Isaac of Stella

ISAAC OF STELLA. - Cistercian abbot and theologian, b. in England at the beginning of the 12th century, d. in the monastery of Stella (near Poitiers) ca. 1169. A monk of Stella in 1145, he became its abbot two years later. Having gone with some fellow monks to the deserted Ile de Ré (La Rochelle), he founded a monastery there, where he lived in extreme poverty and with extraordinary fervor of spirit, fully realizing the ideals of St. Bernard, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer.

He wrote: 54 Sermones de tempore et de festo (PL 194, 1689-1876), of which 41 were delivered on the Ile de Ré and 13 in the abbey of Stella; Epistola de anima ad Alcherum (ibid., 1875-90), written in 1162, particularly important for the history of rational psychology; Epistola de officio Missae ad Ioannem ep. Pictavienem, of which three recensions survive: the brevior, which reproduces the text left incomplete because of an assault on the monastery (ibid., 1889-95); the longior, which carries the text completed after the incident (Vienna, National Library, lat. 1968, ff. 59-61); the brevissima, a kind of summary made by others (in Paris, National Library, lat. 812, ff. 358-62; 1252, ff. 1-5; 1828, ff. 168-69; 2474, ff. 22-23 [fragments]; 11579, ff. 52-53). L. D'Achery (Spicilegium, I, Paris 1655, pp. 343-52) gives the brevissima recension. The Commentarius in Ruth remains unpublished.

A man of extraordinary philosophical and theological culture, he stands worthily beside his contemporaries Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Peter Lombard, for his successful attempt to illuminate the revealed truths speculatively. Platonic in tendency and with movements proper to the school of Chartres, in his admirable Sermones, a true theological summa preached, he displays the unmistakable characteristics of an original thinker, endowed with fine psychological sensitivity, who argues with dialectical vigor and penetrates into the innermost heart of truth, showing its profound bonds and hidden connections, with elasticity of thought and incisiveness of phrase. «Solebat aut invenire prorsus nova, aut eleganter innovare vetera» (Sermo 48: PL 194, 1853). The guiding idea of his soteriological and Marian doctrine is the idea of our solidarity in Christ.

Antonio Piolanti