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2024-2025: A Journey into Paradise

A New Blank Verse translation by Joe Carlson
The Longfellow Translation
Prose Translation (David Bruce)
Dorothy Sayers/Barbara Reynolds translation (pdf)

Canto 1   |   Canto 2   |   Canto 3   |   Canto 4  |   Canto 5  |   Canto 6  |   Canto 7   |   Canto 8  |   Canto 9   |   Canto 10   |   Canto 11  |   Canto 12   |   Canto 13   |   Canto 14   |   Canto 15    |   Canto 16    |   Canto 17    |   Canto 18   |   Canto 19   |   Canto 20  |   Canto 21   |   Canto 22   |   Canto 23   |   Canto 24   |   Canto 25   |   Canto 26   |   Canto 27   |   Canto 28   |   Canto 29   |   Canto 30   |   Canto 31  |   Canto 32  |   Canto 33

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2023-24: A Journey up Mount Purgatory

Canto 1   |   Canto 2   |   Canto 3   |   Canto 4  |   Canto 5  |   Canto 6  |   Canto 7   |   Canto 8  |   Canto 9   |   Canto 10   |   Canto 11  |   Canto 12   |   Canto 13   |   Canto 14   |   Canto 15    |   Canto 16    |   Canto 17    |   Canto 18   |   Canto 19   |   Canto 20  |   Canto 21   |   Canto 22   |   Canto 23   |   Canto 24   |   Canto 25   |   Canto 26   |   Canto 27   |   Canto 28   |   Canto 29   |   Canto 30   |   Canto 31  |   Canto 32  |   Canto 33

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Last year's Study - A weekly journey into Dante's Inferno

Canto 1   |   Canto 2   |   Canto 3   |   Canto 4  |   Canto 5  |   Canto 6  |   Canto 7   |   Canto 8  |   Canto 9   |   Canto 10   |   Canto 11  |   Canto 12   |   Canto 13   |   Canto 14   |   Canto 15    |   Canto 16    |   Canto 17    |   Canto 18   |   Canto 19   |   Canto 20  |   Canto 21   |   Canto 22   |   Canto 23   |   Canto 24   |   Canto 25   |   Canto 26   |   Canto 27   |   Canto 28   |   Canto 29   |   Canto 30   |   Canto 31  |   Canto 32  |   Canto 33  |   Canto 34

Renewing Minds

Plutarch once said that “the mind is not an empty vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."  Saint Paul, taking the words of the great historian to a new level, said that to be a Christian is fundamentally about "the renewing of our minds.”   ​

Igniting Hearts

Our daily prayers are mostly sung live in the Church, but we still do Compline online, and broadcast; you are very welcome to join us.

9pm Compline​

Inspiring Lives

Part of our vocation at Urban Abbey is the renewal of the poetic imagination.   We take turns sharing a poem each morning and after reflecting on it during the day, we have a live reading of it at Compline.  ​

Why an "Urban Abbey"?

The fall of the western Roman empire threatened to extinguish centuries of classical learning in Europe, but Christian monasteries guarded, copied and commented on the ancient texts, keeping alive the rich intellectual tradition of antiquity for future generations.  And the monasteries didn't just remember these riches, they embodied them.   

We live in an age not entirely dissimilar from the late Roman period.  In this time of cultural amnesia, our mission is clear:

• We need to form communities like the monks of old, to protect, pass on and promote the memory of our intellectual and spiritual tradition.
• We need to learn not for the sake of lucre or the respectability of certificates, but for the love of wisdom alone. There are no fees for Urban Abbey courses, though donations are encouraged to cover costs.
• We need to expand the learning community to all who are willing and able to study, especially those who have not had the time and money to invest in formal academic credentials. There are no prerequisites for Urban Abbey courses and no set fees.
• Just like the monastics of the past, our lives need to assume a daily rhythm of communal and personal prayer, work and study.  Any true approach to learning Truth must be accomplished within a context of prayer.

What do we mean by "Truth"?

Truth, by virtue of its very nature, cannot be known apart from the communion and fellowship of a community of souls holding together in love, because the truth is always an expression of, and discourse within, the reality which being itself is grounded upon, the operation of self-offering. The nature of the individual only finds its identity in the coherence of the community in which and for which it lives, and the first true community in which and for which the soul is made to live is God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose own pattern of living is the humility, self-offering and mutual union we call charity, agape (Greek), or caritas (Latin). 

The second such community is similar: the body of human beings united in and by that charity, ultimately called the Church. Therefore, while a human community, being yet mortal and fallen, does not guarantee truth, a division of community certainly guarantees falsehood. Where the truth is born out and defended, community must prosper. Our ongoing discovery of the truth through humble discourse teaches us both that, and how, we may better love one another. And so it is rightly said, the truth will make you free, and at the same time, perfect love casts out fear.