Written in the Year 1500 by Abbot Garcia Jimenez De Cisneros, O.S.B. translation from the original Spanish by E. Allison Peers, Monastery of Montserrat, 1929

PREFACE

The Book of Exercises for the Spiritual Life (Ejercitatorio de la vida epiritual) of Garcia de Cisneros, besides its devotional value and its interests as being one of the earliest semi-mystical treatises of the Golden Age of Spanish mysticism, has the peculiar attraction of being closely related to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. P. Garcia, a Benedictine who came from Valladolid to Montserrat in 1493 and was largely responsible for the striking resuscitation of spirituality in that monastery during the years which followed, ruled it as Abbot till his death in 1510 and composed these Exercises for the use, primarily, of the community, and secondarily, of the pilgrims who visited the famous Catalonian shrine of Our Lady.

        The book first appeared, both in Spanish and in Latin, in the year 1500: recent researches at Montserrat have left no doubt that the Spanish version is the original.[1]) The extent to which Saint Ignatius used it in compiling his celebrated manual has been the subject of lengthy discussions between Benedictines and Jesuits. That there are striking resemblances in the two works is certain; that from the time of his visit there (1522) Montserrat ^[p.8]exerted a strong formative influence upon the character of Saint Ignatius is no less so. It is impossible that he should not have absorbed the late Abbot’s book of devotion into his very being. More, in a brief space, one cannot say. I have alluded to the problem, in passing, in my Studies of the Spanish Mystics, (London, 1927) Volume I, pp. 11-12. In the second volume, now in preparation, I hope to treat it in greater detail.

        Meanwhile, it seems well worth the pains to turn into English a book which has influenced a great saint and a great community, and, through them, many millions of pilgrims, retreatants, missionaries, religious and simple lovers of God. The translation is made literally from the Spanish edition of 1912, which is that used at Montserrat; on a few doubtful readings I have consulted the Benedictine fathers of that monastery, and I beg leave to dedicate the version to them as a token of my deep admiration for their magnificent services to scholarship as well as of my personal gratitude for the kindly welcome with which they invariably greet my importunities.

E. Allison Peers. University of Liverpool.

Feast of St. Benedict, 1928.

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1998....x....  ’ “”.