intrinsic intention of doing what the Church wants. This was explicitly in the ordination formula that was not cited by Apostolo G. Currie. We also know there were politics there. The Irish hierarchy in Rome fought against the great majority decision of the theologians called by Lego Leo to decide the question. The great majority were in favor of the validity and the Irish clergy didn't at all want this. It gets things very complicated. What's the Roman Catholics doing in England and Ireland and if the Anglicans... So this is a historically documented thing. But I have been told that there is no major Roman Catholic theologian now who would argue the invalidity of orders. The whole women thing gets more complicated. But leaving the women's side of things, if you've got a male Anglican before you and he claims to be archbishop, is he just a layman or is he an archbishop? The great majority

[01:01]

Roman Catholics would say he's an archbishop. You may have some theological lackings, but he's an archbishop. Just as the old Catholics or Coptics or something like this. But here it is not true that you have not said you have not said that we can't see... Oh indeed, it hasn't. Certainly, it hasn't. This is the way things work in the Church. There's an official level and often there's an unofficial theological level that's quite ahead. It's quite like saying the Eucharist in the vernacular some years ago. Officially, you couldn't do it and there were all sorts of groups doing it, etc. But according to you, if an Anglican was coming here and he wants to celebrate with us, we should let him celebrate. Every community has to decide this. I know this. You're talking about the bishop also, you know. Yes, oh certainly. I would suggest here that probably it isn't according to the vibrations here. There might be certain communities who are their identity, etc. I think every community

[02:04]

has to work this out in freedom and spirit. I would think that if here you were to refuse communion to an Anglican, this would be a bit much. That you shouldn't invite him, but insist that he come. This is another thing. But if he asks and comes, that you send him away... We give communion to everybody who comes to this church. Good. Interesting. So last time we saw something about possible connections between the contemplative vocation and the ecumenical commitment. We looked at Merton, his life in general, and then the particular essay. Then we looked at Vatican II in general and the specific decree on ecumenism. And we saw the three models, etc.

[03:06]

Today we got something about English mysticism in general. Then, depending upon the time, go on to the cloud or come back to the cloud maybe. Then something about, very briefly on Anglicanism, and then especially more about this initiative of a foundation. Then questions at any time, and then questions after the English thing, and questions after the initiative. And then maybe come back to the cloud, or go on, or whatever the spirit guides us. So, the English mystics. What do we mean by this phrase, who is included and who isn't? For instance, Father Knowles, the Benedictine, has a book, The English Mystical Tradition. And Thomas Merton, in Mystics and Zen Masters, has a beautiful essay, The English Mystics.

[04:16]

What are they talking about here? All the possible English mystics. No, as they say, usually the term has become a technical term to refer to four key mystics. I underline them twice there. Of the 14th century, Richard Rowell, a delightful hermit, who had this experience of the fire in his heart, very, very close to the Eastern heritage. Merton insists on this parallel. Of the cloud of unknowing, we don't know the author, but a very significant essay. And the author certainly knows Pseudo-Dionysius. Indeed, he translated a work of Pseudo-Dionysius. So, as you can imagine, these lines are lines of influence. Chimaldi is a little confusing there. It's not that the cloud is influenced directly by Chimaldi, but by Pseudo-Dionysius. Then Julian of Norwich, wonderful woman recluse, who had a series of visions,

[05:22]

but not weird visions, but beautifully theological visions. Merton says she is the greatest theologian in the English language because there's such a theological content to her visions. And then Walter Hilton. So those are the four. Then, because Augustine Baker, who died almost 200 years later, but because he's so close to them in spirit and continuity, and he wrote a commentary on the cloud of unknowing, etc., because he's so close to them in spirit, so Knowles and Merton treat him also. They push him into this group. So, when you talk about the English mystics or the English mystical school, that's who you're talking about. But the first thing that Merton notes in his essay is that this is very arbitrary. There's no reason of excluding all these others, especially because there's marvelous continuity. That's one thing all these lines are supposed to suggest.

[06:25]

We've got a real heritage here. So we haven't just got four who are out there who have no connection with anything else, but they stand in this mainstream of English monastic heritage, which we'll see is also a monastic Benedictine heritage. So it's good to see them in the context. And to go right back to the earliest prehistory in England, indeed, of Celtic Christian presence, which was very, very monastic. It was so fantastically monastic that it wasn't the bishop who ran things in the diocese. It was the abbot, and the bishop was under the abbot. It was a kind of monastic vision of the church that it's hard for us even to enter into. But this Celtic monasticism comes from France, and France at that time was quite influenced by the East through Cajun. So what I'm trying to suggest is right at the very beginning, there's an interesting Eastern link up.

[07:25]

The Anglicans, by the way, are rather proud of this, that there is the whole Gregorian Western current of which they're very proud. But there's also this mysterious Eastern content from the very beginning. Now, this is not lost in the English heritage. Fortunately, through Bede, who writes, you know, beautiful history of the English. A church, it's a kind of a, not a history in our sense, though he was quite rigorous for his time, but a kind of a theological reading of what has happened. And he safeguards his whole Celtic heritage. In a way, it gets into his writings. And Bede is very influential. And Camaldoli also, we'll see later. And he's very influenced by Gregory. So we're starting to see link ups here. So one could go back right to the Celts. Then there's Bede himself. Anselm, you can call English. He came from Italy, but Archbishop of Canterbury.

[08:27]

He's a philosopher, but a very contemplative, mystical philosopher. And through Augustine, there's certainly, and of course, Gregory and the rule were decisive for him. Elred of Rivaux. How would one say that in French? Pardon me? No, he's English. But that's the name of his abbey in England. It's a curious thing. I don't know. It must be the Norman. Not Norman, but Rivaux. Rivaux. So, a beautiful writer. And a great friend of St. Bernard. He wrote on spiritual friendship. We have it here in the library. He wrote The Mirror of Love. Speculum Caritatis. A beautiful thing. All in the kind of best Cistercian heritage. And very English. Merton says he should be considered

[09:27]

when you consider English mysticism. Then Richard of St. Victor of the great Victorine school of mysticism. With all his contemplative commentaries on scripture. And then, what is his other thing? He also has a Four Degrees of Love. He's most interesting because his master is Hugo of St. Victor. And they both have a very decisive influence on Kamaldoli. We'll see this later. But it's interesting, this link up between English, European, and the Kamaldoli. When I mention Kamaldoli, I'm talking about the Hermitage. The Hermitage spirituality in the early centuries. We now know quite a bit more about who they were reading. The influence of every school, etc. But the Victorine school, surprisingly, is decisive for the Hermitage vision, spiritual vision of the 13-1400s.

[10:30]

Then, John of Salisbury, John Peckham. They're minor figures, but they are at Kamaldoli also and being read. Not that minor, but anyway, important figures. You can get good articles on them on the Catholic. Then we get into our area. Richard Roll, as I say, this beautiful, we'll see more, The Cloud of Unknowing. The Cloud of Unknowing, which is in contact, again, with the whole Eastern thing. Julian and Walter Hilton, which continues this thing. Then Augustine Baker takes up this whole heritage again. He writes a commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing. He knows, he's very widely read in the whole contemplative world. He knows the Cajun, Pseudo-Dionysius, Climacus, etc., etc. Then write down, and as Merton himself notes, there's no reason why not to go into the English Anglican mystics at this point. So there's the so-called 17th century Anglican divines. There's Vaughan and Traherne.

