This new edition, based on some two-dozen manuscripts - including more than a half-dozen hitherto unedited manuscripts with extensive series of newly identified statuta - replaces the classic edition by J.-M. CANIVEZ (Statuta Capituli Generalis Ordinis Cisterciensis, v. I [1933]). Beginning with the first recoverable General Chapter statutes and continuing through the statutes of the year 1201, the edition consists of a lengthy Introduction followed by three main parts: I. Annual Statuta; II. Systematic Collections; III. Local Collections. Each part is preceded by an Introduction and Description of Manuscripts; and the individual statuta (in Latin) are accompanied by notes (in English). The volume concludes with a Bibliography and extensive Indices (Monasteries and Religious Communities, Persons, Places, Principal Subjects).

In the closing decades of the twelfth century, the Cistercian Order had become an important ecclesiastical and economic power in Europe. Yet it had lost its influential spokesman, Bernard of Clairvaux, and as the century drew to a close, religious sensibilities were changing. The new mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and the impulses they embodied were to shift the center of gravity in Christian religious life for centuries to come. It was in this transitional period that Conrad of Eberbach gradually—between the 1180s and 1215—compiled the Exordium magnum cisterciense: The Great Beginning of Cîteaux. It is a book of history and lore, often with miraculous stories, meant to continue a great spiritual tradition, and it is also a book meant to justify and repair the Order. The Exordium magnum was in part an effort to provide a historical and formative context for those who were to be Cistercians in the thirteenth century. Conrad's combination of a historical sensibility and the edifying exempla makes the Exordium magnum a remarkably innovative book. Its unique combination of genres—narratio and exempla—is conceivable only within the intellectual world of the twelfth or early thirteenth centuries, before exempla collections came to be complied solely for edification or use in sermons. The Great Beginning of Cîteaux is a revealing book and an excellent place to begin more detailed study of the Cistercian Order between 1174 and the middle of the thirteenth century.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the third through the seventeenth centuries. The book is thematically organized in terms of the central contexts, practices and concepts associated with the mystical life in early, medieval and early modern Christianity. This book looks beyond the term 'mysticism', which was an early modern invention, to explore the ways in which the ancient terms 'mystic' and 'mystical' were used in the Christian tradition: what kinds of practices, modes of life and experiences were described as 'mystical'? What understanding of Christianity and of the life of Christian perfection is articulated through mystical interpretations of scripture, mystical contemplation, mystical vision, mystical theology or mystical union? This volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.

Scholars have long been interested in the extent to which the Anglo-Saxon past can be understood using material written, and produced, in the twelfth century; and simultaneously in the continued importance (or otherwise) of the Anglo-Saxon past in the generations following the Norman Conquest of England. In order to better understand these issues, this volume provides a series of essays that moves scholarship forward in two significant ways. Firstly, it scrutinises how the Anglo-Saxon past continued to be reused and recycled throughout the longue durée of the twelfth century, as opposed to the early decades that are usually covered. Secondly, by bringing together scholars who are experts in various different scholarly disciplines, the volume deals with a much broader range of historical, linguistic, legal, artistic, palaeographical and cultic evidence than has hitherto been the case. Divided into four main parts: The Anglo-Saxon Saints; Anglo-Saxon England in the Narrative of Britain; Anglo-Saxon Law and Charter; and Art-history and the French Vernacular, it scrutinises the majority of different genres of source material that are vital in any study of early medieval British history. In so doing the resultant volume will become a standard reference point for students and scholars alike interested in the ways in which the Anglo-Saxon past continued to be of importance and interest throughout the twelfth century.

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