passage to keep from it. He explains He's writing, of course, for according to traditional divisions, the spiritual life of a beginner to a proficient person. And that is mainly concerned, obviously, with the beginner. And the way I've discussed it, meditation and so forth. How you start out, uprooting by your own virtues, of course. Now, he knew that. That's what I mentioned earlier. But, it's in this long preparation, the methodical

[47:30]

of one of the key aspects of the devotional dharma is methodical prayer, methodical meditation, having your method and following the method. Let's give an example of this. The devout religious man must, above all in his beginnings, choose to exercise himself in the way of purity. And in order that, according to what has been said above, he may have settled and doodled a lot of exercises, the meditations of the Way of Purity must be distributed throughout the week as follows. On Monday there is to be consideration of sin. On Tuesday there is to be consideration of death. On Wednesday, hell. On Thursday, judgment. On Friday, the passion. On Saturday, Our Lady, and on Sunday, heaven. On Monday, therefore, we must draw on the thought of our sins according to the three function of heart, where the lifting up of the soul to God, exercise of these three should be carried out in the following manner."

[48:40]

Then he then describes how you want to prepare yourself for your meditation. Now brothers, since we do really wish to work out ourselves both judgment and justice, on Monday after matins, at the appointed hour for prayer, coming to the appointed place near signing thyself with the sign of the cross on proud lips and breasts, say this on the cross, come Holy Ghost, for the hearts of thy faithful, and continue them down the path of thy life, and then say three times this verse of God inclined to my aid, or let me just count them, and then withdrawing within thine own spirit to look on thyself as a guilty man, and standing before thy God with must exactly recall to mind and deeply consider how much God was offended by every sin. Passing over the fears and allow thyself up to devotion according to the first element of the way of purity, which we have elsewhere called bitterness of sorrow. Let thy heart at the beginning of thy prayer be wounded by a fellow life's sins, and thus, sharply approaching thyself under the preaching of each throne, save thyself as follows.

[49:48]

It is very characteristic namely to give you the prayer and not what you ought to say, my soul, to think thyself now most carefully, and strive with all thy might to feel how much even one sin is disclosing to God. See how pride cast down Lucifer from heaven, disobedience drove Adam out of paradise, Sodom and Gomorrah were defunct for luxury, and the whole world perished for the flood. Think how the Son of God, thy Redeemer, went for sin, etc. Then, if you go on, when therefore thy soul I have been after this man a trial in the first part of the way of purity, and it has put a bitterness and grief to the painful thought of her sins. Then I pass on to the second step, that is to say, to confusion. I say, would I be feeling, O my Lord, I grieve that I have lost thy friendship, that I have set thy majesty at naught, that I have yielded to my evil passions and have in many ways lived a sinful life, that I have thrown away my time and my strength both for body and mind, that I have trespassed thee in such a manner, and go on and on and on with thee,

[50:49]

short, effective prayers. And when thou hast prayed thus, or on any otherwise, as thou didst wish, nor the souring of thy heart shall move thee to do it, pray with all thy strength to put forth sighs and groans from thine innermost heart, for even as a fowl keen to iron invites it out to its rarest rest, so do heartfelt sighs and groans go out to the rest of our sinking vices and rush them far away to doom and unease. Any real prayer, you can say, that embodies that. And so forth. And I'm concluding with a series then of prayers to the Blessed Virgin and to others. Then, and while I say this, I'd like to finally invoke the saints as follows. On Monday, commend ourselves to all the angels in general, to thy guardian angel in particular, whom thou shalt always love and revere, and say some goodbye prayers in Deity, as well as to the saints whose feasts are kept on that day. On Tuesday, invoke Our Lady and all the Holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Disciples of the Lord. and choose one of them by chief advocate, together with the senator.

