Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/140

 primordial causes is eternally created. This is the Word or Son of God, in whom all things exist, so far as they have substantial existence. All existence is a theophany, and as God is the beginning of all things, so also is He the end. Erigena teaches the restitution of all things under the form of the Dionysian adunatio or deificatio. These are the permanent outlines of what may be called the philosophy of mysticism in Christian times, and it is remarkable with how little variation they are repeated from age to age.

In Erigena mysticism has not yet separated itself in any way from the dogma of the Church. There is no revulsion, as later, from dogma as such, nor is more stress laid upon one dogma than upon another; all are treated upon the same footing, and the whole dogmatic system is held, as it were, in solution by the philosophic medium in which it is presented. No distinction is drawn, indeed, between what is reached by reason and what is given by authority; the two are immediately identical for Erigena. In this he agrees with the speculative mystics everywhere, and differentiates himself from the scholastics who followed him. The distinguishing characteristic of scholasticism is the acceptance by reason of a given matter, the truth of which is independent of rational grounds, and which remains a presupposition even when it cannot be understood. Scholasticism aims, it is true, in its chief representatives, at demonstrating that the content of revelation and the teaching of reason are identical. But what was matter of immanent assumption with Erigena is in them an equating of two things which have been dealt with on the hypothesis that they are separate, and which, therefore, still retain that external relation to one another. This externality of religious truth to the mind is fundamental in scholasticism, while the opposite view is equally fundamental in mysticism. Mysticism is not the voluntary demission of reason and its subjection to an external authority. In that case, all who accept a revelation without professing to understand its content would require to be ranked as mystics; the fierce sincerity of Tertullian’s credo quia absurdum, Pascal’s reconciliation of contradictions in Jesus Christ, and Bayle’s half-sneering subordination of reason to faith would all be marks of this standpoint. But such a temper of mind is much more akin to scepticism than to mysticism; it is characteristic of those who either do not feel the need of philosophizing their beliefs, or who have failed in doing so and take refuge in sheer acceptance. Mysticism, on the other hand, is marked on its speculative side by even an overweening confidence in human reason. Nor need this be wondered at if we consider that the unity of the human mind with the divine is its underlying presupposition. Hence where reason is discarded by the mystic it is merely reason overleaping itself; it occurs at the end and not at the beginning of his speculations. Even then there is no appeal to authority; nothing is accepted from without. The appeal is still to the individual, who, if not by reason then by some higher faculty, claims to realize absolute truth and to taste absolute blessedness.

Mysticism first appears in the medieval Church as the protest of practical religion against the predominance of the dialectical spirit. It is so with Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who condemns Abelard’s distinctions and reasonings as externalizing and degrading the faith. St Bernard’s mysticism 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 resulted 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 because God has loved us.

“To lose thyself in some sort, as if thou wert not, and to have no consciousness of thyself at all—to be emptied of thyself and almost annihilated—such is heavenly conversation} So to be affected is to become God.” “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 another form, another glory, another power” (De diligendo Deo, c. 10). These are the favourite similes of mysticism, wherever it is found.

Mysticism was more systematically developed by Bernard’s contemporary Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141). The Augustinian 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 centuries that followed. Hugh’s pupil, Richard of St Victor, declares, 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 precede it. Walter, the third of the Victorines, carried on the polemic against the dialecticians. 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 ) 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. Fully a century later, when the system of scholasticism was gradually breaking up under the predominance of Occam’s nominalism, Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1425), and his more famous scholar John Gerson (1363–1429), chancellor of the university of Paris, are found endeavouring to combine the doctrines of the Victorines and Bonaventura with a nominalistic philosophy. They are the last representatives of mysticism within the limitations imposed by scholasticism.

From the 12th and 13th centuries onward there is observable in the different countries of Europe a widespread reaction against the growing formalism and worldliness 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.

Thus there arose in the Netherlands the Beguines and Beghards, in Italy the Waldenses (without, however, any mystical leaning), in the south of France and elsewhere the numerous sect or sects of the Cathari, and in Calabria the apocalyptic gospel of Joachim of Floris, all bearing witness to the commotion of the time. The lay societies of the Beghards and the Beguines (for men and women respectively) date from the end of the 12th century, and soon became extremely popular both in the Low Countries and on the Rhine. They were free at the outset from any heretical taint, but were never much in favour with the Church. In the beginning of the 13th century the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders furnished a more 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, in connexion either with the Beguines or the Church organization, 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 contemporary of St Bernard) and Elizabeth of Schönau. In the 13th century