Against All Reason

London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969. Gold title on black cloth boards which have small marks to lower edge but no wear. Internally there is foxing to fore edge, a name and date to front endpaper else clean, tight and unmarked. Dustjacket has a small repaired closed tear and light wear to edges. xiii + 436 pages. 23 half-tone illustrations. Over a million and a quarter people lead the monastic and other forms of the religious life in the Western world - Benedictines, Trappists, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits and members of many other orders and institutes. Their lives are still largely based on St. Augustine's doctrine of perfection, still regulated for the most part by a medieval timetable. For a Cistercian nun this means that the day begins when a bell rings in her dormitory at 2.45 a.m. to summon her to the Night Office. Only by living for a time in a monastery is it really possible to grasp the startling difference between that existence and life as the rest of us know it. For the first time in 1,400 years there are signs of a dramatic change in the direction, the structure and the justification of the religious life. In this deeply sympathetic survey of the religious life in the modern world Geoffrey Moorhouse describes the daily life of monks, nuns and other religious; the effects of authority and the demands of obedience. He explores the meaning and purpose of prayer, and of a vocation that leads men and women to renounce the prospect of marriage, to abandon all private possessions and submit to rigid rules of conduct for the rest of their lives. **** NOT EX LIB **** R1. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.