[51:51]

On Wednesday, honor the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Martyrs. On Thursday, commend thyself to Our Lady in all holy confession. Friday, to Our Lord's painful and most bitter passion. And Saturday, to Our Blessed Lady and the whole choir of clergy. And Sunday, adore the Most Blessed Trinity and call to thy aid the Almighty Father, the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. By mercy of each other, clergy." In other words, a kind of ordered, methodical way for each day of the week, proceeding step by step by step. Now, Ms. Branson comes up even more clearly in the kind of methodical, effective approach in another little work that he wrote, what is known as the Directory for the Canonical Hours. In this way, One was to pray, the liturgy. In other words, you turn the refutation of the office into a framework in which you can make effective prayer according to a method.

[52:57]

Yes, brethren, holy men tell us of diverse kinds of attention during the divine office. But because men in these days are dull of understanding, and by little skill in things divine, few are able to catch the spiritual meaning of what these holy men tell us. I have therefore thought best to choose one easy method out of the many taught by Holy Doctrine, and with the keynote, a methodical prayer. And to arrange the whole office according to this one, I thought our own psalmody is concerned, so that anyone, however simple, can at once understand and make use of it. First, then, during the trip of prayer, we begin to do it. Perhaps we won't try to explain all of this, but it will still be the Middle Ages. is still part of the extra prayer that we're told to be said before we begin. Then we begin it this way. During which, during the, um, and then, Ms. Bray can't make us wait. It's saying as we begin, Mattins, O God inclined to my aid, O Lord, make haste to help me.

[54:01]

Thou alone shall open my lips, and so forth. Then follows the psalm. During this psalm, we must look upon the angel as standing beside us. and speaking to and calling on us, that we may together with them adore and praise our Lord. We must devoutly reflect on the meaning of each verse of this psalm, and then follow the hymn, which is a certain manner of praising God, and we may offer it to him in honor of his presence and as a way of greeting him. Next follow the psalms of the first night, wherein a monk must keep his mind in some fixed place, and set down a number of these resting places, lest it should wander hither and thither. As far as he can, he should adapt the meaning of his psalms to the themes he has in his mind, and he can thus go through the whole of the office, reckoning for example all the psalms of Matthew, and the joints of the four fingers of his left hand as with fashion. He will then place the tip of his thumb on the first joint of his forefinger, and first meditate on the enunciation. At the first psalm, he should not pick on the coming of the angel to Matthew, as if he saw the angel going into Our Lady's poor dwelling and saying, Hail for the Grace, etc., and with him a host of angels singing praises, in whose company they sang the first psalm.

[55:12]

The first psalm being ended, placing his thumb on the second joint of his forefinger, let him now see in his mind's eye the city of Bethlehem, and behold a newborn child laid in a crib. Listen to the angels and shepherds sing the praise, and with them let him recite the second psalm, adapting very carefully to the things that passed before his mind. When Judas thought to wander, he may easily recall them by pressing his finger with his thumbnail. The third psalm is to be sung in honor of our Lord's circumcision, during his above directive concerning his bodily circumcision, by which that of our own souls is signified, and concerning the imposition of the name Jesus, which means Savior, and not one of his precious blood, and his sufferings until the Sabbath. See, in the fourth psalm were the kings, who come to adore the King of kings, adopting his meaning as above. The thing that did sound was Simeon and Anna of the child which we learned in the temple, the sixth of Our Lady and Saint Joseph in Egypt, and the loss of Christ in the temple. And thus the first nocturne is ended, sitting down to attend to the meaning of the lessons in response to it, and be transfigured with Our Lord on the mount.

[56:17]

Next we come to the second nocturne, in which we make six more stations. By the first being at the entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem, but minutely on what took place And the next psalm should be said with the Apostle of the Last Supper. The next should be said with Our Lord praying in the Garden, with Michael the Archangel. And the psalm following from the Garden to the house of Amos with St. John and St. Basil on the ground. And so on and so forth. The first canticle for the third and last canticle should be said with Our Lord as we read from the house of Caiaphas and then of Pilate. And then so forth. Then comes the Te Deum Laudamus and see how Our Lord has led before Pilate to his doom. And it is the pharaoh's office to make the stations alive, but it can't, because until then, at the palace, there had not been a ria. And the psalms that follow make the stations toll off for lords on festivals. Psalms are lords, as we said, at the following stations. The first psalm there is Miseriato, that was just spouted out at the end of the word. But after his sentence, he was bidden to go back to the place of his scurrying, and put on his own garments, and so forth.

