The Cistercian Fathers and Their Monastic Theology

These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963–1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Guiding his students through Bernard’s Marian sermons, his treatise On the Love of God , his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the firs