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330 BOOK REVIEWS is not sufficiently worked out and the reader does not achieve a vision of the problem and its solutions. The thought, expressed in a vigorous style, lacks a unitarian line of development. The intuitions and original ideas are hinted at but not proved and deepened. To sum up, Chiesa e Utopia may be an helpful insight on a modern sensitive topic, but it does not represent an outstanding contribution. ANTONIO MATTIAZZO Washington, D. C. Cistercian Fathers Series Number One. The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux. Volume One. Treatises I. Spencer, Massachusetts: Cistercian Publications , 1970. Pp. 199. $7.50. The board of editors of the present series chose for the first volume in the series four short works of the best known Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux . The whole series is sponsored by the Cistercian communities of America, primarily to provide Cistercian monks and nuns with good translations of the Fathers of the Order. (p. ix) For religious houses, where reading in common is still in vogue, such translations can be useful. The treatises in the volume are: 1. St. Bernard's Apology to Abbot William. ~. The Book on Precept and Dispensation. 3. Prologue to the Cistercian Antiphonary. 4. The Office of St. Victor. These particular works were chosen because they never before had been published in English. (p. ix) The translations are preceded by introductions by Jean Leclercq 0. S. B., Chrysogonus Waddell 0. C. S. 0., and Basil Pennington 0. C. S. 0. There are also brief notes by the translators and editors. The volume closes with a selected bibliography and an analytic index. The translations are based on the critical texts edited by Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais in Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome, 1963). Before reading the translations the reader would be well advised to note the statement of the translator, (p. 30) otherwise he will be somewhat surprised at the liberties taken with the Latin text. In the volume two of the Works are important, namely, the Apologia and the de Praecepto et Dispensatione, because they tell us a great deal about St. Bernard's concept of the monastic life. From the Apology we gather that the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict was the correct one, and from the On Precept and Dispensation we learn that deviations from the Rule, whether by abbots or monks, were deplorable. Once a monk had committed himself by vow to the monastic life he was bound to live out this life in the monastery of his profession, even though conditions had become almost unbearable to the monk. (p. 146) To direct BOOK REVIEWS 331 questions put to him about this point Bernard's answers were not too clear, but we can easily see that the monk was expected to persevere. The monk was bound under pain of sin to the Rule which he professed. Violations of the Rule could be venial or serious (venialia or criminalia) depending on the gravity of the offence. (p. 1~5) Bernard maintains that he respects all the different Orders in the Church and pretends to attack only the excesses in several monasteries, (p. 5~) yet many readers have the distinct impression that very few monasteries would escape his sharp criticisms, especially on the matters of food, clothing, and works of art. St. Bernard was a literary humanist, but in things pertaining to the life of a monk he seemed to have placed his emphasis on spiritual values, even to the belittling of human values. His Latin style and command of rhetorical devices are of a high calibre. The suave Latin style is not evident in the English translations but the rhetorical sophistication is; here only the cursus is lost. This brings up two questions. I. Where and how did Bernard learn Latin? So far there is no satisfactory study on this point. ~- How do we read St. Bernard, since we know that his writings are filled with rhetoric? In the introduction (p. 6) it is suggested that we do not doubt the sincerity of Bernard's expression of reluctance to write the Apology. (p. 33) But this is an old device; see Pliny's Letters Book 5, letter 8: Suades...

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