[57:22]

These psalms, having been seen, they can bring before your mind, and as you keep track of it, Now, what I urge you to do is lift your fingers. That were not to be done just for madness and boredom. These went on. Chapter 5, for example, on Monday, a graceful prime in church. On Monday, you may consider the goodness of God in creating him. On Tuesday, in giving him his grace. On Wednesday, in his vocation. On Thursday, in his justification. On Friday, in enriching him with gifts. On Saturday, in guiding him safely. On Sunday, in the future gifts of glory. Each of these benefits is divided into six heads, three of which are allies of prime and three to terse, and that each of these six articles would say one psalm giving thanks to God after this manna. I thank thee, O Lord God most high, for such a sick benefit. Of the hymns of prime, terse, and sex, throughout the whole week, rejoice in the divine presence. On Monday, meditate on God's goodness and thy creation, thanking him that he, as prime, who destined thee to, created thee, created thee in a body.

[58:24]

where the first psalm gave thee a soul, the second psalm formed thee a guardian angel, and the last psalm gave thee Christian parents. At PAM, on Monday, from all eternity, the rest of the day, and so forth. On and on and on. In other words, you have a subject for each psalm, you have a way of having fun, of keeping track. It's very methodical, a very typical, very, very characteristic of the Wilson Academy. Now, the interesting thing, of course, about Christopher Wilson, remember, is that he writes the spiritual exercises sometime before, um, in the early part of his genius habit, it comes out in 1499, and I think it's done about 1500 to 1512. It would be another man who also writes spiritual exegesis, but of course a much better known man who had a tremendous influence on spirituality He's already well along in years, undergoes conversion, and proceeds to, it's about 1520.

[59:40]

In 1522 he has a wound, and proceeds then on his way to a new life after life. He makes his visit to Montserrat in 1522. After his conversion, he makes his way in 1520, makes his way across Spain, hobbling from his room, he goes to Montserrat. There he makes his general confession, there he hands up a sword from the statue of the Virgin, and there he receives work of conversion. It is from there that Ignatius then goes to Mount Risa, and a little over a year, begins and develops his own spiritual exercises.

[60:47]

Now, of course, you must understand that there are the monks of Montserrat have done for yourself how fine, you know, we agree the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius are great and wonderful, but obviously he got them from the abbot Sistneros. And you can also understand that naturally the Jesuits would hardly want to feel that this work of such originality is forced and should be, in a way, at the core of the whole Jesuit spirituality, and at least numerically, at least in some order. But they can have it. So the fight has raged rather strongly. Naturally, we find that things don't actually humbled and so forth. But Rome, in order to show her complete and total impartiality, put on the index both a work by a Jesuit and a work by a Benedictine, each of which was claiming the authorship of the spiritual exercises for its own hero.

[62:01]

Folks were condemned, and that's where the argument is supposed to start. I think, personally, there probably is little doubt that the spiritual exercises of Cisneros may certainly have helped give at least certainly a framework and an inspiration to Ignatius and his work, which is a remarkable work. If you have read them, you know, obviously, it is a methodical way of approaching meditation, drawing a conclusion. But there's no doubt that Ignatius carries it on to an immeasurable degree. It is the epitome, as that article of Harvey at one time said, it is the epitome of cataphatic mysticism. It is a work of mysticism. It is a beautiful example of how to meditate. We went very far.

