Louis Julius Lekai

Louis Julius Lekai (born February 4, 1916 in Budapest , † July 1, 1994 in Irving (Texas) ) was an American Cistercian monk, university professor and religious historian of Hungarian origin.

life and work

Gyula Lékai attended the Cistercian high school in Budapest (Budai-Ciszterci-Szent Imre-Gymnasium) and entered the Zirc monastery in 1934 . He was ordained a priest in 1941 and received his doctorate from the University of Budapest in 1942 with the dissertation A Magyar Történetirás, 1790-1830 [Hungarian historiography 1790-1830] (Budapest 1942). He then taught until 1947 at the Cistercian High School (Gárdonyi Géza Ciszterci Gimnázium) in Eger (Hungary) and taught history at the law faculty of the Károly Eszterházy University of Eger (1943-1944). During the Second World War he was a chaplain in the Hungarian army. In October 1947 he fled to the United States of America and was a US citizen from 1953.

In the United States, Lekai lived first in the Our Lady of Spring Bank monastery in Wisconsin , from 1953 in Buffalo and from 1955 in the Our Lady of Dallas monastery in Dallas (there from 1969 to 1976 also Prior). He was from 1952 to 1956 Assistant Professor of History at Canisius College in Buffalo, from 1956 to 1958 Associate Professor of History and from 1958 to 1986 Full Professor at the University of Dallas .

With his publications, Lekai put emphasis on previously under-illuminated chapters of the Cistercian exploration; he did not accept clichéd generalizations, for example that the French monasteries were decadent in the Baroque and before the Revolution, or that Cistercian monks should not have worked in large cities. He dismantled simplified stereotypes with source research. He was particularly familiar with French archives of the early modern period. His fate as a refugee forced him to learn many languages, so that he had a broad overview of religious history research in all major languages; his Universal History of the Order (with the subtitle Ideals and Reality typical of his approach ) was considered a standard work for decades and has been translated and reprinted repeatedly.

A stroke that he suffered in 1981 put him on sick leave until the end of his life and made further research impossible.

Works

• The White Monks. A History of the Cistercian Order , Okauchee, Wisconsin, Our Lady of Spring Bank, 1953
  • Les moines blancs. Histoire de l'ordre cistercien , Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957 (translated by the monastery of Sainte Marie de Boulaur)
  • History and work of the white monks. The Order of the Cistercians , ed. by Ambrosius Schneider (1911–2002), Cologne, Wienand, 1958
• “Moral and Material Status of French Cistercian Abbeys in the Seventeenth Century”, in: Analecta Cisterciensia 19, 1963, pp. 199-266
• "Cistercian Monasteries and the French Episcopate on the Eve of the Revolution", in: Analecta Cisterciensia 23, 1967, pp. 66-114, 179-225
• The Rise of the Cistercian Strict Observance in Seventeenth Century France , Washington, DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 1968
• The Cistercians. Ideals and Reality , [Kent, Ohio], The Kent State University Press, 1977
  • De orde van Cîteaux. Cisterciënsers en Trappists. Idealen en werkelijkheid , Achel, Abdij, 1980
  • Los Cistercienses. Ideales y realidad , Barcelona, ​​Herder, 1987
  • I cistercensi. Ideali e realtá , Florence, Certosa, Monaci cisterciensi, 1989
  • Shitō kai shūdōin , Tokyo, 1989 (Japanese)

About Nicolas Cotheret

• “Nicolas Cotheret and His History of the Abbots of Cîteaux”, in: Cistercians in the Late Middle Ages. Studies in Medieval Cistercian History 6, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cistercian Publications, 1981, pp. 70–89 (Cistercian Studies 64)
• Nicolas Cotheret's Annals of Citeaux. Outlined from the French original , Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cistercian Publications, 1982 (Cistercian Studies 57)
  • Les Annales de Cîteaux de Nicolas Cotheret, in: Analecta Cisterciensia 40, 1984, pp. 150-303; 41, 1985, pp. 42-315; 42, 1986, pp. 265-330

About the French Cistercian colleges

in: Analecta Cisterciensia 25-28, 1969-1972

• "Introduction à l´étude des collèges cisterciens en France avant la Révolution", 25, 1969, pp. 145–179
• “The Parisian College of Saint Bernard in 1634 and 1635”, 25, 1969, pp. 180-208
• “The Financial Status of the Parisian College of Saint Bernard”, 1765 1790, 25, 1969, pp. 209-244
• “The College of Saint Bernard in Paris on the Eve of the Revolution”, 26, 1970, pp. 253-279
• “The College of Saint Bernard in Toulouse in the Middle Ages”, 27, 1971, pp. 143-155
• “The College of Saint Bernard in Toulouse, 1533-1791”, 27, 1971, pp. 157-211
• “The College of Saint Bernard in Paris in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, 28, 1972, pp. 167-218

(see also “The Cistercian college of Dole in the 17th and 18th centuries”, in: Revue bénédictine 83, 1973, pp. 436–447)

literature

• Studiosorum speculum. Studies in honor of Louis J. Lekai , ed. by John R. Sommerfeldt and Francis R. Swietek, Kalamazoo, Mich., Cistercian Publications, 1993 (Cistercian Studies Series 141)

Web links

• Literature by and about Louis Julius Lekai in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Lekai,_Louis (lexicon article, main source of this article)