and all the most beautiful passages are given to her. Reason’s rôle is
interrogatory. He catechises Love sharply though respectfully, and
represents the invariable attitude of common sense confronted by the
claims of mysticism. Sometimes he goes too far; Love or the Soul is
driven to put him in his place. “Oh, understanding of Reason!” says this
soul noughted, “what thou hast of rudeness! Thou takest the shell or the
chaff and leavest the kernel or the grain. Thine understanding is so
low, that thou mayst not so highly reach as them behoves that well would
have understanding of the Being that we speak of.” In general, however,
the figure of Reason is used with great art to elucidate the hard
sayings of Love. The alert intelligence of the writer notes all possible
objections to his doctrine, and states and refutes them out of the
mouths of his characters. “O Lady Love, what is this that you say?” says
the shocked voice of Reason whenever the argument becomes paradoxical or
abstruse. “Reason,” says Love to this, “I will answer for the profit of
them for whom thou makest to us this piteous request. Reason,” says
Love, “where be these double words that thou prayest me to discuss ...
it is well asked, and I will,” says Love, “answer thee to all thy
asking.”
What, then, is the doctrine which these discussions put before us? It is
the doctrine of the soul’s possible ascent from illusion to reality,
from separateness to union with the Divine: the primal creed of all
mysticism, here stated in its most extreme form, and pressed to its
logical conclusion. It offers, not a chart of the way to a distant
heaven of beatitude and recompense, but initiation into that state of
being wherein we find our heaven here and now. “I took Jesus for my
heaven,” said Julian of Norwich. So the writer of the _Mirror_:
“Paradise is no other thing than God Himself ... why was the thief in
Paradise anon as the soul was departed from his body?... He saw God,
that is Paradise; for other thing is not Paradise than to see God. And
this doth she [the soul] in sooth at all times that she is uncumbered of
herself.” The super-essential and unknowable Godhead, whose nature is
but partially revealed in the Blessed Trinity, is the only substance of
reality, and the only satisfaction of the soul’s desire. “Though this
soul had all the knowledge, love and learning that ever was given, or
shall be given, of the Divine Trinity, it should be naught as in regard
of that that she loves and shall love ... for there is no other God but
He that none may know, which may not be known.” The history of human
transcendence is the history of the soul’s transmutation to that
condition of love in which it is, as the author is not afraid to say,
deified; and so merged in the Reality from which it came forth, that it
is no longer aware of its own separate experience but is “all one spirit
with its Spouse.”
“I am God,” says Love, “for Love is God and God is Love. And this soul
is God by condition of love, and I am God by nature divine. And this is
hers by right-wiseness of love. So that this Precious, loved of me, is
learned and led by me out of herself, for she is turned to me, in me.”
This process is set forth by the writer of the _Mirror_ under three
chief heads: those of Liberty as the aim, the Will as the agent, and
Surrender as the method of the spiritual quest.
In the conception of Liberty as the supreme aim of the spiritual life we
have what is perhaps the most original feature of his work: though it is
a conception which is of course implicit in the New Testament. Where
most contemplatives lay emphasis on the glad servitude of love, and use
the symbols of wedlock to express the willing subjugation of the soul to
its Divine Bridegroom, the key of this book is the idea of spiritual
freedom; and that freedom as consisting in the liberation of man’s will
from finite desires that it may rejoin and lose itself within the Will
of the Infinite. We are to learn, it says in the first chapter,
something of “the pure love, of the noble love, and of the high love of
the _free_ soul; and how the Holy Ghost has His sail in his ship.” With
our “inward subtle understanding”—that spiritual intuition which is the
instrument of all real knowledge—we are to follow its progress from the
bondage of desire to the point at which, purged of self-will, perfected
in meekness and love, “noughted and abased,” it reaches the “Seventh
Estate of Grace,” and participates in the perfect liberty of Pure Being,
wherein “the soul has fulhead of perception by divine fruition in life
of peace.” “Not-willing” is the secret of liberation, and lord of our
true life. “And this not-willing sows in souls the Divine Seed,
fulfilled of the divine will of God. This seed may never fail, but few
souls dispose them to receive this seed.” Though this emancipation is
only attained by the utter surrender of all personal desire and
achievement, yet throughout the book the dominant note is of glad
liberation, of flying, of a rapturous ascent. As we read, we seem to
hear from every page “the thunder of new wings.” The free soul is
“six-winged like the seraphim.” She is “the eagle that flies high: so
right high and yet more high than does any other bird; for she is
feathered with fine love, and she beholds above other the beauty of the
sun, and the beams and the brightness of the sun. Dame Nature,” says
she, “I take leave of you: Love is me nigh, that holds me free of him
against all without dread. Then,” says Love, “she afraies her nought for
tribulation, nor stints for consolation.”
