The History of the Great Chartreuse

Travellers have often expressed a wish for a book on the Chartreuse written by a Carthusian, who should be able to furnish exact details of the history of the Monastery and the intimate life of the Religious. We have attempted to comply with this wish. This extract is taken from the first edition of 1881. It serves equally well in 1929, and it expresses the exact reasons for the present edition. By a unanimous wish this edition presents almost without alteration the work compiled with such care, almost fifty years ago, by a member of the community of the Chartreuse.It was found necessary to bring the book historically up to date, by adding a chapter on the expulsion of 1903 and another on the life of the Community of the Great Chartreuse in exile. A note also had to be made of the Bull Umbratilem, whose date, 1924, marks an epoch in the history of the Order.Finally it was thought fit to give a brief indication of the position of the Order in the matter of Contemplation, which forms the basis of so much study and discussion in theological colleges to-day. As for the arrangement of the different sections of the book, it was found possible to make some improvement by a slight replanning and rearrangement of the Table of Contents, the result of which has been, according to a severe and worthy critic, to make the general structure rather more clear and orderly, both to the mind and to the eye, than was the preceding arrangement.However, the field still remains open for any subsequent ameliorations. This book is very dear to the Carthusians. To many it has caused the first awakening of a desire to live for God alone, and has first drawn them towards the Carthusian life. It is also appreciated, for entirely different reasons, by historians, scholars and archreologists and in varying degrees, though more, perhaps, than is commonly recognised, among the body of tourists for whom it is also intended.Each of these readers has an immortal soul, made for the sole purpose of attaining the vision of God, face to face, and rejoicing eternally and unwearyingly in His ineffable Beauty. None will succeed who has not first tried to love Him 'with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might,' on every day of the laborious journey here below.To make Him loved, a little less unworthily, a little more fully, by the reader, Carthusian or non-Carthusian, is the sole aim that can have moved the Carthusian who wrote the book in 1881. This alone can be the aim of his younger brothers, to whom, in their turn, it may be given to revise and re-edit his work.