Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition Essays in Honour of Benedicta Ward SLG

Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition presents a chronological picture of the development of monastic thought and prayer from the early English Church (Bede, Adomnan) through to the 17th Century and William Law's religious community at King's Cliffe. Essays interactwith different facets of monastic life, assessing the development and contribution of figures such as Boniface, the Venerable Bede, Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux. The varying modes and outputs of the monastic life of prayer are considered, with focus on the use of different literary techniques in the creation of monastic documents, the interaction between monksand the laity, the creation of prayers and the purpose and structure of prayer in different contexts. The volume also discusses the nature of translation of classic monastic works, and the difficulties the translator faces. The highly distinguished contributors include; G.R. Evans, Sarah Foot, Henry Mayr-Harting, Brian McGuire, Henry Wansbrough and Rowan Williams.

Santha Bhattcharji is Senior Tutor at St Benet's Hall, and a member of the English Faculty at the University of Oxford, UK.

Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth) is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK. He was formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, UK, and was Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 - 2012.

Dominic Mattos is a publisher and writer, and studied Theology at the University of Oxford, UK.

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction - Santha Bhattacharji and Rowan Williams
1. Monastic Women and Prayer in the Early English Church -Sarah Foot University of Oxford, UK)
2. Bede, Christology and the date of Easter: the ramifications of a controversy - Rowan Williams (University of Cambridge, UK, and former Archbishop of Canterbury)
3. Literary and Visual Variations in Saints Paul and Anthony, in Insular Sculpture, Adomnan's 'Vita Columbae' and the 'Navigatio Sancti Brendani' - Eamonn O'Carragain Liturgical (University of Cork, Ireland)
4. What Was Supposed to be going on in the Minds of Monks When they Prayed the Psalter in Carolingian times? - Henry Mayr-Harting (University of Oxford, UK)
5. Boniface and the Acrostic - Henry Wansbrough (Liverpool Hope University, UK)
6. Something on Women - Henrietta Leyser (University of Oxford, UK)
7. Monks and the laity: the wider world of prayer, c, 1050 -c. 1250 - Brian Golding
8. Between Dialectic and the Sacred Scripture: Anselm of Canterbury and the Bible - Giles Gasper (University of Durham, UK)
9. The Prayers of John of Fécamp and Anselm of Canterbury - Brian McGuire (Roskilde University, Denmark (Emeritus))
10. Bernard's Use of the Gloss - Lesley Smith (University of Oxford, UK)
11. Concerning Academic Translation: The Latin Conrad of Eberbach - Paul Savage
12. Late Medieval Mysticism as a Mode of Thought - Santha Bhattacharji (University of Oxford, UK)
13. The Eye of the Mind - The Eye of the Heart: Rationality and Prayer in the Monastic Tradition - E Rozanne Elder (Western Michigan University, USA)
14. William Law and his Religious Community at King's Cliffe - Ralph Waller Sr (University of Oxford, UK)
15. Benedicta Ward in a few words: Nun, Scholar, Teacher - Dominic Mattos
Bibliography of Works by Sr Benedicta Ward
Bibliography
Indexes