[11:33]

You could have put George Herbert before. He knows this whole heritage and he can be read and should be read in this contemplative, mystical heritage as that Orthodox book interpreting him, Sister Thecla does. Then right up to our own time, and T.S. Eliot, to his four quartets. He cites Julian of Norwich three times, I think, in the last quartets, In all things shall be well, in all manner of things shall be well. And the whole apophatic tradition is very close to him too. So the point is, is it's not one person. It's a whole heritage. And that can be important for contemplatives who have a lot of time just to do spiritual reading, to get into spiritual doctrine and teaching. If you've got one individual that's very helpful to you, that's fine. But it's hard to remain sort of within the constrictions of any one person in his experience. But if you've got

[12:34]

a whole heritage, you see one person nourishes another, one person corrects another. The Cloud of Unknowing seems to be arguing a bit with Richard Rohl and Walter Hildon seems to be arguing with the Cloud. So this is fun. Not a kind of a violent thing, but just a sign that I don't agree with you here and that sort of thing. So enriches. So there is a whole heritage. And as I say, it's not even at all closed into itself, but it's tied up to the great monastic bonds of the rule in Gregory and also to the East. It's also a very hermetical heritage. We'll see this later. And it is tied into Camaldoli. I'd like to make a long parenthesis now and go into why we know this and why this can be interesting to us. But just this year there was published this huge tome by our monk librarian

[13:34]

at Camaldoli, Hugo Fossa, along with another Italian scholar. The title is kind of a catchy title to sell more copies because it's terribly extensive. The title is Library and Culture at Camaldoli. But what it is all about is the spirituality at the hermitage from the 10th century, as they say, right down to the present, seen through the library. How can you see a spirituality through the library? Well, the whole medieval monastic heritage is that the library isn't just kind of a place of culture. It's an unhappy word under the New Year's fix. But it is the sacred place after the chapel of a monastery and in a special way of a hermitage because it's a place of the revelation of God. So another point to remember is that manuscripts were extremely costly, extremely difficult

[14:34]

to produce in the early years. So if there is a manuscript in a library, that says a great deal. It's not as if here, for instance, some seminary might send us up two or three boxes of duplicates and we put them on the shelves and no one here might ever be interested in that sort of thing. I've seen sections in the library that I suspect are not that frequented. But they're there. Now, that wouldn't happen at the sacred hermitage. You see, if there's a manuscript there, they've had to really make a sacrifice to get it there, either through their own scriptorium that came up later or through purchasing these very expensive things. So if they decide, let's buy this one and not that or let's spend a year copying this and not that, it says something about their choices. So, scholars have discovered this window into the spirituality of a house. So, their real breakthrough was that recently they discovered

[15:35]

the full inventory of the hermitage library of 1406. Every manuscript that was in the library at that time was on this inventory. So what they've done is publish this about, what is it, 305 manuscripts. Quite a rich, ample library for that time. Very expensive. So they've published the text in Latin here about 20 pages and the whole rest of this thing is simply built around this largely extrapolations and deductions. And when you stop to think about it you can deduce a tremendous amount given these principles that if there's a manuscript there it means a serious choice. So you start asking yourself. Then the other thing, you know what manuscript was there, for instance. Then you can go look for it.

[16:35]

And we know that many are in a library of Florence in Arezzo. There's several in England and such. So you can look at them. You can look them over. Often on the title page there's a note by the Canal de Lis Monk when they came into the library at the hermitage. So this gets extremely interesting. So you now know not only what was there in 1406 but something on that inventory might have just arrived a month earlier. Some might have arrived two centuries earlier. And you can start to reconstruct that. So you can start to reconstruct the library at the hermitage through the centuries. What was there? This is what they're doing here, you see. 10th century, 11th, 12th. What was there in liturgy? What was there in Bible? What was there in commentaries on the Bible? On monastic rules? So you start to get a whole vision of their spirituality through the library. Then they've done an incredible amount of work. They check this, they countercheck this with the

[17:36]

Fonte Avelana library, the other great hermitage monasteries in St. Peter, Damien and make comparisons. Then they found all sorts of other inventories up through the 16th, 17th century. So they see where the library goes, what changes come in. That's extremely fascinating. So you can start asking very concrete questions, for instance. Was the library reading St. Gregory? And how much of St. Gregory the Great? Was there a lot? Was there a little? Was there nothing? This can be extremely interesting. As a matter of fact, there was a tremendous amount, for instance, of St. Gregory the Great. And there's all these sections of the library. There's commentary on scriptures, patristic letters. There's the section on moral theology, etc. It's very interesting what comes first in each of these sections. So St. Gregory the Great occurs very frequently and occurs as number one in four different sections.

[18:39]

So this is already suggesting a predominant influence of St. Gregory the Great at the hermitage. Then again, as you can trace, when he came in and all this sort of thing. Were they reading Climacus? Yes, they were. His work is at the very end. We'll see that later. Were they reading the Apoptegmata? Yes. Were they reading Bede? Yes. Which works of Bede? Of the commentaries? Which commentaries? All this sort of thing. They did not have tape recorders, but that will be interesting to learn. So you see how you can start to build an intuition of what their spirituality is at. What authors, how much of each author, and where it's placed in each section. Then what categories are there? What categories aren't there? For instance, are there books of philosophy? Are they reading Cicero? Are they reading Plato? Are they not reading them? This sort of thing. How many manuscripts in the area of the Sume? This sort of thing. So it becomes really quite fascinating.

[19:41]

How many manuscripts in each category? If, hypothetically, you've got 200 manuscripts in the area of philosophy, and two in the area of biblical exegesis, you know something and it's happening. Matter of fact, it's not that way at all. The huge area has to do with the Word of God. As they say, more than half of the manuscripts have to do either with scripture or with commentary scripture or with homiletics, which was simply commentary on scripture spoken sort of thing. So half of these 300 manuscripts are in that area. Now this is very interesting. What do you do with that? What specific books, for instance, you can get into that? We're reading the Apocalypse here, for instance. They note a real importance of the Apocalypse at the Hermitage from the several manuscript commentaries on the Apocalypse.

[20:44]

They note a real importance of the Canticle of Canticles for the same reason. So you get into this very interesting business. Then the key that for them was decisive was the order of the books. This can be for us rather arbitrary and dry business and we might follow a modified Dewey Decimal. But they didn't have a Dewey Decimal system in that time. So what order do you put the books in? According to importance. So what is your criterion of importance? Or according to some easy system. There were, in some of the monasteries, a system simply alphabetical order. But in what sense? According to author, topic, etc. It gets a little... But that was not the order followed at the Hermitage. So what was the order? And this puzzled these two scholars for some time. So it starts out with a whole section

[21:45]

on liturgy. Missals, processionals, graduals, breviaries, psalters. Then liturgy of the word, commentaries on the scripture, biblical texts, concordances, various commentaries. Then a section called moral, canon law, decrees, constitutions. Then a section on the summa, theological summa, moral summa. Then things on politics, even one work on politics. Then... Then you get into mystical theology. Then you get into monastic and hermetical rules. Then you get into martyrology. And it all ends up with climacus. So they pondered, what on earth does this order mean? You start with liturgy, and towards the middle is canon law and the summa theologicae

[22:48]

and philosophical summa, etc. Towards the end, ascetical mystical theology. Then the martyrology, the lives of the saints. And climacus. Can anyone intuit what might be behind this ordering or whether it was arbitrary or pull a kind of Father Bernard here? Why was he called Albert the Great? Or the universal... So why do we have this order? For instance, is canon law more important to them than ascetical and mystical theology? It comes first. Or does it build up to mystical theology? If it builds up, why is scripture and why is liturgy first? Is that the least important for them? Or is it some sort of alphabetical order? So for $20,000... So they pondered this.