[63:05]

And the Albert Cisneros's text is really important. I think it's kind of significant. But one of the books that has survived in our library, and in fact, there's two copies, that Evan Martin Marty himself wrote personally, contained in England, in English, were two copies of Spiritual Exercises of the Rabbi Stiefvner. As well as, one of the books that goes back to the real foundation of our Abbey and Library in the beginning, are the Teachings of Lewis Lewis. Now, Lewis, Louis de Blois, was equally important as Cisneros, and equally as influential. Francois-Louis Dubois, who is newly known under the Latin acronym of Nangosius, and also the great nobility of France, becomes abbot of the Ghiassi, which is now in, which at that time was part of the Spanish Netherlands, for the French speaking,

[64:18]

and is now part of Northern France, was also a reformer in his monastery. He was called a reformer's monastery as a young man. He had entered the monastery at the University of Duvein, and finally was, through a series of events, supposed to become eminent and introduce a reform. Very typical of the time, reform imposed from outside. It was very typical of the time. two, unformed, untrained monks, so often starting from scratch. Now, what Goethe has done is in a series of writings, important writings, the most famous of which is the Mirror of Four Monks, as well as on his own series of statutes that he draws up for his own monastery, in which he insists that there must be a half-hour of meditation He just does insist very strongly on the value of the, the value of Lectio.

[65:28]

And he describes how it must be done. He also insists upon meditation and how it is to be done, giving, insisting upon a certain methodical way, although nothing spelled out in the same sort of detail as our Cisneros. Joseph, however, is very much aware of the mystical life and points out that it is only for beginners. And in his writing, in there for monks and in there as a spiritual directory, he admits and is quite willing to insist that eventually there should be a moving into higher form of prayer. He was not averse to necessity. But, as he says, if you're going to meditate, and this is very typical of the devotional yama, start with a passion. In a mirror for monks, this passage is very, very typical of Lozius.

[66:36]

The best method for mental prayer, he says, is the remembrance of Christ's life and I knew a monk, and that was himself, whose custom was to propose to himself every day some part of our Lord's Passion. Thus, for example, one day he would set before his eyes Christ's being in the garden, whether soever he went that day, wheresoever he chanced to be. If not troubled with any other serious and necessary cogitation whatsoever he did outwardly, he took a special care to direct his internal eye to our Lord's suffering distresses in the garden, and thus would he talk with his soul. my soul. Behold thy God. Behold, daughter, attend, see, and consider most dear. Behold thy God. Behold thy Creator. Behold thy Father. Behold thy Redeemer and Saviour. Behold thy Refuge. Behold thy Defender and Protector. Behold thy Hope, Trust, Strength, and Health. Behold thy Sanctification and Purification. So thank the Lord now.

[67:44]

We would also force this soul to remember to those things which our Savior did and suffered for her in the garden. One, while it is having heard the considerations of our Saviour's unsearchable humility, mildness, patience, most fervent and incomprehensible charity. And another, while to take compassion on our Lord of intimate majesty, so humble and afflictive, and again to thank Him for His so great benefits and piety. And another, while to repay love with love, and anon to ask pardon for our sins, and to beg this or that grace. We often convert a speech to these or the like affectionate or fervent aspirations. or my soul, when will God be ready to power me to be lifted by the Lord? When will God imitate his madness? When will the example of his patience shine again so bright? And then directing the eye of his heart to heaven on the death of eternal life, he would claim another series of aspirations. In other words, he would accuse his soul that it was too slow, sluggish, tepid, ungrateful, hard, and self-sacrificing.

[68:44]

The same sort of method would progress the picture we've seen. very typical of the worsening of drama, very typical of the spiritual anxiety of muskets medals, anti-amnesia, intimacy, and specialist communication, and then awakening in yourself lively sentiments of compunction, of self-esteem, and desire for conversion, and so on. All this so well laid out as a the way in which one should learn how to pray and meditate, dominated our spiritual formation down, I think, to a very recent time. There's no doubt about it. Blosius, again, was a remarkable writer, who had much credit, which Blosius deserves credit, in fact, for a reawakening of a notion of the value of sacred

[69:51]

and to go back to the Father, and stress on the Spirit in a spiritual way. In other words, these are, both Cisneros and Lourdes are examples of the masticism which Drago didn't like, and had very little use for, taking necessity as inspiration, and the Son of Man transforming it. But, it left its imprint. It is not, it is to a certain extent, a domesticated kind of spirituality. It does not call us to climb the rough and rugged paths, narrow and winding and tortured, into the high trees. The Dalai Lama has said, cultivate your garden. He's a big upperclassman. And maybe, just maybe, he'd like That to some extent is where I see the influence.

