I have a mind that is fascinated by you. I've 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 various of history at their deeming or 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 unit is another institution defined, that one period growth and expansion is another civilization's period of decadence, perhaps even more than this.

[01:25]

Maybe our interest in history is far by our own days, our own times, 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 sort of 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.

[02:26]

And I looked upon the historian not only as detectives, 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 too, because there should be no element in 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

[03:29]

what it means to have a certain fascination for detail. Poisinger studied the end of the Middle Ages. He studied in a very remarkable way. He wrote his work in the 1920s in terms of a student of cultural history, a history of civilization. He studied the period, of course, of the 14th and the 15th and the 16th century. a period of death. Barbara Tuchman studies precisely, and her very first name, was the opportunity for this year, in the 14th century. But what we often, as monastic historians and historians of spirituality forget, is that monasticism was existent at this time. We often overlook in our Interest, of course, in the early period of monastic history and the desert period.

[04:32]

In our fascination with the Middle Ages, we often overlooked that there was also a period of monastic history and that things were happening. Because in the Middle Ages, 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. The virus endured maybe. It is extremely important because we all share in that heritage. The 14th century was a century of many calamities. 1348, 1349, the Black Death, And as Europe carries off a third of the population, I don't think that you can appreciate just exactly what it would mean to have a decimation of population.

[05:43]

It would mean that in many areas, over a third will disappear. But that means in terms of pure economic terms. in terms of young demography, of course, it means that a loss, perhaps, of many of those of childbearing age, or 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 economic dislocation. But it does to a mentality, the sense a pervading sense of death. We might transpose 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 and country and the dislocation of the field.

[06:54]

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, in terms of living in a world which did not yet know that there was a capacity to destroy that world even over. It's a question of mentality. It's a question of apprehension, or almost the universe apprehendedness. That has a significance. We can imagine the 14th century with this kind of terrible decimation of the population we can fight when we are in the midst of that century. At the same time, it's the century which knows almost continual warfare, a hundred years' war.

[07:56]

It takes the most left entry to the next entry between England and France, the battle through is France. The great Western system, from 1878 to 1415, from as far as the Western church is concerned, no one really knew, and we're not even sure today, who was a legitimate sovereign power. to grow up, to reach one's maturity, and perhaps so many even dying, not even really knowing, understanding who in time was the legitimate successor of Peter S. Pope. And the dislocation had 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 the structures, the kundiastical structures, because the folks with each obedience are saying themselves that they must act as if the other do not exist and therefore create a structure, plan and pathways and so forth.

[09:14]

But it isn't just, of course, what that entails in terms of belief, but also what that entails in terms of institutional structures, or what that entails in terms of economics, again. The economic structure is all important. Well, each pope uses money and battle. And in terms of just, again, about 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 the solution, taking drastic measures, a calling of a council at Constance that met from 1414 to 1418, and finally with the election of Pope Martin McPherson. hoping to solve the problem of who is truly potent, and doing so rather pragmatically, and at the same time hoping to solve the even more crucial front of a reform, of a genuine reform in head and members.

[10:38]

It would be a constant cry up until the time of the Council of Trent. some hundred years or so later, with 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 Barthol was perhaps for the first time at that sort of a pivotal moment where

[11:44]

maybe as far as the historian doesn't turn on, not in the question, but I'm not looking at this as a theologian in terms of faith, but it might just have been the moment where the change of government in terms of the church will have a son, a papal monarchy, which of course is a term that has a whole gamut in terms of meaning, it might have a simple term that all, to a parliamentary form of government. 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 and the corruption, almost to the point where both, as far as closure, and they continue to seek and seek. And you almost have, then, the creation of a revolutionary atmosphere in the city of Madeline. who I would see, and competition with people, including very, very, very important people, very outstanding theologians.

[12:56]

Nicaragua, Cusa, after all, Statistria, Basel, Milan, Karajan, rather, very interesting people, rather. Oh, this takes place, of course, before the Reformation. We have a tendency to think that everything that comes to a 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 in the 14th and 15th century that all of these, all of this, all of the causes were laid. It didn't start just because a man was preaching about it. How about you have to do a week when I knew St. Peter? It's a profound malaise, profound malaise. And it's precisely in this period where you have a sort of a consciousness, just the beginning, of course, of the European national consciousness, the Council of Constance, each in terms, the whole council is thought of in terms of nation-states.

[14:14]

the kind of representing nation states, the bishop representing nation states. It's in this age of a writhing nationalism, writhing national consciousness, it is in this time, in this time of consciousness, that a profound transformation also takes place in the monastic world. Because, in a way, based with the reality of a general decadence in monasticism, in most monasticity, there's not seen as well, where that has to be a relative eye, it wasn't the same in every place, in the work of places where there was some flourishing going on. Nevertheless, faced with a kind of a life and the social pressures that insisted that this life would continue, for example, if I could many, many monasteries of men by this time limited themselves only to sons of the nobility based by the fact that by this time it was a general rule that the monastic community had to maintain a certain size economically and for other reasons it could not increase beyond a certain measure based by the fact that very, very often those who entered

[15:43]

entered precisely because of pressures from the family. It was, what do you do with the younger son in the noble family? Long time ago, it had always been a problem. What do you do with the younger daughters, for those of you who do not know it all? What do you do with them? Well, then the only thing they do is to place them where they will be out of harm's way, or where they will be able to live some sort of life in a style in which they were accustomed. So it is not at all unusual or surprising, therefore, that those who would be inmates of these monasteries, and those precisely for us who we might best call them inmates of these monasteries, should continue to some extent, have some of the amenities and some of the customs and so forth that they normally would have had if they had not had this destiny pressed 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 with dinner parties in one department.

