All of life is a pilgrimage, and all places (inasmuch as they are created) are sacred places. This book is a record of one brief pilgrimage through just a few places sacred to Cistercians in France and Spain, which took place in 1993. A group of thirty men and women, some of them Trappist monks and nuns, some of them devotees of things Cistercian, spent ten days on the journey. One of the monks was Br. Benedict Simmonds, who has written the text of this book; one of the devotees was Paul Kolnik, whose exquisite photographs adorn its pages. All who open it may now walk the same road, and perhaps it will ignite in them a yearning to undertake their own pilgrimage and direct their own steps to that Something which is the beginning and end of all journeys

-Dr. David N. Bell





Brother Benedict Simmonds is a monk of the Cistercian (Trappist) Holy Cross Abbey, sixty miles west of Washington on the Shenandoah River. Since entering monastic life in 1983 he has held most community offices, including superior. He is a graduate of Saint Andrew’s-Sewanee School in Tennessee, where Father James Harold Flye was a principal influence and mentor, and of Williams College. He was Keeper of the Native Plant Garden of the New York Botanical Garden. After taking a Library Science degree at Columbia, he was on the university’s faculty, on the Special Collections staff of the New York Public Library, librarian of the Grolier Club, and a director of the Eakins Press Foundation. In 1994 Brother Benedict edited the limited-edition portfolio Conversatio: Cistercian Monastic Life, with photographs by Lance Hidy. In 2004 a filmed documentary biography, He Who Is Blessed, appeared on PBS. Recent publications include The Butterfly Garden at Holy Cross Abbey and Books of the Eakins Press Foundation at the Chapin Library. An anthology/memoir, He Who Is Blessed: The Gift of Friendship, is being edited for publication.



Paul Kolnik, a native of Chicago, moved to New York in 1975. He became associated with the New York City Ballet under the direction of George Balanchine. His intimate association with the New York City Ballet over the past four decades has produced hundreds of thousands of photographs, which have become the iconography of the company in all media. His range in photographing the performing arts is extensive, including major symphony orchestras and performing artists at Carnegie Hall, more than fifty Broadway plays, as well as many major dance companies. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including exhibitions at The National Museum of Dance, The New-York Historical Society, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. His photographs appear regularly in publications throughout the world.