I just started reading this book, "On Cleaving to God," by Saint Albert the Great.(1193-1280)

It's a great work on Contemplative Prayer written 300 years before St. Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross came to be.

It's actually easier to get through than St. Teresa's works, which many people find difficult to read.

Anyway, you can read this book on line
here;

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/albert/cleaving

Regards
Jim

thank you for posting about this book...

Hi JimR,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention and recommending it. I'm sure I'd enjoy it greatly, but right now, I've got enuf books started. The diaglogue between you and Pop-pop on The Cloud pushed me into action to buy that book. I had been wanting to get hold of it for a few years.

I do find St. Teresa hard to read. Those paragraph-long sentences make me dizzy. But, as you know, she is (among) the best!

Interesting that the translator notes:

quote:

It contains many implicit references and quotations from writers who lived well after Albert the Great.

Google Books points to E. P. Goldschmidt, Medieval texts and their first appearance in print, page 49:

quote:

In fact the De adhaerendo Deo was written about 1410 by the Benedictine monk Johannes of Kastl, an abbey near Ratisbon in Bavaria.

I shared these writings through the course of several months as part of Daily Spiritual Seed a few years ago. Very good!

My son, Paul, who was a teenager then, was impressed that Albert was called "The Great" and wanted to know why that was and how he might come to be called "The Great" one day -- jokingly, of course. Since then, I have occasionally called him "Paul The Great!"