[16:54]

To have one's own manservant and one maidservant, to have the peculium, your own cash flow, it was to be able to come and grow as you wish, It was, in other words, to lead the gentlemanly and ladylike existence that one's status in society entitled to. And it's in the midst of this, the reforms begin. The 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 commendatory habits was with a system that was

[18:01]

that became more and more universalized as we moved from the end of the Middle Ages, and a system that was used by everyone, including kings and members of the mobility, as well as the patriots. It was a system whereby you almost saw the local monastery as a place, as a milking place, a very source of revenue. that this, 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 that had in French the title of Hambo Blah, namely Leoblatus, who was often an old soldier, who had to be pensioned off by the king, so he was imposed upon the minority community of men or women.

[19:07]

The old soldier obviously did not, you know, some of the discovery had a vocation, but continued to live like an old soldier in the midst of the community, and to be fed, supported, once supplied, and given a revenue by the community. How are you also going to take care of those soldiers? In fact, I was the artist, you know, at the hotel in Paris. It was finally when the French monasteries, or 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 and build a central place, a central hospital for old soldiers. and perhaps avoid having them pointed on themselves perpetually. It was these kinds of things, 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.

[20:25]

One other thing that was done was to form congregations. was the banding together of monasteries which had been separate. Now, the congregation idea was not something absolutely new. That is exactly what Shuni formed with this dependent priory. There were other instances, other examples of powerful monasteries forming a kind of satellite houses around them or the houses that they reformed. There were Chez Albin Ra, in the south of France, another example. Even the idea of that 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 to a different kind of constitution in order to avoid

[21:27]

the sort of institutional realities that could not be changed, rather than being the question of reality. The most outstanding example of this was the formation of the Congregation of St. Justina by Ludovico Babo in 1419. Ludovico Babo, a clinician gentleman, who is part of that attempt for a new reform movement, which is part of the Reformation, within the Church, to become the nobleman, We've made a commendatory effort by the St. Justino in the city of Padua. Only a couple of monks there, huge, huge buildings, huge landholdings, and he decides to begin to live the regular monastic life and gradually acquires disciples. And also begins then to have, when we form our monastery, and then they decide that in order that they, that to release these monasteries from the parasitic abbot named by an external force, to revamp the whole notion of autonomous monasteries.

[22:45]

Common of issue, constitution, common property. And if you kept it, and the Congregation of St. John kept the title of abbot, and it's depending on how but only, elected only for one year, the governing body was the chapter, the general chapter. Now this constitutional format would be then adopted by other places with various changes of time and go on. But the important thing was it is now, in a certain sense, a parliament, even if only a mini-parliament would rule. In a certain sense, parliamentary rule, the same sort of phenomenon that is taking place It took place because of interiorly the Council of Constance, Council of Basel, and literally the Basel had been in the Council of Basel. It was to be introduced into the monastic system. Monte Cassino joined this congregation of San Cristiano in 1505, and it changed the name of the Presbyterian congregation, which still exists, no longer having, having, of course, once again, autonomous efforts, but it is still the same congregation.

[23:54]

When Father Columba, Columban Tuis, our Saint Joseph Abid, who was president of the Swiss-American congregation for years and years and years, made many concerted efforts to discover what were the privileges of the Swiss-American congregation, especially up until 1900 in our chapter, and what were the privileges in our chapter, and so forth. And all he could discover was that we had the same privileges as the privileges of the venerable Swiss congregation, which was about in the 16th century. The Swiss congregation, all, all the privileges of the congregation of St. Gistain, which was quite a new one, actually. And so he would constantly, whenever he got off the side talking about the privileges of the Swiss American congregation, go back to the congregation of St. Gistain and so forth. But it is very interesting because the congregation of St. Gistain becomes sort of, in a sense, the congregation type. for the new development in us. With that, you have then the development of other congregations, the most ones that we know the best.

[25:04]

There's, of course, the congregation of Saint-Bombe, which is established in Lorraine, which was at that time in my part of France, which was part of the empire against the 1604, and then from Lorraine, moving, at that time, moving then, Westward, to France, to the establishment of St. Moore and the Morris, and all of them are done in 1621. All of them being characterized, getting rid of the epics, and being governed by a general champion of one kind or another, a representative governor. Now why do I, what does this have to do with spirituality? I mean, it's human ethic, spirituality. mainly because the two men I want to talk about, our two men belong to this period, although neither one of them belongs to any of these important congregations. The abbot Cisneros and the abbot Lozius.

[26:10]

Both. Cisneros becomes abbot of Montserrat in 1499. Lozius becomes abbot of Mirti, Mirti. very small monastery, and low end in 1503. But it is precisely at this period of a continued 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, what characterized the spirituality of these Mason congregations, whether it comes to China, much less the congregation of St. Morbus, this particular congregation of St. Justina, and various other monasteries, and particularly the times of these two men, brought a new type of spirituality that was to be found in all of the reformed, many of the reformed circles at that age, even prior to the Reformation, which influenced the Reformation, the Reformation and the spirituality of the Reformation leaders.

