ISAAC of STELLA. Sermons on the Christian Year, Volume 2, translated by Lewis White, with an Introduction by Elias Dietz, OCSO. Cistercian Fathers vol. 66. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 259. $34.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-87907-666-5. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

In 1979, the first volume of the Sermons of Isaac of Stella appeared in English translation in the Cistercian Fathers series. Forty years later the second and final volume of these Sermons on the Christian Year (with, not surprisingly, a different translator, the very busy Lewis White) has at last been published. Aside from two relatively brief letter-treatises, on the soul and on the canon of the Mass, the fifty-five sermons (along with three additional “fragments” not published until 1981) constitute the entire extant corpus of this twelfth-century Cistercian, a native of England who evidently came to France to study in one of the new proto-scholastic schools, still unidentified. He subsequently entered monastic life, perhaps at Pontigny, one of the four earliest foundations of the Abbey of Cîteaux, perhaps at Stella, originally an obscure Benedictine house that became affiliated with Cîteaux in 1145, a couple of years before Isaac was elected abbot there, a position he would hold for more than two decades, probably dying in 1169 or thereabouts, the year in which a new abbot of Stella is first mentioned. As this capsule biography indicates, there is much that is unknown about the specific circumstances of Isaac’s life, particularly a period in which he spent an undetermined amount of time at a new foundation on the island of Ré off the west coast of France, originally planned by Isaac and the abbot of the neighboring Abbey of Trizay but soon coming under the authority of Pontigny. His frequent use of the imagery of exile in reference to this episode led scholars in the mid-twentieth century to theorize that he had been ousted from his position at Stella due to his advocacy for Archbishop Thomas Becket in his quarrel with King Henry II of England and sent to this isolated location where he remained for the rest of his life. More recently discovered documentary evidence suggests that in fact he spent a relatively short time on Ré, probably to help get the new foundation established, before returning to Stella and his abbacy, and that the references to exile in his sermons, whether specifically associated with Ré or more general, were intended to be understood in a spiritual rather than political or institutional context.

In the centuries after his death Isaac’s relatively sparse writings attracted very little attention, but by the late nineteenth century the combination of themes and images characteristic of early Cistercian authors with material indicative of a mind highly trained in the intellectual milieu of the forerunners of the emerging scholasticism of the universities have made Isaac a major figure of the Cistercian “Golden Age” of the mid-twelfth century, the age of Bernard and Aelred of Rievaulx, a thinker and writer who according to Louis Bouyer “more than any of his contemporaries gives us the impression of being remarkably alive.”

The sermons are organized according to the sequence of the liturgical year, though highly unusual in that they begin with a series for All Saints Day rather than starting at Advent. In fact there are no sermons for Advent or for Christmas itself. After a pair of sermons on the Finding of the Child in the Temple come a number for the Sundays following Epiphany (though none for the feast itself), with the bulk of the collection (30 of the 55 pieces) focused on the three Sundays preceding Lent, the first three Sundays of Lent itself, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost, with the final ten sermons on the summer feasts of the Birth of John the Baptist, the Feast of Peter and Paul, the Assumption and the Birth of the Virgin, concluding with the Feast for the Dedication of a Church (all of these being days on which a Cistercian abbot was required by the statutes of the Order to preach). While there is no way of being certain if this collection, with its lacunae, was the result of planning or chance, what is clear is that despite frequent comments to his audience of monks that suggest spontaneous remarks and a familiar, somewhat informal atmosphere, these sermons, like most of those from the period, are carefully composed literary works that are quite different from those actually preached by an abbot in chapter from which they may (or may not) have been developed.

Most of the sermons are components of various series, from a pair to as many as nine for a particular feast (only three are stand-alone pieces), generally on the same scripture passage drawn from the liturgy of the day, though usually not focused primarily on the feast itself. They are depicted not as preached on the same feast-day in successive years, as would have been the actual practice, but as presented on consecutive days, which almost certainly did not happen. Often containing vivid concrete details like his listeners’ weariness after work, or the promise to compensate for the excessive length of the previous day’s sermon by the much briefer one to follow, that lend verisimilitude to a fictional framework, these sequences are generally used to develop a theme or motif that runs through the entire series. The two best-known examples belong to the first half of the collection – the group of six All Saints sermons (SS 1-6) that focus on the Beatitudes and provide a detailed overview of the progression of the spiritual life (which probably explains why they appear first in the collection) and the nine for Sexagesima (SS 18-26), based on the Parable of the Sower, that draw on Isaac’s pre-monastic academic training to present a complex, intellectually and spiritually challenging vision of the God beyond Being as the source and goal of all beings, accessible not through conceptual knowledge but through self-surrender and self-gift, in the words of Thomas Merton “a metaphysic of being and nothingness . . an unquestionably deep and austere intuition . . . deeply mystical.”

The sequences found in the second volume (Sermons 27-55) are generally shorter, such as the group of three (SS 30-32) for the First Sunday of Lent, focusing of Christ’s temptation in the desert as a pattern for his listeners’ outer journey into the wilderness of monastic seclusion and the spiritual journey into previously unplumbed depths of their own “inner regions” to confront their own demons and to be strengthened by divine grace; or the pair of sermons for the Third Sunday of Lent (SS 38-39), in which the exorcism of the mute demon leads Isaac to reflect on his own personal demon, far from mute, constantly tempting him with pretensions to glory, “talking about my knowledge, my religious observance, my habits, . . . my charm, my eloquence, or my refinement” He locates the muteness in the one being addressed, so filled with self as to be unable to praise God, to confess faults, to build up one’s neighbor, while the reaction of the Pharisees to Christ’s healing power reflects the urge to disparage and undermine the motives and methods of opponents by concealing, downplaying or distorting the good they have accomplished.

