The Library
1577 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1101–1200
13 works
c. 1121–1124
Latin
William of Saint-Thierry · c. 1085–1148
A short prayer-treatise on the desire to see God, insisting that love itself is the faculty of knowing him and that the Spirit is the love between Father and Son given to us.
c. 1121–1125
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Benedict's twelve steps of humility read in reverse as twelve steps of pride, each a recognisable social type from the monk who fidgets to the one who rebels openly.
c. 1125
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
An attack on monastic luxury that turns on carved cloisters: what are these ridiculous monsters doing where the brothers read, and would the money not be better given to the poor?
c. 1126–1141
Latin
De Diligendo Deo
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Why God should be loved, and how much: through four degrees, from loving oneself for one's own sake to loving oneself only for God's sake.
c. 1128
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Free choice makes an act ours; grace makes it good. Bernard distinguishes freedom from necessity, from sin, and from sorrow, and gives the first only to the will.
c. 1142
Latin
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
Written at Bernard's insistence, on charity as the sabbath of the soul, and including a grief-stricken passage on the death of a friend.
c. 1141–1144
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Which parts of a monastic rule bind absolutely, which may be dispensed, and what a monk owes an abbot who commands something foolish but not sinful.
c. 1144
Latin
William of Saint-Thierry · c. 1085–1148
A letter to the Carthusians of Mont-Dieu tracing the ascent from the animal state through the rational to the spiritual, where the soul loves as it is loved.
c. 1119–1153
Latin
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Over five hundred letters running the affairs of Europe from a monastery — preaching a crusade, hounding Abelard, defending Jews against a preacher inciting massacre, and reproaching kings.
c. 1148–1153
Latin
De Consideratione
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Advice to a former monk now pope: the litigation will swallow you, you are not the successor of Constantine, and you must keep time for yourself or lose your soul.
c. 1160–1165
Latin
De Spiritali Amicitia
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
A dialogue rewriting Cicero on friendship for the cloister, arguing that a friend is the guardian of love, and that God is friendship.
c. 1147–1169
Latin
Isaac of Stella · c. 1100–c. 1178
Sermons of unusual philosophical seriousness on the soul, the church as the body of Christ, and the mercy owed to sinners by a community that shares their nature.
c. 1175–1180
Latin
Baldwin of Forde · c. 1125–1190
A meditative rather than argumentative treatment of the eucharist, reading it through the Old Testament sacrifices and the church's unity in one bread.
1201–1300
1 work
c. 1219–1223
Latin
Caesarius of Heisterbach · c. 1180–c. 1240
Hundreds of stories told by a novice master — demons in the cloister, deathbed visions, a knight who cannot say the Lord's Prayer, monks who fall asleep in choir.
14 of 1577 works