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Great Christian Thinkers - 39 John Damascene
Great Christian Thinkers - 39 John Damascene
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
John Damascene John Damascene was a personage of prime importance in the history of Byzantine theology and a great doctor in the history of the universal Church. Above all, he was an eyewitness of the passage from the Greek and Syrian Christian cultures shared by the Eastern part…
Great Christian Thinkers - 44 St. Odo of Cluny
Great Christian Thinkers - 44 St. Odo of Cluny
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Odo of Cluny We resume the presentation of important writers of the Eastern and Western Church in the Middle Ages because in their lives and writings we see, as in a mirror, what it means to be Christian. One such luminous figure is St. Odo, abbot of Cluny… Taken from Great C…
Great Christian Thinkers - 53 St. Hildegard of Bingen
Great Christian Thinkers - 53 St. Hildegard of Bingen
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Hildegard of Bingen In 1988, on the occasion of the Marian Year, Venerable John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter titled Mulieris Dignitatem on the precious role that women have played and play in the life of the Church… Taken from Great Christian Thinkers by Pope Benedict XV…
Great Christian Thinkers - 69 St. Catherine of Siena
Great Christian Thinkers - 69 St. Catherine of Siena
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Catherine of Siena We now reflect on a woman who played an eminent role in the history of the Church: St. Catherine of Siena. The century in which she lived - the fourteenth - was a troubled period in the life of the Church and throughout the social context of Italy and Europ…
Great Christian Thinkers - 19 St. Ambrose of Milan
Great Christian Thinkers - 19 St. Ambrose of Milan
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Ambrose of Milan Holy Bishop Ambrose, about whom I now speak to you, died in Milan in the night between 3 and 4 April 397. It was dawn on Holy Saturday. The day before, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, he had settled down to pray, lying on his bed with his arms wide op…
Great Christian Thinkers - 20 St. Maximus of Turin
Great Christian Thinkers - 20 St. Maximus of Turin
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Maximus of Turin Between the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, another Father of the Church made a great contribution to the spread and consolidation of Christianity in northern Italy: St. Maximus, whom we come across in 398— a year after St. Ambrose’s…
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Hilary of Poitiers I reflect now on a great Father of the Church of the West, St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of the important episcopal figures of the fourth century. In the controversy with the Arians, who considered Jesus the Son of God to be an excellent human creature but on…
Great Christian Thinkers - 27 Boethius and Cassiodorus
Great Christian Thinkers - 27 Boethius and Cassiodorus
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Boethius and Cassiodorus I now discuss two ecclesiastical writers, Boethius and Cassiodorus, who lived in some of the most turbulent years in the Christian West and in the Italian peninsula in particular. Odoacer, King of the Rugians, a Germanic race, had rebelled, putting an end…
Great Christian Thinkers - 28 St. Benedict of Nursia
Great Christian Thinkers - 28 St. Benedict of Nursia
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Benedict of Nursia Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, is also the patron of my pontificate. I begin with words that St. Gregory the Great wrote about St. Benedict: “The man of God who shone on this earth among so many miracles was just as brilliant in the eloquent …
Great Christian Thinkers - 32 St. Columban
Great Christian Thinkers - 32 St. Columban
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Columban The holy Abbot Columban was the best-known Irishman of the early Middle Ages. Since he worked as a monk, missionary, and writer in various countries of western Europe with good reason he can be called a “European” saint. With the Irish of his time, he had a sense of …
Great Christian Thinkers - 29 Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
Great Christian Thinkers - 29 Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite In the course of my catechesis on the Fathers of the Church, I speak next of a rather mysterious figure: a sixth-century theologian whose name is unknown and who wrote under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite. With this pseudonym, he was all…
Great Christian Thinkers - 33 St. Isidore of Seville
Great Christian Thinkers - 33 St. Isidore of Seville
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Isidore of Seville Saint Isidore of Seville was a younger brother of Leander, archbishop of Seville, and a great friend of Pope Gregory the Great. Pointing this out is important because it enables us to bear in mind a cultural and spiritual approach that is indispensable for …
Great Christian Thinkers - 35 John Climacus
Great Christian Thinkers - 35 John Climacus
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
John Climacus In presenting the great writers of the Church of the East and West in the Middle Age, I include the figure of John, known as Climacus. His name is a Latin transliteration of the Greek term klimakos, which means “of the ladder” (klimax). This is the title of his most…
Great Christian Thinkers - 41 Rabanus Maurus
Great Christian Thinkers - 41 Rabanus Maurus
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Rabanus Maurus A truly extraordinary figure of the Latin West, Rabanus Maurus was an exceptional and prolific monk. Together with men such as Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and Ambrose Autpert, two of whom I have spoken previously, during the centuries of the so-called…
Great Christian Thinkers - 42 John Scotus Erigena
Great Christian Thinkers - 42 John Scotus Erigena
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
John Scotus Erigena Though a noteworthy thinker of the Christian West, John Scotus Erigena’s origins are nonetheless obscure. He certainly came from Ireland, where he was born at the beginning of the ninth century. But we do not know when he left his island to cross the channel a…
Great Christian Thinkers - 43 Sts. Cyril and Methodius
Great Christian Thinkers - 43 Sts. Cyril and Methodius
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Sts. Cyril and Methodius Saints Cyril and Methodius were brothers by blood and in the faith, the so-called Apostles to the Slavs. Cyril was born in Thessalonica to Leo, an imperial magistrate, in 826 or 827. He was the youngest of seven. As a child, he learned the Slavonic langua…
Great Christian Thinkers - 47 St. Anselm
Great Christian Thinkers - 47 St. Anselm
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Anselm The Benedictine abbey of Sant’Anselmo (St. Anselm) is located on the Aventine Hill in Rome. As the headquarters of an academic institute of higher studies and of the abbot primate of the Confederated Benedictines, it is a place that unites within it prayer, study, and …
Great Christian Thinkers - 48 Peter the Venerable