[23:51]

So no suggestions, intuitions, proposals. They pondered this and then they got into, with all this, they got into medieval mystical theology and especially of the Victorines. Here's where we do get back into our topic. And the Victorines and climacus. This climacus at the end was sort of interesting. And it turns out that the ladder image is decisive in all of the Camaldolese heritage. There are two basic Camaldolese symbols. One is the chalice with two peacocks. It shouldn't be two doves but two peacocks for eternity. It's a very ancient Christian symbol. They spend dozens of pages discussing these symbols. The other is the ladder. Remember the vision of Romualdo, the people going up and down the ladder, Jacob's ladder, and then Benedict and then Romualdo. So the ladder image.

[24:52]

Now this is very important in climacus and very, very important in Hugo of St. Victor. Hugo of St. Victor works out a catabasis and an anabasis, a mystical descent from on high right down to the depths of the human experience. And then in the moment of the incarnation the anabasis, the return to heaven. So this kind of grand mystical cycle of descent and ascent and the mystical and the medieval always starts with the on high and then gets down to us and then the incarnation, the divinization and then we can ascend with Christ to the Father, this sort of thing. So a descending and an ascending. So the order of the monastery reflects this. And so they work out a very direct parallel between the mystical theology of Hugo of St. Victor and the ordering of the monastery library.

[25:53]

And this reveals the whole mindset, the whole mystical vision of the hermitage in those centuries. So why liturgy? Because liturgy, and then there's dozens of pages on each one of these sections how it's understood in the medieval heritage and the hermitage and the Benedictine and the monastic and the hermetic etc. So it's an extremely rich business. So the Eucharist, it starts with the Eucharist indeed. The Eucharist is the on high, it is the kind of the celestial moment for the hermit in a special way. And they cite all the writings from Rudolf and all the rest of it. Then it slowly descends in the office and the Word of God is this on high eternal liturgy directed to us. Also the ordering of for instance the commentaries on scriptures is fascinating. For instance in our library there's a commentaries on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their order is the commentaries

[26:55]

on John, Mark, Luke, and Matthew in that order. So it's obviously always a theological mystical order. So it goes down and down. So you get down to the ultimate depths of the human experience and that's canon law. So it's sort of funny. So it's not that canon law is more important than ascetical and mystical theology for instance. That's as low as you can get. Then given the presence of the divine in the human experience, then begins the return to the Eternal Father. Like through philosophy systematic theology ascending ascetical theology which is beyond the theoretical philosophies and theologies mystical theologies then this rendered concrete in the lives of the saints in the martyrologies and it ends up as a kind of a key to the whole thing in Climacus. So this is the whole bit. But as I say it's a fascinating book and

[27:55]

again it gives you a suggestion of what's happening at Kemal in early centuries and how things develop and decline etc. But there is the real tie-in with the East but there is this amazing tie-in with the Victorines and which is a tie-in with the whole English thing. So we are related we are sort of blood brothers to the East and also to the English West which would then come out with the Anglicans and we'll see that later. So there are bonds that are extremely fascinating to look into. Comments? Criticism? Okay. So let's get back to the English. Why study the school of English spirituality? Why bother? Sort of thing. You know there's all sorts of schools of mystical theology. There are some that are much more known than others but the Carmelites etc. Why study Richard Rolle and the Cloud

[28:56]

of Unknowing etc.? Merton notes some virtues that I think are very interesting. He's very enthusiastic for the English school. In his essay for instance he starts right out there is every reason for interest in the English mystics. They have a charm and simplicity that are unequaled by any other school. This word simplicity comes up again and again and again in this essay. It's very interesting and charm is rather delightful. But I think simplicity is getting a little more important for contemplatives because our contemplative life also can get a little baroque and we can get very complicated in our head. But simplicity can be sort of decisive for a healthy contemplative prayer. They are also, it may be said, generally quite clear down to earth and practical even when they are concerned with the loftiest matters. So this is interesting. If you're not interested in mystical literature

[29:56]

it's a kind of cultural curiosity but to live interior prayer it is good to at a certain point not just be multiplying words about the ineffable but how to grow in interior prayer. They never seemed to have thought of their life with God as something recondite no hidden special esoteric or even unusual. They were simply Christians. They rejoiced in Christ their creator and redeemer. They rejoiced in that in him they had direct access to the father of lights. So simplicity. Another deeper well another important motive he notes is this whole bit. This heritage is very rooted in the patristic heritage and this is through the monks through the whole medieval English heritage which is profoundly monastic profoundly Benedictine. Medieval scholars say there's hardly any other nation in Europe that was so specifically

[30:57]

monastic in its Middle Ages as England was. Almost all of the cathedrals were related to monasteries and the schools were Benedictine and all the rest of it but it was profoundly so he also brings this out. The English mystics belong to the ancient patristic tradition which was so thoroughly transplanted into Britain by the early monks as to become authentically part of the very essence of the English spirit. So the Benedictine through the monastic and the Gregorian there's a whole debate today whether St. Gregory the Great even used the rule or was Benedictine and many scholars say he wasn't. It's a very complicated debate but in any case there is a unique Gregorian heritage of monasticism and a Benedictine and both got into England through Augustine and through Bede. And of course in a certain sense these are monks who can be happy about

[31:58]

them and they are they came from Gregory and Gregorio and there's a historical tie in which is fascinating and it was the Protestants and Anglicans who rediscovered this whole heritage in the 19th century. Now there's another motive that makes it interesting. Oh then he stresses this Benedictine monastic thing several times right up to the conclusion. The chief characteristic of the English school of the 14th century is its homogeneous simple optimistic and personal quality and this is

[32:58]

perhaps due above all to the fact that it developed out of the English monastic tradition. The mysticism of the English school is basically Benedictine and Cistercian. It goes back to the same roots as Pseudo Dennis through Cation and Gregory the Great but at least it's back to Pseudo Dennis Cation to Evagrius Ponticus and the Desert Fathers in origin so he's carried it right back to the earliest roots of this kind of experience so that's encouraging it does remain always a certain little problem for us with the Jesuit schools even the early monastic heritage and there's another thing that makes it rather interesting to us it is characteristically aramidical Richard Rowe was a hermit and very proud of

[33:58]

it and never wanted to become hermit but he certainly wrote for a young hermit he says this explicitly in his at the beginning of the cloud of unknowing so it's literature for a hermit and Walter Hilton there's some hypothesis that he was a hermit before becoming an Augustinian canon so it's typically aramidical in spirit and Merton has a long thing on this it may be argued that the English mystics were for the most part either solitary oriented

[34:58]

towards the aramidical life this does nothing to disprove that their mysticism is rooted in the medieval monastic tradition of England since the English hermits were obviously the full flower of the monastic tradition and this is nice so not wars or juxtapositions but the one as a harmonious complement to the other sort of thing the hermit life properly understood is a life not at the top of the ladder but at the bottom for more than anyone else the hermit has to be a humble man this combination of simplicity individuality and humility of the English school is proper to a spirituality of men and women who have gone apart to live alone with God so there's this dimension of the spirituality that is interesting there's another quality that comes out

[35:58]

again and again spirituality isn't gloomy and sort of constricted and rigid and tense it's just the opposite it lives in a kind of a joyous light of the original innocence and Merton comes back to this several times there is in fact in all the English mystics a characteristic realization of wholeness of restoration of return to a primitive state of innocence the English mystics are paradise men and the more clear and spontaneous their awareness of paradise the more truly English is their contemplation then he goes into the whole thing about um whether they are mystics of darkness or of light the masters of the English school are all equally positive optimistic simple here's this word the author of the cloud talks of darkness

[36:58]

and nothing and yet he does not strike us as much less luminous than Richard Roll with his fire song and sweetness the mysticism of darkness is not a mysticism of gloom we must remember how these mystics appropriated the verse of the song night is my light in my delights it is a darkness illuminated by joy by the presence of the lord all the more joyous precisely because the night brings him nearer and unites us to him more intimately than any light so then he goes on and on about the doctrine of simplicity and joy one finds in the nothing tragic nothing morbid no obsession no violence he says there's a if you like hellfire this isn't

