The English Cistercians recently acquired a manuscript, copied in about 1200, of the first Life of St Bernard. It is a good specimen of the way in which the Life was distributed through the Cistercian and other monateries of Europe in the decades following the saint's death and also shows the kind of difficulty which a small or newly-founded house may have had in setting up and maintaining taining its scriptorium. The codex is all the more valuable because it is headed by a miniature portrait of the saint executed probably when many who had seen him were still alive. The portrait from the first folio of the codex is reproduced, a little larger than actual size, in this issue. If any are Interested in a more technical account of the MS.

A number of things have been written of late on the opinion held by St Aelred on the Assumption of Mary. Since an unknown sermon of the saint, found recently and published by Dr C. H. Talbot, contains a decisive allusion to the point, it may be interesting to resume the discussion and set it against its true background. To those who have studied the sources likely to afford some evidence for the belief, the apparent hesitation of the Cistercians seems surprising, having due regard to their outstanding devotion to our Lady. A remarkable study by Fr E. Wellens of the Abbey of Westmalle (Belgium), throws some light on the real situation.

To begin with, a charming legend told by Caesar of Heisterbach will explain the circumstances. In a monastery of our Order in Lombardy, there was a noble and well-educated monk named Bertram, who could no longer endure hearing doubts about the bodily assumption of Mary.

In one of the castles Jesus entered during his journey, a woman called Martha entertained him in her house. She had a sister called Mary. You have heard from the gospel the great happiness of the two women. Truly, great happiness was Martha's who received such a guest, who waited upon him and was busy in his service. Great happiness was Mary's who recognised the excellence of her guest, who heard his words and tasted his sweetness. The gospel narrates that our Lord Jesus Christ entered one of the castles and a woman called Martha entertained him in her house. She had a sister called Mary who ran to Jesus when he entered and sat down at his feet listening to his words. So closely did she attend to the words of the Lord that she took no heed of anything in the house, not even how much her sister was labouring.

Hallowed be thy name. Hallowed—a Saxon word meaning ‘Blessed, honourable, held holy'. May thy name then be blessed: may it be held holy:'may it be adored. Our prayer should not be all prayer of petition, all self-regarding; we should have some prayer of adoration, prayer just about God. The book of the Apocalypse gives us a description of this kind of prayer where it says, ‘And there was silence in heaven for about the space of half-an-hour'. Is there enough of this prayer in my life? This is the one thing necessary.

The Golden Age of Spanish Spiritual Theology flowered suddenly, almost as though a summer were to burst upon us without a springtide. Not that Spaniards were ignorant of the subject, either in theory or in practice, but previous to the middle of the fifteenth century they produced scarcely any native writers. The medieval period proper was one of importation and imitation. Works of foreign authorship were translated, and Spain was long content to draw upon the common heritage of Western Christendom, for her mystical as for her dogmatic theology. Then, roughly half-way through the century, there begins a long line of Spanish writers who have assimilated the masterpieces of other lands, whether in the original or in translation, and are becoming increasingly original until we reach peak point with St Teresa and St John of the Cross.

Three books have emerged from France-one already courageously translated into English, the second in process of translation, and the third inviting such a process-which between them mark the path of man from the depths of automatism to the heights of freedom. The flash title of the Etudes Carmélitaines—'du Robot au Martyr'— gives a fair indication of the theme treated in diverse ways by all the many contributors to the three volumes.

We live in a Robot age in so many directions that the modern moralist is confronted with a vast set of problems of conditioned, mechanical human actions with which he has hardly begun to grapple. How is he to judge of the culpability or the praiseworthiness of actions that are largely conditioned by interior, psychological or external, social compulsion? The widespread, unnatural and solitary vice among the young may be judged objectively as a serious sin.