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DECLINE OF EMPIRE AND PAPACYCHAPTER XXVI.MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM
The
intense medieval interest in religion discharges itself mainly along two
parallel paths: the intellectual and the intuitive. These, though distinct in
their methods and sometimes pursued in isolation, yet frequently react upon
one another; for the mystic and the theologian seek the same ultimate goal. The
intellectual and speculative vigour of the time produced on the one hand the
scholastic philosophy, and the great theological constructions of St Thomas
Aquinas and his successors, devoted to the justification and explication of
traditional dogma; on the other hand, it inspired anxious questioning and
daring explorations, which opened the door to heresy and prepared the path of
the Reformation. So too the intuitive and experimental religious temper produced
that great efflorescence of mysticism which is one of the most striking characteristics
of medieval Christianity; and which has, like the corresponding intellectual
activity, important historical results both within and without the Catholic
fold. Too various in its manifestations to be comprehended in any single
formula, this mystical temper expresses itself not only in the personal
experiences of spiritual genius, but also in corporate and democratic
movements. It profoundly influences religion and art, and instigates both
religious rebellion and religious reform. Appearing in history at the latter
part of the eleventh century, it is at first closely associated with the
Benedictine Order and completely orthodox in outlook and activities. From the twelfth
century onwards, however, it inspires, on the one hand, an increasing number
of mystical sects proclaiming the liberty of the individual soul, and, on the
other, the best activities of those who oppose them, and seek to regenerate the
Church from within. Thus on the extreme left we have the wild libertinism of
such mystical sects as that of the Free Spirit, tending to moral and religious
anarchy; and on the extreme right the unimpeachable orthodoxy of such great
constructive mystics as Bernard, Francis, Catherine of Siena. Between these two
points every gradation of feeling and doctrine can be found. The history of
medieval Catholicism includes the perpetual friction of the mystical heretics
with their criticism of ecclesiastical authority; and the tonic influence of
the orthodox mystics, seeking to restore that authority to its primitive
purity. This orthodox mysticism receives immense development through the
practice and teaching of the Mendicant Friars. It has its golden age in the
fourteenth century, and gradually recedes from the centre of the stage before
the approach of the Renaissance.
Mysticism,
the claim to an immediate apprehension of God and the craving for union with
Him, is of course an element in all developed religion. It is present in Christianity
from the first. But, though it is essentially the “religion of the heart” and
so may conceivably exist at any level of religious culture, if it is to exert
an influence on thought and action and so achieve historical importance, it
requires a considerable intellectual equipment. The mystic needs abstract
conceptions wherewith to communicate his doctrine and experience; and wherever
a mystical movement arises through the influence of great spiritual
personalities, it soon acquires a philosophy suited to its needs. With hardly
an exception, the great mystics of history have been educated men, fed by
tradition as well as by direct experience. Though doubtless hidden
contemplatives were always numerous, those who achieved historical significance
did so because of their acquaintance with the great mystical tradition of
Christendom, which enabled them to nourish their mental life, express their
intuitions, and so affect the religious life of their time. Therefore the
primary fact for the student of medieval mysticism is the existence within the
Church of this tradition, which guaranteed the classic phenomena of the
interior life, explained them, and provided a symbolism in which they could be
given literary form. Any carefully annotated mystical text will show the close
dependence on authority even of the most apparently personal outpourings.
Because the genuine mystic is a realist and speaks from experience, he often
gives the impression of intense religious spontaneity. Nevertheless he is
always in the truest sense a historical figure imbedded in the religious
culture of his time. We have constantly to strike the balance between the often
vigorous originality of the individual, and the strong tradition by which he
was nurtured and which gave him his technique; and to be on our guard against
discovering novelty in sayings and doctrines which are often adopted without
acknowledgment from an earlier source. The Bible, and especially the
Psalter—the daily food of the professed religious—is the dominant literary
influence of medieval mysticism; and intimate Scripture knowledge is required
of those who would understand its literature. Next in importance is St
Augustine, through whom Neoplatonism entered Christian theology. Behind St
Augustine, whose lofty genius has affected every great mystic of this period,
stands Plotinus who—though only known by them at second-hand—is yet a
determining influence in their development. The Dialogues of Cassian, which
carried forward into medieval monasticism the teaching of the Fathers of the
Desert on contemplative prayer and the works of St Gregory the Great, are also
fundamental for an understanding of Benedictine spirituality and its
offshoots. But the event which, above all, made possible the great development
of mystical religion that culminated in the fourteenth century was the
translation into Latin of the works of the so-called “Dionysius the Areopagite”
by John Scotus Eriugena (ob. 877). Through these
writings, which became gradually diffused throughout the Catholic world, and
affected the spiritual outlook of all its greatest religious personalities, the
mystics obtained a philosophy which justified and explained their experiences,
and a theological landscape within which to place them. Their influence is
especially to be felt in the Dominican and Franciscan schools. Though here
mysticism will be studied mainly as a religious and social phenomenon and not
in its doctrinal or philosophic implications, these cultural
influences—Scriptural, Neoplatonic, and Patristic—must be remembered if we are
to understand its manifold surface activities.
Since
mysticism is essentially religious realism, claiming and emphasising first-hand
intuitive experience of those spiritual realities which theology describes, and
requiring their application to life, it is plain that where this type of
religion prevails and is taken seriously it will act in one of two ways. (1) It
will impart a more vivid actuality and meaning to traditional symbols and more
fervour to traditional practices, heightening their spiritual content, colour,
and significance. Thus the widespread medieval cultus of the Holy Name, the
development of Eucharistic devotion, are in part the expression of the
mysticism of the time. (2) Where these symbols and practices are felt to have
become inadequate, formal, or unreal, the mystic may lead a revolt against
them, involving a more or less complete rejection of tradition and claim to
spiritual liberty: as in the Brethren of the Free Spirit. These opposing
tendencies run right through medieval history. Where mysticism enters into an
alliance with orthodoxy and expresses itself through orthodox symbols, it
purifies and deepens the institutional life, opposes the constant tendency to
degenerate, undertakes the reform of abuses, fills practices with fresh
fervour, and inspires artistic and liturgic development. Thus Francis, Ruysbroeck, Catherine of Siena, while exerting a
transforming influence on the religious life of their time, were valuable
allies of the Church. On the other hand, where the intensely spontaneous
element inherent in mystical feeling is out of harmony with its environment,
and comes into conflict with authority—as in the “Spiritual” Franciscans; where
it rejects the outward in favour of the inward, is associated with an extreme
type of intellectual speculation—as in Eckehart—or
enters into alliance with social unrest, mysticism may shOw itself as the
inspiration of revolt and become the parent of heresy. Thus, though the great
mystic is above all a man of prayer and contemplation, his social importance is
considerable, and he often plays the part of reformer and prophet. The modem
tendency to draw a hard line between active and contemplative life is not
justified by history, which constantly shows their intimate connexion; and this
especially in the period under review.
In
their written works—and by these, after all, they are chiefly known to us—the
medieval mystics constantly trespass on the ground of the moralists and
speculative theologians; while their history is closely connected with that of
the religious Orders and other group-formations. We cannot restrict the name “mystic” to those who write or teach on the degrees of contemplation or similar
themes. Many are deeply concerned to impress on the world their own vision of
holiness, or to remodel the life of the Church nearer to their heart’s desire.
Thus the mystical and realistic temper of medieval religion first appears in
that movement towards the reform of monasticism which is characteristic of the
eleventh century. This is fully discussed as part of the history of the
monastic Orders. Here we are only concerned with it in its mystical aspect, as
the work of certain great personalities, filled with an enthusiasm for the
other-worldly life of unimpeded communion with God which had been sought both
by the Fathers in the Desert and the first monks of the West. In its pure form,
monasticism is a life which gives the first place to these transcendental
interests. Its ascetic disciplines, its liturgic, philanthropic, and
intellectual activities, are all subservient to this. It was therefore
pre-eminently the institution through which the mystical impulse of the period
was likely to find its first path of discharge. The formation during the
eleventh century of reformed Benedictine Congregations under the influence of
saintly personalities witnesses to a genuine revival of mystical religion; even
though this revival has left few literary memorials, hut was mainly expressed
in terms of actual life.
The
movement is first seen in Italy, where St Romuald (c. 950-1027) effected in the
early years of the century what is usually counted as the second Benedictine
reform. His career is typical of many others. After seven years in the abbey of
Sant’ Apollinare in Classe,
which he sought to restore to exact observance, Romuald went to Venice, where
he received an intensive ascetic training from a hermit. A period of wandering
finally brought him to Camaldoli in the Casentino,
where he founded the still-existent Hermitage—a little walled village of
solitary contemplatives. This pioneer experiment in communal mysticism
anticipated in many respects the great creation of St Bruno. Romuald’s
follower, St Peter Damian (1007-72), Abbot of Fonte Avellana, though best known
for his love of asceticism and his campaigns against ecclesiastical corruption,
was also a contemplative at heart. The third of the Italian reformers, St
Giovanni Gualberti (985-1073)—the hero of the
beautiful legend of the Merciful Knight—was driven by the same impulse from the
Benedictine monastery of San Miniato to Vallombrosa;
there he lived in solitary communion with God, until the fame of his holiness
drew so many disciples that he was obliged to organise them upon monastic
lines. Thus was founded about 1020 the Order of Vallombrosa.
During
the second half of the century, similar tendencies appear in France, and result
in the foundation about 1080 of the Poor Men of Grandmont under St Stephen Muret (1048-1124); in 1084, of the
Carthusian Order under St Bruno (c. 1032-1101); and finally, in 1098, of the
Cistercian reform under St Robert of Molesme (1028-1111) and St
Stephen Harding. The Poor Men of Grandmont did not
long maintain the purity of their rule after their heroic founder’s death; but
the setting up of the Carthusian and Cistercian Orders were events of capital
importance for the subsequent development of medieval mysticism. St Bruno’s
desire was to combine the perfect solitude of the hermitage with the mutual
support given by the common life, a conception that could only have come to a
mind for which contemplative interests were paramount, and is alone enough to
prove St Bruno a mystic. With six companions, he established himself under
conditions of great poverty and hardship at the Grande Chartreuse. Thus began
an institution which exerted a great though not manifest influence on the
development of mysticism during the succeeding centuries. The Carthusians lived
and live still so hidden a life that we have few means of knowing the degree
and way in which mysticism was cultivated in their houses. But we do know that
they were the contemplative Order par excellence, each Charterhouse being by
intention a community of practical mystics; and that they played a definite
part in the maintenance of a lofty spiritual tradition. This they did by
practice rather than by propaganda. The essence of mysticism being not a
doctrine but a way of life, its interests require the existence of groups of
persons who put its principles into effect. The early Carthusians seem to have
fulfilled this office. Their houses were recognised places of resort for
spiritual persons; and though they produced few mystical writers, Carthusian
influence is constantly discovered in the lives of the great medieval mystics.
The monks, who were educated men, studied mystical literature with eagerness,
and collected it in their libraries. They also devoted much time to the copying
of MSS; and many mystical works were thus preserved and disseminated by them.
