Abstract
This important volume celebrates the life and work of Benedicta Ward, member of a community of enclosed Anglican nuns, Oxford don, and one of the most influential modern historians of early Christianity, monasticism, and medieval theology. The two pictures of Ward that bookend the volume capture the paradoxical nature of her vocation as scholar, teacher, and contemplative: in the first she is portrayed in the formal academic dress of Oxford University, while in the second she appears in the full monastic habit of the Sisters of the Love of God. The 22 contributors constitute a roll-call of the great and the good of contemporary historical, theological and monastic scholarship and each essay is remarkable both for its depth of insight and for the obvious respect and affection that each contributor has for the honoree. This is particularly true of Dominic Mattos’s warm-hearted conclusion to the volume. If ever a festschrift was a liber amicorum, this is it.
Given Ward’s own expertise and interests, the editors chose the theme of ‘the monastic ordering of life for the purpose of prayer, and the various kinds of thought and writing that result from prayer’ as a uniting thread. It is an inspired and appropriate choice that gives coherence to the volume. Some of the contributors take the opportunity to take a tour d’horizon of their subject areas and the resulting essays are quite revisionist in character. In a masterly opening chapter, the American Benedictine scholar Columba Stewart examines the origins of monasticism in both East and West and demonstrates the inadequacies of the narrow linear approach of traditional narratives. Henry Wansbrough attempts to rehabilitate the figure of St Boniface in a wide-ranging essay, while Sarah Foot explores the intellectual culture and influence of Anglo-Saxon nuns. Brian Patrick McGuire, the doyen of Cistercian studies, traces the influence on St Anselm’s theology of prayer of the lesser-known monk-writer John of Fécamp. G.R. Evans explores the themes of spiritual friendship, distractions in prayer, and monastic stability in St Anselm’s letters of spiritual direction. Gordon Mursell presents Peter Damian’s theology of the spiritual life while, in one of the most original essays in the volume, Henry Mayr-Harting examines the artwork in a number of ninth-century Carolingian psalters to see how they functioned as visual aids to reflection and meditation for their monastic readers.
The topic of miracles, another of Ward’s interests, is explored by two contributors. Jay Rubenstein examines monastic attitudes to the miracles associated with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1095 while Pauline Matarosso demonstrates the extent to which they formed an integral part of daily life in her analysis of John of Forde’s Life of Wulfric of Haselbury. Many of these miracles took the form of visionary experiences and the importance of this genre for the development of late medieval mystical writing, in all its varieties, is the subject of an insightful contribution by Santha Bhattacharji.
The relationship between the life of the mind and the life of prayer is explored by a number of the contributors. This is particularly appropriate given the manner in which Ward has inhabited both the university and the cloister. E. Rozanne Elder demonstrates the link between learning and affective prayer in the work of the 12th-century Cistercian William of St Thierry. Alexander Murray, in a profound and witty contribution, poses the question ‘Universities: friend or foe?’ and proceeds to examine the wide variety of monastic attitudes to the new institutions of learning that emerged simultaneously with the creative and explosive renewal of monasticism in the 12th century. The intellectual and social freedom of the university did not always sit well with the discipline of the cloister: in 1495 the Cistercian general chapter forbade young student monks in Paris from emulating the riotous initiation rituals of their secular counterparts (p. 281).
For Irish readers Éamonn Ó Carragáin’s essay on the encounter between St Brendan and St Paul the first hermit recounted in the Voyage of St Brendan will be of particular interest. In it he demonstrates how monastic attitudes to the eucharist, Lectio Divina, and the relationship of the hermit to the wider Christian community are presented. In his examination of the Venerable Bede’s attitude to the paschal controversy, Rowan Williams shows how it was not just a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, but also a reflection of competing theologies of grace and salvation. In a brilliant and provocative essay on Bede’s view of the eucharist in Anglo-Saxon life, Thomas O’Loughlin views the topic in the light of contemporary liturgical practice and theological reflection. He focuses on Bede’s request for his brethren to offer prayers and masses for the repose of his soul, placing it within the context of a growing clericalization of monasticism with its inevitable division of monastic communities into those who can minister at the altar and those who can’t. He laments this development and the consequent multiplication of ‘private masses’ as ‘a corrosive tendency to reduce the practice of Christian life to a “spiritual credit transfer system”’ (p. 49).
Given the wide-ranging nature of the contributions, the volume would have benefitted from a more extensive index. What is inexplicable however is the decision not to provide a full bibliography of Ward’s works (pp. 335–38). Whereas details are given for all her books and chapters in various multi-authored volumes, readers are just given a list of journal titles in which they may root out her many articles and book reviews by themselves. This is a lost opportunity in what is otherwise an excellent volume. Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition is a fitting tribute to one of the most influential and highly regarded scholars of modern times. It will have an immense influence and augurs well for the continued interaction between scholars of monasticism and its practitioners.