his transcript an arranged course titled “Medieval Monastic History”! From there I went to St. John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota, to study monks with monks. Needless to say, I was hooked and I continue to be hooked. Hence, a book on the history of Christian monasticism geared toward a ressourcement of the tradition for the twenty-first century.1 The untranslatable French word ressourcement is most often used in connection with the theological movement known as the nouvelle théologie