The boundaries of charity

"This work explores how twelfth-century Cistercian monks maintained their tradition of social withdrawal yet played a pivotal political role in the world outside their monasteries. It argues that the Cistercians' political behavior was neither a betrayal of their monastic ideal nor evidence of some inherent Cistercian paradox, but that such public involvement grew out of the monks' conception of their monastic life, notably the cluster of ideas associated with Christian love, or caritas."--BOOK JACKET.