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Early Modern · 1691
Treatise on Monastic Studies
Jean Mabillon · 1632–1707
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What it is
A defence of scholarship as a legitimate monastic work against a Trappist abbot who insisted monks should do manual labour and pray, not read.
Why it lasted
The classic argument that learning is a form of prayer, from the greatest scholar the Benedictines ever produced.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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