Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable teachers of literature, including Mark Van Doren, Daniel C. Walsh, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938 in the wake of a rather dramatic conversion experience. Shortly afterward, he completed his masters thesis, "On Nature and Art in William Blake." Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at St. Bonaventure's College, Olean, New York, Merton entered the monastic community of the Abbey of Gethsemani at Trappist, Kentucky, on 10 December 1941. He was received by Abbot Frederic Dunne who encouraged the young Frater Louis to translate works from the Cistercian tradition and to write historical biographies to make the Order better known. The abbot also urged the young monk to write his autobiography, which was published under the title The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) and became a best-seller and a classic. During the next 20 years, Merton wrote prolifically on a vast range of topics, including the contemplative life, prayer, and religious biographies. His writings would later take up controversial issues (e.g., social problems and Christian responsibility: race relations, violence, nuclear war, and economic injustice) and a developing ecumenical concern. He was one of the first Catholics to commend the great religions of the East to Roman Catholic Christians in the West. Merton died by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand, while attending a meeting of religious leaders on 10 December 1968, just 27 years to the day after his entrance into the Abbey of Gethsemani. Many esteem Thomas Merton as a spiritual master, a brilliant writer, and a man who embodied the quest for God and for human solidarity. Since his death, many volumes by him have been published, including five volumes of his letters and seven of his personal journals. According to present count, more than 60 titles of Merton's writings are in print in English, not including the numerous doctoral dissertations and books about the man, his life, and his writings. Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO from The Abbey of Gethsemani, http://www.monks.org The Thomas Merton Collection at Bellarmine University Thomas Merton and a trinity of his novices (1960's) Thomas Merton (1915-1968), known in religion as Father Louis, was a Trappist monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky. Merton's best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain(1948) has become a classic. His other works include The Sign of Jonas, No Man is an Island, New Seeds of Contemplation, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, The Way of Chuang Tzu, and Mystics and Zen Masters. Since his death in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 1968, a number of his works have been published posthumously, including The Asian Journal, The Collected Poems, The Literary Essays, and five volumes selected from his letters. His Personal Journals (1939-1968), closed for twenty-five years after his death, have been published in seven volumes. In 1967, one year before his death, Merton established the Merton Legacy Trust, naming Bellarmine College as the repository of his manuscripts, letters, journals, tapes, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia. Two years later, in October 1969, the College established the Thomas Merton Center, with the Collection as its focal point. The Center serves as a regional, national, and international resource for scholarship and inquiry on Merton and his works and also on the ideas he promoted: contemplative life, spirituality, ecumenism, East-West relations, personal and corporate inner work, peace, and social justice. The Merton Center regularly sponsors courses, lectures, retreats, seminars, Elderhostels, and exhibits for scholars, students, and the general public. The Merton Center in conjunction with the International Thomas Merton Society publishes the quarterly review The Merton Seasonal and supports publication of The Merton Annual. It serves as the central office for the International Thomas Merton Society, founded at the Center in 1987, and is affiliated with other international centers, such as the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Centro International de Estudios Misticos in Avila, Spain. The Merton Collection has grown to over forty-five thousand items, including the literary estate, ten thousand pieces of correspondence, eight hundred drawings, eleven hundred photographs and six hundred audio taped conferences given by Merton to his community at Gethsemani, and several hundred volumes from Merton's own library. It is the largest Merton collection in the world, incorporating items translated into thirty languages, two hundred masters and doctoral theses, audiovisual materials, and a growing collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and fabric art depicting Merton. The Center is located on the second floor of Bellarmine's W. L. Lyons Brown Library. The facility includes areas for study, meeting, and quiet contemplation; offices for staff; and a climate-controlled room to preserve the Merton Collection. Merton's own drawings and photographs are on display, together with a variety of artistic renditions and photographs of Merton. A special room in the Center, dedicated to Merton's parents, contains a collection of watercolors by Merton's father, Owen.