Anticipating An Infinity of Little Hours

I am looking forward to reading An Infinity of Little Hours by Nancy Maguire. It’s the experiential account of 5 young men who join the Carthusian abbey of Parkminster prior to 1965 (thus their experience pre-dates the second Vatican Council). I confess to a certain smug vindication in the very existence of this book: someone else has a keen fascination with monasticism and a certain period in history. Although the author is a scholar of the 17th century, she reached into the 11th in her research for the book. My point is that she made it a deliberate act to educate herself on a particular time in history, such as I have done with 12th century England, and, like I, she finds the monastic life intriguing and admirable, and fodder for literature. She is also a woman, which carries with it an inevitable awkwardness and demands discretion when it involves infiltrating a colony of celibate hermetic monks.

She was aided in her research by her ex-monk husband – some women have all the luck. If I could find an ex-monk, I might actually consider getting married.

My interests lie not so much with the Carthusian order as with the Cistercians – the two orders actually share roots in the monastic reform movement of the 11th an 12th centuries, but the latter emphasizes a communal rather than hermetic lifestyle. Nonetheless, I believe this book will be enlightening for me and will augment my life’s interest in 12th century monasticism – I believe it will be a keen insight into the thoughts and hearts of monks, whose humanity spans the centuries.

St. Aelred

What an admirable character he was – one who created an oasis of winsomeness in the midst of a societal desert of personal, intimate violence. His ability to shepherd with gentleness was indeed a rare characteristic of the abbots of his era – plagued with painful kidney stones (or the like), he had quarters built adjoining the hospitium of Rievaulx abbey. Unpretentious, unwavering, loving, winsome – he was a man of integrity with the almost mystical gift of celibacy. It seems to me that, as I continue to research this era and its monastic proginy, Aelred rises continually before me as a figure of great interest, a character in his own right who may well dominate my work more than I imagined.