[37:58]

your bag sort of thing but and he says even with Julian who has all these showings all these visions of crucified lord but this is never in a kind of a morbid set but the light of mercy and the joy of life and the risen savior transfigure even the vision of the crucified for lady julian and this of course is it should be so there's this which i think is nice there is a temptation to get sort of gloomy and depressed and melancholic on one level or another then the whole thing about creation and getting back to the original paradise then the elasticity and pluralism the respect for individuality each one of these contemplatives even if you limit it just to those four is really quite unique quite unlike the other and this is delightful so you see the continuity and the harmony but

[38:58]

you also see various distinct individuals so he has a whole paragraph on that but we've already gone 45 minutes and haven't even gotten near our foundation so we might close it up there and also there's this continuing coming back to the theme of love he mentions that and we know that sometime in these writers on the mirror of love that's one of his key tracks it's very lovely he calls the monastery the school of charity the rule says what? the school of divine service and here we have the school of and you know in the whole Cistercian theology that moment there was a very rich mystical theology of love and it's very much so he's got this mirror of love and Richard of St. Victor

[39:59]

has the four degrees of love one of the main works of Richard Rowle is the fire of love and then Julian of Norwich writes the revelations of divine love and one of the key works of Walter Hilton is the gold of love so this is one of the themes it comes up again and again but again in quite a variety of ways of handling it there is the whole bit about this being English spirituality and in English this is the first expression of the English language some of the first forms of the English language in the 14th century are Richard Rowle and the cloud this is really quite lovely you can get into a long discourse here but it is interesting to be able to read really a classic of the mystical life not in

[40:59]

translation so to speak these are sort of modernised English but you can get the old English and it's delightful the critical text which I haven't found in the library here but is quite lovely I think there's something theological here that is if we're born into a certain place there's something behind this with all our means we can go elsewhere so to speak until today you can have a great scholar of India or something this is fine and it enriches the dialogue but it might be good if the man in India who knows about St. Francis also knows something about his own Indian heritage that can enrich his own understanding of St. Francis of Assisi and it makes it more incarnate for his work in India this

[41:59]

sort of thing now we had a distant relative of one of our monks who didn't even know of our monk but young lad fourteen years old this relative and he was off to India because he was convinced that the only place you could pray contemplatively was in India and this lad knew nothing about Western Catholic monasteries he knew that they existed in the Middle Ages but he never knew that they still existed this sort of thing and so he came up to Kamal who and we started dialoguing and it turned out he ended up going to India and coming back but with quite a different perspective knowing he had sort of within himself within his own language his own heritage with which he could come to terms first afterwards but sooner later presumably so there is this bit that is not simply nationalistic you can get into a sort of thing

[42:59]

and you can tie it into nationalism I'm not saying that but I am saying this is part of our heritage in a way perhaps the Vedas aren't so immediately and it might be good to know something about this there's also something rather charming about these things being the first forms of writing in the English language the first expression in our own tongue of the soul's quest for God the cloud of unknown that isn't quite true but that sort of idea but Knowles makes the point that the Latin language had gotten formalistic into the style of writing nicely in Latin so you have this first effort to get these

[44:00]

things in your own tongue and there is a kind again of simplicity there later the English language will become quite polished quite eloquent you're before that also so you're after the Latin formalities and before the English formalities so this again gives you a spontaneous simplicity that's really quite not just charming but might get you closer to the ineffable experience than when you have to be mediated through stylistic forms he writes in both some treatises in Latin and some treatises in English I haven't even looked in your library I think that's Latin from the title yes it's from the Latin yeah it's in English it's in the popular edition oh I'm sure it's

[45:00]

in English whether that is translation or I think it's you have the four to get to the cloud you have the four current translations good translations of the cloud which is Johnson's and then the Penguin Classics this is by an Anglican scholar with a long good introduction then you have the what's his name of the McCann was that a translation in Iroquois or was it the original I think it's a slightly more antiquated piece but I don't think it's the original Chaucerian precisely precisely so you have quite a with all the introductions then you have Knowles and Johnson's very good introduction which I think is better than Knowles so does Merton and then so you have a good little section in the cloud of annoying I haven't looked up on the

[46:00]

other sections yet maybe we will have to shift over to the foundation after if there are other questions comments yeah just the curiousity my question would be whether Richard Victor could be considered English is born in England uh British Isles somewhere it went to France and I think it's trained in France Here it gets a little arbitrary at that point, if one is English or… Now, Merton says he's certainly English. Now, he's a disciple of Hugo, but the whole nationalistic model certainly isn't as that important in the Middle Ages as it is to us today. But he says you should certainly discuss a Richard… Let's see if I can find that… But does he reflect… would you say reflects the English period? Yeah, I think so. Let's see. He's talking about Aylred of Riveau. It was the 12th century.

[47:04]

He says he should certainly be treated… Who were the English mystics? The custom has been, you know… Aylred's father was a married priest, an old Saxon priest. Yes. I think there's a long thing about Aylred. In any case, it's certainly arbitrary, but somewhere in here he discusses Richard, so I put him there also. And he is English of origin, but it's certainly less important in this thing. It's a whole Cistercian heritage rather than English or French or anything else. But it's certainly in this heritage and influences later. Augustine Baker very much uses Richard, for instance. I think, yes, the cloud… There's another tie-in. The cloud translates Richard's work on Benjamin Minor. Did I put in that line?

[48:11]

Well, it's sort of there. Yes. So, in that sense, there's continuity. Other comments, questions? You mentioned the Victorian world. I mean, that's Wolpe and Hugo, I think. Is that English? Very important and very rich in spiritual theology. So, they're called the Victorines of St. Victor, the abbey there. Are there any other reflections of that Victorian spirituality, besides the library, I think? That's the first I heard of that connection. It was the first I had, too. I'm wondering if there's any other manifestation of that. Maybe it's on the writings of it, because all these writings are very perspective. Perhaps. As I say, I've just started to… read this thing. There's a marvelous index. So, one could look up Richard, for instance, who cited here several… He cited four times. They had the writings of Richard,

[49:16]

they had the writings of Hugo, and specifically the writing on the latter bit. And so, they're sure of that tie-in. Now, whether later writers refer to the… They were certainly read and utilized. And the whole thing that you tie in to Hugo for the whole basic structuring of the library, which their thesis is, thus of your whole theological and mystical vision. Other things? How does the time of the community or sharing with one another these experiences? Do they just write these books? Is that the one experience, and then you read them, and that's the way you experience this grace from God? Well, I think it's sort of like our library. There is the library to which you go to get books for

[50:18]

your spiritual reading. Now, certainly, I would think they would discuss them in their recreations, which were not that frequent, etc., but they meditate them. You know how the monks meditated the spiritual reading, which is all they interpreted as a commentary on this word of God, etc. So, it certainly got inside of them and inside of their experience. And again, if there's a manuscript there, it means it's been chosen and some sacrifice was brought there or copied there. There's also beautiful examples of Kamaldali's calligraphy. Father Roy, the prior of Berkeley, of the Anglican community, he's a very good calligrapher, but this is neither here nor there. But just to say that at a certain point, there was the, what is it called, scriptorium at the Hermitage, and they started producing their own manuscripts. And that, of course, then, oh, another tie-in with the English. There's a whole

