. Word now most often used for what would have been called “contemplation” (contemplatio) in the medieval Latin tradition. In its narrowest meaning, mysticism involves a personal experience of the unmediated presence of Absolute Reality or, to use the Christian designation, God. Such an experience is described in the literature of religious traditions throughout the world.
Much modern writing on mysticism has focused on “mystical experience,” the direct, personal experience of the immediate presence of the divine, which often results in a mental state in which the person is unaware of the ordinary world and aware of only the divine presence (“ecstatic mysticism”). Mystics often describe a process, called the “mystical way,” with a variety of stages leading up to the mystical experience. These descriptions generally concern disciplines for the body and the mind to prepare an individual for “mystical experience,” as well as with visions, voices, and other extraordinary phenomena that occur as persons follow discipline. Some interpreters, and some mystics, contend that visions and other extraordinary phenomena have little or nothing to do with “mysticism” and can be misleading. If, however, “mystic experience” includes a spectrum of experiences that relate variously to the transcendent divine, present in unmediated mystical experience in one mode but present in a different, mediated form in voices and visions, then “mysticism” must embrace the whole spectrum of experiences recorded by those who have good claim to be counted among the mystics.
Though the Christian tradition draws upon scriptural passages to support interpretations of the mystic way and mystic experience, Jesus is not presented as the archetypal mystic; rather, as one Person of the divine Trinity, he becomes the object of the mystic’s experience.
Fundamental lines of Christian mysticism were laid down in late antiquity. Five mystics and theologians had more influence than others on the medieval tradition in France: Origen of Alexandria, Pseudo-Dionysius the Are-opagite, John Cassian, Augustine of Hippo, and Gregory the Great. Origen set an important pattern for later biblical exegetes and mystics by taking the relationship of the Bride and Bridegroom in the Song of Songs as a “drama” symbolic of the union between Christ and his church or God and the soul. While Origen paid more attention to this imagery as symbolic of ecclesiastical ideas, he did pursue the symbolism of the mystical experience through the nuptial and erotic imagery of the Song. In this, he was followed by such mystics as Gregory of Nyssa in the Greek East and, much later, Bernard of Clairvaux in the Latin West.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite claimed to be the 1st-century convert of Paul at Athens but seems to have been a 6th-century Syrian monk. His writings combined Neoplatonism and biblical imagery, stressing on the one hand the material world as a set of partial symbols of the divine realm and on the other an “ascension” from immersion in the material world to a purely spiritual and immaterial apprehension of the divine presence in the “divine darkness” of “unknowing.”
Cassian was a monastic author whose Conferences, a summary of the teachings of Egyptian desert mystics-ascetics, exerted a decisive influence on Christian spirituality.
Augustine, a great theologian and bishop of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, also combined Neoplatonic philosophy and biblical thought to produce an understanding of the spiritual path as an ascent from the material world, through the world of mind, to a momentary glimpse of Absolute Reality, understood as pure light, beheld in a trembling glance. Augustine’s Confessions were an enduring personal account of a spiritual journey from Mani-chaeanism, through Neoplatonism, to Christianity.
Gregory the Great, more than any other author, sums up the Christian spirituality of late antiquity and transmits it to the medieval period. His commentary on the book of Job, Moralia in Iob, has sections that are miniature treatises on the mystic way. Gregory’s characterization of the contrast between the “active life” of engagement in the world and the “contemplative” life of withdrawal for asceticism and prayer was widely influential, as were his description of the mystical experience as a glimpse of the “unbounded light of divinity” and his conception of the way in which the soul makes a “ladder” of itself to “ascend” from experience of the external world of sense, to the in-terior world of mind, to the transcendent world of spiritual realities and the “unbounded light” that is God.
As late antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages, the spiritual traditions sketched above were preserved, but little applied or developed. The spirituality of the 6th century to the 11th focused first on missions and expansion, then on the establishment and regularization of the monastic and clerical life. Within monasteries, emphasis was not so much on personal spirituality as on public celebration of the liturgical hours and the Mass. One sees much evidence of “spiritual reading” and reflection on Scripture and earlier authors but little evidence of ec-static mysticism. However, as the 11th century progressed and reform movements began to gain ground, the spiritual life and the mystical quest began to claim more and more interest.