[27:18]

Also, which was to be found adopted by the monks in their own community. And that was the Rocio Moderna. And one cannot understand the background of the Rocio Moderna as one also remembers. And it takes us to rise in this period of decadence, if you will, and of apprehensiveness and of general disintegration. Would you just say quickly, who composed the general chapters? Well, it differed from place to place. Usually it would be an election in each house. In some places, I mean, kind of you can decide where it's the abbots of the various houses who composed them in the chapter. But he was, as abbot, he was made up of our honor. And then the congregation as a whole would act. But more or less how it worked in the congregation of St.

[28:23]

Justina. Then whoever was the delegate would be implemented in whatever the decisions were in the other congregation? Well, 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. It is a general chapter which from the beginning that once a year, and then every three years, was composed of the superiors of all the monasteries, and also including elected delegates from the monasteries. They, in turn, elected a council of definitaurs, who were six others and three delegates. And this council had the supreme authority over everything in the kind region. They named the superiors in all the congregation of superiors and officials in each monastery. Most important, they owned the property. The property, in other words, there was no individual land home in anybody's monastery.

[29:25]

That way, you could eliminate the possibility of creating a commendatory abbot who had a right to revenue. There was no house heading of revenue, and we got either of the commendations. That was necessary. They also chose a president and four or five visitors. It was important that you have the attention to strengthen that so that each house could be regularly visited and hopefully with a reform movement any kind of abuse could be nipped in the back by an outside force. The other thing that was very important and which I didn't mention but had been characteristic of monasticism as we moved into the late Middle Ages, is that the officials in a house, the obedientios in other words, received it most clearly in a very amusing way if you'll stop and read the Chronicle of Jocelyn.

[30:27]

Very good, I mean, I hope you've got a hell of a chance to read that. That's very fascinating, you know, the work that's written in the beginning of the 13th century by a monk of various Indians, Jocelyn, who recounts the remembrance of what life is like in this monastery. Well, the obedientiary system was, of course, these were the officials in the monastery. They found this at Cluny, they found in every house. They made them with the men who were involved in the temporalities of the house. The Cluny was called the Chamberlain, and the Salera, and each one had the others. of his assistant and the sacristan, for example, and so forth. Now, how did this work in terms of economics? Namely, each one had his own source of revenue. Each officer, the sacristan, would have certain land affected to the officer's practice, and that would be the source, then, for the monies in order to run the sacristan and whatever department he was responsible for.

[31:36]

But held for each office, But what did it mean? It meant that by, as you moved into the late or middle ages, well, the individual among had this for life. It was, it was his. It was as much, it was as much his benefit as was, as there was a canon with. And he could not, in the end, he could not do it very easily. And also he would have his assistance and so forth. It also meant that he had a, it would be, well, 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, uh, going to be set up for life. It became, as you came to the end, in the middle ages, your very source of revenue, and, uh, and your, uh, your own bank account. Because, of course, when it was mismanaged, you'd have to remember, you didn't have, there wasn't any money there at all. This is a big drop and a big one. This guy is a good cover. Uh, what happens in the financial dealings of this money?

[32:37]

very welcome monastery in the 18th century. Socks didn't spend the night where we shouldn't. And everyone was there with a death. That meant, in other words, the other danger that these congregations tried to avoid, very seriously, namely the setting up of a beneficiary system within the community to do away with people who have titles and a source of revenue for life. In that way, that's why the congregation named all the officials. That's why it was a congregation that had the property. They would no longer have the lands of the sea without the people. And so all of these were very kind of pragmatic reasons to deal with evils. The other thing, of course, is that many of these people, like Ludo Rico Dado, are dealing with recruits Always men who had been in the monastery, it was kind of draconian where they were instituted to reform at the Congregation of Saint-Bain, when our Idiot of La Cour, where our institutes were formed there, where the help of the bishop was there around.

[33:50]

We had a handful of old monks that did not wish to reform. So they were finally told, okay, you've got that corner of the monastery, we don't want to see you. And he started telling them that it moved you. And when finally they get more and more, they probably decide, well, you're going to have to move out, we're going to move to another place, the other men, and we'll stay there. But it was kind of a fun game. And also they were told that any of them, you know, we're going to tavern and have too much, you know, too much talent, we're going to deal with you. Well, it's a harsh way. But that was a bad attempt to sort of start again. Start again. Now, dealing with these men, a new kind of pride he was imposed, and that was the use of the Boots of Madana. In other words, they used them to try to educate spiritually a group of people the kind of techniques, the larger Boots of Madana technique, to give them a spiritual formation.

[34:59]

And it's the beginning now of which practices as a half-hour meditation, half-hour spiritual healing, the kind of things that, of course, we take for granted in the house, in our regular monastic environment. When I look at the works in Marjana, we've got, again, the 14th century, and we've got to go to one man, whom salt is a very interesting character, and that is Gerard Gold. was a Dutchman. He was born at Deventer in Holland in 1340, and he died relatively young in 1384. His mother had been a victim of a black death.

[36:08]

She died in 1350 of the plague. So at that time also, 1355, he was finding a student of Paris, in other words, and he becomes a plague group. In other words, he was tonsure, which meant that he had a right to have all kinds of benefits this way, but I don't know that. The right to benefits is enough of a steady income from the church, but as soon as you were tonsure, that's what people like to do. was not doing more. But we were, we were forced to be hired. It used to be, we were forced to be hired somebody, some workplace. You needed some money to take your place. You got the work and you needed to work. You were supposed to give him, you were supposed to give him a fortio-fungal, a fitting portion. But of course, there's always a difference between, you know, for year and for year and what it's been. But this was a normal practice. Well, he was a normal student.