The
relations between the first Carthusians and Cistercians were close. St Bruno
had received his early discipline from St Robert, the future founder of
Citeaux; and in the following century St Bernard was on intimate terms with the
monks of the Grande Chartreuse, visiting them, and exchanging letters upon
spiritual themes. A Carthusian abbot was one of the first recipients of his
mystical commentary on the Song of Songs—one of the great source-books of
mystical doctrine in the later Middle Ages. These facts already shew the
beginning of a phenomenon of great importance in this phase of religious
history: the degree in which mysticism was fostered and imparted through social
intercourse, personal instruction, and discipleship. Often conceived as a
solitary adventure of the spirit, it has as a matter of fact a strongly marked
social aspect, well seen in the relationship existing between some of its
outstanding personalities and their followers.
St
Anselm; St Bernard
Of
such personalities, one of the most influential for the eleventh century
revival of mysticism was St Anselm (1033-1109), Abbot of Bec and Archbishop of
Canterbury. Anselm is one of those great figures, peculiarly characteristic of
Catholic culture at its best, which exhibit in action the fruits of
contemplation. It is this type, balancing spirituality by immense intellectual
and practical ability, which gives the Christian mysticism of the West its
historical importance. Driven by a strongly religious temperament, Anselm after
some years of wandering found at the abbey of Bec in Normandy a “heaven on
earth”. He was professed at the age of twenty-seven, and lived there for
thirty-three years, successively becoming prior and abbot. The charm and
greatness of his character are well known to us from contemporary notices. In
spite of the vast influence and permanent value of his theological writings and
his important ecclesiastical work, it is a mistake to regard Anselm mainly as
a theologian or administrator. His real interest and the efficacious cause of
his ceaseless labours was the personal passion of the mystic. Thus while on the
one hand rightly considered the father of scholasticism, on the other hand he
anticipates St Bernard as a teacher of contemplative love. The genuine prayers
and meditations which modern criticism has separated from the many spurious
pieces passing under his name reveal the nature of his secret life. They were
widely circulated and became one of the great formative influences of the
medieval school, especially in England. It does not appear that St Anselm was
acquainted with the works of “Dionysius the Areopagite.” As a mystic he depends
chiefly upon St Augustine, whose philosophic and devotional fervour he
reproduces in the terms of his own time, blending with it that personal and
intimate feeling which was characteristic of medieval piety. His clear and
critical mind rejected the elaborate and often ridiculous symbolism which
weighed down the religious expression of the early Middle Ages, and dwelt by
preference upon those first principles which are the food of the contemplative
life.
Anselm’s
life overlaps that of St Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), the outstanding name
in twelfth-century mysticism. St Bernard was at once the son and the support of
the Cistercian reform, which had at its outset a contemplative character
afterwards lost. Behind him, and somewhat obscured by his many-sided
brilliance, stands the beautiful figure of the true founder, Stephen Harding,
the English saint, who combined great administrative gifts with a passionate
love of poverty and an unfailing spirit of joy that anticipate St Francis of
Assisi. Stephen was a convinced and realistic mystic, who saw the whole of life
in terms of work and contemplation. The monks were consecrated peasants. The
record of his rule at Citeaux is an epic of heroic other-worldliness and serene
courage, in the face of the famine and pestilence which almost wiped out the
community. It was saved from extinction in 1113 by the arrival of Bernard, a
brilliant and attractive young noble of twenty-two, leading a band of thirty
disciples. The party had spent six months in retreat together before asking
admission at Citeaux, a sufficient tribute to the personal influence of their
youthful leader, whose fragile body was possessed by an intrepid will to holiness.
Spiritual
genius matures swiftly. At twenty-five, Bernard was sent to found the daughter
house of Clairvaux, of which he remained abbot till his death. He entered
almost at once on a career of boundless activity which finally made him the
dominant spiritual and ecclesiastical influence of his time. Monastic founder
and reformer, preacher, statesman, and director of souls, he is characteristic
of the varied and vigorous religious life of the twelfth century. Yet he
remained to the end a solitary and contemplative at heart, his many outward
works the expressions of an interior devotedness. His personal charm and talent
for friendship, the energy which triumphed over persistent ill-health produced
by his early and immoderate austerities, the practical abilities which balanced
his profound spiritual absorption, are all made plain to us by contemporary
sources, which include considerable remains of his voluminous correspondence.
As
a mystic, Bernard’s influence was on the whole conservative and anti-intellectual.
His contemporary Richard of St Victor was making pioneer researches into the
psychology of contemplation; but Bernard had no interests of this kind. His
view of the mystical life was devotional and practical; he stressed affection
rather than intellect, and continued the Benedictine tradition, based on the
meditation of Scripture and on the writings of St Gregory and Cassian. Yet,
adding nothing new to the doctrine of the contemplative life, he impressed on
the developing mysticism of the Middle Ages a distinctive form and colour, and
became one of the major authorities on whom all later mystics depend. Bernard’s
spirituality emerges from the Benedictine tradition, as early Gothic art
emerges from the Romanesque. It adds to inherited qualities a new graciousness,
responds to a new emotional demand. The position given to him by Dante in the
Paradiso correctly represents the place which he occupied in the religious
development of the Middle Ages. The treatise On the Love of God, written
in 1126 before the beginning of his great public career, and the sermons on the
Canticles, composed in later life for the edification of his monks, are the
chief literary expressions of his mysticism.
If
the specific medieval tradition of spiritual life descends on one side from St
Bernard, on the other it takes its departure from the Augustinian abbey of St
Victor at Paris. Here about 1108 a theological school, which soon became an
important centre of intellectual life, was founded by William of Champeaux (ob. 1121), one of Bernard’s personal friends. St
Bernard, a man of prayer and action, had little interest in the speculative
side of religion. The Victorines, who were Platonists and students of St Augustine’s
works, supplied together with a deep spiritual fervour the necessary
intellectual backbone to the growing science of the mystical life. For medieval
thought, scholastic and mystical theology were closely related; and in the best
Victorine writings an endeavour is made to harmonise rational and intuitive
knowledge. Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096-1141), a great and influential thinker,
is the chief theologian of the school. The poet Adam (ob. 1192), in his
sequences, brought the learning and spirituality of the community to bear on
the liturgic life of the Church. More important for the subsequent history of
mysticism was Hugh’s Scottish—or perhaps Irish—disciple, the fervent and
learned Richard (ob. 1173). Richard of St Victor was the first Christian thinker
to attempt a psychological account of mystical experience, and is the
originator of some of its most important distinctions. His remarkable analysis
and description of the stages in the development of the contemplative
consciousness—the expansion, the uplifting, and the transfiguration of the
mind—exercised a decisive influence on the great mystical teachers of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the vernacular writers of the
English and Flemish schools. His personal holiness is said to have been great;
and though his writings are entirely objective and nothing is known of his own
experience, for Dante he was the typical mystic “superhuman in contemplation.”
Richard regarded the heart and not the head as the organ of spiritual knowledge;
and he rivalled St Francis in his expressions of contempt for secular learning.
Yet it is largely due to his penetrating intellect that the mystical fervour of
the time was saved from an easy and general descent into the abyss of religious
emotionalism. Thus the Victorines, though cloistered scholars, profoundly
influenced the religious life of the Middle Ages. Much of their teaching was
conveyed by way of mystical commentaries on Scripture, and with an
abundant—often extravagant—use of symbolic imagery. Nevertheless, with them
begins the great part played by the Dionysian writings, with their resolute
rejection of symbol and image, in the development of medieval religion.
France
was a chief centre of the great spiritual revival of the twelfth century; and
French influence was at this period dominant in the spheres of monastic reform,
religious art, and learning. We might therefore expect to find it at work in
the religious movement which arose in England during the reign of Stephen, when
a wave of spiritual enthusiasm comparable to the Puritan and Evangelical
revivals spread over the country. The history of this movement is not yet fully
made out. Its beginning apparently coincided with the coming of the Cistercians
to England, and the rapid foundation—mostly under circumstances of poverty and
hardship—of the great Yorkshire abbeys; but the form which it assumed was less
monastic, more individualistic, than in France. It is significant that its
chief literary monument, the ancren Riwle, witnesses to that cult of the solitary or anchoretic
life which had already arisen in late Saxon times, and was afterwards so
closely associated with the classic age of English mysticism. Perhaps the first
English medieval mystic of whom we have certain knowledge is St Wulsi (ob. c. 1097), originally a monk of Crowland, whose longing for a contemplative life drove him
to seek refuge in a cave near Evesham, where he lived for over seventy years,
becoming one of the chief spiritual influences of the West. In the following century,
the general dissatisfaction with the lax state of the nunneries and unreformed
Benedictine houses led to numerous experiments in the solitary life being made
by those who desired to give themselves to contemplation. Northern France at
this time was said to be “full of hermits,” and although the Carthusians were
not established in England till 1174, their fame had preceded them; and
spiritual minds were drawn to seek means of imitating their methods. We hear
frequently of small groups of hermits, or solitaries of either sex, established
in lonely places in order to lead a life of contemplation. Some of these
hermits exerted a widespread influence on the pupils and clients who resorted
to them. Such were St Godric of Finchale (ob. 1170), who lived for seventy years in a lonely spot on the banks of the
Wear, and is credited with the Franciscan power over animals; and St Wulfric
(c.1080-ob. 1154), who lived in a cell adjoining the church of Haselbury near Crewkeme. St Wulfric was much venerated as a
prophet and wonderworker, and Henry I and Stephen came to him for counsel. At Markyate, between Dunstable and St Albans, dwelt in the
first half of the century the holy hermit Roger, a mystic whose soul “conversed
with the invisible” and who was called the “friend of God.” His disciple St
Christina of Markyate, a prophetess and clairvoyante, became one of the most notable women of her
time. Henry II in 1155 made provision for her support out of the Exchequer; and
Abbot Robert of St Albans, seeking to win the favour of Hadrian IV, could find
no better gift than sandals and two mitres embroidered by “Lady Christina of
the Wood.” Less famous figures, but equally significant of the religious
outlook, are the visionary Seleth, supernaturally led
from the south to set up a company of hermits in Airedale, and thence evicted
by the ruthless founder of Kirkstall Abbey; Bartholomew, the hermit of the Fame
(1120-93); or the two women brought in from the woods about 1140 by Abbot
Geoffrey of St Albans to form the nucleus of Sopwell Priory. Though this widespread movement has left few literary remains, its
chief personalities probably imparting their spiritual knowledge by direct
intercourse with visitors and disciples, it is here that we must look for the
origins of English mysticism. The beautiful Middle English rhapsody, A Talking
of the Love of God—now recognised as a conflation of earlier materials— suggests something of the realistic spiritual passion which irradiated these
solitary lives. So too the Meditations of St Aelred (Abbot of Rievaulx 1146-66)—often confused with those
of St Anselm—and the Rule of a Recluse, which he composed for the use of his
sister, must be reckoned among its characteristic products.
