Pauline Matarasso RIP
In my view, the best book on the Cistercian patrimony, alongside Bouyer’s Cistercian Heritage, is Pauline Matarasso’s The Cistercian World. Pauline, a woman of formidable culture, had an understanding of the monastic life that was at once intellectual and connatural. Introducing the third abbot of Cîteaux, she observed: ‘All that Stephen Harding touched bears witness to his pursuit of authenticity, of the spirit that only the authentic letter can set free.’ It is a brilliant insight. She was well placed to produce it. Spirited pursuit of the authentic letter defined her distinguished career as a translator (of medieval epics, of Bobin and Noël), historian (e.g. of her revered father-in-law Isaac Matarasso), and essayist. Even as she lay dying she kept translating, committed to finding and making sense accurately and beautifully. She was one of the noblest, most gracious people I have ever known. She once wrote: ‘Whereas a tiger is born, we are made, and in most of us the making process is still incomplete when death takes us, however late.’ I’d say what had been made when death came to her last Wednesday had reached a kind of perfection. May she now know in fullness the loving truth she sought with fidelity and, unknowingly, radiated.
