MONASTIC STUDIES By Watkin Williams
Mr. Williams has collected in a volume eighteen short essays on various aspects of the early monasticism of which he is a well-known student (Manchester University Press, sos. 6d.). The first three deal with the Merovingian foundations in Burgundy, such as Moiitier-Saint Jean, the fifth-century abbey which boasted of a charter from Clovis. The other papers are mainly concerned with Cluny and its great abbots and with the Cistercian order in its attempts to revert to the simple austerity of the original Benedictine rule. The Cluny-Citeaux controversy of the twelfth century is well expounded in the " Dialogue between a Cluniac and a Cistercian ' to which the most generally interesting of these essays is devoted. Under St. Bernard of Clairvaux the Cistercians probably made a greater appeal to the lay public—and certainly in England— than the somewhat worldly and luxurious Cluniacs ; the author, who has written much on St. Bernard and here deals with his mystical side, is naturally predisposed in the Cister- cians' favour.
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