Spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. --

From the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, essentially the great age of monasticism, much thought was given to developing a ground plan by which the monk or friar could reach contemplation and mystical union with God. Basically, the writers of the age saw a fourfold division of this ground plan: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. While the basic ideas of spirituality were generally accepted by all writers, there were divergent teachings. The author here traces the main treads of these varied teachings from Benedictine spirituality of the eleventh century, through the ideas of the new orders (the Cistercians, the Franciscans and the Dominicans) down to the fifteenth-century writings of Thomas à Kempis, whose Imitation of Christ is still one of the best-known and most-loved spiritual guides. The author also deals at length with the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the major spiritual theologian of the Middle Ages.