The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

MERTON'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH:
Winandy, Jacques, Dom, O.S.B., 1907-2002

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Descriptive Summary

Record Group: Section A - Correspondence

Dates of materials: 1954-2003, bulk 1954-1968

Volume: 30 item(s); 47 pg(s)

Scope and Content

Merton had been long interested in obtaining more solitude and living as a hermit, so news of Dom Winandy's experimental band of hermits was exciting news. Merton saw such experimental and independent new communities as the future for revival of monasticism through rediscovery of such traditions as the eremitical life.

Biography

Dom Jacques Winandy was born in Liege, Belgium, in the early 20th century and became a Benedictine monk Clervaux Abbey in Luxemburg. This was a compromise for him. His father wanted him to enter a Benedictine abbey closer to home rather than follow his dreams of becoming a Carthusian. Carthusians are a monastic order living in community but spending most of the day, besides Mass and two of offices of prayer, in solitude in one's cell. During World War II, the monks of Clervaux lived in exile in religious houses in Belgium. Winandy was excepted as a Carthusian during this time; however, he was elected as abbot of Clervaux immediately after the war, a role he reluctantly accepted. He served as abbot until 1957. He spent time as a hermit before, after a year in Rome, being sent to the Benedictine abbey in Martinique. There he met Br. (now Fr.) Lionel Pare. Pare shared Winandy's interest in the eremitical life. They obtained permission to start of group of hermits, living individually but under the direction of an elder in 1964. They found an amenable bishop, Bishop Remi De Roo and the space for solitude on the Tsolum River in British Columbia, Canada, near Merville. Winandy remained in a hermitage in British Columbia until 1972, when he returned to a hermitage in Belgium, not far from Clervaux Abbey. He spent the next twenty-five years of his life there before his last six months at Clervaux while infirm. Winandy's eremitical life had a profound impact on a revival of the vocation of the hermit in the Catholic Church. (Source: Brandt, M. Charles. "A monk of the Diaspora." The New Catholic Times: 5 Jan 2003.)

Usage Guidelines and Restrictions

Related Information and Links

See also the "De Roo, Remi Joseph" file; and see also published letters from Merton to Winandy in The School of Charity, pp. 289-290, 293-296, 343, 397 and 403-404.

Other Finding Aids

If the person in correspondence with Merton has full text records in the Merton Center Digital Collections, there will be a numeric link to them below.
    31941

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