Saint Bernard was born in 1090 near Dijon, France. He joined the fifteen-year-old monastery of Citeaux in 1113. In 1115 he became the founding abbot of Clairvaux Abbey, whence his name, Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Bernard was a gifted and prolific writer of theological treatises, Scriptural commentaries, letters, and many sermons. The sermons in the collection published here, styled Sermones de diversis (Sermons about Various Topics), lack the specific point of departure that characterizes his other sermons. That is, whereas the sermons on the Song of Songs are a verse-by-verse...

Bl. Rafael Arnaiz Baron's life was extraordinary by any standards. Set amid the tumult of the Spanish Civil War, this spiritual biography recounts the efforts of a fervent young Spanish aristocrat to come to grips with his artistic talent, his intense personality and, above all, his unquenchable passion for God. Trained in art and architecture, Rafael longed to be a Trappist but was obliged repeatedly by war and illness to withdraw and then try again. His intensively personal reflections form the basis of this biography of a man intent on giving his life to God despite all obstacles. At the...

A scholar turned monk, Isaac combined the increasingly technical vocabulary of the cathedral schools with the spiritual tradition of the monastery. Dialectic is here combined with meditative reflection.