ST BENEDICT'S BLESSING

Opening of Westminster Cathedral Manuscript
of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love
 

N the early Middle Ages, the first two thirds of Christianity, in monasteries and convents, women could be equally learned as were men. These were Schools for Prayer , living the Word of God, the Gospel, the Bible. In the Twelfth Century, in Paris, the pagan Greco-Arabic model of the university was subverted and adopted by the Church. From its lecture halls, where theology now came to be taught to authorized specialists, women were rigorously excluded, only finding their way back partially into the world of learning in our past century. Likewise with this learning, minds became abstracted and divorced from soul and from body, from the family, from women and children, concentrating upon the rigor mortis of the intellect only, out of harmony and balance to flesh and blood reality, to Creation. Many monks and nuns have helped us, among them Father Gerard Farrell OSB of St John's Abbey, Father Matthew Naumes, formerly St Martin's Abbey, Father Finbar Boyle OSB of Pluscarden Abbey, David Hugh Farmer, Don Bernardo Francesco M. Gianni, OSB Oliv., P. Alberto E. Justo, O.P., Dame Benedict OSB of St Mary's Abbey, Colwich, Dames Eanswith Edwards OSB and Margaret Truran OSB of Stanbrook Abbey, Sister Victorine Fenton OSB, Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P., Sister Jane Morrissey, S.S.J., Sister Patricia, O.S.S., Suor Chiara figlio dell'uomo O.Carm, and Don Divo Barsotti, and many of our younger participants have now become monks and nuns. In this website, this 'School of Charity', crafted by both men and women, and also by their children, is a wealth of learning for men and women and children, culled through time from spiritual, rather than temporal, sources, from collaborative, not competitive, communities. Imagine this composite website as your monastic library, your scriptorium, all within your anchorhold, for free, unlike secular universities, to read in prayerful contemplation.

William Langland, Julian's contemporary, remembers his schooling at Benedictine Malvern Priory:

{OR if hevene be on this erthe . and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistere or in scole . be many skilles I fynde;
For in cloistre cometh no man . to chide ne to fi3te,
But alle is buxomnesse there and bokes . to rede and to lerne.

Piers Plowman B.X.300-303

Norwich Cathedral
 

Welcome. And place a Gregorian Chant CD, like those produced by the Abbey of San Domingo de Silos in Spain, the while in your computer . . .
 
 

Saint Benedict The Rule I, II, III In Latin

Saint Gregory the Great Dialogues II, on Saint Benedict

Sister Jane Morrissey, SSJ. Saint Gregory on Saint Scholastica

Father Gerard Farrell, OSB. Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages, Chapter 5 with the music of the Office of Saints Benedict and Scholastica

The Cloister Website

Its Scriptorium Website

Before Julian:

Mary's Dowry Newest

Caedmon and Hilda The Dream of the Rood: The Earliest English Poem

A Monk or Nun at Whitby The Earliest Life of St Gregory

Maria Makepeace The Codex Amiatinus: A Northumbrian Manuscript in a Florentine Library

Alexandra H. Olsen Saint Lioba and Saint Boniface

Alexandra H. Olsen Saint Pega and Saint Guthlac, Hermits

Alexandra H. Olsen Saint Pega and Saint Guthlac in the South-East English Legendary

Terence through Time, Terence of Africa's Comedies preserved in Benedictine monasteries influencing further dramas including those of Hrotswitha of Gandesheim and the Orleans 201 Liturgical Dramas, Resuscitatio Lazari and Officium Peregrinorum

Hildegard von Bingen: The Monastic Context

Sister Victorine Fenton, OSB. 'Columba aspexit'; Hildegard's Sequence in Honour of St Maximus

Cell of Self-Knowledge: The Pilgrimage Within: Christina of Markyate, Angela of Foligno, Umilta` of Faenza, Margaret Kirkeby, Margaret Heslyngton, Emma Stapelton, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Francesca Romana, Elizabeth Barton

Saint Umiltà of Faenza: Contemplating on Holy Humility

Julian's Time:

Mary's Dowry Newest

David Hugh Farmer John Whiterig, OSB., Hermit of Farne, Contemplating the Crucifixion

Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton OSB:  Norwich Cathedral, 1 December 1998

Textual Communities and Gendered Audiences: The Cloud of Unknowing and Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich Showing of Love, The Westminster Cathedral Manuscript

The Julian of Norwich Website

Dom Finbar Boyle, OSB, Julian's Raindrops from Eaves

After Julian:

Mary's Dowry Newest

The Showing's Scribes as Julian's Editors

Julian in a Nutshell: The Manuscripts of the Showing and Their Contexts

Walter Hilton OSA, Augustine Baker and Serenus Cressy OSB, The Parable of a Pilgrim Newest

Dames Margaret Gascoigne/Bridget More, OSB. Contemplating on Julian

Dame Barbara Constable, OSB. The Upholland Manuscript

An English Nun in Exile Colections

Archbishop Fenelon's Letters to Madame Guyon in a Benedictine Nun's Manuscript

Dame Gertrude More OSB On Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, Way of Prayer

Dame Gertrude More OSB

Dame Catherine Gascoigne OSB On Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, Way of Prayer

Dame Justine OSB

Don Divo Barsotti Ascolta, O Figlio: Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict

Teaching Ourselves: A Monastic Studies Programme in Florence

Don Bernardo Francesco M. Gianni, OSB Oliv  'Si revera Deum quaerunt': Un tentativo di sintesi della spiritualità benedittina
italiano

Fr. Alberic Farbolin, OSB, New Melleray Abbey, Song of Songs: A Cistercian Retreat

Our library (the Mediatheca Bottega Fioretta Mazzei in the 'English' Cemetery in Florence), like our website and its companion CDs, is monastery friendly. Father Finbar, OSB., of Pluscarden Abbey, and our library in a cemetery as hermitage in Florence happily exchange and loan contemplative books. And he has sent these two images, one of himself out walking 'the kids', in Scotland, the other of contemplative Carthusian Mount Grace Priory, in Yorkshire.

We recommend most highly the film, Into Great Silence.

An interesting example of initialism is the St Benedict medal (origin in 15th cent.? 17th cent.?), which includes the sequences:

CSSML NDSMD (Crux sacra sit mihi lux! Nunquam draco sit mihi dux!);  and

VRSNSMV SMQLIVB (Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!)

If you have used and enjoyed this page please consider donating to the research and restoration of Florence's formerly abandoned English Cemetery by the Roma and its Library through our Aureo Anello Associazione's account with PayPal:   Thank you!