Terryl Kinder on the Cistercian architecture and spirituality
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Dr. Terryl Kinder, a medieval architectural historian and archaeologist, is currently visiting Professor in Fine Arts at St Michael's College in Vermont. She was trained at Syracuse and Indiana Universities, and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. She has taught at the University of Paris I-Sorbonne, the University of Brittany at Rennes (France), Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., the State University of New York system, and the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John's. Kinder lectures widely on Cistercian monastic matters and publishes on Cistercian architecture and archaeology. She is editor-in-chief of the journal Cîteaux, responsible for ongoing excavations at Fontfroide Abbey in southern France. | |||||
Episode 1: Cistercian architecture and spirituality (22 min.) Cistercian churches are visually quiet, Kinder tells Fox. Modern people often miss the churches' subtlety because we're so used to seeing things in motion and colored and busy. "It's very hard to be in quiet place. A place of peace," she said. | |||||
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Episode 2: An Opening to Something Deeper (19 min.) Cistercian life is stark, Kinder said. But for Cistercians, what looks like deprivation to some, is not a goal, but a method, a way, a door. "Deprivation can be an opening to something else. If you willing to go there," she said. | |||||
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Cistercian Europe: Architecture of Contemplation appeared (in English) in 2002 (William B. Eerdmans Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI). She is also author of the text accompanying a book of photographs of Cistercian architecture by David Heald, Architecture of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France, (New York: Abrams, 2000) | |||||
Jean Reynolds I was
Jean Reynolds
I was disappointed that Dr. Kinder is supporting Mepkin Abbey's cruel treatment of chickens. She writes that few people today understand modern farming methods. Well, I'm no expert on farming, but I certainly understand starving chickens and cutting the beaks of chicks with a hot blade. I'd like to see Catholics encouraging the monks to find more compassionate ways to support themselves.