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  • The Impact of the Classics of Western Spirituality Series on the Discipline of Christian Spirituality
  • Sandra M. Schneiders (bio)

First became aware of the need for something like the Classics of Western Spirituality (CWS) in the late 1960's and early 1970's when I was working on my licentiate thesis in Paris. My subject was the understanding of consecrated virginity in the first four centuries of Christianity. I was motivated to study this subject by two hunches, both confirmed by my subsequent research: first, that the spirituality of Catholic Religious Life, both monastic and ministerial, as it developed in the Christian tradition, was actually rooted historically and mystically in the commitment of the consecrated virgins in the first three centuries rather than in the later ascetical tradition of the eremitical movement of the third and fourth centuries; second, that our only access to that early spirituality of consecrated virginity was the texts of the Fathers of the Church, a surprising number of whom had written whole treatises de virginibus (on virgins) and de virginitatis (on virginity). It was one thing to know that such lesser known figures as Basil of Ancyra, as well as the better known fathers like Ambrose and Augustine, had written treatises, sermons, or rules on the subject of consecrated virginity and quite another to find accessible and reliable, to say nothing of critical, editions of these texts or helpful introductions or commentaries on them in any modern western language. I remember well my academic ecstasy when, after months of my fruitless searching, the ancient librarian at the Jesuit scholasticate library in Chantilly outside of Paris found, somewhere in the recesses of that private library's stacks to which only he had access, an uncatalogued and tattered, unannotated 1943 French translation of an Old Slavic version of Basil's work. No doubt the secret of the text's existence and location went to the grave with him a few years later.1

But my travails were minuscule in comparison with those of one of my fellow students whose doctoral dissertation on a 17th century French Carmelite, Maur de l'Enfant Jésus, was nearly fatally undermined by the fact that, despite his trips through most of western Europe in search of the third of three extant manuscripts of this worthy's writings, he appeared at his defense one-third short of a fully critical basis for his dissertation—a point that did not go unnoticed by the jury. [End Page 97]

The sheer amount of time, energy, and money spent by students in the fledgling field of spirituality trying to round up the textual resources for serious work in the field appears now, some thirty-five years later, like a colossal misallocation of resources—except for the evident fact that there was no alternative. The texts were simply not readily accessible, often not available in modern western language translations, and when they were available were not furnished with introductions, notes, or critical apparatus.

A few years after finishing my own doctoral work in Rome (where the frustrations of library research in spirituality easily matched those of Paris) I was on the faculty of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, involved with colleagues in the founding of the first research doctoral program in Christian Spirituality in the United States. It was in that context that I participated in a conversation about the feasibility of launching a publication project that would make available in critical English translation, with scholarly introductions and carefully selected bibliographies of both primary and secondary materials, texts of the great writers in the tradition of western spirituality, especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim as well as those of some native peoples insofar as that could be done. I recall one of the Paulist Press editors expressing the very understandable concern about the financial riskiness of the project. What assurance might we have that there would be a wide enough market for works which, in the 1970's, seemed relatively arcane—works such as the inaugural volume, Julian of Norwich's Showings, or Origen's De Principiis,Emmanuel Swedenborg's esoteric writings on science and mysticism, or Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls...

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