[37:10]

In other words, he lived a kind of a very life. That's funny. He was into everything. And it was only in 1374 that he suddenly converts. He converts. He renounces all his benefits. And he becomes a deacon in 1377, so he didn't finish. And he becomes a fiery creature, and very radical, and so fiery and so radical that the hierarchy is frustrating. In the city of Deventer, he begins to live a kind of a common life with his disciples that gather around him. And it's particularly with one man who was a canon of Utrecht, Utrecht being the spiritual capital, Florent Wadawines, with him, and particularly with Wadawines, but he forms then a new tribal religious community, the brethren and the common life.

[38:30]

Well, potentially. The brethren will move out. And follow all else. They were not to be monks. The only thing that the drug guild didn't like them was like monks. They didn't want to be concerned with them. But he was concerned that was a character of the decalence and of the decay and of corruption. He would have to be read out of the church. The brethren were... engaging in preaching, educated youth, educated clerics, works of edification, and many of them had the rudiments of also a new human, this was also the period of the Renaissance, of a new humanism. But Girard wrote, steers them into a certain type of spirituality, a spirituality that, which he felt,

[39:31]

was needed at the time, namely, that was turned away from all the subtleties of theological discussions and distinctions, and so forth, that would be found in the other two. It steered its way from theologians, philosophers, but went to, again, to the scriptures, and went to the warmth, personal warmth, of Jesus himself. Special Parts of devotion to Jesus in his remember voice. And a notion of getting back to basics of what is right, what is wrong, the fact of a part of it in the virtues. And above all else too. But there I go in my life. None of this mystical books. Getting away from mysticism. None of this. None of this. Let's be simple. Let's be direct.

[40:33]

Let's relate to Jesus. Let's be related to Jesus and his humanity. But let's try to stir up within us, as we read the Scripture, not to try to study it, but to stir up within us feelings, feelings of love, power, etc. But the influence of Gerard, of course, was immense, because this movement begins to spread. And 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 who was higher of harvest, But they were regulars, they were not monks, but they were canon regulars, the formation of the canon, the largest union canon, of the congregation of Linda Canon.

[41:36]

And the man was Thomas O'Kempis, who died in 1471. And one of the things that Thomas O'Kempis was the whole, the road to Moderna, the movement at the end of the immigration of Christ. He writes this, and the work of Christ is immediately fixed up. But it sums up in a remarkable way, a remarkable book, that the whole spirit, the whole orientation of what Gerard Goethe had begun, namely, his devotion to Christ, his turning away from any sort of intellectual speculation, intellectual concern, and heartfelt warmth for Jesus. And he has been casting me to Jesus. Jesus, 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 and Spain, but also because of his own writings, the influence of which is greater than any would like to be.

[42:57]

Cisneros was of a great Spanish family, related to the famous Cardinal Jiménez, friend and advisor, and the statesman, 39 Ysabella, by the name of Charles V for a while. Cisneros was not a monk originally of Montserrat, he was Santo Montserrat. when they decided to reform that very small community, in all of a very small community, but a great children's center. A monastery that goes back at least to the 12th century. Cisneros had been a monk of the congregation of Valladolid. The congregation of Valladolid, as this sister I would be glad to know, I'm not going to take fun. [...]

[43:58]

I'm not going to take fun. [...] absolute and total fiction pleasure. It was called the cross-strawlades. They were as enclosed as any, I mean, uh, drama like that. Which, of course, was a good affair that couldn't last too long. And, in fact, uh, I don't know exactly how long they maintained, quite some time, of almost absolute and total withdrawal, and not being able to get out at all. But the, it was part of every foreign movement.

[45:01]

But gradually it became more and more, and also kind of a severe, the monastery, I believe, had almost a an iron-like grip on all the houses that we belong to submit to its jurisdiction. It was on that two iron fire, two regions, and the summits on that two, they were chained, and didn't consist of years. And Richard, or Simon Pure, he formed 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 congregation for long. And they came up flourishing, I think. What we remember Cisneros IV, however, we came out of Montserrat only in 1499. He really was never a long time.

[46:03]

But what we do not remember him for is that it was that Montserrat that he wrote a famous work, spiritual work, which he gave to his month, and which his month continued to use. And many more of that is a, is a, um, living in the center, which he meant, which meant to kind of come to many, many different people. The work that he wrote was known as the Book of Exercises, the Spiritual Exercises, of the Spiritual Life. And then it was short directly on the canonical hour, This work embodies, in a magnificent way, I think, the essence of the diversity of modern spiritual life. Adaptive, poor, when asked to live. Let me read your passage in front of you. In other words, he explains, in the writing of the cross, for, according to the relational visions of the spiritual life of the genius of the vision of the purpose.

[47:10]

And that is mainly concerned, obviously, with the beginning. And the way I discuss with meditation and so forth. How you start out, operating by your own virtues, of course. I knew about that. I was about to cash in the area. But it's in this long preparation, methodical preparation. One of the key aspects of the world is methodical prayer, methodical meditations. having your method and following the method. Let's give you an example of this. The devout religious man must, above all in his beginnings, cheat to exercise himself in the way of purity. And in order that, according to what has been said above, he may have settled and do 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 sins. On Tuesday, there is to be consideration of death.

