De la sainteté et des devoirs de la vie monastiqueby the Abbé Armand-Jean de Rancé was originally published in Paris by Francois Muguet in 1683. In 1830 it was translated and titled On the Sanctity and the Duties of the Monastic State by Abbot Vincent Ryan, founding abbot of Mount Melleray in Capoquinn, Ireland and published in Dublin by Richard Grace. This derivative edition has been re-typeset, re-titled, edited, updated, heavily annotated, and its many citations both substantially corrected and expanded. Moreover, it has been supplied with a contemporary introduction, with 44 illustrations as well as an Image Index and an Index of Scriptural Citations.
Although Abbé de Rancé, the founder of the Trappists, originally wrote for his monks, many laity of 17th c. France gladly embraced much of his spirituality, and to wonderful effect. With asceticism re-appearing now as a corrective to our self-indulgence and softness, his wonderful book is a badly needed, albeit bracing corrective for the Christians of our time. If appropriated in our day, Back to Asceticism: The Trappist Option will likely accomplish spontaneously all that The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher envisioned, and far more.
On the Sanctity and Duties of the Monastic State was the soul of Trappist spirituality until very recently, and the very implosion of the Trappists suggests that survival of the order depends on an about-face, a return to the wisdom of its founder. In fact, the same may be said mutatis mutandi of the entire Church, which is badly in need of this ascetic wisdom which de Rancé has distilled from Saint Benedict, Saint Bernard and the Desert Fathers, from Saint Basil, Saint John Climachus, and others.
Volume I contains the following fifteen chapters:
1 The Obligations of Religious Life in General 2 The Institution of the Monastic State 3 Of the Origin of the Solitary Life 4 Of the Different Forms of Life Which Were Established among the Ancient Solitaries 5 Of the Essence and Perfection of the Cenobitical State 6 Of the Principal Means by Which Religious Persons May Attain to the Perfection of Their State 7 On the Love of God 8 Of Loving the Superiors and Having Confidence in Them 9 Of the Charity and Duty of Superiors 10 Of the Charity that the Brethren Should Have for One Another11 On Prayer 12 On Penance, On Humiliations 13 On the Meditation of Death 14 On the Judgments of God 15 On Compunction
Volume II contains the additional eight chapters:
16 On Retirement 17 On Silence 18 On Abstinence and Austere Food 19 On Manual Labor 20 On Night Watchings 21 On Poverty 22 On Patience under Sickness and Infirmities 23 On Mitigations
In all, the two volumes comprise 700 pages of monastic wisdom compiled and commented on by the immensely learned Abbé de Rancé in light of his own decades long experience as the re-founder, the very successful re-founder, of Our Lady of la Trappe monastery in France. That monastery under his rule was by all accounts a kind of Heaven on earth. If "By their fruits you will know them" is taken as our principle of discernment, the fact that his monastery is the mother of every Cistercian monastery of the Strict Observance in the world today, and that the order thrived under the influence of his spirituality, then the true worth of De la sainteté et des devoirs de la vie monastique and its present day iteration, "Back to Asceticism: The Trappist Option is clearly seen. With this work Abbé Armand-Jean de Rancé is striding into the moribund world of contemporary Catholicism and speaking once again with words of fire.