The period between 1025 and 1150 was a time of creativity and new beginnings in monastic life. Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and Stephen of Obazine established two very successful monastic families in the neighboring regions of the Auvergne and Limousin respectively. La Chaise-Dieu became the head of a vast Benedictine congregation; Obazine had a number of dependencies. With them it joined the Cistercian Order in 1147. The saintly lives of these two founders, recounted by near contemporaries and here translated into English for the first time, unfolded against a backdrop of political unrest and lawlessness. While devoting themselves to monastic life according to the Rule of St. Benedict, these communities served the poor and uprooted. Both reformer monks are models and inspiration for our era, which too calls for creativity and new beginnings. Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB, (Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID), a specialist in twelfth-century religion, has translated several books for Cistercian publications.
"For those who teach the history of twelfth-century monasticism, the arrival of this translation of the lives of two reformers from that age is a happy occasion."
The Catholic Historical Review
"The importance of these texts is of immense value for the historian: the miracle accounts and the celebration of death reveal the popular devotion of the laity; and the accounts of moral failings and social sins reveal the moral climate in this period of medieval life. The sorrow of death enlivens the point of joy and the meaning of life."