Especially
in the Ancren Riwle we have
a document which reflects the religious temper of this time. It is a spiritual
directory written for three girls of noble birth, who had left the world to be
enclosed as anchoresses, independently of the established religious Orders, and
desired a rule by which to live. Though it deals much with the externals of
their existence, there is implied throughout the mystical object for which they
have been enclosed, and the contrast which exists in the writer’s mind between
the formalism of the older religious Orders and the realistic spirituality
which is required of the true anchoress. Here it is probably representative of
the religious outlook which found expression in the cult of the solitary life.
At about the time that the Ancren Riwle was written, the Gilbertine Order began (1131-35)
with the enclosure by St Gilbert of Sempringham (1085-1190) of
seven village girls in a church-anchorage. We must remember, in estimating such
events, that they are at once an implied criticism of the older religious
establishments, and the outward expression of a vigorous interest in the things
of the spirit; the same desire to cultivate the invisible side of life, and
subdue all external circumstances to its demands, which had inspired the heroic
founders of Citeaux and the Grande Chartreuse.
Both
in England and France the mysticism of this period was as a whole sober,
austere, and comparatively free from sensational and apocalyptic characters.
Devotional rather than intellectual, it expressed itself outwardly in a life of
intense asceticism and tended little to speculation. In Germany and Italy,
however, the mystical impulse took a more startling form; and, in the prophetic
activities of St Hildegarde and the Abbot Joachim of Flora, entered into close
relations with secular history. St Hildegarde (1098-1179), the “Sibyl of the
Rhine,” was the first of those strange women of genius who played so great a
part in the history of the medieval Church, her manifest psychic abnormality
contributing to her spiritual prestige. Born in 1098, she entered the religious
life as an oblate when only eight years old; and was educated by Jutta, an
anchoress of noble birth, whose disciples formed the nucleus of the Benedictine
convent of Mount St Disibode. Hildegarde took the
vows here in 1117, becoming abbess in 1130. Subject to visions from childhood,
and reputed to possess healing and other abnormal powers, Hildegarde laid claim
to direct inspiration and believed the obligation was laid upon her to denounce
the abuses of contemporary life. Her great prophetic period began in 1141, when
she was divinely ordered to tell her revelations to the world. It continued for
about ten years, during which time the series of symbolic visions described in
her Scivias were received by her. As a result of her
prophecies, which dealt in vigorous terms with the corruption of the Church and
of society, and greatly disturbed the contemporary mind, she entered into
relations with all the chief personages of her time, to whom she wrote with the
authority of one who literally believed herself the “agent of the Living
Light.” Her correspondents included four Popes, two Emperors, and numerous
royal and ecclesiastical persons. She consulted St Bernard on the validity of
her experiences, and his guarded letter of reply still survives. The latter
part of her life, like that of St Teresa, was spent in ceaseless activities.
She founded two convents, and travelled hundreds of miles in a country and time
which were ill-adapted to women’s journeyings. Her intellectual interests
ranged from medicine to music, and her literary works include a long physical
treatise in nine books and over sixty hymns. Her friend and neighbour, the
Benedictine nun St Elizabeth of Schonau (1129-65),
was an ecstatic whose trance utterances and symbolic visions were also directed
to the reform of ecclesiastical corruption. Her influence, however, was small
in comparison with that of St Hildegarde.
St
Hildegarde and St Elizabeth, like earlier mystics of their type, had denounced
with violence the increasing wealth and political preoccupation of the Church,
the glaring contrast between the worldly lives and the spiritual obligations of
the priesthood. Their reputation for sanctity protected them; but their
protests had little real effect. The religious revival of the early twelfth
century, which had given to the mystical fervour of the great monastic
reformers and solitaries so favouring an environment, was now nearly spent. As
a result, when that fervour appeared in individuals, instead of driving its
possessor to a monastery or anchor-hold, it tended more and more to emphasise
the contrast between institutional and interior religion, and to find new
expression outside the ecclesiastical frame. Especially in North Italy, the
Rhineland, and France, groups and individuals were beginning to appear among
the laity, filled with a craving for spiritual perfection which the average
institutionalism did not satisfy; and seeking, as the monastic contemplatives
had done—though with different results—an outward life consistent with the
aspiration of their souls. Some of these spiritual realists managed to retain
their Catholic status. Others, more logical and less submissive to authority,
were driven into heresy. Although in the strict sense we cannot perhaps give
the name of “mystic” to any of these movements and their founders, there was
yet a definite mystical element in their teaching. Its theological basis was a
pantheistic doctrine of the divine nature of the soul, which derived from the
works of Eriugena and the Neoplatonists and tended to
undermine the authority of the official Church. Its social impetus came from
the manifest disorders and shortcomings of ecclesiastical life. Its devotional
bias was quietist. If, from the point of view of Church history, these
heretical mystics are precursors of the Reformation, seen from a more purely
religious angle they represent the working under changed conditions and without
institutional safeguards of that same realistic spiritual temper which had
inspired the Catholic solitaries and reforming saints. While these had
expressed their otherworldly passion by means of a vigorous and penetrating
use of Catholic discipline and symbolism, perpetually seeking to restore their
purity and power, the heretical mystics reacted with more or less violence
against institutional religion, and sought the inward by the rejection of the
outward. In them first appear the characters which
afterwards distinguished the orthodox mysticism of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, namely, the ever greater part played by the devout laity
and by the formation of free associations or groups; the abandonment of the old
tendency to identify mysticism with a special class vowed to the “religious”
life; and that use of the vernacular for religious writings which played so
great a part in the development of European literature.
Mystical
Sects
The
general method of these sects was the substitution of religious experience for
religious authority, and a return to the apostolic life of poverty. Their aim
was the same liberation from an unspiritual world and initiation into the life
of God which had been offered by the ascetic discipline of the cloister, the
anchorite’s cell, or the Victorine mystic’s “elevation of the mind.” They
attracted adherents, because this mystical craving for spiritual realities was
at work in the medieval world, and was now assuming a democratic form. The
support given by the Papacy to the Mendicant Orders in the next century was at
least partly inspired by a recognition of this fact, and of the need of meeting
the threatening tide of heretical mysticism by the counter-attractions of a
popular spiritual movement embodying many of its principles but arising within
and controlled by the Catholic Church. When Innocent III approved the First
Rule of St Francis, he was announcing to the world that the life of the Gospel
could still flourish within its walls.
The
history of the numerous heretical sects and groups which appeared in North
Italy, Germany, Flanders, and France during the twelfth century is still
imperfectly known. Their literature is lost, and we now’ see them only through
the eyes of their ecclesiastical critics. Some, particularly the dualistic Cathari and Albigenses and their offshoots, seem to have
had little or no mystical character; and these need not be considered here. But
in many others we find that combination of speculative freedom, moral
earnestness, devotional fervour, and anti-clerical feeling which is in all
periods characteristic of the Christian mystical sect. Two distinct but really
complementary influences lie behind these movements. The first is that desire
for a return to the pure apostolic life of the New Testament—and especially the
evangelical poverty which is the price of spiritual freedom—which always tends
to appear in times of ecclesiastical decadence, and was widespread in the
latter part of the twelfth century. The second is the enormous impetus given to
mystical speculation by the renewed study of the works of Dionysius the
Areopagite and of Eriugena, which were much read and
discussed—often with intoxicating effect—in the University of Paris in the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The Neoplatonic philosophy, that
unfailing stimulant of the mystical sense, was thus brought into the current
academic life, offering a vision of spiritual reality which seemed to satisfy
men’s deepest cravings. Actually, it tended to the encouragement of that “pure”
mysticism which is in the end indistinguishable from pantheism; and, where it
achieves concrete expression, commonly means a more or less complete revolt
from authority and tradition, and a consequent reduction of religious practice
to quietism.
This
strand in the spiritual complex of the twelfth century appears early in
Flanders, where the speculative religious temper was always at home. Mystical
groups, at first orthodox but tending to degenerate into heresy, are already
found at Arras in the mid-eleventh century. At the beginning of the twelfth, Tauchelin of Zeeland was teaching a pantheistic mysticism
in Antwerp and Bruges, which survived into the next century. Mild tendencies of
this sort within the Catholic fold have been detected in the Letter to the
Brethren of Mont Dieu probably written c. 1145 in North France or Flanders by
Abbot William of St Thierry, the friend of St Bernard. Addressed to the monks
of a newly established Charterhouse, and afterwards widely circulated, this
beautiful little treatise suggests how thin a line already divided the orthodox
and the heretical mystic. In the following century we find its doctrine reproduced,
with guarded ecclesiastical approval, by the daring Mirror of Simple Souls
apparently written in French in the Liege district. In France, Amaury of
Chartres (ob. 1205) had pushed to extreme lengths the Neoplatonic doctrine of
divine immanence. His teaching was condemned, and he retracted before his
death; but his disciples, variously known as the Amaurists or “Spiritual Society,” survived him, and promulgated his ideas in a more
popular and excessive form. They held that all men were potentially divine, and
hence emancipated from all rites and ceremonies; and also that the universal
reign of the Holy Ghost—fixed for the year 1210—was at hand. This notion
suggests Joachist influence, though it may have
arisen independently. Groups holding similar pantheistic and quietist doctrines
appeared about the same time in the Rhineland and Flanders, one of the chief
distributing centres of medieval mysticism. Here, at the end of the twelfth
century, Lambert le Begue founded at Liege the lay
associations of Beguins and Beghards which played so
large a part in the promulgation of mystical religion, both orthodox and
heretical, during the later Middle Ages. These communities represented a
definite revolt from Monasticism; and, after the coming of the friars, the orthodox
groups were frequently under mendicant direction. Of those which departed from
Catholic normality some—the Beghards—became closely allied with the Fraticelli;
and others—the Beguins—with the Brethren of the Free
Spirit. By the mid-thirteenth century, beguinages had
multiplied in all the Rhenish cities; that at Malines is described as “a little
town.” Many of the occupants being educated, they provided a favouring soil
for that pantheistic mysticism, involving the claim to an inner light absolving
its possessor from ecclesiastical and ultimately even from moral law, which was
the common doctrine of the quietist sects; and so dangerous did they become in
the eyes of the Church that in 1311 the Council of Vienne ordered their
suppression.
The
most celebrated and widespread association of heretical mystics, the Brethren
of the Free Spirit, first appear in Augsburg in 1262; and for over a century
they are prominent in German and Flemish religious history. By the beginning of
the fourteenth century they were also numerous in Central Italy, where Boniface
VIII and Clement V attempted their suppression. Historically descended from the
followers of Ortlieb of Strasbourg, their ultimate
ancestry is Neoplatonic. Other groups sought rather to revive the primitive
Christian life. Among these were the Waldensians, who arose in the Lyons
district under the leadership of Peter Waldo in the last quarter of the twelfth
century, the Apostolics of Cologne, and the Humiliati of North Italy. The Humiliati,
who seem originally to have been a gild or fraternity vowed to a life of prayer
and evangelical poverty, anticipated in many respects—especially their “ third
order” of married laity—the creation of St Francis. Their tenets included
pacificism, and the refusal to take oaths or wear dyed clothing. They early
split into two divisions: the “true” Humiliati, who
remained within the Church, and tended under clerical influence to become more
and more monastic in character, and the “false,” whose defiance of the
prohibition against lay-preachers and the holding of conventicles finally drove
them into schism. By the late thirteenth century all these various bodies of
spiritual experimentalists and dissidents, including the Fraticelli and
Brethren of the Free Spirit, had become closely interconnected, and formed a
heretical movement so strong and widely spread that it persisted in the teeth
of persecution until the Reformation finally absorbed its constituent elements.