[48:14]

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 elements of the way of purity. That is, first, bitterness of sorrow. Second, compunction of heart. Third, the lifting up of the souls of God. The exercise of these three should be carried out in the following manner. when he then describes how you want to prepare yourself for your medication. Now, brothers, since we do really wish to work out ourselves both judgment and justice, on Monday after matters, at the appointed hour for prayer, coming to the appointed place near there, signing thyself with the sign of the cross on borrowed lips and dress, say this on the front, come Holy Ghost, to the house of thy faithful. and continue them down in the fire of thy life. Then say three times this verse of God inclined to my aid, or one of his captain, and then withdrawing within thine own spirit to look on thyself as a guilty man.

[49:18]

And standing before thy God with great fear, as he forced a real judge about to condemn thee, thou must exactly recall to mine and deeply consider how much God was offended by thy sin. Personally, it appears and riles thyself up to devotion according to the first element of the way of purity. which we have as we have called bitterness of sorrow. Let thy heart at the beginning of thy prayer be wounded by the fellow thy sins. And thus, shop for the fortune thyself, under the preaching of each song, save thyself as follows. With a very characteristic name, I may give you the prayer around what you ought to say, with his affectivity. O my soul, rethink thyself now most carefully, and strive with all thy might to feel how much even one's sin is disproven to God. See how pride cast down Lucifer from heaven. Disobedience drove Adam out of paradise. Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt for luxury, and the whole world perished for his blood. Think how the Son of God now redeemed and went for sin, etc. Then, through on, when therefore thy soul hath been after this man a child, in the first part of the way of purity, and as full of bitterness and grief, of the pain for thought of her sins, then I pass on to the second step, that is to say, to compunction, and say with lively feeling, O my Lord, I grieve,

[50:35]

that I have lost thy friendship, that I have set thy majesty up north, that I have yielded to my evil passions and have in many ways lived a simple life, that I have thrown away my time and my strength, both the body and mind, that I have trespassed me in such a man, and go on and on and on with thee, short, effective prayers. And when thou hast craved us, or in any other wise, as I have wished, nor the souring of thy heart shall move, did it do? Try with all thy strength to put forth sighs and groans from thy inmost heart. For even as a file came to iron and bites it out, particularly all it's rust, so do heartfelt sighs and groans throughout the rest of our sink and bites it and rush them quite a way to do as I do it. And a little prayer, you can say, that embodies that, and so forth. In other words, I am concluding with a series then of prayers of the Blessed Virgin and to others. Then, and while lastly, there is a next, finally, and broke the saints, the star one. On Monday, commend thy son, to all the angels in general, and to thy guardian angel in particular, whom thou shalt always love and revere, and say some devout prayer to him dearly, as words to the saint whose peace is kept on that day.

[51:42]

On Tuesday, invoke Our Lady and all the holy patriots, prophets, apostles, and disciples of the Lord, and choose one of them for thy chief advocate, together with the saint of the day. On Wednesday, I am the blessed virgin, and the holy martyrs. On Thursday, commend thyself to Our Lady and all the holy confessors, and pray to Our Lord's faithful and most pure passion, On Saturday, to our Blessed Lady, and the whole choir of Virgins, on Sunday, adore the Most Blessed Trinity, and call to Lae, the Almighty Father, the Father, the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost. In other words, a kind of ordered, methodical way for each day of the week, proceeding step by step by step. Now, this practice comes up even more clearly in the kind of methodical, uh, 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.

[52:45]

In other words, he turned the restitution of the office into a framework in which he can make effective prayer according to the method. For us, 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 doc. With the keynote, a methodical prayer. And to arrange the whole office according to this one, I find 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, it begins your office. That's, who won't try to explain my office? Well, there's certainly the middle ages, the middle ages, still part of the extra prayer that would probably be said before you began.

[53:48]

Then you begin it this way. During which During the, um, and then, Mr. Hymn, make us weary, saying, as we begin, O God, incline to my aid, O Lord, may he help me, thou, O Lord, shall open my lips, and so forth. Then follows the sound. During this sound, we must look upon the angels who are standing beside us, and speaking to and calling on us, that we may together with them adore and praise our Lord. We must carefully reflect on the meaning of each verse of this sound, and then follows the hymn. which is a certain manner of praising God, and we may offer it to him in honor of his presence, and as we were greeting him. Next follow the psalms of the first nocturn, 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 the psalms to the themes he has in his mind, and he can thus go through the whole of the office, reckoning for an example all the psalms of Matthew. and the joints of the four fingers of his left hand out of good fashion.

[54:51]

Let him place the tip of his thumb on the first joint of his fourth finger, and first meditate on the Annunciation. At the first time, we should not take on the coming of the angel to Nazareth, as if he saw the angel going into Our Lady's poor drawing and saying, Hail for the grace, etc., and with him a host of angels singing praises, in whose company they sang the first song. The first sound 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 the newborn child lay in the crib, listening to the angels and shepherds singing the praise, and would then let him recite the second sound, adapting very carefully to the things that passed before his mind. And should he start to wander, he may easily recall them by pressing his finger with his thumb in it. The third song is to be sung in honor of our Lord's circumcision. doing as above directed concerning this bodily circumcision, of which that of our own souls is signified, and concerning the imposition of the name Jesus, which means Savior, and that point of his precious blood, and his sufferings until his servant.

