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In Praise of God’s Holy Mother and On Our Lod’s Word to His Disciples at the Last Supper were written between 1205 and 1214 at the abbey of Locedio, in the diocese of Vercelli, northern Italy. when the unique manuscript was rediscovered in the seventeenth century, the homilies were promptly attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux–despite differences between the devotion they express and that articulated by the early twelfth-century Cistercian.
In 1205 Ogier–also know as Oglerus, Oglerius, and Occlesius–was elected abbot of Locedio, a former benedictine abbey refounded in 1124 under the Cistercians. Little else is know of his activities before his deal on 10 September 1214. The homilies not only bear witness to his own spirituality, but articulate the devotion of the earth thirteenth-century to the Virgin Mary and to the Eucharist.
D. Martin Jenni, (1937-2006), was Professor Emeritus of the University of Iowa School of Music, and distinguished himself as a composer, a teacher, and a scholar. Deeply familiar with the Latin chant of the Middle Ages, he also studied the theology and literature of the period. Here he brings into modern English the long overlooked works of an almost forgotten medieval Cistercian spiritual writer.