In estimating the mysticism of the Middle Ages and interpreting its literature,
we have always to remember this fact, and the thin line which often separated
mystical rebel from mystical saint. Many of the works of the orthodox mystics
can only be understood in the light of the heresies they were concerned to
rebuke or to avoid.
Meanwhile
there had arisen in South Italy a mystic and prophet who was to influence
profoundly the religious history of the West. Joachim of Flora (1132-1202) was
born in Calabria, a district remote from the spiritual and secular interests
and conflicts of the north. While spiritual and political unrest was filling
North Italy and France with heretical movements, in Calabria Latin Christianity
had developed in continuous contact with the Byzantine Church. Here the hermits
of the tenth century still represented the spiritual ideals of the fervent; and
the Basilian monks, though in union with Rome, still used the Greek rite.
The
familiar characteristics of the mystical saints are seen in the Abbot Joachim,
who is rightly placed by Dante among the great contemplatives in the Heaven of
the Sun. His revelation of the “Eternal Gospel,” which shall wholly supersede
the temporal gospel and bring in the age of the Holy Ghost, was the intuition
of a mystic, who found in the Scriptures that which he longed to find there—the
promise of a spiritual renovation, the coming of the Kingdom of God. His career
was determined by a revelation received during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
in which he believed that the true meaning of the Scriptures was disclosed to him.
Returning to Calabria, he became first a wandering preacher, then a Cistercian
monk, and in 1178 Abbot of Corazo. Obtaining papal
permission to adopt the hermit’s life, he retired first to Pietralata and finally to the remote mountain-retreat of Flora, where with his disciples
he lived in extreme austerity, absorbed in communion with the unseen world, and
composing his great prophetic books. Occasionally he emerged to visit the
Italian monasteries and urge them to reform. Universally revered as a great prophet,
and enjoying papal approval throughout his life, the destructive element in
Joachim’s revelations was not at first realised. For these revelations,
astonishing in their vastness and daring, meant nothing less than the
supersession of institutional by mystical Christianity. He declared that the
epochs of Father and Son—the Old and the New Testament—were nearly over. The
monks, and especially the hermits, restored to their primitive per fection of
life, were about to bring in the epoch of the Spirit, that “new age” of love
and freedom when the Church should be ruled by its contemplative souls.
Joachim, in fact, solemnly announced from within the Church the precise
consummation which the various heretical sects were seeking outside the fold.
By a series of calculations he fixed the coming of the new era in the year
1260, and declared that it would be established through two new Orders, one of
laymen, the other of priests, who would live in apostolic poverty the spiritual
life. This prophecy, apparently fulfilled in the coming of the friars, probably
contributed to the prompt success of the Mendicant Orders; and the friars in
their turn demonstrated in the eyes of the world the truth of Joachim’s
revelation.
In
Italy during the thirteenth century, and indeed later, all spiritual minds were
in some degree influenced by Joachist ideas, and by
the spurious revelations which soon became attributed to him. In the general
unrest of that vigorous time of transition, the apocalyptic longings of
dissatisfied piety found in his visions a certain justification of their hopes.
Though the Trinitarian doctrine of the “Eternal Gospel” was condemned by Rome
in 1215, the holy life of the abbot and his followers was commended. The
prestige of his prophecies increased, and after the death of St Francis they
became a principal support of the Spiritual Franciscans in the struggle
against the relarati. In Paris a Joachist circle, marked by vigorous criticism of the Papacy and belief in the coming of
the New Age, formed round the friar Gerard of San Donnino,
author of the notorious Introduction to the Eternal Gospel. This reductio ad
absurdum of Joachist teaching, made in the interests
of the Franciscan extremists, was solemnly condemned in 1256, and its
destruction ordered. But its influence lingered for many years, and may be
estimated by the fact that the Abbot Joachim is the only non-Biblical prophet
to whom Dante gives a place in Paradise.
St
Francis
Francis
of Assisi (1182—1226), who was to give the mysticism of the thirteenth century
its most original characteristics, was twenty when the Abbot Joachim died. The
son of a prosperous Umbrian merchant, living on the highway between North Italy
and Rome, he can hardly have grown up without some knowledge of the prophecies
of the Eternal Gospel on the one hand, and on the other of those heretical
movements which anticipated his own cult of evangelical poverty. Similarities
between certain doctrines of the Cathari and Humiliati and primitive Franciscanism have indeed been traced; but the unquestioning adherence of Francis to the
Church and his life-long veneration for its sacraments preclude any suggestion
of deliberate borrowing from this or any other anti-clerical sources. What
Francis gave the world—or those who would listen to him—was rather a
satisfaction from within the Catholic fold of those spiritual needs which the
best and most sane of the heretical movements had sought to meet outside it. He
was a mystic and poet, who insisted with the simple logic of a child or an
artist on embodying his spiritual intuitions in the stuff of practical life. He
obliged his first followers—and only these were in the full sense Franciscan—to
live that “mixed life” of action and contemplation which the Middle Ages had
accepted from St Gregory as its spiritual ideal, but had only practised in the
rare persons of its saints. Basing his First Rule on three texts from the
Gospels, and imitating as closely as possible the life therein described, he
was by turns itinerant preacher, hermit, penitent, and troubadour. With him
mysticism definitely comes out from the cloister into the open air, irradiates
the natural scene, speaks the common language of the people, and accepts inspiration
from the literature of romance; yet retains that contact with Catholic
tradition and practice which had been deliberately broken by the heretical
sects. Thus the “New Religion” of St Francis conserves the positive values of
the evangelical reaction whilst avoiding its negative extravagances.
The
spiritual genius of the Founder is shown especially in two directions. First,
in the degree in which not only religion, but also literature and art, were
affected by him; for it is not too much to say that the realistic fervour, the
tender human quality which transformed late-medieval paintings and religious
poetry, especially in Italy, are largely of Franciscan origin. Next, in the
number of diverse strands woven into his practice and teaching: the penitential
outlook of the Christian ascetic, the romantic outlook of the poet, the love of
all living creatures which could serve the lepers and preach to the birds, the
intense Christocentric fervour which controlled his whole career, found its consummation
in the episode of the Stigmata, and left its mark on the devotional life of
succeeding centuries. It is true that the life-long effort of St Francis to
maintain his followers at his own level of spiritual realism ended in
disappointment and frustration, and that his Order as a whole failed to
reproduce his ideals. But the extraordinary impression made by his life—for the
“relaxed” friars, who did not attempt to follow, still admired it—is shown by
the common and quite literal belief that in him the earthly life of Christ had
been lived again. This conviction, which is worked out in detail in the early
Lives of Francis, had an enormous effect on the religious imagination of the
time, and gives the Franciscan mysticism of the following generation its
peculiar note of personal enthusiasm.
It
is usual to say that Franciscan mysticism is mainly distinguished by this
ardent personal feeling, while the Dominican school is marked by a more
speculative and philosophic temper; but this contrast is too absolute. On the one
hand, an intense fervour certainly enters into Dominican mysticism. On the
other, the Franciscan contemplatives, while emphasising the emotional and
volitional element in personal religion—and in their more extreme
representatives continuing the founder’s hostility to secular and even
theological learning—show in their greatest works close dependence on
traditional sources, especially on St Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite.
The difference of temper between the two schools is better understood if we
remember that one is primarily the expression of Latin, the other of Teutonic
spirituality. The real marks of thorough-going Franciscan mysticism are (1) a
sense of the unique commission of St Francis, and hence of his spiritual descendants,
to restore within the Church the primitive evangelical life; (2) a continuance
of his belief in the absolute spiritual worth and obligation of Poverty; (3) an
adoring devotion to the earthly life, and especially the passion, of Christ. It
is obvious that a mystical doctrine composed of these three elements may have
revolutionary effects, both social and spiritual, on those who accept it
literally. It permeated all the early Franciscan writings, especially the Lives
and legends of the patriarch, and operated in various degrees of intensity over
the wide area which was by the middle of the thirteenth century included in the
Franciscan sphere of influence. At one end of the scale, the lives of the
Conventual friars, who had accepted a mitigated rule, were but little affected
by it. It appears in a reasonable and tempered form in the writings of St
Bonaventura (1221-74), who nevertheless became, with St Bernard and Richard of
St Victor, one of the chief literary sources of the fourteenth-century mystics.
Whilst emphasis on evangelical poverty soon became the peculiar mark of the
Spiritual extremists, the Christocentric side of Franciscan mysticism found its
classic expression in the celebrated and popular Meditations on the Life of
Christ, long attributed to St Bonaventura, but now recognised as the work of an
unknown thirteenth-century Minorite, in whom ardent feeling and creative
imagination have combined to produce a devotional masterpiece. The influence of
this book, not only on the literature, but on the sacred art and drama of the
later Middle Ages, was enormous. Ludolf the
Carthusian, writing in the late fourteenth century his Life of Christ, which
became a standard manual of meditation for the religious, merely copied its
methods. Thus the contributions of the mitigated Franciscans to mysticism,
though sober in method, were important and had permanent results.
At
the other end of the scale were the “Spiritual” friars of the extreme left, who
were driven by their own passionate logic into fanaticism, and finally into conflict
with the Church. The history of the Spiritual party as a whole is complicated
first by a lack of documents, and next by the extraordinary variety of
interests and personalities which became included in it. But there can be
little doubt that, even in its most turbulent manifestations, the movement was
in essence a mystical one. It was born of the desire to actualise the spiritual
vision of St Francis, and was supported by the influence of those saintly
friars of the Primitive Observance—many of them the companions of the
patriarch—who were still living in the latter part of the thirteenth century.