[55:54]

Seeing the fourth psalm with the kings, who come to adore the king of kings, adopting his meaning in the Bible. Seeing the fifth psalm with Simeon and Anna, as a child who was there in the temple, the sixth with Our Lady and St. Joseph in Egypt, and at the loss of Christ in the temple, And thus the first nocturn is ended, sitting down, attending the meaning of the lesson in his sponsor is, and be transfigured with our Lord on the night. Next we come to the second nocturn, which we make six more stations. Let the first be at the entry of our Lord into Jerusalem, but minutely on where it took place when we left the city. And the next psalm should be served with the Apostle at the Last Supper. The night should be served with our Lord, praying in the garden with my goody-eye to him. and the sound following from the garden of the house of Annas with St. John and see him right along in the house. And so on and so forth. The first canticle, for the third in that turn, is that we serve with our Lord as we live from the house of Caiaphas and then of Pilate. And then so forth. Then comes the Te Deum Laudamus, and see our Lord has lived before Pilate, today is June.

[56:57]

And if it is a fail, others make the stations alive to the canticles in Te Deum at the Padam Nostra and Ave Maria. And the psalms of the following, like the stations, told off were lords on festival. The psalms of the Lord could be served at the following stations. The first psalm, there was a small psalm, but again, that was the Lord. But after his sentence, he was built to go back to the place of the scurry and put on his own grounds, and so forth. These psalms, having gone a scene that you bring before your mind, and as you keep track of it, not with erosion indeed, but with your fingers. And that, that, were not to be done just for Madden, for Lord. He went on. Chapter 5, for example, on Monday, at first of the prime and terse, on Monday he may consider the goodness of God in creating him, on Tuesday and giving him his grace, on Wednesday and his vocation, on Thursday and his justification, on Friday and enriching him with gifts, on Saturday and guiding him safely, on Sunday and the future gifts of glory. Each of these benefits is divided into six heads, three of which are alive to prime and plead a terse,

[58:03]

And with each of these six articles, we say one psalm, doing thanks to God unto this man. I thank thee, O Lord God Most High, for such and such benefit. The hymns of fine pleasant sex throughout the whole week, rejoicing in the divine presence. On Monday, meditate on God's goodness and thy creation, thanking that he, a fine, predestined thee, to, created thee, three, gave thee a body. For I terse, for the first psalm gave thee a soul. For the second psalm, for the last psalm gave thee a guardian angel. For the last psalm gave thee a Christian parents. at pram on Monday, from all eternity to the destiny and so forth. On and on and on. In other words, you have a subject for your song, you have a way of having a sort of keeping track. The thermothonic, a very typical, very, very capitalist. Now, the interesting thing, of course, about Christmas, remember, is that he writes the spiritual exercises sometime before, in the early part of his awareness of it, It comes out in 1499, and I think it's done about 1503 to 1504.

[59:07]

It would be another man who also writes spiritual activities, who, of course, are much better known and who had a tremendous influence on spirituality down the ground. And that, of course, is St. Ignatius, a Basque nobleman from a soldier, where he is already well along in years, undergoes conversion, and, uh, proceeds to, uh, about 1520. In 1522 he has his, uh, wound, and, uh, proceeds, uh, on his way to a new life of a life in the depth of understanding. The nations visited Montserrat in 1522. After his conversion, he was, he makes his way in, like, 1520, makes his way across Spain, hobbling from his womb.

[60:17]

He goes to Montserrat. He very makes his general impression. There he hangs up his sword and comes straight to a virgin. And there he receives, he was very clear, he receives a copy of the Spiritual Act Society of the Abbot Cisneros. for his reflection, part of his whole work of conversion. It is from there that that Ignatius Lendusman, Raita, and Willow Revere, begins without his own spiritual exercise. Now, of course, you must understand that the monks of Montserrat have gone to a show of how fine, though we agree the spiritual exercises are great and wonderful, But obviously he got them from the Abba Cisneros. And you can also understand that naturally the Jesuits hardly want to feel that his work of such originality, such force, which certainly, in a way, is at the core of the whole Jesuit spirituality, and it's rumored that it would become some old better than Abba.

[61:26]

So the fight has raged rather strongly. Actually, we Benedictines don't have the same kind of resources as the Jesuits do, and we comply not to be polemically, to be actually humble and so forth. But Rome, in order to show her complete and total impartiality, put on the index those that worked by a Jesuit and worked by a Benedictine, each of which was claiming the authorship of the spiritual exercise was brought its own hero. Both were condemned, and that's where the argument is supposed to be. I think, personally, there probably is little doubt that the spiritual exercise that Cisneros may certainly have helped give at least certainly a framework and inspiration to Ignatius.

[62:32]

which is a remarkable work, which, if you have read them, you know, you obviously, it is a methodical way of approach to meditation, setting up a place, the drawing of confusion. But there's no doubt that Ignatius carried around to a remarkable degree. It is the epitome, that article that Harvey, it is the epitome of catathetic mysticism. It is a way toward mysticism. It is a beautiful example of how to meditate. And he went very far. And the, um, and the other system also says, uh, text is really important. I think it's kind of significant. But one of the books that I survived in my long run, in fact, there's two copies, but Evan Martin, Marty himself wrote personally for change in England, in English, were two copies of spiritual episodes of the Abbotese Meadow. As well as, one of the works that goes back to the Yale Foundation of I Abbey and Stanley of Endless Library in the beginning are the teaching of those years.

