cistercian studies series: number forty-eighty

THE LADDER OF MONKS

A Letter on the Contemplative Life

and

TWELVE MEDITATIONS

by

GUIGO II

Translated, with an Introduction by Edmund Colledge, OSA and James Walsh, SJ

Cistercian Publications

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LITURGICAL PRESS

Collegeville, Minnesota

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A Cistercian Publications title published by Liturgical Press

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Published in arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

© 1979 Edmund Colledge and James Walsh.

Published by Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except brief quotations in reviews, without written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321-7500.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guigo II, d. 1188.

The ladder of monks.

Translation of Scala claustralium and Meditationes.

1. Spiritual life—Catholic authors. 2. Meditations. I. Guigo II. d. 1188. Meditationes. English. 1978. II. Colledge, Edmund. III. Walsh, James, 1920– IV. Title.

BX2349.G8513 242′.1

Cistercian Publications edition:

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 81-30

ISBN 978-0-87907-748-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

introduction

The Life and Writings of Guigo II

The Scala Claustralium

History and Manuscript Tradition

The Ladder of Monks

Doctrine and Sources

The Middle English Version: A Ladder of Four Rungs

The Meditations

History and Manuscript Tradition

Doctrine and Sources

The Meditation on the Magnificat

the ladder of monks

A Letter on the Contemplative Life

twelve meditations

INTRODUCTION

The Life and Writings of Guigo II

Dom andré wilmart wrote of the early Carthusians: ‘These men, austere and discreet, founded their hermitages so that they could live in silence among the shadows, occupied in meditating upon eternal truths. We do not expect self-revelation from them.’1 This is especially true of Guigo, the ninth prior of the mother house, the Grande Chartreuse. What little can be learned of his life is set out in orderly fashion by Wilmart;2 and since he wrote, nothing has been added to our knowledge.

He appears as witness to an agreement made in 1173 between his house and the near-by abbey of Chalais, and he is there called ‘monk and procurator’. In that year or the next, according to Le Couteulx, he was made prior;3 and he is so styled in two papal bulls of 1176 and 1177. About the year 1180, when Henry II of England asked for his successor as procurator, Hugh, the future bishop of Lincoln and canonized saint, to be sent to England to the new Carthusian foundation at Witham, Guigo unsuccessfully opposed this request, saying that he looked to Hugh as his chief support in his old age. In 1180 Guigo was replaced as prior, but he is mentioned in the chronicles of the house in 1185 as ‘former prior’. Most recent authorities agree that he died ...