These deeply-venerated brothers, who had refused to accept the mitigated rule,
now dwelt in remote hermitages in Umbria and the March of Ancona. There they lived
the life of poverty and contemplation, sometimes emerging to preach in the
Umbrian cities, and constantly visited by the more fervent members of the
Spiritual party. Among them were Brother Leo (ob. 1271), the close friend of
Francis and unrelenting apostle of Franciscan rigorism; the great visionaries
Conrad of Offida (1237-1306) and Peter of Monticello;
and the mystics, John of Parma (1209-1288), who had ruled the Order for ten
years, and John of La Verna (1259-1322), a celebrated preacher who is said to
have been the spiritual father of Jacopone da Todi. The diversity of interests and cultural level among
those who resorted to these hidden mystics and were inspired by their teachings
was great, for the Spiritual party contained both lay and clerical elements and
had political, doctrinal, and revolutionary, as well as purely mystical
objectives. All these appear in the poetry of Jacopone da Todi (1236-1306), a man of education and of fierce
enthusiasms, who had been by turns lawyer, penitent, wandering preacher,
contemplative, and poet, and became one of the leaders of the Spiritual friars
during the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The subjects of Jacopone’s laude, extending from the heights of Neoplatonic
contemplation, through every phase of mystical fervour, to the depths of social
and political satire, indeed invective, may be considered representative of the
many types of feeling included in the Spiritual ranks. On the extreme left were
those Franciscan zealots whose devotion to the prophecies of the Abbot Joachim
and the principle of unmitigated poverty involved personal squalor, and an
apocalyptic propaganda which at last drove them into schism. Joachist ideas began to spread in the Order during John of
Parma’s rule (1247—57), mainly in Italy and the south of France. In Provence
Hugues de Digue (1205-1256) and his sister the
ecstatic
The
most characteristic products of that mysticism, however, and our best clues to
its character, are found in the vernacular writings which were produced in
Central Italy, mainly in connexion with the Tertiary movement. The Tertiaries,
who were devout lay-folk bound to an austere rule of life, were numerous in
most of the cities of North and Central Italy by the middle of the thirteenth
century, while in the Rhineland they formed the inhabitants of many of the
orthodox beguinages. They were in fact a loosely-knit
religious society, usually in close touch with those friars of the Spiritual
Party who were struggling in the teeth of official discouragement to maintain
the Primitive Rule, and occupied an important position in the religious life of
Italy, where their groups provided a particularly favourable environment for
the development of mystical enthusiasm. We recover their atmosphere in such
relics of Spiritual literature as the Speculum and the Fioretti,
in the works of the remarkable ecstatic and religious teacher Angela of Foligno (12481309), whom her admirers did not hesitate to
call a Mistress of Theologians; in the personal confessions of her disciple,
the tempestuous Ubertino da Casale;
and in the laude of Jacopone da Todi,
many of which were probably composed to be sung at their meetings. Angela, Jacopone, and Ubertino were all
converts from a life of ease to absolute destitution, and in this exhibit the
power operating in Franciscan mysticism of the second generation. The thought
of Jacopone, while keeping close to the evangelical
fervour of St Francis, is deeply tinctured with Neoplatonism; and it is perhaps
from his laude, or a similar source, that Angela has obtained the Dionysian
language in which some of her great visions are described. The work of both these
mystics, which circulated rapidly, greatly affected the later development of
mysticism; while many scholars find in Jacopone’s dramatic lauda, “Donna del Paradiso,” the origin of
the Italian religious drama.
Such
facts as these indicate how wide a variety of mystical phenomena was produced
in Tertiary circles, and how high was the level of spiritual culture and
enthusiasm presupposed in those whom the Franciscan vernacular writers
addressed. Here the vision of Francis indeed survived, and was embodied in a
democratic lay-movement, anticipating in many points that of the Friends of
God, which arose in Germany in the next century under Dominican influence, and,
like that movement, producing its own vernacular literature. Among the
Tertiaries, social origin, learning, and ecclesiastical office appear to have
been little considered. Only spiritual aristocracy was acknowledged; and this
seems to have shown itself in many humble and nameless saints. Thus it was from
the holy Sienese comb-seller Pier Pettignano (ob.
1289) that the brilliant friar Ubertino da Casale first learned “seraphic contemplation”; while Angela
of Foligno, an elderly widow of the middle class,
completed his education.
German
thirteenth-century mystics
In
Germany during the second half of the thirteenth century mysticism assumed two
sharply contrasting forms: the first associated with the Preaching Friars, the
second with the old Benedictine monasticism. In the great Dominican scholars,
Master Eckehart (c. 1260-1327) and Theodore of Freiburg
(1250-1310), we see the vigorous beginnings of an entirely new movement,
destined to colour the spirituality of the next century, in which bold
theological speculation and profound mystical fervour are combined with
pastoral zeal. In the exuberant visionary, St Gertrude the Great (1256-1301),
and her associates at the aristocratic Cistercian convent of Helfde in Saxony—Gertrude of Hackeborn (1232-1291) and her sister St Mechthild of Hackeborn (1240-1298)—we have the final flower of that
Benedictine tradition which had nourished the genius of St Hildegarde. The
mysticism of the Cistercians of Helfde owes its
peculiar quality to the blending of two streams of influence. The first is that
daily liturgic routine and sequence of the Christian year, which was the
framework of the nuns’ religious lives, and inspired the vividly pictorial
visions of Christ and the Saints which abound in their writings. The second is
the romantic vernacular poetry of the Minnesingers,
which reached them through the inspiring genius of the group, the exquisite
poet and visionary, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282). Born near Magdeburg, of the ruling class, Mechthild renounced her rank and property in girlhood, and lived for many years under
Dominican direction the unenclosed but dedicated life of a beguine. Her
vigorous criticisms of the clergy provoked reprisals which at last drove her to
take refuge at Helfde, where she was received by the
Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn in 1268. Her prophecies
and denunciations of contemporary morals, in which Joachist influence has been detected, continue the tradition of St Hildegarde, but do
not constitute her chief claim to remembrance. A true “Minnesinger of the Holy Ghost”, she resembles the Franciscan laudisti in her power of adapting the poetry of Chivalry to the purposes of spiritual
passion. She wrote, in the Low German dialect of the day, her great Book of the
Flowing Light of the Godhead, a collection of lyrics, visions, and dramatic
dialogues in prose and verse, filled with the romantic idealism, the tender
feeling, the fresh delight in natural beauty, which characterised the new-born
secular poetry. In her we see again the mystical genius of the laity entering
and transforming the traditional spirituality of the cloister, and contributing
to the beginnings of a national literature. The contrast between Mechthild of Magdeburg and the three Helfde nuns is striking; but her influence can be detected in those poetic passages
which—especially’ in St Mechthild of Hackeborn—relieve their more conventional visions and
rhapsodies. The school had more than a local influence. The beginnings of the
Catholic cultus of the Sacred Heart have been traced to the visions of St
Gertrude; and her meditations have a permanent place in Catholic literature. Mechthild of Magdeburg—whose works were translated into
Latin before her death—disputes with Mechthild of Hackeborn the honour of providing Dante with the model for
the Matilda of the Earthly Paradise.
The
lives of these nuns—who were, with the exception of the poetess Mechthild, “inheritors of a dying world”—overlapped the
rise of that vigorous school of mysticism, at once so wide in its philosophic
sweep and so practical in application, which was to inspire in the next century
the great movement of the Friends of God. Mechthild of Hackeborn in one of her visions saw the two real
founders of this school—the Dominican doctors Albert the Great and his pupil St
Thomas Aquinas—entering Paradise. Though Franciscan mysticism in its later
developments is by no means independent of literary and philosophic culture,
and its great writers shew thorough acquaintance with Christian Neoplatonism,
its inspiration is mainly evangelical. But the mysticism which developed in the
Rhineland under Dominican influence explores, and subordinates to the
requirements of orthodoxy and the needs of the devout laity, those religious
speculations which had been inspired by the study of Dionysius the Areopagite
and Eriugena. Thus one school proceeded mainly by the
enhancement and spiritualisation of religious feeling, the other by the
enhancement and spiritualisation of religious thought. In so far as they
retained their Catholic status, and avoided capitulation, the first to the
extravagant logic of the Fraticelli, the second to the pantheistic tendencies
of the German religious temper, they formed together the Church’s answer to the
demands and declarations of the heretical sects. The Dominican mystics have an
intellectual background, a solid mental culture, hardly to be found in the Franciscans
of the first generation. They all depend upon St Thomas Aquinas, whose
unquestioned authority governs the orthodox mysticism of the later Middle Ages.
St Thomas had learned from his master Albert the Great (who wrote a commentary
on the Dionysian writings1) to appreciate the Areopagite and Richard of St
Victor, both of whom he frequently and respectfully quotes in the Summa,
placing their doctrine in precise and orderly relation with the general
theological scheme. This, perhaps more than any other single fact, assured to
Dionysius his prominent place among the sources of later Catholic mysticism.
Though his treatment of mysticism in the Summa is entirely objective, and his
real place is in the history of scholastic philosophy, St Thomas’ Eucharistic
hymns are enough to prove that he had a strong mystical side. For medieval
thought, the sharp modem distinction between philosophy, theology, and
mysticism did not exist; and in the great mind of Aquinas, as afterwards in
that of Dante, these three avenues to one Truth were harmonised.
Both
Albert the Great and St Thomas had taught in the schools of Cologne, which
retained the impress of their powerful personalities; and here German Dominican
mysticism began in the person of Master Eckehart (c.
1260-1327), the dominant and in many respects the most enigmatic personality of
the school. After centuries of neglect, modern students of mysticism have
tended somewhat to over-estimate Eckehart’s originality. He should perhaps be regarded as the most brilliant and powerful
representative of a school to which his contemporary Theodore of Freiburg also
belonged. Theodore, who was studying at Paris in 1285, was, like Eckehart, in philosophy a Neoplatonist, in religion a
profound and daring mystic. Both men passed their lives in the Dominican Order,
in which Eckehart rose to the rank of Provincial for
Saxony and Vicar General of Bohemia. Probably entering on his studies at
Cologne about the year of Albert the Great’s death, in later life he spent two
periods, in 1302 and 1311, at the University of Paris. Thence in middle-age he
returned, soaked in the mystical philosophy of Dionysius and Eriugena, to begin his great career as a preacher at
Strasbourg, at that time the chief religious centre of Germany, and much
affected by heretical mysticism. About 1320, being now at the height of his
power and reputation, he returned to Cologne, where he taught until his death,
inspiring a group of disciples, which appears to have included Henry Suso (1295-1366) and Johannes Tauler (c.
1300-1361), the two chief Dominican mystics of the next generation. Both Eckehart and Theodore of Freiburg shew the workings of the
speculative Teutonic mind on the transcendental doctrines of Christian
Neoplatonism. Both embodied their teachings in vernacular sermons which are
surprising in their profundity, when we consider the degree of theological
intelligence presupposed in the congregations to which they are addressed. In
his sermons—which only survive in transcripts of doubtful accuracy—we see Eckehart as a teaching mystic, full of pastoral zeal. In
his fragmentary Latin writings he appears as a daring-speculative philosopher,
expounding a doctrine which may possibly be justified as a legitimate
development of Thomism, but is certainly susceptible of a pantheistic
interpretation. Indeed, forty-nine propositions drawn from his works were
condemned at Rome in the year of his death, and the heretics of the next
generation frequently appealed to his authority. There is, however, no doubt
that in spite of excessive language Eckehart’s intentions were strictly orthodox; and his memory was revered by his disciples
as that of a saint. Moreover, careful comparison of his teaching with the most
mystical poems of his Italian contemporary, Jacopone da Todi, reveals a close identity of doctrine between
the most advanced Franciscan and Dominican mysticism, both in fact depending
directly on Dionysius the Areopagite, and suggests that we must attribute Eckehart’s influential position far more to intellectual
vigour and impressive personal qualities than to the novelty of his teaching.
Here the point of interest for the historian of religion is the existence among
the laity and in the beguinages and Dominican
convents of the Rhineland— as among the Franciscan Tertiaries of Central
Italy—of a public capable of assimilating the profound and abstract doctrines
of Eckehart and his contemporaries and followers.