[51:24]

section on England here. They have a manuscript here in the library that came from an English manuscript. So, there's some tie-in there. And then he notes in a passage that Kamaldali, we sometimes think of it as right out in the absolute wilderness. Kamaldali was right on the main highway from Rome up north. There were all sorts of foreigners coming through, bringing all sorts of, this was the spiritual exchanges that went on. So, there's a whole section on that. But here is the calligraphy, the Kamaldali's calligraphy, which also is a whole, and this is the finer, this is a more ornate form of our symbol, which for them had a huge, it was a kind of a little icon that summed up, as I say, they have a, and again, it's Eucharistic, interestingly enough. Yeah, the doves, they're very angry about that. That represents a later decadence. It's a very biblical image of eternity. But there's a

[52:36]

section on that. And a whole section on the latter, the symbolic grades, the symbolic degrees. Yeah, more of a sharing. Well, I thought you were in Kamaldali, but you're in England with the Isis. Yeah. Well, now the author of the cloud, it seems quite evident, very much wanted to remain anonymous, which is rather lovely and interesting. So, it's not as if no one had ever heard of the cloud. Obviously, he was— He said he wrote it for a monk. For a hermit, a young hermit. And one of the deductions is he had quite a group around him of,

[53:39]

he was a spiritual director, and he had quite a group that he was directing. But it was no, there was quite a bit of exchange. And again, Walter Hilton knows the cloud and criticizes it implicitly. And the cloud knows Richard Noll's role in criticism. So, there's quite a bit of exchange. And the cloud, indeed, knows the whole Eastern thing. So, it's quite a rich business of exchanges and continuities. In that sense. Augustine Baker is an amazing tie-in. I didn't bring the holy wisdom, but he's read the whole thing. He's sort of a Merton of back in the 1600s. And he puts it together and makes his own sort of— That's a fascinating thing. I mean, if you go further downstream, you've got more to pick up and more to assimilate in as you pass. I mean, like, you know, it gets, as it were, a little bit, in a sentence, a little bit harder, but also, Richard, to be further downstream, as it were, as you're picking it up like that.

[54:43]

But that's a fascinating thing to do, to set it up like that. But I wouldn't, it would be extended, short, a little bit more. And I think you could—I don't know what the judges do when they're hopeless. I think the Carmelite thing and the Franciscan thing could also be drawn in there. I find it very interesting, the way you're talking about it. Was there any influence on Carmelite and Franciscan among Camelot? The Carmelite—because I talked, as I say, I haven't read the whole book. But Hugo gave a whole conference and with all sorts of questions, this sort of thing, and people started immediately asking him, this one, yes, this one, no. The Carmelites, I don't remember anything. Well, let's remember, this is 1406, on the other hand. That's why there's no English school in our sense. It's that time. But there is Franciscan. This is very interesting. There's a real influence of the first Franciscan mystics on Camaldoli.

[55:49]

And as I say, any of this can be researched. The other things, yeah, one could go on a great deal. I wanted to sort of focus on the English thing and tie it into two things, the Italian monastic and the Eastern. But obviously, the Italian monastic could be filled out incredibly. The Eastern could be filled out incredibly. And also the English sort of thing. But not to make it too—I had to turn it this way, as it was. Is Lancelot Andrews considered one of the leaders of the writer? I mean, I don't know much about his name. He's a beautiful spiritual writer, Anglican. Well, he's one of the 17th century divines. He has a lovely book on private prayers. There was a very nice collection of personal books that he did on prayers, I think. Oh, yeah. Lancelot Andrews. He mentions when Newman went across and became one of ours, he kept a Lancelot Andrews book of prayers always by him, despite the—yeah.

[56:57]

Other comments, questions? I was just after the time, probably after the peak of scholasticism. Yeah, that's very fascinating. There is just the Summa contra Gentiles. There's not the Summa Theologicae. And it is there in an apologetic section. The hermits were into counseling and this sort of thing. And it comes in later. Of course, obviously, it comes in later. But there's not a preponderant presence of—also, the whole canon law section. It's small and it comes in quite late. Yeah, they think that things go downhill quite rapidly afterwards. The library gets much larger, but they say it loses its typical—here, there's a whole mysticism implicit and a whole specific vision. Afterwards, it's a regular big library with a bit

[58:01]

of everything. All sorts of Eastern fathers, I didn't put there, but Gregory of—Gregory of Nyssa, Basil—they're all there in translation, of course. Insofar as Hugo knows, there's nothing in Greek, but there's all sorts of things from the Eastern translation, which is interesting. But as I say, there's the index, name and author index, and also analytical index. You can just look up anyone. Climacus. What is there of Climacus? This sort of thing. Hugo of St. Victor. For instance, Peckham, John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury. He's not a major writer, but he's a good medieval writer who writes all sorts of things—philosophy and theology and a very little mystical theology. There's one thing in mystical theology. Is it Kamaldi? These other things aren't. His commentary on the Canticles, is it Kamaldi? This sort of thing is interesting.

[59:03]

So, they're picking and choosing. So, as I say, it's fascinating. They say this is just the beginning of a big discussion and debate and all the rest, and all sorts of things. Abide, etc. Augustine. Do you know anything about how many people were at the Monastery at that time, or where they came from, whether it was an international community or just locally? I don't. I know it was certainly an international community in the sense that there was this highway that goes not just by the Monastery. It's incredible. It goes right through the Monastery. If you've been at Kamaldi, there's this huge monastery below. The Hermitage is above. Then, you still see this road coming up and coming right through the main—it's an amazing thing. But apparently, the cultural journey that is represented by the A document

[60:06]

opens up to distant spaces. The writings of William of Montebus, who I didn't put there, who's another Englishman, John of Gaulis, upties Kamaldi in a mysterious manner to the English schools of Oxford and Lincoln. There's, as I say, even a manuscript that was written in England. So, there was certainly an international community in that sense. And the fact that the Victorines, just a couple of centuries—let's see, Richard of St. Victor died in—and Hugo of St. Victor—Richard of St. Victor died in 1173. So, in the very beginning of the 1400s, Hugo, his master, his writings, Richard's, are at Kamaldi, and Hugo's are already decisive. So, there's all sorts of exchange with all of Europe.

[61:11]

How many monks and hermits? I don't know that sort of thing. Hugo would. I think it would be good to get Hugo over to the States and talk to us. I'd like to invite him up, because Berkeley goes anywhere. Because he has lots of this in his head, and he's a fascinating person. Also, man, a real prayer. And he thinks that Kamaldi gets too cultural at a certain point, and he says at a certain point, produces more professors than saints. There's some delightful little things in here. But it's—yeah, other things? Just one more quick question. I didn't think—is St. Bernard and William of St. Theory represented in a significant way? I think Bernard quite a bit. Guglielmo. I'll look up this Guglielmo.

[62:16]

Hugo C. Victor, I see lots of things. Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory Palamas. That's interesting. Gregory the Theologian, that is. So we're looking up Guglielmos. And now there's several Guglielmos. There's Demontipus, the Englishman, Derenes, Durandus—sounds like an English—Peraldus and St. Theodore. His life of St. Bernard. I don't know if that is he. I'll see maybe in the—then in the analytical, they're talking about all sorts of people who might not even be there, actually. Now I remember they discuss Guglielmos. No, I don't see it here. I don't know about that one. Certainly Bernard. Yeah, here's Bernard.

[63:19]

About 20 citations here. Yeah, 20. 20 citations. Not that there's 20 manuscripts, but 20 citations. It's a very complicated thing because they don't—it's not as if the manuscript is titled Commentary on the Cantico by Bernard. It's entitled A Manuscript That Begins, and then there's a Latin text of the first words, and ends. So these poor people have had to work through the writings of Bernard and Hugo and the whole thing to see if Bernard wrote, in fact. Not only that, but you have the beginning and the end, but it's not excluded that there would be all sorts of things in the middle. So this is a minimum of what they had, not a maximum, this sort of thing. You think that that were a fine author that—I don't know who wrote it.

