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The Meditations, written over a period from 1125 to 1137, are a personal account of William of Saint-Thierry’s ascent into Trinitarian intimacy. Writing to the monks of Mont Dieu sometime around 1144, he proposed the Meditations as helpful in forming minds in prayer. These Meditations, with their accompanying commentary, are now presented as helpful in forming an intimate relationship with the triune God.

The Epistle to the Romans was a favorite text of medieval commentators, especially in an age concerned with the theology of grace. William of Saint Thierry's Exposition is a thoroughly monastic text. In it the twelfth-century monk is concerned, not with dialectic or scholastic disputation, but with something far more personal: humility of heart and the recovery of the image of God in fallen humankind. Only when a person is open to God's grace can growth occur. William is convinced of this. He hopes to convince us of it. He sings the praises of God's grace. He combs Scripture for insights on the workings of grace. Several times in the course of the commentary, he shifts from narrative to address God directly. In doing so, he adds a personal, intimate touch to a literary genre which was soon to become settled in the impersonal methodology of the Schools.

The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux, traditionally known as the Vita Prima, originated to prepare the case for canonization of Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux. The work was begun by William of Saint-Thierry, continued by Arnold of Bonneval, and completed by Geoffrey of Auxerre. When the initial case put forth for Bernard was rejected by Innocent II, Geoffrey undertook a revision of the original vita (Recension A) and submitted another version (Recension B) to Pope Alexander III, who declared Bernard a saint in 1174. This work emphasizes the deep love in which Bernard was held during his life by his monks and the people of France and Italy as well as his role as a powerful public figure. This book contains the first English translation of Recension B, drawn from what is apparently the only manuscript of the work found today in a Cistercian monastery, Mount Saint Bernard Abbey. The introduction begins with the story of how this manuscript came to Mount Saint Bernard, so fixing this translation of the Vita prima within Cistercian life from the twelfth century to today.

WILLIAM OF SAINT THIERRY, the little known but very great contemporary and friend of Saint Bernard, wrote his treatise On the nature and dignity of love a little after his first work, On contemplating God. He was at the time abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Saint Thierry near Rheims, but one already notices how heavy he found the abbatial charge. Eventually he found it impossible to carry on any longer, and in I 135 he resigned his office and took the Cistercian habit in the new foundation at Signy. Most of William' s work was produced when he was abbot of Saint Thierry, and his treatise On the nature and dignity of love lnight conceivably be based on sermons delivered at the morning chapter to his monks at Saint Thierry. As Saint Aelred took Cicero's doctrine as the basis for his work on spiritual friendship, so the author of The nature and dignity of love took Ovid's Art of Loving as the starting point of his work. But whereas Aelred developed Cicero's thought in a Christian context, William used Ovid only in order to contradict his all too popular doctrine of profane love, as he says quite clearly in his first chapter: ' ... by unruly rules he [Ovid] instructed the natural faculties in licentiousness ... instead of turning towards God in the due order of nature, men were brought low by the allurements of the flesh.' One can legitimately suppose that William found many of the novices as saturated with Ovid as he found them in later years at Signy reeking with the 'errors' of Abelard. William visualized the monastery as a school of love. In chapter nine we read that the monastery is charity's own school. Here the study of love is pursued. Here love's disputations are held and love's questions answered.' But it is important to note how, in the same chapter, William traces the descent of the monastic comnumity from that fellowship of the Holy Spirit which the Apostles were the first to enjoy. On the nature and dignity of love is not just a monastic idyll, but a passage which most interest every Christian, for all are bowld to seek after the perfection of love.

William of Saint Thierry left all things in his search for God. He left his home in Liage (modern Belgium) to study in France. He left the schools to enter benedictine monastic life at Rheims. And late in his life he left the Benedictines to enter the more austere, recently founded cistercian abbey of Signy in the Ardennes forest. What he did not leave was his keen intellect and his vehement love of Truth.