William of Saint-Thierry is one of the most enigmatic "Cistercian Fathers" of the twelfth century. His was a dynamic career crossing many a supposed boundary of the twelfth-century's ecclesiastical and intellectual landscape. He was born in Liège in the late eleventh century. Although best known as a monastic writer, he was probably trained in one of the region's cathedral schools. His education there flavored his later writings in ways that seem to set him apart from figures with similar intellectual trajectories, like Bernard of Clairvaux or Aelred of Rievaulx. His academic disputes with secular masters like Peter Abelard and William of Conches are reminiscent of those that Rupert of Deutz had with Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux. But William also sparred with Rupert himself, a fellow monk and native of Liège. William was attracted to Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian way of life. But he spent most of his professed life in traditional monasteries, first at Saint-Nicaise and later at Saint-Thierry in Reims, where he was elected abbot in 1121. In that role, he played an important part in the so-called "General Chapter" of Benedictine abbots in 1131, but then gave up his abbatial authority to become a Cistercian monk at Signy after all. We should also note that William's works were, after his death, rapidly attributed to Bernard, a state of affairs that was not fully corrected until the twentieth century. As the editor of this volume notes in the introduction, it is surprising that, while there are articles galore on William's spirituality and theology, there are precious few book-length studies of his life and works, either monographs or collections of essays. This volume provides a new, welcome introduction to William of Saint-Thierry, albeit one that I wished showed more breadth in its coverage.
The volume consists of an introduction followed by seven essays. The introduction by F. Tyler Sergent provides a glimpse into the importance of William's thought and writing and a useful overview of previous scholarship on William. The volume begins in earnest with Brian Patrick McGuire's overview of William's life, drawing together what can be gleaned from the Vita Antiqua--a hagiography composed by a monk of Signy well after William's death--with other available sources. The chapter focuses on piecing together the most likely chronology of William's life, with much attention given to the nature of his relationship with Bernard of Clairvaux. McGuire also surveys all of William's extant writings, situating them within his career and giving brief summaries of their contents. The next essay by F. Tyler Sergent turns to the question of William's sources and influences. Undergirding this question is a longstanding debate as to whether William was deeply reliant on Greek patristic sources--a position advanced by the work of Jean-Marie Déchanet--or whether his spiritual writings were more rooted in the Latin Fathers, especially Augustine. Sergent provides a historiographical overview of this debate and then uses two concepts from William's works--ratio fidei and fruition--as case studies for exploring his influences. Ultimately, he discovers that many authors between the sixth and eleventh centuries, such as Paschasius Radpertus and Rabanus Maurus, need to be included in the list of sources upon which William drew.
David N. Bell delves into William's "mystical theology and theological mysticism," noting how different it is from that of Bernard and other Cistercian writers of the twelfth century. Neither Marian nor Christocentric, William's mystical theology is based on three principles: man's creation in the image and likeness of God, the Trinity as understood by Augustine, and the notion of love as will. On these principles, William builds a spiritual program that allows one to know God by being like God or, in William's own words, "to become what God is." Aage Rydstrøm-Poulsen builds on Bell's synthesis of William's theology and anthropology with a study of William's doctrine of the soul. In the next essay, E. Rozanne Elder opens by looking at William's refutation of Abelard's position on the ways in which the Incarnation achieved the redemption of humankind. This serves as a launching point to investigate William's understanding of the redeeming work of Christ, novel even in his own day for its emphasis on salvation via human participation in the Trinity.
Thomas X. Davis provides a sensitive reading of William's spirituality geared toward showing its continued relevance for contemporary society, with particular focus on William's understanding of conscientia--the "inner self"--as the route to knowing Christ. Nathaniel Peters turns to the eucharistic theology of William of Saint-Thierry. Although William is best known for his trinitarian theology and accounts of the soul's encounter with the trinity, Peters argues that William's understanding of the eucharist serves as the "capstone" of his whole theological system. For William, Christ's presence in the Eucharist operates inseparably from the Incarnation and thus inseparably from Trinitarian relations. Both Incarnation and Eucharist thus work to incorporate human beings into the Trinity, to "deify" them. Finally, Glenn E. Myers examines William's influence on late medieval spirituality. Despite the fact that William's works were rapidly re-attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux--in fact, because of this re-attribution--they were widely read. Myers looks at William's influence by tracking the transmission of his ideas about mystical union in the Golden Epistle into the sermons of the fourteenth century preacher Johannes Tauler. He demonstrates that Tauler had ready access to the text by looking at eight possible manuscripts that he might have encountered and then shows the ways in which Tauler's ideas of spiritual progress were stamped with William's influence. Most concretely, he traces the influence of five key ideas concerning mystical union in seventeen of Tauler's sermons.
As this summary suggests, the focus of this volume is on William of Saint-Thierry's theology and spirituality. For readers looking for an introduction to William's thought, this is a very good place to begin. Given that both Sergent's introduction and McGuire's overview of William's career emphasize that he is now equally recognized for his activities as a monastic reformer and a public intellectual as he is for his theological writings, it is unlucky that there are no essays dedicated to these aspects of William's life. Given current scholarly reconsiderations of monastic reform, I would have welcomed an essay re-examining William's role in the 1131 "General Chapter" of abbots from the traditional monasteries of Reims. Multiple essays in this volume mention that William's thought shows the deep compatibility of the sorts of theology practiced in the monasteries and the schools. An essay reconsidering how to situate William's disputes with Abelard, William of Conches, and Rupert of Deutz would have been a nice addition. Myers' discussion of some of the late medieval manuscripts containing William's works under Bernard's name piqued my interest as to the transmission history of William's writings and I would be fascinated to read about the full history of the misattribution of William's writings and their rediscovery by scholars. While I think that better coverage of the whole of his career would have produced a more fully rounded introduction to William of Saint-Thierry, this volume does a fine job of providing an accessible starting point.