They offered from within the Church food to that vigorous appetite for
religious fundamentals which sought satisfaction in the heretical
mysticism—often an exaggeration of orthodox teaching—flourishing in the Rhenish
cities at the opening of the fourteenth century. This heretical mysticism,
which infested the beguinages, was the object of
persistent attack on the part of the great Dominican preachers. Cologne was an
important centre of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who actually extracted
from Eckehart’s sermons many propositions in support
of their own teaching.
It
was mainly, however, through the work of his immediate disciples, the
Dominicans Johann Tauler and Heinrich Suso or Seuse, that Eckehart’s genius bore fruit. They, like their master, were
both philosophers and teaching mystics; and in them his spiritual realism and
metaphysical passion for ultimates transfigure the
ordinary materials of Catholic devotion. Even the intensely emotional Suso combines intimate fervour with strongly Platonic
passages; while the impressive quality of Tauler’s sermons arises from his power of placing against the vast Eckehartian background the directly ethical and spiritual demands of the Christian life.
Born
at Strasbourg, and probably a fellow-student with Suso and Nicholas of Strasbourg at Cologne, Tauler—who
calls Eckehart his “most holy Master”—became the
greatest German preacher of his time. His sermons, which unite the lofty
mystical doctrine of Eckehart with simple Christian
teaching, were mostly delivered at the orthodox beguinages and Dominican nunneries. They are his only authentic works. During the
Interdict imposed by John XXII in 1324, he removed to Basle, at that time the
headquarters of the Friends of God. Thence he returned in 1347 to Strasbourg,
and finally to Cologne, where he died in 1361. Tauler was a thinker, teacher, and religious leader. As a mystic, he tells us nothing
of his own experience. His contemporary Suso, though
his exuberant symbolism conceals the degree in which he too has assimilated Eckehart’s philosophic doctrine, is pre-eminently
subjective and emotional. His Life is one of the most important documents for
the history of personal religion in this period. Like Eckehart of aristocratic origin, Suso was born by Lake
Constance in 1295, and studied at Strasbourg and Cologne. Poetic and
impressionable, he is the Minnesinger of the
Dominican, as Mechthild of Magdeburg had been of the
Benedictine, mystics, combining the two strands which run through the history
of German religion—metaphysical speculation and pietistic sentiment. His
devotion is given to the Eternal Wisdom, but is expressed in the terms of romantic
love. His writings, which shew close acquaintance with Dionysius and Aquinas,
are partly addressed to his immediate disciples and fellowmembers of the Friends of God, partly directed against the heresies of the Brethren of
the Free Spirit. If Tauler is pre-eminently the
preacher of the school, Suso’s teaching was chiefly
imparted in personal ways. Trained in the cloister and practising for many
years an extreme asceticism, he became a trainer and director of souls; and
under his influence the Dominican nunneries of Switzerland and western Germany,
especially Tosz, Unterlinden, Adalhausen, and Engelthal,
became hotbeds of an intensive religious culture, closely connected with the
movement of the Friends of God. The best known of these women mystics were
Christina Ebner (ob. 1356) and Adelaide Langmann (ob.
1375) of Engelthal, and Margaret Ebner (ob. 1351) of Medingen.
The
Friends of God, the chief fourteenth-century expression of group mysticism,
came into existence as the result of the conjunction of various tendencies and
events, local, political, and spiritual. The conditions surrounding
institutional religion were of the most distressing kind. The removal of the
Papacy to Avignon in 1309 had troubled all pious minds. In 1324 those German
cities which supported Lewis of Bavaria in his struggle against the Pope had
been placed under an Interdict. Heresy was increasing. The lives of many of the
clergy were corrupt. The Black Death, which swept over Western Europe in
1347-48, inevitably left behind it a sense of the divine wrath, increased by
the series of earthquakes which visited the Rhine valley about the middle of
the century, Basle being almost destroyed in 1356.
Circumstances
were favourable for a vigorous revival of mystical religion; and this in fact
took place, largely under the influence of devout laymen of the middle class,
such as Rulman Merswin of
Strasbourg, but also in close association with the work of the great Dominican
mystics. The Friends of God drew their inspiration on the one hand from the
older German mysticism, especially the apocalyptic prophecies of St Hildegarde
and St Elizabeth of Schonau, which they applied to
the disorders of their own time as the Franciscan Spirituals had done with the Joachist prophecies. On the other hand, they absorbed
through Eckehart’s disciples something of his exalted
Neoplatonic mysticism, and thus obtained a theological landscape within which
their reforming efforts could be staged. The movement appears to have
penetrated all ranks of society, and bound together all religious realists in a
concerted effort for the revival of the Christian life. It included sober
citizens, friars, visionaries, anti-clerical agitators, and ecstatic nuns; and
produced a mass of tendency-literature of a visionary and prophetic character.
Essentially a movement of reform from within the Church, it presented the
familiar features of lay-control, group-formation, a vernacular literature, and
a great variety of mystical and inspirational phenomena; in all these points resembling
the Franciscan lay-mysticism of Central Italy. The moral standard was austere,
many Friends of God practising an extreme asceticism and detachment. The chief
centres of the movement lay along the banks of the Rhine, especially at
Strasbourg, Basle, and Cologne; but it was also strong in Bavaria. The member’s
formed open groups in the chief towns, though some lived in brotherhood-houses
like those of the Beghards. The circles were visited by itinerant prophets; and
a considerable literature, which included Suso’s and Tauler’s works, was circulated amongst them. Apart
from the sermons of Tauler, who is its greatest
figure, the chief literary monument of the movement is Rulman Merswin’s Book of the Nine Rocks, which
contrasts, in a series of apocalyptic visions, the spiritual ascent to which
the Friend of God is called with the corrupt condition of the official Church.
This and similar documents shew clearly that the Friends of God considered
themselves an “inner church” of spiritual men, acting under direct divine
guidance; but in spite of this exalted illuminism, and the critical attitude
which they adopted towards the secular clergy, they were and remained orthodox
Catholics. Possibly under the influence of their Dominican directors, they
combined emphasis upon personal mysticism with great reverence for the
sacraments, and carried on a vigorous campaign against the doctrinal and moral
excesses of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The movement produced one literary
masterpiece, the exquisite Theologia Germanica, attributed to an unknown priest of the Teutonic Order in
Frankfort, in which the doctrine of Eckehart is
re-interpreted in terms of love and will.
The
corporate activities of the Friends of God do not exhaust the history of the
German mystical revival. Contemporary with them, and equally significant of the
religious temper of the time, are many forgotten visionaries and saints, such
as the Franciscan tertiary Luitgarde (c. 1290-1348),
who, after twenty years as a beguine, founded “in great courage and poverty”
the convent of Wittichen in the Black Forest. Luitgardes immoderate cult of poverty and ignorance
suggests the influence of the Fraticelli. Her life abounds in abnormal
incidents, and she is said to have travelled, like Catherine of Siena, to
Avignon to plead with John XXII. In Flanders too, where the situation was much
like that in Germany, mystical religion, fostered by social misery and clerical
decadence, flourished both in its orthodox and in its heretical forms. Pious
souls retreated to the beguinages, where mystical
notions, often of an extravagant kind, were cherished, as we can see from the
opening chapters of Ruysbroeck’s XII Béguines. In 1310 a beguine of Hainault, Marguerite Porette, leader of the sect of Porettists,
was burnt in Paris; in Brussels, a few years later, the heretical mystic Bloemardine, a Sister of the Free Spirit, seems to have
obtained a great following. Both taught those extreme doctrines of deification
and quietism which easily tend to moral and religious
anarchy, and are so vigorously denounced by Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), the greatest of the Flemish mystics.
Flemish
mysticism: Ruysbroeck
The
contemporary of Suso and Tauler,
and probably in touch with the leaders of the Friends of God, Ruysbroeck lived till middle age as a secular priest in
Brussels, at that time seething with the heresies of Beghards. Lollards, and Beguins. He was active in the campaign against them,
especially attacking Bloemardine. In 1343 he retired
to the hermitage of Groenendael, where with a few
companions he took the Augustinian rule; and here most of his works were
composed. Writing in Flemish, in order to reach the public the heretical mystics
addressed, Ruysbroeck combined lofty spiritual
qualities with a powerful and well-equipped mind. He takes from his
predecessors, especially Dionysius, the Victorines, Eckehart,
and Aquinas, what he requires for the expression of his own doctrine; and this
doctrine corrects the most advanced mysticism of the time in such a sense that,
while maintaining its transcendental quality, it remains within the frame of
Catholic belief. The Franco-Flemish Mirror of Simple Souls, which its
fifteenth-century English translator Methley actually attributed to him, shews
how far it had once been possible to go without sacrificing orthodoxy.
Nevertheless, the prevalence of pantheistic mysticism, and the narrow line
between orthodox and heretic, caused a nervous scrutiny and even adverse
criticism of some of Ruysbroeck’s more profound
works. The Book of Truth, one of his last writings, was devoted, at the
instance of the Carthusians of Herinnes, to clearing
himself of the charge of pantheism. Yet in the next generation his doctrines
were denounced as excessive by the mystical theologian Gerson, who involved
them in a general criticism including the Letter to the Brethren of Mont Dieu.
The
fourteenth century witnesses the transition from monastic mysticism, stated in
precise theological and philosophical terms and addressing itself to the
professed religious, to a more popular type of mystical religion, spread by
means of vernacular writings, stated in terms of feeling and experience, and
directed to practical results. In this revolution, initiated by the Mendicant
Orders, and pursued with violence by the heretics and with more prudence by the
orthodox mystics of the Church, Ruysbroeck occupies
an important place, as a chief intermediary between traditional and empirical Catholic
mysticism. His works, inspired by the Neoplatonists and scholastics, yet convey
the impression of a personal experience exceeding that of normal minds. His
teaching was spread partly through his vernacular writings, many of which were
translated into Latin during his lifetime and widely distributed. In the next
century the Franciscan Harphius (ob. 1477) and the
Carthusian Denys Ryckel (14021471) wrote under his
immediate inspiration. But his chief influence upon religious history was
exerted through his personal disciples, who included the most spiritual
contemporary minds; and especially through Gerard Groote (1340-1384), the founder
of the New Devotion.
Gerard
is a figure of great importance for the history of late-medieval religion. He
was a brilliant and versatile scholar, and had taught at Cologne, where he was
probably influenced by the Friends of God; his conversion being completed by
the Carthusian Henry de Kalkar—the leader of a group
devoted to mystical piety—and by Ruysbroeck, whom he
frequently visited at Groenendael. He first became a
lay-preacher, his eloquence drawing crowds to hear him; but his biting
criticisms of the clergy having cost him his licence, in 1381, with his
disciple Florent Radewyns, he founded at Deventer the
Brothers of the Common Life. It was largely through this community, with its
many schools and houses in the Flemish cities, and that of the Augustinian
Canons of Windesheim which sprang from it, that the
teaching of the Flemish mystics was disseminated, and initiated a genuine
renaissance of personal religion within the Church. Though the “New Devotion”
of the Brothers was in essence a simple and practical pietism, it drew its
spirit of profound interiority from the works of Ruysbroeck and the classics of Christian mysticism, which were studied and copied in the
houses of the Fraternity. It produced a literature of its own. The mystical
tracts of Henry de Mande (c. 1360-1415), a disciple of Gerard who was known as
the Ruysbroeck of the North, the beautiful Fiery
Soliloquy with God of Gerlac Petersen
(1378-1411), and the Lives of the founders by his friend Thomas à Kempis
(1379-1471), show well the practical yet transcendental temper of its
spirituality. But its chief gift to the world was the Imitatio Christi, in which we recapture its very spirit, and with it the interior
trend characteristic of the best mystical religion at the end of the fourteenth
century. Through this book—much of it a catena of Biblical and Patristic
passages harmonised by one informing spirit—Flemish mysticism became an
enduring influence in the religious life of Europe. It is needless to insist on
the unique position which it occupies in Christian literature, but more
important to recollect that in it we have the fruit of a spirituality derived from
the school of Ruysbroeck, and perhaps embodying the
actual notes and meditations of his pupil Gerard Groote. Thus the reform which
began at Deventer looks back to the genius of Ruysbroeck—its
main link with the Catholic mystic tradition—and forward to Nicholas of Cusa and the philosophic mystics of the next century.
