The Bonds of Love: St. Peter Damian's Theology of the Spiritual Life

312 Pages·2021·3.324 MB·English

by  Gordon Mursell

THE
BONDS
OF
LOVE

Gordon Mursell
THE
BONDS
OF
LOVE
St. Peter Damian’s Theology of the Spiritual Life
The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2021
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standards for Information Science—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress
978-0-8132-3441-0
•In grateful memory of Dom Bruno Sullivan (1923–2000)
Carthusian monk, friend, and mentor

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1 6. Solitudo Pluralis 126
1. Creation 31 7. Asceticism 148
2. God 52 8. Spirituality 191
3. Church 69 9. Sabbath 228
4. Scripture 97 Conclusion 250
5. Cloister 111
Bibliography 259
Index 289

Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
It is easy to recall the moment at which this book was first con-
ceived. I was visiting St. Hugh’s Charterhouse at Parkminster, the only
Carthusian monastery in the British Isles, in connection with research
on the early Carthusians, sometime toward the end of the 1980s. One
of the monks there, the late Dom Bruno Sullivan, had been a friend
and spiritual guide since my teenage years, and in the course of a con-
versation on that day he suddenly leaped to his feet and said that, if I
wished to get close to the spirituality of the early Carthusians, I need-
ed to read the work of someone who wasn’t a Carthusian at all. So he
took me to the monastic library, drew out volume 145 of Migne’s Pa-
trologia Latina, and began to read from Peter Damian’s “Book of ‘The
Lord Be with You,’ ” translating as he went:
If, while many, we are one in Christ, as individuals we possess our whole self
in him; and hence, even though in our physical solitude we appear to be far
away from the Church, still by the inviolable mystery of unity we are always
most immediately present in her. So it comes about that what belongs to all
belongs to each; and what is particular to each is, in the wholeness of faith
and love, common to all.
Dom Bruno turned to me. “If you really want to understand our life,”
he said, “you should learn about him as well.” Thirty years later, this
book is the result. Struggling to manage the tension between vocations
to marriage, priesthood (and later episcopacy), study and teaching,
and growth in the spiritual life may serve to explain the delay.
I owe a great debt to several scholars who encouraged me to perse-
vere: to Sister Benedicta Ward, SLG, who supervised my research on
the early Carthusians and remained a friend and wise guide thereaf-
ter; to Professor Giuseppe Fornasari, of the University of Trieste, who
ix