The longest series found in this volume is the group of five sermons for the Second Sunday of Lent (SS 33-37), based on the gospel passage of Christ’s encounter with the Canaanite woman (Mt. 15:21-26), something of a tour de force in which the woman and her daughter are first briefly considered typologically as the church and her sick child, then morally as the weakened will unable to exercise freely her desire for fruitful action without the intervention of Christ; leading into a lengthy reflection on the mystery of divine predestination and human freedom that clearly relies on Isaac’s academic training; then moving into a meditation on the woman’s humility, perseverance and “great faith” – marked by knowledge, confidence, devotion and steadfastness; and culminating with a stinging critique of those, especially religious, who claim virtues and even property as theirs by right rather than as unmerited gift. Here the broad range of Isaac’s concerns, from complex theological issues to concrete attitudes and patterns of behavior, are woven together in the context of the monastic common life, which includes a willingness to be ordinary, to renounce a desire for distinction.

Among the most effective and appealing sermons in this volume are the pair for Easter (SS 40-41), in which faith is recognized as a resurrection following on complete surrender of self to the will of God, in which Christ’s own perfect obedience is both model and source of faith-filled human obedience; the Sermon for the Ascension (S 42), which illustrates Isaac’s key emphasis on the Body of Christ, the whole Christ united in Head and members; the Second Sermon for the Feast of Peter and Paul (S 50), in which Peter’s call to be ready to give an account of why and how one lives (cf. 1 Peter 3:15) prompts a powerful reflection on the monastic practices of manual labor, silence, obedience, fasting, common life and chastity, and a critique of deviant forms of religious life that are rooted more in self-love than in the gospel call to discipleship; the Second Sermon for the Assumption (S 52), with its encomium for “Saint” Bernard (not yet canonized), the force of whose personality could provoke awe and even fear, but the sweetness of whose presence “sprinkled everyone with the delights with which he always abounded”; the Third Sermon for the Assumption (S 53), in which Isaac perceptively criticizes monks who have ostensibly renounced self-will in entering religious life, yet whose behavior in the monastery clearly shows that such renunciation was superficial at best; and perhaps especially the Third Sermon for the Birth of John the Baptist (S 48), in which Isaac calls attention to the vice of “curiositas,” the desire for knowledge rather than wisdom, which has led him to alter his own preaching to focus more on familiar but central elements of Christian life than on the more elevated and esoteric theological speculation that might foster an unhealthy desire for novelties in his listeners, as well as prompting a forceful, prophetic denunciation of another kind of novelty, the new military orders with their “fifth gospel – to force unbelievers with spears and clubs to accept the faith, and to freely plunder and religiously massacre those who do not have Christ’s name.”

The three recently discovered fragments, the first two of which, at least, appear to be substantially complete, have their own particular interest, as they may represent texts closer to sermons as actually delivered than the more rhetorically developed texts in the main collection. Thus the Epiphany Sermon of Fragment 1 provides succinct allegorical explanations for each of the main elements of the magi story (East, star, Bethlehem, gifts, etc.), followed by a series of triads associated not only with the three gifts and the (assumed) three wise men, the three theological virtues (faith, hope, love), the three powers of the soul (memory, understanding, will), but with the three rays of the star, corresponding to the light making visible a clean heart, powerful speech and upright action, the three gates on each side of the holy city, entered through doctrine, knowledge and experience, or conversion, testing and contemplation, etc. One can imagine Isaac expanding in his oral presentation on these quickly outlined distinctions. The second fragment, “A Pilgrimage Sermon,” is a brief description of Isaac’s return from a journey that is also called an exile, probably though not certainly his absence from the community while at Ré, and the “shackles” and “battles” with world, flesh and devil experienced on this pilgrimage of life, concluding with a prayer that the “grace, kindness and goodness” of Christ will “rescue us from these attacks and remove our shackles, so that we can run through him and safely come to him.” The third and final fragment provides a brief description and exemplification of four kinds of proud people – those proud of material possessions, those proud of spiritual gifts, those perversely proud of sinful behavior, and those taking pride in gifts, material or spiritual, that actually belong to others – a set of points for a sermon rather than a text of the sermon itself.

The volume is introduced by Abbot Elias Dietz of Gethsemani, one of the most astute contemporary scholars of Isaac, who presents his comments not as a comprehensive overview of Isaac but as a supplement to the decades-old but still valuable Introduction to the first volume by Bernard McGinn. He provides an updated look at Isaac’s life, based on the most recent studies; a brief consideration of the unusual structure of the collection; a somewhat longer summary of Isaac’s style, particularly his use of balanced pairings – the inner and outer world, the dynamism of ascent and descent, the contrast and complementarity of far and near, distinction and integration, going forth and bringing together, as well as triadic patterns, above all the traditional stages of spiritual growth: beginning, progress and perfection. Finally he provides a sort of reading guide to the collection as a whole, grouping the sermons into three categories, those most useful as introductions to Isaac’s thought, those best read as coherent sets, and the more challenging extended theological and philosophical reflections. He thus provides a method of delving into these works of the high middle ages in a way that maximizes their accessibility to a contemporary audience. He concludes by emphasizing Isaac’s remarkable integration of the two great movements of the twelfth century: the renewal of ascetic and ecclesial life and the new methodology of rational analysis emerging from academic circles. “What makes Isaac stand out is the remarkable marriage of these two worlds in his heart and mind. Although his literary output is less voluminous than that of Bernard, William, or Aelred, he deserves a place among them for the soundness of his monastic teaching, the depth and breadth of his theology, and his skill with words” – eloquent testimony to the value of having this Cistercian Father’s work at last made available in toto for a broad audience.