English
fourteenth-century mystics
In
contrast to the philosophic character of German and Flemish mysticism and the
tendency towards political action which marks that of Italy and Central Europe,
the English fourteenth-century mystics were closely connected with that
solitary life which was still the natural refuge of contemplative souls. Hence
they appear to have exerted little or no influence on social and ecclesiastical
affairs. One unfortunate result of this is that, with the exception of the
exuberant and subjective Rolle, the personalities of the English mystics have
left no mark on contemporary history. While much has come down to us concerning
the character and life of Hildegarde, the first Franciscans, Suso, or Catherine of Siena, we are entirely ignorant of
the origin and personal life of Hilton, or the writer of The Cloud of
Unknowing, and know little of that of Juliana of Norwich. No doubt the
roots of English fourteenth-century mysticism, with its emphasis on devotion
and neglect of philosophy, and its strong Christocentric bias, go down into
that religious stratum which produced such early medieval rhapsodies as the
Orison and Wooing of Our Lord. Much of its writing reproduces on levels of
experience the emotional temper of those Middle English religious lyrics based
on the Iesu dulcis memoria and connected with the cult of the Holy Name. But the school as we know it
arises, independently of monastic influence, in the north-eastern and eastern
counties; and its works have a marked reference to the solitary life. There
seems to have been in this country no inclination within the Church to form
lay-groups or inspire lay-movements, such as the Humiliati or the Friends of God. The first definitely mystical writer who has been
identified, Margery Kemp (late thirteenth century), was an anchoress of Lynn.
Richard Rolle of Hampole (c. 1300-49) was a wandering
hermit. The two great mystical treatises of the next generation—the anonymous Claud
of Unknowing and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection—were written
for recluses. Finally, Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416) was an
anchoress. English mysticism, then, is mostly concerned with individual
spiritual culture. Its main works being either confessional, or intended for
the instruction of lay persons—especially women—unable to read Latin, it is
intimately connected with the beginnings of vernacular literature. The number
of early MSS surviving, and also the quantity of anonymous mystical pieces
found in MS collections, prove that its products were deeply appreciated,
especially perhaps in Brigittine and Carthusian
houses. But its work in the religious complex was quietly done. Though Rolle
attacked monastic luxury and deeply desired the reform of the clergy, he led no
movement for these ends. Again, the English mystics are little interested in
speculation; and thus both avoid the metaphysical excesses of German and
Flemish mysticism and fall short of its greatest achievements. Though Rolle,
Hilton, and the writer of the Cloud were trained theologians, and Juliana of
Norwich shews remarkable understanding of Christian Platonism, all are content
to take their philosophic conceptions from St Augustine, Dionysius the
Areopagite, the Victorines, St Bernard, and Aquinas. Richard of St Victor was
particularly appreciated here, and has strongly influenced Hilton and the
writer of the Cloud. But the ruling intention of these writers is practical;
they abound in shrewd advice and homely imagery. A peculiar characteristic is
the almost total absence of Eucharistic references, a feature which sharply
distinguishes them from their Continental contemporaries.
Nevertheless,
the English school, though so national in character, is influenced by
Continental mysticism and articulated to the great Catholic tradition of the
contemplative life. Means of contact were not lacking. The works of the
Franciscan and Dominican mystics quickly circulated through the houses of those
Orders. Early translations of Suso, Tauler, and Catherine of Siena survive. At Knaresborough in
1315, Edward II had established four Flemish hermits from Ypres. Rolle, a
layman and vigorous religious individualist, whose anti-clerical temper and
claim to direct inspiration first caused collision with the clergy, and
afterwards recommended his writings to the Lollards, was a trained scholar,
sent to Oxford as a boy. Recent research shows that he may also have spent one
if not two periods at the Sorbonne, where he would receive the influences of contemporary
European mysticism and learn something too of the prevalent heresies. The works
of the Spiritual Franciscans—who may well have affected him—were well known in
Paris at that time. He cannot entirely have escaped contact with Joachism, the ideas of Eckehart,
or the spirit that produced the Friends of God.
In
Rolle’s exuberant character the prophet, devotee, and lyrical poet combine; as
in some of those Franciscan mystics to whom he is temperamentally akin, and
whose passion for poverty he shares. Like them he blends mystical emotion with
moral austerity, and like them seems to have led by turns the life of wandering
preacher and recluse. His emotional and poetic mysticism is intimately
connected with the cult of the Holy Name, at that time the favourite expression
of Christocentric fervour. He attracted disciples, and his works were quickly
and widely circulated; but his large and learned commentaries on the Psalter,
and the fact that surviving MSS are chiefly from monastic libraries, suggest that
his reading public was mainly of the religious class. Syon House, which had Yorkshire founders, and the Shene Charterhouse, which was in touch with Mount Grace, were peculiarly rich in
Rolle MSS. During the 150 years preceding the Reformation, he was widely read
both here and on the Continent, where he was known before the end of the
fourteenth century. The contagious quality of his emotional fervour, the
beautiful rhapsodies addressed to the Name of Jesus, and the entire absence of
abstract and difficult doctrine, are enough to account for his popularity. His
authentic English works are three epistles and a Commentary on the Psalms,
written for women disciples, with five prose fragments and a few poems. His
more important mystical writings, the Melum and Incendium Amoris,
are in Latin. The first is mainly a glorification of the hermit’s career, which
is sharply contrasted with that of the regular clergy, in terms which explain
and even excuse his unpopularity with the authorities. In this distinctly egoistic
work Rolle claims already to have attained the height of sanctity; but in the Incendium, written perhaps ten years later, he
describes more humbly and attractively his spiritual course. Rolle’s reputation
as a saint stood so high in the North that after his death an Office—our chief
though not wholly reliable source for the facts of his early life—was composed
in his honour; and though he was never canonised, a cultus survived at his
shrine for over 200 years.
Rolle
owes his historical importance, however, more to his religious and literary
influence than to his quality as a mystic. Here he is outdistanced by his chief
followers, especially the writer of The Cloud of Unknowing, and Walter Hilton,
an Austin Canon of Thurgarton near Nottingham (ob. 1395-96).
The Cloud of Unknowing, a remarkable treatise on contemplation addressed to a
young recluse, represents the introduction of the Dionysian writings into
English literature; and the number of surviving MSS attests its popularity. We
have four epistles and a free translation of the Mystical Theology, entitled Dionise Hid Divinite, by the same
unknown author, a mystic who writes in a North Midland dialect, is acquainted
with Rolle’s work, but otherwise gives us no clue to his identity. His work,
which shews much philosophic and psychological knowledge, deals with levels of
spiritual experience untouched by Rolle, and is addressed exclusively to those
called to contemplation. We note in him, as characteristic of the English
school, that the use made of Neoplatonism is always practical, never
speculative. Walter Hilton, whose Scale of Perfection became and remained a
devotional classic second only in popularity to the Imitatio,
is more general in his appeal; and is, perhaps, in his mingled practical and
transcendental teaching, the most typical mystic of the English school. The
rapid circulation of all these works shews the continued existence, here as
elsewhere, of a tradition of spiritual culture within the Catholic Church,
vigorously opposed both to Quietism and to Lollardy,
which Hilton attacks in the strongest terms. Juliana of Norwich, one of the
most individual products of this tradition, certainly depends on it. Traces of
Hilton’s influence have been noted in her Revelations of Divine Love; and it is
possible that they may have met, for she was over fifty when he died. Either by
reading or oral instruction, Juliana had absorbed much theological knowledge,
which has mingled with the fruits of intuition in her singularly poetic and
sensitive mind to produce the spiritual masterpiece by which she is known. This
in its developed form—for two versions exist—seems to represent her meditations
upon a single mystical experience, occurring at the crisis of an illness in her
thirtieth year. Juliana appeal’s never to have enjoyed the popularity of Rolle
and Hilton, and so far only one early MS of her Revelations has come to light.
Until a critical text is possible we cannot estimate her sources, or her place
in the history of English religion. Her connexion with the Benedictine house of
Carrow links her with the monastic tradition; while the intimate relation of
Norwich with the Low Countries makes us suspect the possible influence of
Flemish and German mysticism, for the works of Suso and Ruysbroeck were in circulation before the
Revelations were composed. Apart from a few notices in her book, however, we
are completely ignorant of her life and origin. Yet she is the first English
woman of letters; and through her we learn what the life of the anchorhold could be and produce at its best.
Italy:
St Catherine of Siena
The
religious history of Italy in the second half of the fourteenth century is
dominated by another woman of genius, the Dominican tertiary St Catherine of
Siena (1347-80). In St Catherine we see mysticism in action, the spiritual
realist at grips with the disorders of contemporary life. We incline, however,
to attribute to her political action a unique character it did not really
possess. The scandals she attacked were patent; and the particular aims she set
before herself were the objects of all who had the welfare of Christianity at
heart. The continued exile of the Papacy and the condition of the clergy
created chronic dissatisfaction in all religious minds; and produced within the
Church a series of reforming mystics whose denunciations exceed in violence
anything uttered by its enemies. In Siena itself Giovanni Colombini (ob. 1367) had founded the congregation of Gesuati,
devoted to absolute poverty and evangelical ideals, who surrounded Urban V with
their ragged and disconcerting enthusiasm on his return to Rome. The preaching
of the Gesuati caused a transient revival in Siena
and Tuscany, especially among the friars, and helped to form St Catherine’s
religious environment. From another point of view, Catherine took over and
completed the work begun by Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden (1303-1373). Birgitta, a
mystic and visionary of the Hildegardian type,
believed herself called by God to purify the Church and end the exile of the
Papacy. After founding the Brigittine Order in 1346,
she went in 1349 to Rome, where she ended her days. When Urban V retired to
Avignon in 1370, she prophesied with accuracy his coming death. Driven by her
revelations, she visited Gregory XI at Avignon, denouncing the immorality of
the clergy, demanding his return to the Vatican, and warning him of the price
of refusal. Her final appeal reached Gregory in 1373. Four months later she
died, and St Catherine of Siena—whose political letters begin in 1372—took up
her unfinished task.
