Dennis D. Martin from the Cistercian Studies Quarterly
Vol 29.3 (1994) 363-7 (copyright C.S.Q. 2003 - some parts have been corrected to reflect recent changes)Since 1970 the monograph series Analecta Cartusiana has been appearing, first from Berlin and then (1971) from Salzburg. The series is self-published by its editor, Dr. James Hogg, a former Carthusian who teached in Salzburg until 1995. The first volume was Dr. Hogg’s Berlin doctoral dissertation on the earliest legislation of the Carthusian Order. Many volumes in the series contain proceedings of the approximately biennial international conferences on Carthusian studies organized by Hogg since the late 1970s.
In addition to conference proceedings, the series also contains an incredible miscellanea Cartusiana, ranging from art history to material culture to English literature.
The series is luxuriantly ramified—out of its projected 130 volumes, some individual volumes are projected to contain more than 40 separately bound parts.
After Dr. Hogg announced that his monograph series would end with volume 130, a serial journal of the same name was begun in 1989, edited in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France. Because the impression seems to have arisen in some quarters that the original monograph series was a serial journal, the new journal is sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Analecta Cartusiana, new series.”
DOCUMENTS FOR A STUDY OF CARTHUSIAN LEGISLATION AND LITURGY
As early as 1615 the Carthusian Order took steps to produce a comprehensive general history of the Order, asking all priors of individual houses to send historical documents regarding their communities to the Grande Chartreuse. Given renewed impetus by the General Chapter in 1686, the plan was to organize the project in three parts covering
(1) the statutes, spirit, and purpose of the Carthusian Order;
(2) information on individual Carthusians;
(3) information on individual houses of the Order.
Part I appeared in 1687 when Innocent Le Masson, prior of the Grand Chartreuse and thereby head of the Order published what is now reprinted in Analecta Cartusiana, 99, Documents, parts 18-20. The original title was Annales ordinis Cartusiensis, Tomus Primus ... For a second edition (Paris, 1703) the subtitle became the title: Disciplina Ordinia Cartusiensis. A portion of part three of the project (covering the history of individual charterhouses, 1084-1429) was compiled in manuscript by Charles Le Couteulx in the late 17th century, but was not published until the late 19th century as Annales Ordinis Cartusiensis, 8 volumes (1887-1891)—bibliographic confusion in Carthusian matters is of long standing! Part two, the biographical register, was compiled by Leon Le Vasseur in manuscript at the same time as the other two parts and likewise was not published until the late 19th century as Ephemerides Ordinis Cartusiensis, 5 volumes (Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1890-1893). A corrected edition of Le Masson’s Disciplina was printed along with the initial editions of Le Couteulx and Le Vasseur works by the Carthusians at the Charterhouse of Notre-Dame des Près. Yet even these 19th-century editions are relatively rare in North American libraries.
James Hogg has set out to publish and reprint the raw materials for the study of Carthusian constitutional and liturgical history as an appendix to volume 99 of the Analecta Cartusiana. (In regard to constitutional history of the Order, note that volume 100 in the series is devoted to the acta or chartae of the Carthusian general chapter, i.e., the records of the General Chapter meetings, which must be assembled from partial collections in various manuscripts. More than 39 parts of volume 100 have appeared to July 2003.)
Strictly speaking, volume 99 will consist of Dr. Hogg’s as yet unpublished 3-vol. study of the Evolution of the Carthusian Statutes to 1509 (projected for 2005). In the meantime, as a sort of extended appendix to volume 99, he is publishing this series of “Documents.” (Although the individual parts carry the term “volume” on the cover and title page, for clarity’s sake, they will be referred to here as “parts” of “Volume 99.”)
The first four parts of this “Documents” appendix are a reprint of the famous but relatively rare 1510 Basel Edition of the first four centuries of Carthusian legislation: the Consuetudines of Guigo I (early 12th century, now available in a critical edition in Sources Chretiennes); the Statuta Antiqua (1259, 1271), the Nova Statuta (1368), the Tertia Compilatio (1509), and various indexes. Next come the 1681 Nova Collectio Statutorum (Analecta Cartusiana, volume 99: Documents, parts 4-7), the 1926 and 1932 revisions (Documents, parts 8-11), and the 1971 and 1991 post-conciliar revisions (parts 12-17). Parts 21-25 contain the 1879 Carthusian Breviary. Parts 26-31 in the Documents series of volume 99 are the temporal and sanctoral cycle of Emmanuel Cluzet’s work, Particularites des prieres de la messe cartusienne.
