Quietism

Quietism

QUIETISM. Although some of the important insights of Quietism—a movement distinguished from the generic sense of the word quietistic, which implies withdrawal or passivity with regard to politics or ethics—can be found in medieval devotion, in sixteenth-century Spanish spirituality, and in various mystical sources, both Christian and Buddhist, the usual meaning of the word is restricted to the late seventeenth-century devotional movement in the Catholic Church in Italy and France. The main figure in the history of Quietism was Miguel de Molinos (1628–1696), a Spanish priest who settled in Rome at the end of 1663. He became an enormously popular spiritual adviser, especially among nuns and women of high society. His new contemplative way of Christian perfection was summed up (without some of its esoteric aspects) in a book he published simultaneously in Spanish and Italian: Guida Spirituale, che disinvolge l'anima e la conduce per il interior camino all'acquisito della perfetta contemplatione e del ricco tesoro della pace interiore (1685), often referred to as his Spiritual Guide.

Though supported by a number of theologians and, for a time, probably by Innocent XI, the Guide was soon attacked by the Jesuits for its total disregard of meditation, spiritual asceticism, vocal prayers, and, implicitly, the cults of Jesus and of the Virgin.

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