3rd–17th centuries

Genealogies of Christian Mystical Theology: from Origen to the Quietist Controversy

Bernard McGinn maps the history of mystical theology as a set of “genealogies” – lines of transmission with a recognizable origin: Eastern and Western patristic, Dionysian, monastic, Franciscan, vernacular, and the Protestant and Catholic lines of the 16th–17th centuries. The map ends with the Quietist Controversy of the late 17th century, after which mysticism in the West long receded.

Key points

• McGinn: a “genealogy” approaches the themes of mystical theology with an identifiable origin and succession over centuries; it replaces the dubious “schools”. Genealogies are passed on from teacher to pupils (Eckhart to Tauler and Suso), through literary tradition, and through religious orders. The lines are patristic (Eastern, Dionysian, Western), monastic, Franciscan, vernacular, and the Protestant and Catholic lines of the 16th–17th c. English mystics of the 14th–early 15th c.: Rolle (Fire of Love), Hilton (Ladder of Perfection), The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, Kempe. On 13 May 1373 Julian received visions of Christ on the cross; the heart of her teaching: “love was his meaning”. Margery Kempe (1373–c.1440) dictated her Book in the 1430s, the first English autobiography. In Spain c.1500 interior mysticism (Laredo, Osuna, recogimiento) coexisted with the Inquisition’s persecution of the Alumbrados (from 1525). In France Barbe Acarie’s mystical circle (1590s) produced Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life, 1607) and Bérulle’s “French School”. Themes of 16th–17th-century Catholic mystics: levels of prayer, effort versus gift (acquired and infused contemplation), discernment of spirits. The Enlightenment saw mysticism as irrational fanaticism; after 1700 it often went underground or took bizarre forms

People

• Origen
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
• Augustine
• John Cassian
• Gregory the Great
• Bernard of Clairvaux
• Bonaventure
• Meister Eckhart
• Julian of Norwich
• Teresa of Avila
• John of the Cross

Place

Alexandria; Mount Athos; Paris; the Rhineland; Flanders; England; Spain; France

More on the doctrine

• Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor: God beyond Being and the Negative Way (c. 500 (Maximus – 7th century))
• Deification in Byzantine Theology: Maximus the Confessor and Symeon the New Theologian (7th–11th centuries)
• Luther: The Theology of the Cross against the Theology of Glory and the Break with Scholasticism (1518)