Reading Saint Benedict

Cistercians are men and women who follow Saint Benedict's Rule for Monks and the Constitutions of Citeaux. Settling in 1098 in a remote burgundian marsh (in Latin a cisterna), the first Cistercians determined to live simply and to balance in their lives common prayer, personal reflection, and manual labor. For guidance they read the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the documents of centuries of christian monasticism.

The literature they created resonates their love of God and their reasoned analysis of the intensely personal experience of growth through self-knowledge to self-acceptance to the perception of God.

Cistercian Publications brings the insights of these remarkable twelfth century writers into English in its Cistercian Fathers Series. A companion Cistercian Studies Series augments these texts with translations of ancient, medieval, and modern monastic literature, and with works of scholarship and spirituality touching the claustral tradition.

Translators work from the finest available critical scholarship and strive to strike a balance between fidelity to the original and contemporary ways of expression.