Parts 12 and 13 are the 1991 revised Statutes and thus are of value to anyone interested in the current constitution of the Order. Part 14 offers the initial post-Vatican II revision (1969), part 15 gives the first part of the 1971 revised statutes; part 16 gives the last part of the 1971 revised statutes, dealing with liturgical observances, in the emended form presented to the General Chapter in 1973 (final approval in 1975). Professor Hogg has reprinted parts 14-17 from typescripts and mimeographed editions that circulated within the Order. Part 17 represents the initial version of the post-1983 revision (1987), paving the way for the 1991 Statutes in parts 12-13.
A brief note at the beginning of part 12 explains that the 1991 Statutes were the outcome of a revision of the 1971 Statuta Renovata necessitated by the 1983 Code of Canon Law; part 15 likewise has a note explaining the necessity of a post-Vatican II revision. Otherwise, the reader is offered no help in situating the legislation in the post-Vatican II history of the Order. None of them includes a listing of the other parts of the Documents series of Analecta Cartusiana, volume 99. One has to be knowledgeable about the most recent history of the Order or at least of monastic history since Vatican II to make sense out of them. Since Professor Hogg’s projected constitutional history of the Order will go only as far as 1509, we have no clear prospect of any brief overview. Readers could turn to standard lexika entries on the Carthusians, but such reference sources do not yet cover the post-1983 revisions (parts 12-13, 17 under review here).
A brief analysis of Hansjakob Becker of the liturgical revisions and the text of the liturgical portion of the 1975 Statuta Renovata are found in Analecta Cartusiana, volume 116.5: Die Kartause: Liturgisches Erbe und Konziliare Reform (1990).
In short, parts 12-17 of Analecta Cartusiana, volume 99, are of considerable comparative significance to other monastic communities and thus to CSQ readers, but those who read these volumes will have to plow their way through the Latin (except parts 12-13, which have facing-page French translations) to analyze them on their own. We have no real study and analysis of the post-conciliar revisions. This illustrates the purpose of the series: Dr. Hogg aims to offer the raw materials for future Carthusian historians, not even to begin to write that history himself.
Le Masson’s study (parts 18-20) is significant in a different way. It begins with a brief history of Carthusian origins. In the context of 17th-century monastic scholarship, Le Masson deals with various critical questions in order to defend the Order: was the story of the Paris professor whose corpse frightened Bruno into repentance apocryphal or not? Did Bruno himself compile legislation for his followers? What was the central, animating spirit and aim of the Carthusian life? (ch. 1-7). The bulk of Book I, however, is Le Masson’s detailed gloss on the early 12th-century Carthusian statutes. Books II and III then provide a similar glossed text of the Statuta antiqua and the Nova Statuta (1259, 1368). In short, parts 18-20 offer a convenient summary of the Carthusian life through a seventeenth-century lens and will be of interest to students of monastic history generally. Again, however, the editor has offered no help by way of introduction or summary analysis, although, in a note facing the title page, he does refer the reader to three published secondary studies.
Although not specifically under review here, Analecta Cartusiana, 99: Documents, parts 1-4, should be part of any library with a serious interest in monastic history, given the importance of the Carthusians during the four centuries they cover (1084-1509) and their extreme rarity. Published at the Amerbach Press in Basel in 1510, this edition is significant even as a stage in book publishing and contains the frequently reprinted woodcut illustrations of the Order’s history.
Although 17th- and early 20th-century legislation in parts 5-11 will be of less interest to most CSQ readers, precisely this neglected period in Carthusian history should not be ignored, and these volumes also open up possibilities for comparison with contemporary developments in Cistercian and Trappist history.
In general, these volumes are valuable research tools that could have been made more valuable with the addition of introductions and analysis, but which would then not have appeared for decades, if at all. Librarians responsible for collections supporting the study of monastic history, whether inside or outside religious life, should acquire them and make them available to scholars at all levels of research.