It is clear to the writer that only certain persons are capable of this
complete freedom in love: and it is to them—the natural mystics, the
people with a genius for reality—that his book is addressed. They are
“of that lineage that be folks royal,” “called without fail of the
Divine goodness,” and it is on their spiritual intuition, their
transcendent knowledge, that “all Holy Church is founded”; a suspicious
statement in the eyes of orthodox theology. They possess, or are able to
possess, the incommunicable gift of spiritual vision.
“This gift is given,” says Love, “sometimes in a moment of time. Who
that has it, keep it: for it is the most perfect gift that God gives to
creature.” So removed is the resulting perception of reality from human
wisdom that no one can teach the illuminated soul anything. “Now for
God,” says Reason, “Lady Love, say what is this to say? This is to say,”
says Love, “that this soul is of so great knowing that though she had
all the knowing of all creatures that ever were, be or shall be, she
would think it naught in regard of that that she loves.” Yet, true to
Neoplatonic principles, she is aware that her highest perceptions are
nothing, and her “right great and high words” but “gabbynge” or idle
talk, compared with the ineffable reality. She “wots all and wots
naught,” and is content it should be so. “He only is my God that none
can one word of say, nor all they of Paradise one only point attain nor
understand, for all the knowing that they have of Him.”
But though the Transcendent God is unknowable, the free soul, in
singular contradiction to contemporary asceticism, finds Him everywhere
immanent in the world. “And for this, that He is all in all, this soul,
says Love, finds Him over all. So that for this all things are to this
soul covetable, for she nor finds anything but she finds God.” So
Meister Eckhart: “To it all creatures are pure to enjoy; for it enjoyeth
all creatures in God and God in all creatures.”
The preliminary discipline of the mystic, the hard acquirement of that
“very charity” which is “the perfection of virtues” and “dwelleth always
in God’s sight ... obeying to nothing that is made but to love” is
little dwelt on by the author of the _Mirror_; who did not write for
beginners in the contemplative life, but for the mature soul whose love
has made him free, and who therefore needs “nor masses nor sermons nor
fasting nor orisons, and gives to nature all that he asks, without
grudging of conscience”—a practical application of St. Augustine’s
dangerous saying, “Love, and do what you like.” M.N., however,
interpolates a prudent reminder that “by this way and by sharp
contricion souls must go, or than they come to these divine usages.”
The author’s own instructions are really reducible to one point: the
complete and loving surrender of the individual will to the Primal
Will—detachment, or, as he calls it, the “noughting” of the soul. This
is that “peace of charity in life noughted,” which constitutes the
higher life of love; in contrast to the active life of virtue,
struggling to keep unbroken its attitude of charity to God and man. In
it the soul dwells, as do the Seraphim, within the divine atmosphere,
and has direct access to the sources of its life. “This is the proper
being of Seraphim: there is nought mediate between their love and the
Divine Love; they have always its tidings without means. So hath this
soul, that seeks not the divine science amongst the masters of the
world, but the world and herself inwardly despises. Ah, God! what great
difference it is between a gift given by means, of the Loved to the
Lover, and the gift given without means of the Loved to the Lover. This
book says sooth of this soul. It says she hath six wings as have the
Seraphim. With two she covers the face of our Lord: that is to say, the
more knowledge this soul hath of the Divine Goodness the more she knows
that she knows not the amount of a mote as in regard to His Goodness,
the which is not comprehended but of Himself. And with two she covers
His feet: this is to say, the more that this soul hath knowledge of the
sufferance that Jesu Christ suffered for us, the more perfectly she
knows that she knows naught, as in regard of it that He suffered for us,
the which is not known but of Him. And with two she flies, and so dwells
in standing and sitting: this is to say, that all she covets and loves
and prizes, it is the Divine Goodness. These be the wings that she flies
with, and so dwells in standing, for she is alway in the sight of God:
and sitting, for she dwells alway in the Divine Will. Whereof should
this soul have dread, though she be in the world? An the world, the
flesh, and our Enemy the Fiend, and the four elements, the birds of the
air and the beasts of the field, tormented her and despised her and
devoured her if it might so be, what might she lose if God dwelled with
her? Oh, is he not Almightiful? Yea, without doubt: He is all might, all
wisdom and all goodness, our Father and Brother and our true Friend.”
