The work of Dom Adalbert de Vogüé, O.S.B. (1924-2011) serves as the basis of all serious study of the Rule of Benedict. In this second volume, Vogüé first provides historical and critical commentary on texts from the Rule of the Master and other early sources, then shows how Benedict integrated and developed this material in writing his Prologue, Epilogue and chapters on the Tools of Good Works, Silence and Humility.

Volume 3 of Adalbert de Vogue's "A Critical Study of The Rule of St. Benedict" interprets The Rule, especially facets of monastic life that secular readers might find unimportant such as prayer regimen, psalmody, correction of faults, and everyday routines like sleeping arrangements. This meticulous scholarshipƒ‚‚"ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚"in an accessible translation by Benedictine Sister Colleen Maura McGraneƒ‚‚"ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚"traces how Benedict departed from earlier "Rules" and explains why, more than 1,500 years later, monasteries still follow these practices. Benedict was expert organizer, creative liturgist and informed student of human psychology. (Judith Valente - author of How to Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community)

A Benedictine Reader, 530–1530, has been more than twenty years in the making. A collaboration of a dozen scholars, this project gives as broad and deep a sense of the reality of the first one thousand years of Benedictine monasticism as can be done in one volume, using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and from several languages and areas of Europe. The introduction to each of the thirty-two chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. The general introduction summarizes the main ideas and practices that are present in the Rule of Saint Benedict and in the first thousand years of Benedictine monasticism while suggesting questions that a reader might bring to the texts.

In this book, Riitta Hujanen explores temporality in the context of Catholic enclosed contemplative traditions. It investigates, based on literature and other sources, what enclosed contemplatives might say about temporality through their monastic journeys. What makes a young person decide to dedicate their life inside a cloister? Do contemplatives have a preference for eternity over temporal time? How does the enclosed contemplative life impact one’s concept of time? How is time perceived towards the end of one’s monastic journey? What is seen when looking back to the years in the enclosed contemplative life? What is experienced at the hour of death? The answers to these questions illustrate a paradoxical dynamic in monastic journeys that cover a broad historical scope from the earliest monastic writers to contemporary sources.

"The work of Dom Adalbert de Vogeuae, O.S.B. (1924-2011) serves as the basis of all serious study of the Rule of Benedict. Vogeuae uses literary criticism to show how the Rule of Benedict developed. He establishes the dependence of the Rule of Benedict on the Rule of the Master"--

Approaches to Monasticism in the Context of Christian Responses to Modern Culture is a study of how the values and practices of monasticism are being shaped by the shift to a cultural understanding of Christianity in modern times. The values and practices of traditional monasticism are contrasted with those of various expressions of new monasticism against the background of a multicultural and fluid social environment in an effort to find some reciprocal illumination. The study aims to describe monasticism in terms of authenticity and lived religion.

The influence of the theology and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo on subsequent Western thought and culture is undisputed. Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition argues that the notion of the 'Augustinian tradition' needs to be re-thought; and that already in the generation after Augustine in the West such a re-thinking is already and richly manifest in more than one influential form. In this work, Jonathan D. Teubner encourages philosophical, moral, and historical theologians to think about what it might mean that the Augustinian tradition formed in a distinctively Augustinian fashion, and considers how this affects how they use, discuss, and evaluate Augustine in their work. This is exemplified by Augustine's reflections on prayer and how they were taken up, modified, and handed on by Boethius and Benedict, two critically influential figures for the development of Latin medieval philosophical and theological cultures. Teubner analyses and exemplifies the particular theme of prayer and the other topics it constellates in Augustine and to show how it already forms a distinctively 'Augustinian' concept of tradition that was to prove to have fascinatingly diverse manifestations. Part I traces the development of Augustine's understanding of prayer. Patience and hope as articulated in prayer sit at the centre of Augustine's understanding of Christian existence. In Part II, Teubner turns to suggest how this is picked up by Boethius and Benedict.