At the moment I’m reading Saint John of the Cross’ The Ascent of Mount Carmel, to be followed by these texts as grounding for continuing to read Maria Gabriela Llansol’s Geography of Rebels trilogy.
There’s a longer list I’m contemplating that includes social histories by Hartmut Kaelble and Béla Tomka, Henry Suso’s The Exemplar and Thomas Müntzer’s writing.
Indirectly I’ve also become drawn to Simone Weil, that strange and astonishing figure who inhabits a unique position within twentieth century mysticism. The tension in her work, between philosophical rigour and mystical openness, between political action and contemplative withdrawal, creates a bridge between medieval contemplative traditions and contemporary thought that resonates particularly with this reading project. Her insistence that authentic spiritual understanding requires physical encounter with suffering recalls the embodied mysticism of Teresa of Ávila while anticipating later existentialist concerns.
What draws me to this constellation of texts is their shared concern with the ineffable, approached through radically different historical and linguistic frameworks. Medieval mysticism and its modern inheritors both struggle to articulate experiences at the limits of language, yet each tradition develops distinctive strategies for this articulation. The question remains whether these texts, separated by centuries, are describing the same terrain of human experience or entirely different territories.
The classic reference work on (Christian) mystics is Bernard McGinn’s 6 (at last count) volume history, collectively entitled THE PRESENCE OF GOD. It’s not something to read straight through (woe is me, I tried), but worth keeping on hand to consult relevant chapters and contextualizing summaries for any study of individual mystics. Unlike the many social histories of mysticism, it presents an “inner” interpretation, a catholic theologian’s accounting and analysis, which even for an unbeliever like myself is a testimony important to an appreciation of the tradition. I recommend dipping into it and at least reading the introduction to the first volume.
Thanks, Robert. That is perfect, just what I am looking for. It currently runs to seven volumes. I’ve dropped the publisher a note.
I’ve only dipped, but it does look magnificent.
Thanks for that recommendation. I’ll explore further. At the moment I’m looking for European social histories, preferably medieval.
Thank you for the picture of your books!I had never heard of the Beguines. And that started me on a whole Wikipedia adventure that went through Meister Eckhart,
To Schopenhauer to the theosophical society.
Thanks for that little excursion of education education!
A pleasure to be able to send you down a rabbit-hole.
You should check out Hildegard of Bingen; In Our Time covered her on one of their podcasts. Barbara Newman’s Voice of the Living Light is a good collection of essays about her. Margery Kempe is another mystic, and In Our Time covered her, too. Check out The Book of Margery Kempe (I studied her in college). Additionally, Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena are female religious figures (The Life of Saint Teresa by Herself and the Dialogues are their respective books). Cities of Ladies is a scholarly history of the Beguines that I own. Caroline Walker Bynum is a very well-respected scholar of medieval Christianity. Check out her book length essay, Christian Materiality. And her book Jesus as Mother (it is not a feminist theology book–so the title is misleading) is fabulous. I am very interested in medieval Christianity, and I read a lot in this area. I hope this is along the lines of what you are looking for.
I just thought of a few other mystics/medieval Christians to look into: Bernard of Clairvaux (the selected works with an introduction by Leclercq); Bonaventure; and Julian of Norwich. And then The Love of Learning and the Desire for God by Leclercq is a classic. (This covers the western Christians with the exception of Augustine and then you have the Eastern ones: Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianus and Gregory of Nyssa, and others). Okay this is probably more than you want to know!
Also thanks for these additions. The Leclercq book looks fascinating.
I went through a long phase years ago reading all of those oldies. Not easy, but I think essential to understand the development of European thought.
So rich and influential.
Thanks very much, such a rich reading list. I know Hildegard of Bingen’s music very well. These are all excellent suggestions that I’ll add to my reading list.
Great recommendations here. Also check out recordings of Hildegard’s music.
Just to offer a twist of a kind: one contemporary poet who has — I think it’s somewhat safe to say — found a lot in the works of Simone Weil is Ellen Hinsey; another poet who had (or has) a fair amount of interest in mystic thought is Gjertrud Schnackenberg…now, although not of the medieval period, Angelus Silesius might be of interest to you (though I dont know if much or even any of his work has been translated)
Thank you very much. I really like the look of Ellen Hinsey’s White Fire of Time. Both poets are new to me, so I appreciate the recommendations.
White Fire of Time is fantastic, I think youll see a lot of the influence; her latest, The Illegal Age, though very different, is also excellent. Harrowing.
Angelus Silesius is available in translation.
Silesius was a favorite of Hesse’s, of course, so I thought that there might be a chance —