You know that rabbit-hole? At the moment I’m reading Saint John of the Cross’ The Ascent of Mount Carmel, to be followed by these, 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 recently, a strange and astonishing woman who seems to be almost the quintessential twentieth century mystic, comparable with Thomas Merton. If you can recommend a good biography (there are so many) please do so in comments. Or have any recommendations of medieval mystics and/or good social histories that are worth reading.