One of the first “schools” of mysticism to flourish in medieval France was that of the regular canons of the ab-bey of Saint-Victor at Paris. Two 12th-century canons were among the leading mystical writers of the whole medieval period: Hugh of Saint-Victor and Richard of Saint-Victor. Hugh was one of the first persons in the West to write treatises that offered systematic instruction in the mystic way. According to Hugh’s theology, the first humans had been immediately aware of the divine presence and had also been able to perceive the outward, material world as a symbolic manifestation of God’s power, wisdom, and goodness. With the Fall, humans lost the inward sense of divine presence and the ability to discern fully the cosmos as symbolic of the divine. In Hugh’s powerful image of the “three eyes” with which humans had been created, the Fall produces varying degrees of “blindness”: the “eye” of the intellect (which sees God and spiritual things) is totally blinded; the “eye” of reason (which knows the self and those things within the self) is partly blinded; only the “eye of the flesh” functions fully and leads one to a deceptive relationship with the external world of matter. A major aspect of the salvation of human beings is the restoration of the immediate inward awareness of the divine, the “eye” of the intellect. Hugh’s treatises on the symbolic meaning of the Ark of Noah and Isaiah’s vision of the Lord and the Seraphim (De arca Noe morali and De arca Noe mystica), and also his treatise De arrha animae are complex explorations of the stages by which the soul recovers the immediate awareness of God through discipline of mind and body and the concomitant gift of divine grace. Hugh defines four stages, which correspond to a classic pattern in Christian mysticism: awakening, purification, illumination, union. Each is divided into three degrees, yielding a twelvestage way. Awakening is divided into stages of fear, sorrow, and love; Purgation, into patience, mercy, and compunction; Illumination, into thinking, meditation, and contemplation; Union, into temperance, prudence, and fortitude. These twelve stages outline advancement in discipline, insight, and experience, culminating in the transformation of the self and experience of God. In De arrha animae, Hugh uses the theme of the Bride and Bridegroom from the Song of Songs to develop a long dialogue on the role of love in relation to the world, the self, and the divine, with a focus on the soul’s yearning for a unique experience of the divine in intimate relationship, even union. One of the striking aspects of Hugh’s spirituality is the use of a visual diagram to present it; his treatises on Noah’s Ark describe and use for meditation a drawing that shows in the form of a mandala both the unfolding of the cosmos and history from Christ and the return to union with Christ through the twelve stages of mystical ascent.
Hugh was also crucial in the introduction of the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite into the mystical and theological traditions of the West. His commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s Greek Celestial Hierarchy made that work accessible to his contemporaries and explored such important themes as the role of symbols, the nature of anagogical ascent, and the “divine darkness” in mystical experience (so important in Dionysian thought). Like almost all medieval mystics, Hugh gave attention to the relation of loving and knowing in the mystical quest, concluding that both play central roles but that ultimately it is the “embrace” of love and not the act of knowing that unites the soul with the divine in ecstasy.
Hugh’s successor, Richard of Saint-Victor, was interested in the dynamics of development and psychologcal processes. Like Hugh, he depended heavily upon visualizations and personifications to convey his message. In De arca mystica, the Ark of the Covenant and its two Cheru-bim are given a symbolic interpretation that incorporates Richard’s understanding of six levels in the epistemological structure of the mystic quest. Contemplation—“behold-ing” or “apprehending,” not analyzing, the object of atten-tion—is possible at all levels of knowing, but contemplating God occurs only in the highest two. Richard offers a complex analysis of the six levels of knowledge (two each for sense, reason, and intellect) including states of mystical ecstasy; he also offers a detailed analysis of the epistemology of prophetic visions; and he presents an analysis of possible ways of entering (or “triggering”) the experience of “alienation of mind” or “ecstasy” in which the individual becomes unaware of the external world and the self and is aware only of God and spiritual realities. Richard continued and expanded Hugh’s use of Pseudo-Dionysius in his writings.
A second school of 12th-century mysticism was Cis-tercian, led by Bernard of Clairvaux but developed by other monks, including William of Saint-Thierry and Isaac of Stella in France and Aelred of Rievaulx and John of Ford in England. Just as the Cistercians saw the cloister as a school for the love of God, so their spirituality focused to a great degree on the nature of the mystic’s love of God and the reciprocal effect of that love on the individual. Bernard’s earliest work, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae reveals the Cistercian revision of Benedictine foundations as Bernard comments on Chapter 7 of Bene-dict’s Rule. Cistercian spirituality was shaped in fundamental ways by deep reflection on the bridal imagery of the Song of Songs, transformed for Bernard and others into powerful imagery of the deep union between the self (the soul) and the divine (Christ) in mystical experience. Bernard’s eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs comprise his greatest contribution to the literature of mysticism. William of Saint-Thierry wrote treatises on theological and mystical topics, as well as a commentary on the Song of Songs.
The emergence among the Victorines and Cistercians of intense focus on the nature of the mystic way and experience, and the expression of that way and experience under the symbolism of the marriage bond between two individuals, reflects a new conception of the mystic experience. In the writings of Augustine and Gregory the Great, the mystic experience was primarily a “beholding,” usually expressed impersonally in terms of a vision of light. With the 12th century, the mystical experience is conceived in terms of personal and intimate imagery: the relationship between two individuals in the nuptial embrace. Thus, the imagery of love is given full expression in symbolic form in the embrace of the marriage chamber, although the mystics insist that the imagery and experience are purged of all bodily associations and refer to a spiritual union of soul and Christ.