[71:07]

Whether it was from good or ill, I don't know, but the influence has been there. There's certainly no doubt about the fact that the Jesuits had such a great deal of influence in terms of influencing nuns, Biblical nuns, in terms of influencing other Biblical monasteries. So it wasn't just... In a certain sense, Sister Austin's Moses would have been better had to be one that had been influenced directly by them, because they were. They still are harking back to a kind of Consciousness of the Father. I have an earlier tradition. I would say that, by and large, much was the foresight of the retreats and missions being given by Jesuits.

[72:12]

And there are other writers. There are other things that come in. Don't think this is the end of the story. Judsonism makes its appearance. I intend to. That ain't mine. Judsonism doesn't interfere. Jainism is as anti-mystical in its backdrop. It's a very, very anti-contemplative sort of religion. And the Morris, many of them were Jainists in Jainism. But, of course, anti-Jesuit too. There's a very strong, anything that's anti-Jesuit tends to be pro-Jainism. But the influence of the Jesuits level, certainly in this country. My monastery, when I first entered, we never had public meditation for three days a week, and now the last three days are Holy Week, and all of the rabbis without admission will read from the exercises from the mission.

[73:26]

By the way, blessings are new, I'll introduce them, because none of you would know that because we weren't able to change, but the introduction of the new community of Holy Week came, and we no longer anticipated in the early morning, out of seriousness, of Holy Thursday and Good Saturday, and Holy Saturday was for us, in our community, the fact that we would no longer have those public meditations, and we would now have the Office of Tenebrae, which we might be for now in the morning, and it wouldn't be time in front of my house. Even the term that was used in New York, when you look in the archives, for retreating, the exercise was called that. Father, father, brother, um, David, we had a question last week to ask you.

[74:50]

How did that happen, and what did it have to do with the rise of the idea of waybrothers, if anything, and how did they get differentiated and all of that? Well, I wouldn't have to ask Bill if he didn't know. Not in fact, my thesis. All my youth lost my hair. I wanted to look at the laypersonnel, the familia, the laypersonnel that came from the foundation community in 909 and 910 to the middle of the 14th century, 1350. And what sparked my interest when I first started this, and I had unknown, I would never, never, never have chosen that subject. It was a subject I would have chosen if I had given it over 10 years.

[76:12]

But I was still sort of questioning the labor of it. Before the Vatican Council and questioning the labor of it as such, that was a kind of varying question. And I was thinking about trying to do something. I was going to find the origins of labor. and the origin of the Lay Brothers. Working on the hypothesis that others have begun to suggest, that you must look for the origin of the Lay Brothers in that group of people who were around the monastery, attached to the monastery, but were not monks, namely the familia, meaning all of those who were in some way attached to the monastery and have various lines of relationship to it. And that question that you ask is precisely, then, on the past level. Namely, the question of trying to identify, in the documents, the various other kinds of people that would be found in the Amalastra community.

[77:23]

And the Amalastra community is middle-aged, high-middle-aged, community and other state monasteries, but not just amongst there. There's a whole lot of other monasteries in the whole city. And so my method was to try to identify the elements that I mentioned in the darkness. Hoping that I could say, voila! There! There! You have the missing link. You have the specimen of someone who starts out as a laity and goes through the transmutation And now you have the late brother of Martin Luther King. And not only that, it becomes the attempt to identify with clinical certitude whose people are. You don't have just the term Oblati, you have the term Donati, you have the term Brigandari.

