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Full Description
There were two Bernards of Clairvaux. The first was the genuine Bernard who lived from 1090 to 1153, and wrote letters, sermons, and treatises that are of major consequence in the history of the twelfth century. The second is a host of writers, most of whom have not been identified, who wrote treatises attributed to the genuine Bernard, but that were not from his pen.
This volume, the first complete translation in more than three hundred years, presents one of the most important texts in the history of medieval Latin spirituality. Written between 1170 and 1190 by an unidentified Cistercian monk-priest, Meditationes piisimae, "Very Devout Meditations," became one of the most popular and widely distributed pieces of spiritual literature in the whole of the Middle Ages. The work survives in at least 670 manuscripts, with the complete English translation of the treatise published in 1701.
Contents
Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Part One: Introduction
Chapter One: Bernard and Pseudo-Bernard 3
Chapter Two: The Meditationes piisimae 19
Chapter Three: The Teaching of the Meditationes: Theory 37
Chapter Four: The Teaching of the Meditationes: Practice 55
Chapter Five: The English Translations 71
Part Two: The Translation
Most Devout Meditations On the Knowledge of the Human Condition
Chapter One: On Human Dignity 89
Chapter Two: On Human Misery, the Horror of Death, and the Severity of the Supreme Judge 95
Chapter Three: Of the Dignity of the Soul and the Baseness of the Body 101
Chapter Four: Of the Reward of the Heavenly Homeland 109
Chapter Five: On the Daily Examination of Oneself 116
Chapter Six: On the Need to Be Attentive at the Time of Prayer 119
Chapter Seven: On Guarding the Heart and Zeal in Prayer 126
Chapter Eight: On the Hatred of Carelessness or Negligence in Prayer 128
Chapter Nine: On the Unstable Nature of the Human Heart 130
Chapter Ten: On the Dislike of Being Corrected, and of Being Accused of One's Failures and Faults 135
Chapter Eleven: On Conscience, Which Accompanies Us Everywhere and Continually Goads Us 141
Chapter Twelve: Of the Three Enemies of Humankind: The Flesh, the World, and the Devil 142
Chapter Thirteen: On the Attacks of These Three Aforesaid Enemies 146
Chapter Fourteen: On the Desire for Our Heavenly Homeland and on Its Supreme Happiness 148
Chapter Fifteen: On the Nature and Feelings of the Old Self, and Its Mortification and Transformation through Christ 150
Index of Classical, Patristic, and Medieval Sources 155
Index of Names and Subjects in Part One 159
