Mystery Stories

Anti-dialectical.—Mysticism first appears in the mediaeval Church as the protest of practical religion against the predomi nance of the dialectical spirit. It is so with Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), who condemns Abelard's distinctions and reason ings as externalizing and degrading the faith. St. Bernard's mysti cism is of a practical cast, dealing mainly with the means by which man may attain to the knowledge and enjoyment of God. Reason has three stages, in the highest of which the mind is able, by abstraction from earthly things, to rise to contemplatio or the vision of the divine. More exalted still, however, is the sudden ecstatic vision, such as was granted, for example, to Paul. This is the reward of those who are dead to the body and the world. Asceticism is thus the counterpart of medieval mysticism; and, by his example as well as by his teaching in such passages, St. Bernard unhappily encouraged practices which necessarily re sulted in self-delusion. Love grows with the knowledge of its object, he proceeds, and at the highest stage self-love is so merged in love to God that we love ourselves only for God's sake or be cause God has loved us. "As the little water-drop poured into a large measure of wine seems to lose its own nature entirely and to take on both the taste and the colour of the wine; or as iron heated red-hot loses its own appearance and glows like fire; or as air filled with sunlight is transformed into the same brightness so that it does not so much appear to be illuminated as to be itself light—so must all human feeling towards the Holy One be self-dissolved in unspeakable wise, and wholly transfused into the will of God. For how shall God be all in all if anything of man remains in man? The substance will indeed remain, but in an other form, another glory, another power" (De diligendo Deo, c. so).

Mysticism was more systematically developed by Bernard's contemporary Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141). The Augus tinian monastery of St. Victor near Paris became the headquarters of mysticism during the 12th century. It had a wide influence in awakening popular piety, and the works that issued from it formed the textbooks of mystical and pietistic minds in the cen turies that followed. Hugh's pupil, Richard of St. Victor, de clares, in opposition to dialectic scholasticism, that the objects of mystic contemplation are partly above reason, and partly, as in the intuition of the Trinity, contrary to reason. He enters at length into the conditions of ecstasy and the yearnings that pre cede it. Bonaventura (1221-1274) was a diligent student of the Victorines, and in his Itinerarium mentis ad Deum maps out the human faculties in a similar fashion. He introduces the terms "apex mentis" and "scintilla" (also "synderesis" or avvrOnats) to describe the faculty of mystic intuition. Bonaventura runs riot in phrases to describe the union with God, and his devotional works were much drawn upon by mystical preachers.

Theology of the Heart.

From the 12th and 13th centuries onward there is observable in the different countries of Europe a widespread reaction against the growing formalism and worldli ness of the Church and the scandalous lives of many of the clergy. Men began to feel a desire for a theology of the heart and an unworldly simplicity of life. In the beginning of the 13th century the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders furnished an ecclesiastical and regular means of supplying the same wants, and numerous convents sprang up at once throughout Germany.

The German mind was a peculiarly fruitful soil for mysticism, and a number of women appear about this time, combining a spirit of mystical piety and asceticism with sturdy reformatory zeal directed against the abuses of the time. Even before this we hear of the prophetic visions of Hildegard of Bingen (a contem porary of St. Bernard) and Elizabeth of Schonau. In the 13th century Elizabeth of Hungary, the pious landgravine of Thuringia, assisted in the foundation of many convents in the north of Germany. (For an account of the chief of these female saints see the first volume of W. Preger's Gescliichte der deutschen Mystik.) Mechthild of Magdeburg appears to have been the most influential, and her book Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit is important as the oldest work of its kind in German. It proves that much of the terminology of German mysticism was current before Eckhart's time. Mechthild's clerico-political utterances show that she was acquainted with the "eternal gospel" of Joachim of Floris. Joachim had proclaimed the doctrine of three world ages—the kingdom of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit. The reign of the Spirit was to begin with the year 126o, when the abuses of the world and the Church were to be effectually cured by the general adoption of the monastic life of contempla tion.

Very similar to this in appearance is the teaching of Amalric of Bena (d. 1207) ; but, while the movements just mentioned were reformatory without being heretical, this is very far from being the case with the mystical pantheism derived by Amalric from the writings of Erigena. His followers held a progressive revelation of God in the ages of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Just as the Mosaic dispensation came to an end with the appear ance of Christ, so the sacraments of the new dispensation have lost their meaning and efficacy since the incarnation of God as Holy Spirit in the Amalricans. With this opposition to the Church they combine a complete antinomianism, through the identifica tion of all their desires with the impulses of the divine Spirit. Amalric's teaching was condemned by the Church, and his heresies led to the public burning of Erigena's De divisione naturae in 1225.

Eckhart.

In Meister Eckhart (? 1260-1327) the German mind definitively asserts its pre-eminence in the sphere of specu lative mysticism. Eckhart was a distinguished son of the Church, but in reading his works we feel at once that we have passed into quite a different sphere of thought from that of the churchly mystics; we seem to leave the cloister behind and to breathe a freer atmosphere. The scholastic mysticism was, for the most part, practical and psychological in character. It was largely a devo tional aid to the realization of present union with Gocll and, so far as it was theoretical, it was a theory of the faculties by which such a union is attainable. But in Eckhart the attitude of the churchman and traditionalist is entirely abandoned. His sys tem enables him to give a profound significance to the doctrines of the Church ; but, instead of the system being accommodated to the doctrines, the doctrines—and especially the historical facts —acquire a new sense in the system, and often become only a mythical representation of speculative truth.