The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron

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The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron. By Geoffrey Grossus.Translated with an introduction and notes by Ruth Harwood Cline (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2009- Pp. xxxiv, 177. $24.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-21681-2.)

From the early-eleventh century until about the middle of the twelfth, a powerful religious revival characterized by asceticism and eremitic withdrawal flared up in many places across western Europe. Loose-knit colonies of hermits sprang up in the wastes and multiplied, sometimes attracting hundreds of recruits to an existence unconstrained by the bonds of normal society and to a lifestyle patterned on that of the desert fathers and …