Louis Julius Lekai, O.Cist. (* 4 February 1916 in Budapest; † 1 July 1994 in Irving, Texas) was an American monk, historian and university professor born in Hungary.
Life and work
Julius (Gyula) Lékai was a student at the Cistercian school (Budai-Ciszterci-Szent Imre-Gymnasium) in Budapest and entered the noviciate at Zirc Abbey in 1934. He was ordained a priest in 1941 and completed his doctorate a year later at Budapest University. His Dissertation was an analysis of Hungarian historical research in the period 1790–1830. He taught at the Cistercian school (Gárdonyi Géza Ciszterci Gimnázium) in Eger until 1947. He also taught history at the Faculty of Laws at the Károly-Eszterházy University in Eger (1943–1944). During the Second World War he was a military chaplain for the Hungarian Army. He fled to the United States in October 1947; he became an American citizen in 1953.
Lekai's first home in the USA was Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey in Wisconsin; from 1953 to 1955 he lived in Buffalo, teaching at Canisius College, and as of 1955 he was in the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas. He was made prior there in 1969 and served as such until 1976. In sum he was Assistant Professor of History at Canisius from 1952 to 1956. 1956 he was made Associate Professor at the University of Dallas, advancing to full Professor in 1958 and teaching there until his retirement in 1986.
Lekai's research addressed aspects of Cistercian history which were rarely covered before his time, such as Baroque abbeys in France immediately before the French Revolution and Cistercian involvement at great European universities, most notably in Paris. He was able to reshape common perceptions of urban monks and feudal abbeys by applying concentrated analysis of archival sources. His personal fate as a refugee had forced him to learn many languages, so that he had an overview of monastic research in all the major European languages. His general history of the Cistercian Order (subtitled in a manner typical for Lekai Ideals and Reality) was the standard work for decades, going into several reprints and translations.
A stroke suffered in 1981 made him unable to speak or write until his death 13 years later.
Publications
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 nuns of Boulaur Abbey) Geschichte und Wirken der Weißen Mönche. Der Orden der Cistercienser, ed. Ambrosius Schneider (1911–2002), Köln, Wienand, 1958 "Moral and Material Status of French Cistercian Abbeys in the Seventeenth Century", in: Analecta Cisterciensia 19, 1963, p. 199–266 "Cistercian Monasteries and the French Episcopate on the Eve of the Revolution", in: Analecta Cisterciensia 23, 1967, p. 66–114, 179–225 The Rise of the Cistercian Strict Observance in Seventeenth Century France, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1968 The Cistercians. Ideals and Reality, [Kent, Ohio], Kent State University Press, 1977 De orde van Cîteaux. Cisterciënsers en Trappisten. Idealen en werkelijkheid, Achel, Abdij, 1980 Los Cistercienses. Ideales y realidad, Barcelona, Herder, 1987 I cistercensi. Ideali e realtá, Florenz, Certosa, Monaci cisterciensi, 1989 Shitō kai shūdōin, Tokio, 1989 (japanisch)
On 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, hrsg. von E. Rozanne Elder, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cistercian Publications, 1981, p. 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, p. 150–303; 41, 1985, p. 42–315; 42, 1986, p. 265–330