The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam ed. by F. Douglas Scutchfield and Paul Evans Holbrook Jr. (review)

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.” This inspiration comes from and describes well Thomas Merton—prolific writer, Trappist monk, and mystic. Born in France in 1915, Thomas Merton traveled through Europe with his father and lived in New York State with family for short periods. Merton began his spiritual pursuits as a young man, and in the late 1930s he experienced a strong desire to follow a Catholic path toward priesthood. In 1942 the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (commonly known as Trappists) accepted him as a novice at its monastery in Kentucky. He was ordained “Father Louis” in 1949. Most readers perhaps know Merton from his best-selling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, published in 1948. During his relatively short life (1915–1968), Merton published over thirty books and, since his death in 1968, editors have published just as many more Merton works. His books fall into a variety of categories including autobiographies, meditations, religious life, biblical commentaries, social issues, poetry, letters, and other topics.

One of the more recent volumes comes from a friendship that Merton developed with Victor and Carolyn Hammer: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. The Hammers met Merton at his monastery in September 1955 and the three found they had common reading and spiritual interests. Correspondence between the Hammers and Merton began immediately with greetings to “Mr. Hammer,” “Mrs. Hammer,” and “Fr. Louis.” As time passed, “Mr. Hammer” became “Victor” and “Mrs. Hammer” became “Carolyn.” In July 1962 Merton signed his letter to Carolyn, “Tom,” noting, “I might as well keep the record straight and be consistently Tom with all my friends outside the monastery” (160). The editors point out, “Merton and the Hammers took great nourishment from their ongoing dialogue and evolving friendship” (271).

Victor Hammer (1882–1967) grew up in Vienna and developed his art in the broadest sense over a lifetime: architecture, woodcutting, metal engraving, furniture making, bookbinding, painting, and print type design. In 1939 he and his first wife, Rosl (married 1909), emigrated from Europe to America, and Hammer began teaching in the Art Department at Wells College in Aurora, New York. Nine years later, due to Wells’s mandatory retirement age, Hammer accepted a position as “artist-in-residence and professor of fine art” at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. Carolyn Reading studied at Columbia University and worked at the Library of Congress in the 1930s. She began her work as a private press printer in the 1940s and became a student and apprentice of Victor’s in the late 1940s. Carolyn helped Victor and his wife through Rosl’s illness. Following Rosl’s death in 1954, Carolyn and Victor married in 1955. Carolyn founded the King Library Press in 1956 and later worked in the University of Kentucky Library, becoming head of the Acquisitions Department and curator of rare books. Thomas Merton met the Hammers in the guesthouse of the monastery in September 1955. One can image how their initial conversation turned to books and never quite left that subject. Although they could visit each other only infrequently due to Merton’s monastic lifestyle, they wrote to each other often.

In the first letters, one can immediately see what drew Thomas Merton and Victor Hammer together; book publication, philosophy, and art. Merton and Hammer, both “culturally isolated,” found spiritual needs fulfilled by each other. The reader also witnesses through the letters how Merton’s life as a monk limited what he could do. Some may remember that Merton’s superiors did not want him writing about war and peace during the 1960s. Here, in The Letters, Merton must ask “Father Abbot...