Born in England, after studies in Paris, he entered the Order of Cistercians, probably at Pontigny, during the reforms of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
[1] At some time in his later life, most probably in 1167, he left Stella to set up a monastery on the Île de Ré on the Atlantic coast.
[3] Isaac's most popular work was an allegorical commentary on the canon of the Mass in the form of a letter to John of Canterbury, bishop of Poitiers.
The Letter (1962) was addressed to Alcher of Clairvaux, and combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic theories about psychology with Christian mysticism.
It exercised a significant role in later mystical speculation due to the incorporation of large sections of Isaac's work in the anthropological compendium known as De spiritu et anima (The Spirit and the Soul), which circulated under the name of Augustine and was widely used in the 13th century.