[64:21]

It's like, you know, I mean, St. Paul, if you never knew his name. Well, they're working on it. They've got it down with very careful scholarship to some place, and I think it's the East Midlands, through the kind of English dialect that comes out. And they—certainly all sorts of conjectures. He was a priest because he concludes, I leave you with God's blessing and mine, so there seems to be a sacerdotal blessing in there. A country parson, East Midlands, acquaintance with the religious life, a largest circle of souls under his direction. There seems a certain consensus about this. There's a whole group of scholars who think it was indeed Walter Hilton, but others deny this, and it seems now more probable that it wasn't, you know, these scholars. But, I don't know, I think it's rather charming that a real spiritual classic is anonymous, you know, sort of thing. Also, the pseudo-Dionysius, we have no idea.

[65:24]

I guess there's conjectures, all sorts of—but I think it's interesting. And he apparently didn't want to be known. You know, he wasn't writing to get in the book. Well, it might be better for this kind of type of spirituality, maybe, not to be known. There might be a reason. Yeah. There are all sorts of writings in the Middle Ages. We don't really know who the authors are. Often, they're applied to so-and-so and so-and-so, but now they're called pseudo-Augustine or pseudo—there's all sorts of discussions here—pseudo-Hugo of St. Victor, etc. So, it's nothing new at all. Often, a writer to try to give more authority to his thing would—there was less scrupulosity about—but this man simply apparently didn't—he didn't tie this to anyone.

[66:25]

He just wanted to remain anonymous. That was his intention. Yeah. I think he's saying, you know, what I'm trying to say is more important than my name in light sort of thing, I think, which is good. Want to take a break for five minutes? Good. Good. Just a few notes about the Anglican communion, which is not unrelated to all this, because at least the way the Anglicans see themselves, you see, they see their church as a church of continuities. When we think of the Anglicans, we usually think, you know, the church founded by Henry VIII in the 16th century. That's the way they don't see themselves. So, if you want to offend an Episcopalian, ask about Henry VIII as founder or something. For instance, Macquarie—one of their outstanding theologians to this day—says, Anglicanism has never considered itself to be a sect or denomination originating in the

[67:27]

16th century. It continues without a break. The Ecclesia Anglicana, founded by St. Augustine 13 centuries more ago, our present revered leader, Archbishop Ramsey—this was written some years ago—is reckoned the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury in direct succession to Augustine himself. So, their main thing is continuity, you see. And they say, yes, there was a reform, and we were changed after, but not radically. They say, it's like you Romans now, before and after the Vatican Council. The Council changed us quite considerably in many ways, you know, the mass now and the vernacular. And we see the change and know it, but we feel it's the same church before and after, but reformed. Now, that's the way they've always considered—and this is true—their earliest apologists, if you want to say earliest. For them, their earliest apologists are Augustine and Bede, etc.

[68:28]

But if the earliest, specifically Anglican-Anglican apologists, insisted on this continuity. Now, the continuity is very important because, as we've seen, it's a continuity in the monastic and Benedictine heritage. And there you get into all sorts of interesting possibilities. One of the monks of the Word of the Holy Cross, with whom we have this covenant and with whom we'll be working in Berkeley, wrote an article for the Review for Religious, stressing this basically monastic spirit in all of Anglicanism, what happened in the reform of the 16th century for them. For them, it was essentially putting a liturgy in the vernacular, which we finally did after 400 years later, making the Word of God much more available to the people, much more space for the Word of God in the liturgy. The Anglican Church reads more of the Word of God in the liturgy than any other church. For instance, at a vespers service, they won't read a few verses of John. They'll read a whole chapter of John, after having read a whole chapter from somewhere

[69:31]

in the Old Testament. And another thing is that their vespers and laud services are not just for the clergy, but they're basic liturgies for the parishes that all people participate in. So this is a kind of an expression of this basically monastic spirit in all of Anglicanism. Well, all of this is to mean that what we might be involved in becomes considerably easier because there's this kind of monastic common root to what we're interested in and to what the Holy Cross is interested in, but to the whole of the Anglican ecclesial experience, perhaps. You know, the Anglican Communion is this communion of 23 national churches all over the world of Australia, Africa, Canada, et cetera. Just 200 years ago, there was not one Anglican bishop outside of Great Britain, and now about 80% of the Anglican bishops are outside.

[70:33]

I was at Lambeth, their gathering, their cynical gathering every 10 years of bishops. It was beautiful to see. They've really gone indigenous. So all these Black bishops, and there was a group of Japanese bishops there with the translators and the whole bit, but it's quite an international church in that sense. The Holy Cross, the order we're involved in, it was founded in 1881 here in the States. It's the oldest men's order, Anglican, in the States. It is not just in the States. It's also in Canada and Africa and the Bahamas, et cetera. But it has quite a longer history. One of their spiritual writers, Father Hewson, is now dead, but he's quite an outstanding. He's written books on contemplative prayer with Christ and God, et cetera. He is citing here people like Baker, Benson, Bernard, Gregory. He's stressing liturgy, et cetera.

[71:35]

So it's basically, we're always there sort of thing. So that's rushing very hastily through the Anglican communion. Now, the foundation, as you probably know, last November, 21st, there was this decision after some comments of Bruno and talking about New Camali, some thoughts about a possible foundation of a little monastery in California. Then another Italian priest, it was Innocenzo, pushed me saying, well, why don't? Because there seemed to be a manpower problem. Who would do this? So he said, why don't you offer yourself? So I talked to Bruno, et cetera. So just a year ago. Then what happened? We started talking. I had some get-togethers with Bruno and Adam, and then the general and superiors. I said, what would be the basic spiritual sketch of the thing? And we put together a document, and then another document in English, which I guess I didn't

[72:41]

bring along if anyone wants it. But I have lots of copies. It's a sketch of the basic principles of the spirituality, which would be centered on Christ, on the word of God, on liturgy and the Eucharist. Basic principles of monastic heritage. Then I hope quite an emphasis on interior prayer. I think this might be a link up with here. I think the explicit strong witness here to the importance of contemplative prayer, of recollection, of silence, et cetera. Obviously, we wouldn't have the intensity of this in a small monastic urban situation. But we could certainly insist on it, insist every day, period for interior prayer, et cetera. And I think that would be very important. It's very important for me for simply living the monastic life. And so very briefly, we can go back to that in the Christian period. So it would hopefully be a continuity with a whole monastic heritage and commodity heritage.

[73:43]

The house will depend from commodity and also some kind of spiritual bond with new commodity, but not at all juridical. We shouldn't either feel that the other is some sort of juridical bond or that sort of thing. This is a little parenthesis, but maybe you know that Father B. Griffiths was through here. It might be that he will be plugging into commodity, as it were. He's looking for some sort of relationship with an established monastic order that would be not just juridical, but also juridical. But the juridical side, it would seem that he will be depending from the general and the general's council the way Berkeley will be. So it would be an interesting thing. Commodity has other houses depending from it, the hermitage in Naples, the farm down

[74:45]

below, and San Gregorio. But to have one quite contemplative ecumenical house in India, dialogue with the Hinduism, and then another house in Berkeley, it seems to me, suggests a stretch that's fascinating and also quite challenging. But I think it's sort of… And then he's interested perhaps in the presence, he's hoping, of B. Griffiths, of our Don Bernardino, who's already been there a year living with him at his ashram. He very much likes Don Bernardino. Apparently, he wants him to help out in the further formation of the little ashram, etc. I'm wondering how it's going to work with the individuals, that is, about their becoming analogous and so on, so they're giving it to us, you know? I don't know, I don't know. I see, you know, complications there, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. For instance, the individual who already belonged to this monastery, you know, sort of get transferred on a block, or something like that.