“This soul,” says Love, “can no more speak of God; for she is noughted
to all outward desires, and of all the affections of the spirit. So that
what this soul does, she does it by usage of good custom, and by
commandment of Holy Church, without any desire: for will is dead, that
gave her desire.... Who that asks these free souls, sure and peaceful,
if they would be in purgatory, they say nay. If they would living be
certified of their salvation, they say nay. Eh, what would they? They
have nothing of will, this for to will; and if they willed, they should
descend from Love: for He it is that hath their will.... Thus departs
the soul from her will and the will departs from this soul, so she again
puts it and gives and yields it in God where it was first.” Such a
doctrine easily slides into the complete passivity or “holy
indifference” which was the ideal of the seventeenth century Quietists:
and the _Mirror_ certainly does contain passages which, if taken alone,
would convict their author of a fondness for this heresy. “I certify
thee that these souls that fine love leads, they have as lief shame as
worship, and worship as shame; and poverty as riches and riches as
poverty; and torments of God and of His creatures as comforts of God and
of His creatures; and to be hated as loved, and loved as hated; and hell
as paradise and paradise as hell ... the free soul has no will to will
or unwill, but only to will the will of God and suffer in peace His
divine ordinance.”
Nevertheless, other passages make it clear that active surrender, not
mere passivity is the aim, and that the “noughting” of the self within
the All is a loving sacrifice, consistent with its achievement of
completest happiness. “True love has but only one intent; and that is,
that she might alway love truly, for of the love of her Lover has she no
doubt, that He does what best is. And she follows this: that she does
that that she ought to do. And she wills nought but one thing; and that
is, that the Will of God be alway in her done.... This soul,” says Love,
“swims in the sea of joy, that is, in the sea of delights, streaming of
divine influences. She feels no joy, for she herself is joy. She swims
and drenches in joy, for she lives in joy without feeling any joy. So is
joy in her, that she herself is joy, by the virtue of joy that has
merged her in Him. And so is the will of the Loved and the will of this
soul turned into one as fire and flame.”
The teaching of the writer seems to be, that so long as the will is
consciously active and desirous—however good its actions or desires—its
owner cannot be liberated from the illusions and anxieties of the
personal life. What he needs, if he did but know it, is reunion with
that fontal life from which he came, to which he is perpetually drawn by
love. Here his separate will finds its meaning, and is not annihilated
but absorbed. “The understanding, that gives light, shows to the soul
the thing that she loves. And the soul that receives by light of
understanding the nighing and the knitting by accord of union in
plenteous love, sees the Being, where that she holds to have her seat;
receiving gladly the light of knowing that brings her tidings of love.
And then she would become so, that she had but one will and love; and
that is, the only will of Him that she loves.”
The detached soul who is thus “noughted in God” enjoys a freedom from
stress, an immunity from disappointment incredible to those who still
live the individual life. “Now shall I say to you what they be that sit
in the mountain above the wind and the rain? These be they that have in
earth neither shame nor worship, nor dread of anything that befalls.”
She has, moreover, passed beyond that moral conflict which arises from
the discord between conscience and desire, and is the essential
character of the active life; for she has within her “the Master of
Virtues, that is called Divine Love, that has her merged in them all and
to Him united.” Thus she is able to say, “Virtues, I take leave of you
for evermore. Now shall my heart be more free and more in peace than it
has been. Forsooth, I wot well your service is too travaillous. Sometime
I laid my heart in you without any dissevering: ye wot well this. I was
in all thing to you obedient. O, I was then your servant: but now I am
delivered out of your thralldom.”
