Gregory the Great was pope from 590 to 604, a time of great turmoil in Italy and in the western Roman Empire generally because of the barbarian invasions. Gregory’s experience as prefect of the city of Rome and as apocrisarius of Pope Pelagius fitted him admirably for the new challenges of the papacy. The Moral Reflections on the Book of Job were first given to the monks who accompanied Gregory to the embassy in Constantinople.
This fourth volume, containing books 17 through 22, provides commentary on twelve chapters of Job, from 24:21 through 31:40.
Gregory, Brian Kerns, OCSO, Mark DelCogliano
Br. Brian Kerns has been a Trappist for sixty years, seventeen years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and the rest at the Abbey of the Genesee in upper New York state, interrupted by a year at Oxford, North Carolina, and five years at Genesee’s foundation of Novo Mundo in Parana, Brazil. He hails originally from Pottsville, in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. For many years he worked in the library at Genesee and Novo Mundo, and he has interested himself in various translation projects, among which is the life of Dom Gabriel Sortais, abbot general of the Trappists in the early 1960s. That volume has also been published by Cistercian Publications, in the Monastic Wisdom series. The first four volumes of his translation of Gregory the Great’s Moral Reflections on the Book of Job were published by Cistercian Publications between 2014 and 2017.
Mark DelCogliano earned a Ph.D. in patristic theology from Emory University in 2009 and currently teaches in the Department of Theology at University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has published several studies of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy, including Basil of Caesarea's Anti-Eunomian Theory of Names, and has collaborated on translations of patristic and medieval texts, such as Works on the Spirit: Athanasius and Didymus, St. Basil of Caesarea: Against Eunomius, and For Your Own People: ’lred of Rievaulx's Pastoral Prayer.
"I give this book a high recommendation, both for its readable and accurate translation, and because it brings together a noteworthy saint and a timeless biblical book, both of which originated during a troubled time like ours. Essential reading for enthusiasts not only of the writings of St. Gregory, but of the book of Job, as well."Karl A. Schultz