[75:45]

Yeah, there's things to work out, certainly. I don't know how far the thing has gone. Does it seem like a very high likelihood? From what, you know, Cimso said to me when I was just up there, it's on its way. That is, it's sort of finalized in the sense that, yes, we're going to do this. How to work out all the details, etc., that's another thing. But if I understood, you know, Cimso right, it has been decided, and B. Griffiths has chosen Camaldoli, which is rather nice. You know, he's not just choosing it as a kind of a juridical opportunity, but he's been looking for the house that, for him, can, you know, be in communion with what he's trying to do in India. That's the main reason he left here earlier, to try to do that same connection. Yeah, yeah. But I guess... But did he spend time in Camaldoli, B. Griffiths? Yeah, he's been in Camaldoli, both the monastery and the hermitage, as I understand. As I say, he knows Bernardino all the way.

[76:48]

He's already sent us a couple of... one monk, curiously an Italian monk, but an Italian who had gone to India, and then he suggested you go back and become a Western monk. And the one monastery he picked out to go to, and this man spoke English quite well, was Camaldoli, again, this sort of thing. So there has been quite a bond of friendship, and Bernardino writes regularly to him. I think that B. Griffith is a kind of a spiritual father of Bernardino. So, the prayer character. Now, the whole ecumenical side, we've got to go into that. For me, again, that doesn't compromise the contemplative side. I think it'll be a commitment to push further. Father Roy, who's the prior of the community there, he's quite a spiritual man. He's now doing graduate work in the Institute of Spirituality, the people who come here, what, a couple of times a year. And he has been to Japan. He's very interested in Western Catholic.

[77:49]

He's studying at the Roman Catholic Institute of Spirituality, and he's also interested in the dialogue with the Zen heritage, etc. So the prayer character, the ecumenical. How did the thing get ecumenical? I think it might be good to spend a little time on that, because people might think it was some kind of a sinister plot or something. So, 21st of November, it was a projected start, looking around, see if anything could be done. One of the big issues was to find a job. The economic, the sort of nuts and bolts problems are decisive for foundations. There was the idea of the Brazil Foundation. One of the things that is holding that up is the whole economic thing. Comaldi is not in a position to sort of bankroll it for its first years at all, or even its first months. So the teaching side seemed a reasonable way for me to earn my keep for at least the first period.

[78:50]

So the first thing to do was to find a teaching job. Was there a job available in California teaching? So the first thing I did was write to certain friends and acquaintances in California saying, did they know any ins about teaching? Well, we'd had this fellowship, we'd had this covenant relationship with Holy Cross with a couple of years. Also, the fellowship had grown up a year. And we had visited Berkeley up there. So I wrote Father Roy the 28th. The dates are interesting, because it'll be the 28th that we'll be going up there. I'm saying, what do you know about a job? Nothing ecumenical at all. So he started looking for teaching jobs. He seemed interesting, because right there at the GTU with all the friendships with the Jesuits and Dominicans. So he was really quite helpful. And he offered at one point to write every Roman Catholic teaching place in California. I ended up doing it because it was more suitable. But in any case, he was quite helpful. And so we had exchanges of letters simply on the level of job finding.

[79:51]

Then in April, he wrote me. I sent him our fellowship newsletter, et cetera. And awfully nice to have a newsletter and that you're getting. I'm glad that you've had some nibbles about the teaching. Then he said, wouldn't it be fine if you could find a good teaching position in this area and the Kamaldolese and OHC could open up a joint house? That would be a true ecumenical pilot project. So this is the 27th of April, some four months later after job hunting, et cetera. So this is a concrete proposal. And I felt I couldn't just ignore it or pretend it hadn't been made. Then sometime in the spirit, the general of Holy Cross passed through. And he made another reference to this. Obviously, they had talked it over among themselves. Roy doesn't have the authority to make a proposal like this without their own superiors' OK. So some sort of answer was required. So I talked it over with General Benedetto Innocenzo, et cetera.

[80:52]

And we decided to send back a kind of a reflection on various problems, that there would be certain, obviously, eucharistic sharing. How would that be worked out? What would be the relation of the... He simply talks a joint house, you see. So he writes back later. This is June 12th. He says, awfully nice to have your letter and accompanying tract. It's because in response to my suggestion of a joint OHC, Camaldi's House. So one thing I would like to stress, the whole initiative came from them. It wasn't some sort of... It has taken me a while to answer because, et cetera. Then he goes on. He discusses all the details that I brought up. And our covenant proceeded from high inspiration, and so should its implementation. And then the vocations things. Of course, the Camaldis would want to attract vocations to the witness of the foundation, as would Holy Cross. How would a joint house affect this? Well, the presence of a unity and diversity would probably enrich the formula, so to speak.

[81:54]

I mean, each community attracts a type in accordance with the vision of its founder. And the witness of both OHC and OSB under one roof could help clarify a sense of vocation in either direction, perhaps. And he goes on working about these details. Then he gets very concrete. You see, I've been looking for jobs. I've had nibbles. We were still thinking in terms of a year from now, perhaps beginning teaching, because it's very difficult finding teaching jobs in California. But either next year or things went very well this year. So the housing issue starts to come up. There were some more substantial nibbles from Holy Cross, Holy Family College, and they have an apartment. So one possibly seemed to be immediate. First here a period, then in the apartment at Holy Family. But that has its pluses and its negatives. But he says, for the immediate future, what would you think of tying in with St. Dominic's Priory, that's theirs, as seems suitable in the event you take a teaching position

[82:54]

in the area? Which wasn't at all certain. Chances are we could arrange room for you in the building, perhaps right next door to our monastic suite on the top floor. Then when our priory in Marin County is given, we can move in that direction. That's a line that's still puzzling to me. I don't know if they've had a house offered them, whether this is a joke or what, but that's a whole thing that has to be worked out. Eventual other possible housing. We've already looked with Lewis and Uchenzu at two possibilities, one in Berkeley, one outside. But the whole area of space. As suggested, a joint house would be founded on the neutral spirit between the orders sensed in our initial contact several years ago. That, it seems to me, must be the basis for everything. On this foundation, well-disposed and mature members of both communities should have little difficulty in working out a common office and other living arrangements, etc. So they proposed it, and it seemed to require some sort of answer. So you're either going to say yes to them, or no, or maybe, or let's give it a try,

[83:59]

or let's wait a while. So we started at length discussing this, of the general, and Uchenzu, and the whole bit. I don't remember now at what point I wrote to Bruno, but the dialogue was going. Now, we came to a kind of consensus that we couldn't say no to these people. It's, they've had to sacrifice making this proposal. We shouldn't think this is all they've, but at any rate. And we couldn't neither say let's wait, because what does let's wait mean? Obviously, if we start the foundation, it's going to take a certain direction. We're going to be looking for a house, looking for, let's wait is equivalent of saying no. So it's equivalent of closing the door. So, then suddenly the teaching job did come through quite clearly, and providentially, it was quite close, or non-providentially, depending on your point of view, to Berkeley. And then we wrote again on what about transportation, and he immediately looked

[85:02]

into all this sort of thing, and said the Bart King's looks possible. Then there was the whole thing of Uchenzu wanting to come, having to study English. Roy immediately found a school for him. It's free, a very good school of English. So things started on a very concrete level working through, and that is a fairly important level in the thing of making a foundation, because sometimes you have beautiful ideas, but nothing works on the, you can't find the man, or you can't find a house, or you can't find the money, or something. But things seem to move through. So sort of here we are sort of thing. One decisive thing for me, quite frankly, was there was a group of Episcopalians in Rome on an ecumenical pilgrimage from Michigan State, and I was showing them around Rome, and they were staying at San Gregorio, and then they had kind of an audience at the Secretariat for Christian Unity, and they really put out the red carpet there, and their Anglican man, Canon Stewart, spoke to them, and he cited the Lund Principle,

[86:06]

which is this. It is that we have now arrived to such a level, advanced level of ecumenical dialogue, that the several Christian churches should no longer undertake any initiative separately if it can possibly be done together at any level. And Canon Stewart says, unfortunately, we are still following just the opposite principle. That is, if we can possibly do it separately, each on his own, then we'll certainly do it that way. So he was speaking. So this sort of blew my mind that right in the middle of the Vatican here was this Monsignore who was talking about this Lund Principle, and we were talking about, thinking about this initiative, this monastic foundation initiative, and we had this very concrete proposal that was waiting for a yes or a no of doing this jointly. So don't do anything separately that you could possibly do jointly. Well, at least we could give it a try jointly.