At
this time, aged twenty-six and at the height of her reputation, Catherine had
only seven years to live. During a four-hour trance in which she nearly died,
she believed that she had received a divine command to leave her cell and city
and “witness before small and great,” including the Supreme Pontiff. Travelling
now to Avignon in her turn, she pleaded with the Pope to such effect that he
sailed from Marseilles in September 1376, she going overland to Genoa, where he
visited her secretly and received from her courage to enter Rome. When we
consider the initiative and self-sacrifice involved in the decision of a
French Pope, knowing no Italian, to leave his country and family and establish
himself in strange and hostile surroundings at the behest of a young woman
recommended by nothing but her sanctity and simple-mindedness, we obtain from
this incident a vivid impression of Catherine’s power. Though ecstatic and
other abnormal phenomena abound in her life, she was no mere visionary, but a
woman of genius controlled by her strong sense of vocation, whose astonishing
public career only represents one aspect of her greatness. Born of the people
and with little education, her spiritual power matured early; and at twenty she
was already the centre of a group of disciples, including priests, scholars,
and aristocrats, over whom she exercised an unquestioned authority. In private
life an extreme ascetic, the transforming influence she exerted, the courage
with which she opposed vested interests and attacked apparently impossible
tasks, the mingled authority and humility of her writings—which are among the
masterpieces of early Italian literature—all prove her spiritual transcendence.
Her follower Barduccio called her with reason the
“Mother of thousands of souls,” and at the culmination of her career the sight
of her face was enough to effect a conversion. St Catherine’s letters, of which
over 400 survive, shew the range of her interests and influence, extending from
an intimate care of individuals to the pacification of Italy and the
regeneration of the Church. Her aim was nothing less than the purging and
spiritualising of political and ecclesiastical life, by applying to it the
standards of contemplation and inspiring its rulers with that invincible spirit
of charity and courage which possessed her own soul. The words with which her
Dialogue begins: “Wishing to follow the truth in a more virile way”—show well
the temper of her mind, which was doubtless cultivated by the Dominican and
other scholars in her immediate circle. By the time her public career began,
she had obtained from this or other sources considerable theological knowledge,
and was well acquainted with the ruling ideas and symbolism of Christian
mysticism. While her heartbroken accounts of clerical corruption are among the
most terrible we possess, her vision of the Church and its destiny has an
almost epic greatness. She was a militant mystic; and though her political work
was soon undone, the impress of her amazing personality remained. “This poor little
woman shames us by her valour!” said Urban VI when she appeared before him in
1378, racked by illness, but intrepid still.
In Ruysbroeck, Juliana of Norwich, and Catherine of
Siena, we have three differing yet typical manifestations of the developed
mysticism of the fourteenth century, with its often sublime transcendentalism,
tender feeling, and moral and reforming zeal. It represents the reaction of
really religious natures to the miseries of society and manifest disorders of
the Church. It is probable that in this period the only monastic houses in
“spiritual good health” were those where mystical piety flourished; and, in
addition to these, we have evidence of the existence of many individual
mystics, of whom most achieved only a local reputation. As the century matured,
the character of its mysticism had gradually changed. The strict schools of
monastic contemplation, the Benedictine and Augustinian ideals of the twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries, were more and more criticised. The anchoretic
life was no longer taken for granted. The more humanistic religious outlook
encouraged by the friars shewed itself on the one hand in the steady increase
of such Christocentric devotions as the cults of the Precious Blood and the
Holy Name, with their strong emotional emphasis. On the other hand, it
encouraged a democratic effort to bring into the common life a realistic
spirituality which might or might not find nourishment in ceremonial and
sacramental religion, but could flourish independently of the often corrupt
institutional life. In the Franciscan Tertiaries, the Friends of God, and the Devotio Moderna we
see the orthodox side of this movement. The often extravagant mystical heresies
of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries shew the inevitable results of
an uncontrolled popularisation of principles too abstract for general use,
coupled with a rejection of the safeguarding influences of tradition. The final
positions reached by many of these heresies were equally repugnant to normal
morality and to common sense. Thus the history of mysticism in the fourteenth
century is punctuated by the burnings of those—including some of the less
prudent Friends of God—who had crossed the narrow line between an exalted and
an insurgent spirituality.
The
position of Catholic mysticism at the opening of the fifteenth century is well
shown in the significant figure of the chancellor Gerson, at once a mystic in
his own right and a keen and discriminating critic of the mass of religious
writings, movements, and phenomena claiming the title of mysticism. Gerson was
a second Bonaventura, a man of true and humble sanctity, a born psychologist, a
lover in all things of the golden mean. Much experience had given him a dread
of extravagances in religion, and an intense distrust of the visionaries and
pseudo-mystics who swarmed in Flanders and France at the end of the fourteenth
century. His hostile reference to the women whose visions brought back Gregory
XI to Rome, and so gave rise to the Great Schism, reminds us that two opinions
were possible about the activities of St Bridget and St Catherine of Siena. Yet
Gerson’s sincerity and discriminating power is proved by two facts. First, that
in spite of his anti-feminist and anti-visionary bias, he was one of the two theologians
who guaranteed the authenticity of the voices of St Joan of Arc (1412-31).
Next, that though a severe critic of Ruysbroeck’s more extreme doctrines, he defended at the Council of Constance (1418) the
Brothers of the Common Life, whom a Dutch Dominican had charged with heresy.
Gerson’s own works are partly concerned with the criticism of false mysticism,
and also of the Neoplatonic and pantheistic tendencies in the Catholic mystics;
partly with rules for the “discernment of spirits”; and partly with his own
theory of the contemplative life, in which he keeps close to the Victorines and
St Bonaventura. The fact that he has been regarded as a probable author of the Imitatio indicates the character and tone of his
spirituality.
Save
for a few scattered stars, of whom only one is of the first magnitude, we reach
with Gerson the end of the classic period of medieval mysticism. The fifteenth
century witnesses its gradual decline before the growing forces of humanism. A
tendency to repetition, a failure to make fresh devotional discoveries, mark
the dropping temperature characteristic of a transitional epoch. In Flanders
the long life of Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) covers the careers on the one hand
of such merely reminiscent mystics as Harphius (ob.
1477) or the pathological visionary St Lydwine of
Schiedam (1380-1432), and on the other of the saintly scholars, Denis the
Carthusian (1402-1471) and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). In England in the same period, religious pieces inspired by Rolle
and his followers continued to be produced; and the numerous fifteenth-century
MSS of their works and those of other fourteenth-century mystics shew that
mysticism was still a living interest in the Church, though no longer producing
great and creative personalities. In Italy the exquisite yet entirely
traditional spirituality revealed in the paintings of Fra Angelico (1387-1455)
shews us the mystical piety of the early fifteenth century at its best. It is
characteristic of the period that we find the older and truly medieval types of
spiritual feeling and endeavour continuing side by side with those which look
towards newer embodiments. Thus we still have reforming mystics, intent on the
regeneration of religious Orders or religious practice. Such are the Franciscans
St Colette of Corbie (1381-1447), St Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444), and St
Catherine of Bologna (14131463). St Colette, who combined mystical fervour with
immense practical energy, began life as a beguine. At twenty-two she was
enclosed at Corbie as an anchoress, but was driven by her visions to leave her
cell and undertake the reform of the Poor Clares.
Travelling to Nice, she received the authority of Benedict XIII for this work,
and founded thirteen houses of the Colettine reform
before her death. St Bernardino of Siena, through whose preaching a wave of
spiritual fervour passed over Central Italy, was glad to call himself her
disciple. He shares with her, and with his compatriots St Giovanni da
Capistrano (1385-1456) and the ecstatic Clarisse, St Catherine of Bologna, the
credit of the transient revival of Franciscan mysticism, with its evangelical
enthusiasm and moral demands, which marked the first half of the fifteenth
century.
Nicholas
of Cusa
Side
by side with this, the current of spirituality arising in the New Devotion, and
ultimately derived from the great mind of Ruysbroeck,
is found operative in such typical scholars of the early Renaissance as
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) and his friend Denis the
Carthusian. Here both intellectual speculation and reforming energy are
transfused by the spiritual realism of the mystic. Denis, one of the great
figures of fifteenth-century religion, was first an obscure secular priest; but
in 1423 he entered the Charterhouse of Roermond, of
which he became prior. His combination of ascetic and intellectual
intensity—his works fill 45 large volumes, and he claimed with reason “an iron
head and steel stomach”—gave him a European reputation for learning and
sanctity. A mystic, subject to visions and ecstasies, and a profound student of
Dionysius and Ruysbroeck, he was yet keenly
interested in contemporary life. He advised from his cell the chief personages
of the State, and accompanied Nicholas of Cusa on his
reforming missions. Many of his visions were apocalyptic; and he steadily
prophesied calamity for the Church if she delayed the work of reform. Yet Denis
was not spiritually creative; and here he is typical of his period. His works,
immense in range, mainly simplify and make accessible the lofty teachings of his
predecessor’s, as Deventer had made accessible to ordinary men the monastic
discipline of meditation and prayer.
Nicholas
of Cusa was trained at Deventer, where sound learning
no less than mystical piety flourished. He was an enthusiastic student of Eckehart and the Neoplatonists; and was also influenced by
the writings of the Majorcan scholar-mystic Raymond Lull (1232-1316). These
studies, congenial to his profoundly metaphysical intellect, at first gave
Nicholas1 mysticism a coldly speculative character. But later, when beset by
the many exacting duties of a great ecclesiastic, his vision of Reality was
brought into more immediate relation with the demands of practical life. As
between the intense intellectualism of the scholastics and the anti-intellectualism
of those who identified mystical knowledge with the “wise ignorance” of the
Areopagite, Nicholas, as we see in his De Visione Dei, takes an intermediate position, recognising the claims of both mind
and heart. This little masterpiece—the final flower of Flemish mysticism—was
written for the Benedictines of Tegernsee, who had applied to him for spiritual
help. In its combination of intimate and metaphysical feeling, it expounds a
mysticism too profound to be popular, but which was the inspiration of a life
spent partly in scholarship, partly in the struggle that has called so many of
the mystics to restore the purity and force of a Christianity which in
Nicholas’ eyes had “degenerated into an appearance.”
Though
nourished on the medieval tradition, Nicholas of Cusa is not truly a medieval figure. With him we are definitely moving away from the
Middle Ages; and with the last great mystical saint of the period—St Catherine
of Genoa (1447-1510)—we finally part company with them. While her compatriots,
the widely venerated Dominican beati, Columba of Rieti (1430-1501) and Osanna Andreassi of Mantua
(1449-1505), merely continue in their visions and denunciations the tradition
of St Catherine of Siena, bringing no contribution of their own, Catherine of
Genoa lifts Christian Platonism to fresh levels of fertility. She is a lady of
the Renaissance with a genius for the spiritual life. She joins no religious
Order, leads no campaign, performs no miracles. Her contemporary Savonarola (of
whose existence she betrays no knowledge) is led from contemplation to a
hopeless conflict with society; and at last to martyrdom. But Catherine Fieschi is content to teach her sublime doctrine to a small
group of disciples, and to establish and rule with admirable common sense the
first modern hospital. In her, mystical religion completes its transition from
the medieval to the modern world.
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