Three Mediæval Mystics

Three Mediæval Mystics by Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill's Three Mediæval Mystics presents essays on three writers of the inner life: the anonymous author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, the Blessed Angela of Foligno, and Julian of Norwich. The first essay treats The Mirror of Simple Souls as a neglected link in English mysticism. It is a middle-English translation, made around 1400, of a lost French work of the thirteenth century. Its translator, who signs himself M. N., was a gentle and timid contemplative in the school of Walter Hilton. In his prologue he fears that the book's hard sayings will be misunderstood. He therefore revises it, adds glosses marked with his initials, and submits to the correction of Holy Kirk. The French author's own prologue cites approving clerks: Friar John of Querayne, Dan Frank of Viliers, and Master Godfrey of Fountaynes. All three warn that few should see the book. Godfrey is identified as a Master of Divinity at the University of Paris who died about 1306. The essay dates the original to the last quarter of the thirteenth century and suggests its author was a monk, possibly a Carthusian. The book is a dramatic dialogue between Love, the Soul, Reason, and figures such as Pure Courtesy and Discretion. Reason questions Love sharply and stands for common sense. Its doctrine is the soul's ascent to union with God. Liberty is the aim, the will is the agent, and surrender, or "noughting," is the method. The free soul finds God everywhere, takes leave of the virtues as a lady over them, and swims in joy. The essay admits that some passages, taken alone, lean toward the complete passivity or "holy indifference" of the seventeenth century, but it argues that the surrender is active and loving. It sets out the seven Estates of the soul's ascent, from being touched by grace to the unspeakable glory of the Seventh. The second essay concerns Angela of Foligno, born of a prosperous Umbrian family in 1248, whose influence Underhill ranks second among Franciscans only to St. Bonaventura. The main source is her book, dictated in Latin to her Franciscan confessor Fra Arnaldo. It has three parts: her conversion and penitence, her visions, and her instructions to disciples. Angela lived a vain, worldly, hypocritical life as a young married woman. Under Franciscan influence her conscience awoke, and she climbed eighteen "steps" of penitence. Poverty and self-knowledge became her two guiding principles. The deaths of her mother, husband and children came as she turned to God, and Underhill defends her notorious reaction to them. She went to Rome to pray for true poverty and gave away all her goods. She then endured a long struggle of illness, temptation, and public self-abasement. It culminated in a dark night around 1294 and gave way to years of deep peace. She formed a small sisterhood in Foligno and became a teacher to Franciscan disciples, among them Ubertino da Casale. She died in 1309. Her imaginary visions, such as her walk toward Assisi in conversation with the Holy Ghost, are poetic in kind. Her rarer metaphysical visions, in which she saw God as Goodness, Power, Love, and finally "darkly," place her with Ruysbroeck. Underhill compares her to Jacopone da Todi. The third essay treats Julian of Norwich, born about 1342, whose Revelations of Divine Love is the main source for her life. Underhill traces her imagery to East Anglian manuscript painting, the devotion to the Holy Name, and the Passion poetry of the age. As a girl Julian asked for three gifts: a vision of Christ's Passion, a bodily sickness, and the three wounds of contrition, compassion and longing. In May 1373, at thirty, she fell gravely ill and seemed to die. During five hours of trance she received sixteen revelations. The short version of her book, which Underhill believes is the earlier, was followed by a long version written after 1393. The long version is enriched by decades of meditation and reading. Underhill finds echoes of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck in it. She describes Julian's teaching as an all-transcending yet all-enclosing God, the Trinity with Christ as Mother, and sin as having no substance. She stresses its joyful and hopeful tone: God is "courteous, glad, and merry," and Julian condemns only sloth and doubtful dread. All that is made is "a little thing the quantity of an hazel nut."

By Evelyn Underhill · First published 1911 · Genre: Christian mysticism, Religious literature, Contemplative spirituality · 23,370 words

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I. "THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS"

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Christian mysticism · Medieval mysticism · Middle English translation · Fourteenth-century England · Thirteenth-century France · Dramatic dialogue · Spiritual freedom · Surrender of the will · Noughting · Seven estates of the soul · Union with God · Dionysian mysticism

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