On the Nature and Dignity of Love

William of St. Thierry (c.1085-1148), little known until recently, has, in the last few decades, come to be appreciated as one of the great spiritual masters of the Middle Ages. As St. Aelred took Cicero's doctrine as the basis for his work on spiritual friendship, so William took Ovid's Art of Loving as the starting point of his work. But, whereas Aelred felt Cicero's work capable of Christian treatment, William used Ovid only in order to contradict the Roman poet's all too popular doctrine of profane love.

William presents love as something which begins as a neutral faculty of doing good or evil indifferently. The direction taken by desire is specified either by self-will, which inclines to sin, or by the coming of the Holy Spirit (Who is the will of the Father and the Son), Who turns the human will into love. In chapter seven we are given a complete analysis of the human faculty of loving. And, as the loves of man are rearranged under the influence of grace into their original hierarchy, so the image of God in the soul regains more and more of its beauty.

A great classic of Benedictine spirituality.

This is the sixth title in the Columba Series.

On the Nature and Dignity of Love, by William of St. Thierry (trans. G. Webb and A. Walker).
63 pages, paperback. ISBN 1 901157 54 7.
£3.95 ; $5.00 in the U.S.A.
Published by The Saint Austin Press.
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