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Camaldolese Extraordinary: The Life, Doctrine, and Rule of Blessed Paul Giustiniani. By Dom Jean Leclercq and Blessed Paul Giustiniani. Edited by the Camaldolese Hermits of Monte Corona. (Bloomington, Ohio: Ercam Editions. 2003. Pp. xii, 536. $35.00.)
This volume presents in English translation for the first time Dom Jean Leclercq's 1951 biography of the Venetian nobleman Tommaso Giustiniani (1476-1528), who entered the eremitic Camaldolese order as fra Paolo in 1511. Alongside this work the Camaldolese of Monte Corona (founded by Giustiniani in 1523) have issued Dom Leclercq's meditation on the spiritual works of Giustiniani entitled Alone with God. The third and final major section of this book contains Giustiniani's rule of 1516,again published in English translation for the first time.
In his biography Leclercq describes Giustiniani's journey toward the ascetic life through the carnivals and carnal temptations of a Venetian adolescence via a Paduan education in which Giustiniani was soaked in stoic and neo-Platonic philosophy whilst...