Letters - Volume 6: Letters to Nuns and Monks

This sixth collection brings together the letters that Catherine of Siena addressed to nuns and monks belonging to various religious orders (Benedictine, Franciscan, Augustinian, Dominican), as well as to the novices, abbesses, abbots and priors of these same orders living in the many convents and monasteries that she had visited during her travels or with which she had privileged relations, such as the monastery of Santa Agnès in Montepulciano, which her niece, Sister Eugenia, had entered, and that of Santa Maria dei Angeli in Belcaro, which she had founded with the intention of gathering her disciples there.

The reform of the Church involves the observance of the rules of the order of each community; therefore, these letters, considered a model of spiritual direction, deal with the duties of monastic life, and in particular obedience and humility, the foundation of all monastic virtues. But what makes them instructive and touching is that they allow us to penetrate the spirit of this "cell", which Catherine had to leave to satisfy the will of God, and where she never ceases to lock herself away and "return" in her spiritual writings. Thus, after having been invited many times to take refuge in the "mental" cell of self-knowledge, here we are invited to visit this "physical" cell which, as cut off from the world as it is, always keeps a window open, to remind us that we can and must leave it by letting our soul fly away towards other souls in search of mystical marriage.

Presentation: Softcover cardboard binding, paperback

Publication date: June 18, 2015

Format: 12.7 cm × 19.5 cm × 2 cm, 226 pages

ISBN: 9782204077187

Author: Catherine de Sienne

Weight: 240 g

Publisher: Cerf

In French only.