[63:39]

Now, Louis Louis de Bras was equally important as Cisneros and equally as influential. François-Louis Du Bois is newly known under the Latin reform of his name, Josius, and also the great nobility of France, who comes out of the IFC, which at that time was part of the Spanish Netherlands, but French-speaking, and is now part of northern France, was also a reformer in his monastole. He was called a reformist monastery. He was a young man. He had entered the monastery at the University of Duvain, 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.

[64:43]

It was very typical of the time, this constant effort of, how are you going to give a spiritual education to unformed, untrained monks, so often starting from scratch? And what Glosius does is there is in a series of writings, important writings, the most famous of which are in the mirror for months, 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, a half hour of spiritual reading, fifteen minutes of public spiritual reading each day. Glosius does insist very strongly on the value of the the value of lexio, and 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 spells out in the same sort of detail as Aracis Naros. Joseph, however, is very much aware of the mystical life and points out that it is only for beginners.

[65:51]

And in his writing, the law for monks, and in his other spiritual life, 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 Devotion of Moderna, start with a passion. In a mirror for monks, this passage is very, very typical of Loseus. The death method for mental prayer, he says, is their remembrance of Christ's life and passion.

[66:53]

I knew a monk, and I 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 being in the garden, wheresoever 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 will he talk with his soul. of my soul. Behold thy God. Behold daughter, attend, see, and consider, and most dear. Behold thy God. Behold thy creator. Behold thy father. Behold thy redeemer and savior. Behold thy refuge. Behold thy defender and protector. Behold thy hope, trust, strength, and health. Behold thy sanctification, spirit, and so forth. But I'm not. It also forces soul to remember to those sins which our Savior did and suffered for her in the garden. One, while it's having heard the considerations of our Savior's unsearchable humility, now in its patience, most fervent and incomprehensible charity.

[68:01]

And another, while to take compassion on our Lord of infinite majesty, so humble and afflicted. And again, to thank him for his so great benefits and parity. And another, while to repay love with love, and now to ask pardon for his sins, and to beg this or that grace. We often convert his speech to these of alike affectionate or fervent aspirations. O my soul, when will God be ready to power the humility of thy Lord? And will thou imitate his madness? And will the example of his patience shine again so bright? And then directing the eye of his heart to heaven and the depth of eternal light, he would frame another series of aspirations. In other words, he recused his soul that it was too slow, sluggish, tepid, ungrateful, hard, and such, and so forth. The same sort of method, we progress, we picture the scene, rather typical. of the worse in the drama, very typical of the spiritual exercise with musculoskeletal, anti-images. Picture the scene and special scene locations and then awakening yourself, lively sentiments of compunction, of self-esteem and desire for conversion and so on.

[69:15]

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, into a very recent time. There's no doubt about it. Blosius, again, was a remarkable writer. He had much read at which Blosius deserves credit, in fact, for a reawaking of the notion of the value of sacred reading, holy reading, and to go back to the Father, and stress on the spirit, very spiritually. In other words, these are, both Cisneros and Gloria, these are examples of monasticism, which Gerard Gold didn't like, and had very loose for, taking necessary inspiration

[70:16]

I understand 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 path, narrow and winding and torches, into the height. But Dalmora says, cultivate your garden. You should dig up the potatoes. We thought, and maybe, just maybe, we might find a way there, but let's keep leaving. Don't know, and if I go, where's it going? But to some extent, it's where I see the influence in the world. Whether it was good or ill, I don't know, but the influence of the world in the world. There's certainly no doubt about the fact that the Jesuits have a great deal of influence in terms of influencing lands, Atlantic lands, kind of influencing other Atlantic monasteries,

[71:46]

So even just, in a certain sense, Sismanors and Josias, it 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, kind of an earlier tradition. I would say that by and large, much was the force of the retreats and missions being given by Josias. And there are other writers. There are other things that come in. Don't think this is the end of the story. Jansenism makes its appearance. I don't intend to bet any time on it. Jansenism is as anti-mystical in its practice. It's a very, very anti-contemptative sort of the Buddha. And the Morris, many of them were Jansons. But, and of course, anti-Jesuits too.

[72:49]

Very strong, anything they've anti-Jesuit technically do. But the influence of the Jesuits I think was very, very, very great. Certainly in this country. My monastery, the old, 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 us, rather, without admission, will read from the exercises in the music. By the way, blessings are new, I would introduce them. Of course, none of you would know that, because you were always able to change, but the introduction, a new liturgy of Holy Week in the week, no longer anticipated it in the other morning, out of services of Holy Parity, and just not, you know, exactly what it was. For us, in our community, exactly, we would no longer have those public meditations.

[73:52]

And we would now have the Office of Tenebrae, which was the night before, now in the morning. And it wouldn't be time to read and make it. Oh, yeah, we had a lot of, uh, in front of my house. Even the, even the term that was used in the, for, when you look in the archives, where we treated, the exercise. It's called that. It's very collectible. And I dare say that it was their wife's friend, I think. Yeah, it was. Father, Father, it was David. We had a question that I asked you to ask me. When you mentioned about the old soldiers, it reminded me that I wanted to ask you how widespread and how was the development of Oblake's people coming to live in the monastery, or as we know, Oblake's band.

