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Blessed William of Saint-Thierry: Monk of Signy'
Editor's Note
On September 8, 1148, William of Saint-Thierry, one of the so-called "Cistercian Evangelists," passed through death to eternal life at the Cistercian Abbey of Signy near Rheims in France. We had hoped to publish this short sketch by Thomas Merton to commemorate the 850th anniversary of his death in 1998, but the main focus was on our Founders, Robert, Alberic, and Stephen Harding. We trust that he as well as our readers will understand and pardon our tardiness.
This biographical sketch was included in the mimeographed volume circulated by Gethsemani in 1954 as Book Four of the Cistercian Studies series under the title Modern Biographical Sketches of the Cistercian Blessed and Saints. It reached only the English-speaking houses of the Order and has all but disappeared from the face of the earth. Cistercian Publications plans to re-issue the volume along with other similar volumes on Monastic Orientation by the young monk, Thomas Merton.
It should be noted that many of the works cited in this article in the midforties have since been translated and are available through Cistercian Publications at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. In fact, Etienne Gilson's classic, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard (of which Appendix V on William of Saint-Thierry is quoted at the beginning of the article) has recently been republished with an Introduction by Jean Leclercq written shortly before the latter's death.
May the example of William's "School of Charity" fire the coals of love and unity in our communities as we enter the new millennium.
All our early Cistercians have been much neglected, even in their own Order: but perhaps the most neglected of all, when we consider how great a claim to our attention is made by his writings and doctrine, has been William of Saint-Thierry. Here is a mystic and theologian with all the power and genius of the great theologians of Saint Victor, whom he closely resembles, and one who, at times, is in no respect inferior even to Saint Bernard or Saint Anselm. It has remained for one of the soundest and most able Catholic philosophers of our own century, Etienne Gilson, to evaluate William of Saint-Thierry at his true worth. Let us...