M.N. is quick to gloss this dangerous declaration: “I am stirred here to
say more to the matter ... when a soul gives her to perfection, she
labours busily day and night to get virtues by counsel of reason, and
strives with vices at every point, at every word and deed ... thus the
virtues be mistresses and every virtue makes her to war with her
contrary.... But so long one may bite on the bitter bark of the nut that
at last he shall come to the sweet kernel. Right so, ghostly to
understand, it fares with these souls that be come to peacefulness. They
have so long striven with vices and wrought by virtues that they be come
to the nut’s kernel, that is to say, to the love of God, which is
sweetness. And when the soul has deeply tasted this love ... then is she
mistress and lady over the virtues, for she has them all within herself
... and then this soul takes leave of virtues, as of thralldom and
painful travail ... and now she is lady and sovereign and they be
subjects.”
In the technical language of mysticism she has passed from the active to
the contemplative life, the crucial phase in the evolution of man’s
transcendental consciousness. This evolution is described for us with
great psychological exactness in the _Mirror_, under the traditional
formula of the “States” of the soul’s ascent. Since few mystics have
escaped the mania for significant numbers, one is not surprised to find
seven steps on this “steep stairway of love.” “I am called,” says this
soul, “of the touchings of Love, something to say of the Seven Estates
that we call beings: for so it is. And these be the degrees by which man
climbs from the valley, to the top of the mountain that is so several
[apart] that it sees but God.”
“The First Estate is, That a soul is touched of God by grace and
dissevered from sin: and, as to her power, in intention to keep the
commandments of God.” This is, of course, equivalent to the conversion
or change of heart which begins the spiritual life.
“The Second is, that a soul hold what God counsels to His special
lovers, passing that what he commands. And he is no good lover that
demenes him not to fulfill all that the which he wist might best please
to his Beloved.
“The Third is, that a soul holds the affection of love of works of
perfection, by which her spirit is ripened by desires: taking the love
of these works to multiply in her. And what does the subtlety of her
thought, but makes it seem to the understanding of her humble affection,
that she cannot make offering to her Love that might comfort her, but of
thing that He loves: for other gift is not prized in love.
“The Fourth is that a soul is drawn by highness of love into delight of
thought by meditation, and relinquishes all labours outward, and
obedience to others, by highness of love in contemplation. Then the soul
is dangerous, noble and delicious: in which she may not suffer that
anything her touch but the touchings of pure delight of love, in the
which she is singularly gladsome and jolly. What marvel is it if this
soul be upheld and updrawed thus graciously? Love makes her all drunken,
that suffers her not to attend but to Him.” These four stages have
brought the self to the complete practice of the contemplative life, and
prepared the way for that second great phase in the achievement of
reality which consists in the surrender of the separate will.
“The Fifth is, that a soul beholds what God is, and His Goodness, by
Divine Light. She sees the Will, by the spreading illumination of Divine
Light, the which light gives her the will again to put in God this will;
which she may not without this light yield, that may not her profit
unless she departs from her own will. Thus departs the soul from her
will, and the will departs from this soul, so she again puts it and
gives and yields it in God, where it was first.
“Now is this soul fallen of love into nought, without the which nought,
she may not all be. The which falling is so perfectly fallen, if she be
fallen aright, that the soul may not arise out of this deepness, nor she
ought not to do it. Within she ought to dwell. And then leaves the soul
pride and play, for the spirit has become bitter, that suffers her no
more to be playing nor jolly; for the spirit is departed from her that
made her oft love in the highness of contemplation, and in the fourth
estate fierce and dangerous.” Here the spirit of the mystic experiences
that terrible and characteristic reaction from the exalted joys of
contemplation which is sometimes called the “mystic death” or “dark
night of the soul,” and destroys in it the last roots of selfhood. In
this stage she completes the abandonment or “self-noughting” which
initiate her into that which the German mystics called “the Upper School
of the Holy Spirit.” Thence she passes to the Sixth Estate, of union
with the Divine life, in so far as it can be achieved by those still in
the flesh. The Seventh is that indescribable state of “glory” or
super-essential life, which constitutes the beatific vision of the
Saints, known only of those that “be fallen of love into this being.”