In the 12th century, other movements for monastic and spiritual reform, such as the Carthusians and Premon-stratensians, also developed interpretations of the mystic way. A good example is the Scala claustralum by the Car-thusian Guigo II (d. 1188). In analyzing what he calls “spiritual exercise,” Guigo introduces the idea of a ladder that will raise a monk from earth to Heaven. Guigo’s ladder has four rungs: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. In this, he owed no small debt to some of the formulations of Hugh of Saint-Victor. Reading, for Guigo, is a careful consideration of Scripture; meditation is a focused search, by reason, for some truth; prayer is primarily petitionary prayer seeking something of God; contemplation is “a certain elevation of the mind above itself, suspended in God, tasting the joys of eternal sweetness.” The scheme demonstrates again, in different language, the movement from outer, to inward, to transcendent realities.
With the advent of the mendicant orders in the 13th century came new centers for pursuing ascetic life and contemplative prayer. The Franciscans were influenced by the mystic experiences of their founder, Francis of Assisi, and his devotion to the poor, suffering, crucified Christ. Francis was an extraordinary ecstatic visionary who received, near the end of his life, the stigmata, the presence on his body of the five wounds of Christ, which confirmed for medieval men and women that he was totally conformed to Christ in his life. Franciscan mysticism was given a definitive shape in one of the classics of medieval mystical literature, Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Bonaventure was a Franciscan master lecturing at the University of Paris when he was elected master general of the order in 1257, which was at the time struggling over the true meaning of poverty and other issues. He went for a time of spiritual reflection to Mount Alverna, east of Florence in Italy, where Francis had received the stigmata. While meditating there, Bonaventure realized that the spiritual path of return to God was adumbrated in Francis’s vision when he received the stigmata: he had seen the Crucified (Christ) in the form of a six-winged Seraph. Through this image, he understood that the return was accomplished through the humility of the suffering Christ, through burning love of the Crucified, and through six stages of “ascension” from the material world, through the inner world of the mind, to the transcendent world of divine reality. The result of this insight was the Itinerarium. Bonaventure here drew upon the six levels of knowing/contemplating as outlined by Richard of Saint-Victor, infusing them with a Francis-can celebration of the divine presence in the world, in the self (through the imago Dei), and in the realm of spiritual reality, all considered in light of the significance of the poor, suffering Christ, the emblem of divine self-giving love.
The other major mendicant order, the Dominicans, initially made less of mystical experience, although personal prayer and instruction in ways of praying were both important in the development of a Dominican spirituality. St. Dominic’s Nine Ways of Praying, accompanied in the manuscript tradition with illustrations showing the nine postures for prayer rooted in the founder’s practice, is an example of such instruction. Thomas Aquinas made a theological place for mystical experience in this world and the vision of God (visio Dei) in Heaven, but he laid little stress on the former. Just before his death in 1274, he had a profound mystical/visionary experience of Christ, after which he ceased dictating the text of his Summa theologica (it was completed by another Dominican) and declared that, next to his vision, all he had written was but straw. However, the real flourishing of mystical experience within the Dominican order occurred in the Rhineland with Meister Eckhart and his disciples Tauler and Suso. Eckhart developed a distinctive mystical way that incorporated ideas of total detachment, emptying the self, and the “birth” of the divine in the soul. Eckhart also evidences a significant development within the Dominican order: the pastoral care of convents of women, both Dominican nuns and others. This involved the friars in the spiritual direction of women who were involved in their own unique kind of spiritual development, often at odds with male patterns of spirituality, especially in the prevalence of visionary experiences, emphasis upon female bodiliness, and a devotional focus on the eucharistic host (as Christ’s body). The literature of female spirituality and mysticism receives treatment in another article.
In the late Middle Ages, Jean Gerson (1363–1429) stands out as a figure who combined distinguished leadership as chancellor of the University of Paris, involvement in the ecclesiastical and political aspects of the Great Schism, acute contributions to the development of late-medieval scholastic thought, and a deep sense of the mystical dimension of Christian theology and life. Like his contemporary Nicholas of Cusa, Gerson was drawn to the idea of the coincidence of opposites as a key to understanding and also looked to the mystical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite as significant for guiding one on the way toward an experience of divine presence. Gerson wrote numerous treatises, both technical and “popular,” on mysticism and the mystic way. He reached an unusually wide audience, for he wrote and preached in both Latin and French.
Butler, Cuthbert. Western Mysticism: The Teaching of August-ine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Con-templative Life. 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.
Classics of Western Spirituality, published by Paulist Press, New York, is a series that presents writings of the mystics in new modern translations with introductions. Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Mich., has an extensive series of translations, with introductions, of the writings of Cistercian mystics.
Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1961.
McGinn, Bernard, and John Meyendorff, eds. Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century. New York: Crossroad, 1985.
Matter, E.Ann. The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
Raitt, Jill, ed. Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation. New York: Crossroad, 1985.
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