[87:07]

Now, this might not work out for reasons we don't yet see. If it doesn't work out, then we'll very certainly take another road. That's all. That is, the ecumenical thing is not a sine qua non. It's not that either this goes through or, I don't know, we're going to go out and get married or something. This is a first try. If this doesn't work out, another more traditional model of a specifically, exclusively, commaldelese house, etc. So that's another aspect that some have discussed, one or two. The Berkeley Foundation does not preclude, does not exclude other little monastic foundations or big monastic foundations, either from new commaldelese or from commaldeleerism. A couple have proposed a kind of a model of Berkeley as a monastic house of studies, ecumenical, then a larger monastery, not urban, rather like the big monastery at Commaldelee in the forest, maybe. Then the hermitage here with juridical relationships to be worked out.

[88:12]

But I'm just simply saying that the Berkeley thing does not want to be some sort of monopoly on the possibility of monastic foundations. If other initiatives can be started from here or from Commaldelee, fine. I, on my part, will do everything possible, etc., to help. If my help is not needed, fine, etc. So there's that wrinkle to the thing, too. Just, what, a couple of days ago, I met with Innocenzo, who's now been up there for 40 days. And he's been following, sort of, 40 days and 40 nights, he's been following their community life rather closely as I would, sort of building up a kind of a joint community in small. Now, he has quite a critical sense. I mean, if there's problems, he'll see it. Sometimes he'll see problems when there aren't problems. But he's got quite a penetrating eye. And for me, it's been quite a test, the fact that he went up there first. He is, he's very ecumenical. But his thing is not Anglicans.

[89:14]

And this is really his first serious contact with them. He doesn't tend to like them. He doesn't tend to like English. And he doesn't like that whole culture. And, but, so. Now, his first reactions is, I got them. We talked quite a long time. We're quite positive. That is, he sees no problems. He says it's almost impossible to, sort of, get into a ferocious argument with these four. Certainly the interpersonal vibrations. This can be fairly important if you've got a small monastic community. It's always fairly important. It shouldn't be decisive, but it's important. And especially if you're going with this added. But these are very warm-hearted, open, kind people. All very dedicated to ecumenism. As I say, Father Roy is very spiritual. Their youngest man is beginning his first theology there. Absolutely brilliant. He's a linguist. He comes from a Spanish background. So he speaks Spanish and Portuguese and French.

[90:17]

And he's already picked up Italian. According to Innocenzo, he's the most brilliant man in the theological seminary. But he's very interested in ecumenism. He, as a matter of fact, was Roman Catholic. We sometimes think that all the going across is in one direction. They have, the great majority of the Holy Cross monks are converts from one thing or another. Most of them are Methodists or Presbyterians or something. But there are some Roman Catholics also. But he's very serene about this. And so that's an interesting wrinkle. But Innocenzo is already proposing that he spend a period in Rome doing some theological studies there. And he's quite interested in this. And Innocenzo is also already interested. We have several clerics beginning their theological studies in Italy. That one of them do at least a period at Berkeley. Innocenzo is fairly impressed with the theological program. Excuse me. But anyway, Innocenzo did not see problems.

[91:18]

He thinks it will have the character of a ecumenical monastic house of studies. But either on the personal level, on the theological level, on any level, he thinks it's going well. He's impressed by the fact that Berkeley is, you know, the Jesuits there, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Anglicans, all sorts of people. But there isn't a monastic presence. It's already an extremely ecumenical atmosphere. But again, there isn't a monastic. And the stress of a monastic spirituality, a monastic prayer, the witness of monastic prayer, could be very important and helpful. And the whole ecumenical, you know. So the community is urban. I'd like to say a few words about that. Sometimes one thinks you can put a monastery anywhere. You can put it in the forest. You can put it on the top of a mountain. Christ. You can put it in the jungles or in the desert. But you can't put it in a city, this sort of thing.

[92:21]

So just the fact that it's an urban monastery, this already sort of blows it, so to speak. Well, this is a view, point of view. There's all sorts of points of view in the monastic world. I would simply note that there is, in the whole monastic heritage, a very long thing on urban monasticism. Our own St. Gregory's, which is one of the oldest monasteries in Christendom. But there's a whole series of examples you can give. But I've been amazed in looking over the history of the order to find out how central it is to our heritage. There was hardly a major city in Italy that didn't have its Kamaldolese urban monastery. Many of them were very strict monasteries. They had a very high level of observance. And they were very important for the cities. But there was St. Michael's in Venice, which were very important. St. Mary of the Angels in Florence. St. Michael's in Pisa.

[93:22]

St. Clement's in Arezzo. St. Mary's in Arezzo. There were two Kamaldolese monasteries just in the city of Arezzo. St. John the Baptist in Faenza, etc., etc. St. Mary of the Angels in Bologna. St. Mary in Napadova. St. Severo in Perugia. These monasteries produced saints and all the rest of it. But the whole urban thing, which was decided on quite before the whole ecumenical wrinkle, is thoroughly Kamaldolese. Also, the whole study thing. Of course, you get, I think, healthy tensions here. Urban study, a rural forest, a hermitage, etc. There are obviously different emphases that are coming in here. And I think, in the past, we've sometimes, in our worst periods, felt sort of threatened one by the other. That is, if one is doing one thing, the other feels threatened if that's different from what I'm doing. Always the kind of doubt that he'll sooner or later want to impose that on me.

[94:26]

But I think that Kamaldolese heritage at its best is saying this sort of unity in diversity. And precisely because we are unified, we can be incredibly diverse. Teilhard has the principle that union differentiates. But the whole St. Paul model of the body, that the heart is absolutely different from the eye, which is absolutely different from the hand, but they are in organic unity. So there isn't one rigid mold of what monasticism should or shouldn't be, and then you excommunicate everyone else. I think the Kamaldolese approach is this great diversity. So we have going here a small urban monastery with quite an ecumenical thrust. This is what is on the immediate horizon. As I say, if this doesn't work out, for reasons that have not at all emerged up to now, then we certainly take another. We've already agreed with Holy Cross,

[95:29]

it won't at all be traumatic for our relationship, the one with the other. And it should teach us, if it's done seriously enough, even a mistake, even not being able to go ahead will teach us something about the whole thing. So we feel that saying no to this opportunity, there don't seem to be the grounds for saying no, that's the thing. And what Roy has proposed, and in effect the hospitality they're offering, has made possible that the thing has gone forward with a certain ease in the way that other, as I say, other foundation endeavors have become incredibly blocked. And as I say, it might take a different form, but also the possibility of innocenzo, for instance, again, to study, et cetera. That's all been made possible, more or less, by this sort of shape it's taken. Other sides, I guess that's about all.

[96:32]

We can talk about the office that they have there, the sort of rhythm of life they have there that might come out in questions. They have a laud service in the morning, a vespers service in the evening. Now, when you get in the ecumenical, now, when you get in the ecumenical,

[96:47]

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