[75:09]

How did that happen, and what did it have to do with the rise of the idea of waybrothers if anything, and how do they get differentiated and all that. The lay personnel, the familia, the lay personnel, they came from the foundation came me in 909 and 90 to the middle of the 14th century, 2150. And what sparked my interest when I first started this, and I had I known, I would never, never, never have chosen one subject. We were a subject that I would have chosen before it took me over 10 years.

[76:15]

So the question of labor was before the Vatican Council and the question of labor was such, that was a kind of brain question. And I was thinking about trying to do something. I was going to find the origin of labor. That was my stupid dream. Find the origin of labor. Working on the hypothesis that others have begun to suggest, He said, 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, namely all of those who were in some ways attached to the monastery and had various lines of relationship to it. And that question that you ask is precisely then of the counselors, namely the question of trying to identify, in the documents, the various other kinds of people that were found in the Aminassi community, or in the Aminassi community, in the Middle Ages, behind the Middle Ages, to me and other state monasteries, but not just amongst the area, but a whole lot of other cities, a whole city.

[77:32]

And, um, and I'm sort of, sort of my, that was to try to identify Yes, as the elements are mentioned indeed in the background. Hoping that I can say, voila, there, there, you have the missing link. You have the specimen of someone who starts out as the laity and goes through the transmutation, and now you have the late brother of Maritana. That could be that's important. And not only that, it becomes the attempt to identify with clinical certitude whose people are. You don't know how to get the term Oblati. You have a term Donati. You have a term Brigandadi. You have a term, other kinds of terms that have been used when we found that.

[78:35]

Just try to identify now and down, of course, It's almost impossible because you're dealing with a living, breathing situation, which is where you've got things always in shock, always in movement. The term of lati is specific in your question. The term of lati is a term that has various meanings, 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 giving things to the monastery, namely the five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old kid. I agree that those boys were there. They were not given a title or black team in the documents, so they were usually called infantis. That's the whole problem of dealing with any kind of nomenclature.

[79:35]

You've got to see how it seems to be identified in those sites. The other attempt, of course, is to try to—we do know, however, that this term of blackness did have several different meanings. One of them is, at times, children, of course, do. And the other was that someone who had given and offered himself or herself to the community And as a result, we seized them benefits from the community. So there were 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 Sikhs, or they were something slightly different. And one of the questions about the Pandobla, a work which was very, very badly done, was to try to that there is modality of this kind of relationship where a lay person lived and was courted on the monastery.

[80:47]

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 your property and your land, really understanding that you would be, for the rest of your life, would be filled, clothed, and supported by the community at their death And your land, of course, the monster would be able to have the unit books of your land and would own it after your demise. But in other words, it's your insurance property. It's your insurance policy. In a certain sense, we reinvent life insurance. Because we help them get an annuity. But in doing that, then, the magistrate had then 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 then to have a noble personage use that just as much as he or she would use the Abbot Commendant.

[81:50]

And they'd say, okay, you've got so many spaces. I'm going to, as a favor to me, they're going to take care of so-and-so, And this person will live and have a woman void, 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 for someone else. In other words, a Donatus Well, I'll send my report, for example, who was a donatist in the beginning. He was not a laborer. He was a blackist laborer in the world, particularly at the period of that time. But he can only be a donatist. Namely, a person who becomes practically a slave of the community. Donate it. Donate it himself. And becomes juridically a subject to the community. Juridically subject. You have that kind of institution.

[82:51]

The juridical bond is the... like becoming a servant or something similar to the master, except if you have a habit and live inside from my mind. So now, those are the very common ideas. Now, is there a labor to come from there? It's hard to prove. All we know is that the term conversis is a term that has many different meanings, and one of the earliest of its meanings is the late comer, the monastic life. And he comes in late, didn't, wasn't a kid when he joined the class here. And that's what I meant to be an author of the knut and never hold was that of the choir director. So it could be a funny, a child who became, when he was higher in the monastery, he would know that he was by heart. He would be able to read the shorthand in the manuscript, in the news, in the response. We have to be the polite. But the converses were the late comer. And when the documents use the term converses,

[83:53]

It's only a certain period, but the beginning means someone who is coming from the outside, is given a habit, not better monks, because it's a tradition, gives a habit to men who never became monks, are not allowed to enter most parts of the monastery, are not allowed to see in the office of the monks, or they're not monks, or they're supposed to work. And because monks couldn't stay out overnight, they could be sent down to the faraway granges to do work. That's why they might come in for Sunday or Friday, Friday or Sunday, and be safe. But that thing, evidently, never existed to me, is my conclusion. And it's a little bit more involved in that. But that's the second meaning of conversation, the second meaning. But the term of blood, of blood, has various meanings. There are various kinds of meanings. And though the modern present-day second ombre is a result of being signed up on the Book of the Arch of the Comfortons with the Abbey, then he become one of the benefactors, usually admitted into the chapter room, and usually it wasn't for the ordinary guy.

[85:13]

It was an ordinary serf who gave himself to the monastery, and I didn't try to go from the noble duke, and so forth. who signed up for the spiritual benefits, was admitted as a brother, and would be admitted in a chapter when the book was assigned, but at his death, when I saw him after he said, [...] and get the habit among the faith. It would be among us. All those were very, very gradations. But there would be another way of belonging to the community. I don't know. It's kind of brief. Probably a little bit of story.

[86:19]

I'll do that. Let's visit 515 today, not by 30.

[86:36]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_55.78