A Benedictine Reader shares the treasures of the Benedictine traditionthrough the collaboration of a dozen scholars. It provides a broad and deep sense of the reality of Benedictine monasticism using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and originally written in six different languages. The introduction to each of the chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. This second volume of A Benedictine Reader looks at Benedictine monks and nuns from many angles, as founders, reformers, missionaries, teachers, spiritual writers and guides, playwrights, scholars, and archivists. In four centuries, they went from Bavaria to North America and Africa, from England and Spain to Australia, adapting to new environments. Committed to the liturgy by their profession, they played an important role in the liturgical renewal that culminated at Vatican II. Rooted in God, church, and their surroundings, they showed remarkable resilience in the face of wars, confiscations, suppression, and exile. Their impact has been deep and stabilizing, and their story is a microcosm of the history of the church in modern times.

Based on extensive archival research, this study shows how, in the age of ultramontanism, nineteenth-century Australian Catholicism was shaped by successive Roman interventions in local conflicts, sometimes ill-informed and harsh but tending towards a judicious balance of forces.

Spanning six decades from 1833-1891, the correspondence of Henry Edward Manning and William Ewart Gladstone provides significant insights into debates on Church-State realignments, the entanglements of Anglican Old High Churchmen and Tractarians, and the relationships between Roman Catholics and the British Government.