“The Sixth is, that a soul sees neither her nought by deepness of
meekness, nor God by highful bounty. But God sees it in her of His
Divine Majesty that illuminated her of Him. So that she sees that none
is, but God Himself. And then is a soul in the Sixth Estate of all
things made free, pure and illuminated. Not glorified, for gloryfying is
in the Seventh Estate, that we shall have in glory that none can speak
of. But, pure and clarified, she sees nor God nor herself: but God sees
this of Him, in her, for her, withouten her, that shows her that there
is none but He. Nay, she knows but Him, nor she loves but Him, nor she
praises but Him, for there is but He. And the Seventh keeps He within
Him, for to give us in everlasting glory. If we wit it not now, we shall
wit it when the body our soul leaves.”
II
THE BLESSED ANGELA OF FOLIGNO
It is a curious fact that in the modern revival of interest in the
Franciscan movement, little attention has been paid to the life and
works of Angela of Foligno. Yet, excepting only St. Bonaventura, this
woman has probably exerted a more enduring, more far-reaching influence
than any other Franciscan of the century which followed the Founder’s
death. In saying this, I do not forget the claims of such great
Franciscans as John of Parma or Jacopone da Todi, nor yet of St. Clare,
the Founder of the Second Order. But the influence of John of Parma was
comparatively short-lived; and that of Jacopone’s superb poetry, though
great in Italy, did not go beyond it. His ecstasies could not be
translated into other tongues. As to St. Clare, with whom the feminine
aspect of the Franciscan ideal first showed itself, her vocation was to
the foundation of a contemplative order, which should support by its
heavenly correspondences the active and missionary life of the
Franciscan friars. The business of the Second Order is the essential
woman’s business, of keeping the fire of love alight upon the hearth.
Its influence, therefore, was and is almost entirely confined within the
boundaries of the spiritual family. The deepest wells of Franciscan
mysticism are there hidden, and must always be hidden, from the outer
world.
But the vocation of Angela of Foligno was, in a sense, more thoroughly
Franciscan than this, more broadly human, more complete. Like that of
St. Catherine of Genoa, a mystic whom she resembles in certain respects,
it was a twofold vocation: to the eternal and to the temporal, to the
divine and to the human. She was a great contemplative, but she was also
an exceedingly successful teacher of the secrets of the spiritual life:
one of the great line of artist-mediators between the infinite and the
human mind.
We know nothing of St. Clare’s mystical experience. We know of Angela’s
all that she was able to express; and she tried hard, though for want of
language she confesses that she often failed. This passionate, faulty,
very human woman, who came to the Mystic Way from a disorderly life, and
was hampered by a natural egotism which she transmuted, it is true, but
never perhaps really killed, has earned the great title of “Mistress of
Theologians.” She penetrated to that world of realities which the
diagrams of theology, like the temple built with hands, foreshadow upon
earth. Her book of visions and revelations, now so little read,
profoundly affected the religious life of Europe. During the sixteenth
and the seventeenth century we often come upon its traces in England and
in France, as well as in Italy itself; for in this period it was one of
the most widely circulated religious works. It exerted great influence
on St. Francis de Sales, and also upon the French Quietists. It is
quoted as an authority by Madame Guyon, Poiret, and Malaval; and through
the great English Benedictine, Augustine Baker, and his pupil, Gertrude
More, it has left its mark on the English Catholic mysticism of the
seventeenth century.
This book is practically our only trustworthy source for the facts of
Angela’s inner and outer life. It was written in Latin, at her
dictation, by her Franciscan confessor Fra Arnaldo; at some date
subsequent to 1294, since it dates a past event by the pontificate of
Celestine V. It was not printed till the sixteenth century, when first
an Italian translation, and then the Latin text appeared. Both soon
became popular; the translation being one of the first Italian books of
devotion to appear in the vulgar tongue. It is divided into three parts,
which must be read in relation with one another. First we have the
history of Angela’s conversion, penitence, and slow, difficult education
in the mystic way: a detailed psychological document of much interest.
Secondly we have, grouped together, all the visions and revelations
which she received in that way. Unfortunately Fra Arnaldo has seen fit
to arrange these according to their subjects, and not according to the
order in which they were experienced; thereby increasing their edifying
character at the expense of their scientific worth. Last comes “the
evangelical doctrine of the Blessed Angela”; a treatise largely made up
of letters addressed to her disciples, but, like the writings of St.
Teresa, full of illuminating autobiographical touches.