[78:26]

other kinds of terms that have been used when we found Latina. Just try to identify now and then, of course, it's almost impossible because you're dealing with a living, breathing situation, where you've got things always in shock towards the movement. The term Oblati, to be specific, thank you for your question. The term Oblati is a term that has various meanings, if you find them. Obviously, one who is offered. One who is offered. It then meant, normally, some kind of an individual who is offered to the community and has some kind of link to that community. In some places, it meant the children who were given faith to the monastery. Namely, the five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old kid. Agree me that those boys were there. They were not given the title Oblati in the document, so they were usually called Infante.

[79:31]

That's the whole problem with dealing with any kind of nomenclature. You've got to see how it seems to be identified in various places. Just as the term Kapalanus in Cluny meant the secular priest attached to a local parish, but Cluny owned, and therefore they owned the secular priest, too. The other attempt, of course, is to try to... We do know, however, that this term of Latin did have several different meanings. One of them is, at times, children And the other was that someone who had given and offered himself or herself to the community, and as a result, received and benefits from the community. So there are various ways of establishing a kind of juridical relationship to the community for various reasons. And you had all kinds of persons who belonged. Either they were serfs, or they were something slightly different. And one of the questions about the Pando block a work which was very, very badly done, was to try to deraise modalities of this kind of a relationship where a layperson lived and was courted on the monastery.

[80:45]

One of the ways in which this could be done is that the monastery would be willing to accept a donation from, you would say, of their property and their land, with the understanding that you would be, for the rest of your life, would be fair, and supported by the community at their death. And your land, of course, the monster would be able to have a uniform to your land and would own it after you're in fact you're denied. But that was, in other words, it was your insurance property. It was your insurance property. In a certain sense, we invent life insurance. We help invent annuities. But in doing that, then, the monastery had them the obligation to support. And this would often be the case. This was to be found quite frequently. The next step, of course, would be to have a noble personage use that just as much as he or she would use the abbot commandant.

[81:50]

And they'd say, OK, you've got so many spaces. I'm going to, instead of as a favor to me, you're going to take care of so-and-so. And this person will live and have room and board, et cetera. And that would be your way of paying me taxes, or paying me revenue to take care of this person. And then the office of oblate would support this by someone else. In other words, a donatus doesn't affix my deposit, for example, with a donatus. In the beginning, it was not a label. But you can argue it doesn't matter. Namely, a person becomes practically a slave of the community. Don't eat it. They don't eat themselves. And becomes juridically a subject to the community. Juridically a subject. You have that kind of institution.

[82:51]

The juridical bond is Those are the very kinds of ideologies. Now, is it a labor to come from there? It's hard to prove. All we know is that the term converses is a term that has many different meanings, and one of the earliest of its meanings is the late communist monastic life. We have to do this a lot. But converses with the latecomers. And when the documents use the term converses, it's only a certain period, but the beginning means someone who is a, coming from the outside, is given a habit, not that of monks, because it's traditional to give that habit to men who never became monks,

[84:08]

they could be sent down to the faraway ranges to do work. That's why overnight, come in for Sunday and Friday, Friday and Sunday, and Tuesdays. But that thing evidently never existed to me, is my conclusion. And there's a lot of money involved in that. But that's the second meaning of conversion, because you're going to slip in. But I tell them a block of block thieves has various meanings. The modern, present-day secular omelette is the result of being signed up on the Book of Life of the Competent in the Abbey, then you become one of the benefactors, usually admitted into the chapter room, and usually it wasn't for the ordinary guy, the ordinary serf who gave himself to the master. He admitted in a chapter when he was assigned that at his death, uh, that's only a matter of the testimony of Pope Francis IV, that's only, uh, uh, some of the other spiritual, liturgical offerings would be carried out.

[85:42]

In fact, he would be buried in the community, or even he would come and, before his death, make vows That would be another way of belonging to the community. I don't know. Kind of brief. Probably a little bit of a story. I'll leave it at that. Let's put it at 5.15 today, not 5.30. All right. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to go. We're all going to separate. I'll buy you a drink of water.

[86:32]

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