parallels to this state of conflict: the ups and downs of Suso, his
alternate illumination and despair, his great self-denials balanced by
foolish little sins: the thirty years during which Teresa—already, like
Angela, regarded as a great example—swayed between her mystical vocation
and the claims of a more normal life. In Angela this inward battle
culminated, she says, “some little while before the time of the
pontificate of Celestino”—that is to say about 1294, when she was
forty-six—and endured for more than two years. In it, in addition to
bodily and mental agony, she was humiliated by recurrent temptations to
sensual indulgence. Her depression was extreme, and her intellect often
so clouded that she could not even recall the idea of God to her mind.
It was her last lesson in humility and self-knowledge—an excellent
antidote to the dangers of professional sanctity—and answered to that
terrible period of final purification which other mystics have called
the “Dark Night of the Soul.”
From this last purgation, in which all the elements of her character
seemed flung back into the melting-pot, she emerged into that condition
of spiritual equilibrium, of perfect harmony with transcendent reality,
which is known to mystic writers as the Unitive Way. “A divine change,”
she says, “took place in my soul, which neither saint nor angel could
describe or explain. Wherefore I say again that it seems to me evil
speaking or blasphemy if I try and tell of it.” Again, “I came not to
this state of my own self, but was led and drawn thereto by God; so that
though of my own self I should not have known how to desire or ask for
it, I am now in that state continually.” Though the capacity for pain
never left her, and is implied in many of her greatest revelations—for,
like all the great Catholic mystics, she found the Christian paradox of
joyous suffering at the very centre of truth—yet the last twelve years
of her life seem to have been years of profound inward peace. “He hath
placed within my soul,” she said, “a state which changes little, and I
possess God in such fullness that I am no longer in the state in which I
used to be; but I walk in such perfect peace of heart and mind that I am
content in all things.”
It was that state of which Jacopone has written:
“La guerra è terminata
de le virtú battaglia,
de la mente travaglia
cosa nulla contende.
La mente è renovata
vestita a tal entaglia,
de tal ferro è la maglia
feruta no l’offerende.”
Angela has two claims to the title of a great mystic: that of her life,
which we have briefly considered, and that of the revelations and
experiences which she reports; our chief evidence of the unique nature
of her consciousness. What then was the nature of these visions and
revelations? There are signs in her book that she ran through the whole
gamut of mystical experience. She practised, and described, all those
degrees of contemplative prayer which are analyzed by St. Teresa and St.
John of the Cross. She heard interior voices. She saw visions. She was
an ecstatic. Moreover, at least after her achievement of spiritual
equilibrium—for it would be unfair to take into account the morbid
states from which she suffered during the period of readjustment—her
ecstasies were of that rare and supernal kind which, far from being
signs of mental or nervous disease, actually renew and invigorate the
physical life of those who experience them. There is a beautiful passage
in the life of St. Catherine of Genoa in which she is described as
coming joyous and rosy-faced from the ecstatic encounter with God’s
love. So Angela says: “Because of the change in my body, therefore I was
not able to conceal my state from my companion, or from other people
with whom I consorted; because at times my face was all resplendent and
rosy, and my eyes shone like candles. When the soul is assured of God
and refreshed by His presence, the body also receives health,
satisfaction, and nobility.”
Her revelations were of two kinds. First we have a long series of
“imaginary visions”: pictures, no doubt representing deep and imageless
intuitions, resulting as it were from some communion with reality, but
taking their form—as distinct from their content—from the memory and
imagination of the visionary. Though many of these must be classed as
dreams, and some indeed were received in sleep, others were definite
experiences; seen, as she says, with the eyes of the mind, far more
clearly than anything can be seen with the eyes of the body.
Nevertheless we are bound to consider them less as objective revelations
than as vivid artistic reconstructions; symbols of something that she
has felt and known. Angela’s religious beliefs and romantic leanings are
both clearly reflected in them. Some deal with the physical accidents of
the Passion—always a favourite subject of the mediæval visionary—and
these closely resemble the series of Passion-pictures seen by Julian of
Norwich. Others are inspired by her devotion to the Eucharist. One or
two seem, like the Visions of St. Gertrude, to anticipate the later cult
of the Sacred Heart. In virtue of these visions Angela belongs to the
great family of women Catholic mystics; women possessing a rich
emotional life, and, largely by means of that emotional life,
actualizing and expressing their communion with the spiritual world.
We see this emotional character clearly in one of Angela’s most
celebrated experiences; the one of all others which seems to have set
the seal on her career as a religious teacher, and which is placed at
the beginning of her book of visions and revelations, though there was
no vision involved in it. I mean the beautiful scene in which she talked
with the Holy Ghost, walking on “the narrow road which leads upward to
Assisi, and is beyond Spello.” That sense of heavenly intimacy, of
divine communion, of a destiny pressed upon her from the spiritual
sphere, which then took possession of her consciousness, was translated
by the surface-mind of the natural Angela—whose nearest parallels to
such an experience were found amongst the emotional incidents of human
love—into the wonderful imaginary conversation in which, as she climbs
the path between the vineyards, she is wooed by the Holy Spirit, and
assured of His peculiar interest and affection. “I will bear thee
company and speak with thee all the way,” He says to her. “I will make
no end to My speaking, and thou wilt not be able to attend to anything
save Me.” “Then did He begin to speak the following words to me, which
persuaded me to love after this manner, ‘My daughter, who art sweet to
Me, My daughter who art My temple, My beloved daughter, do thou love Me,
for I love thee greatly, and much more than thou lovest Me.’ And very
often He said to me, ‘Bride and daughter! sweet art thou to Me; I love
thee better than any other in the valley of Spoleto.’ These and other
similar things did He say to me. Then when I heard these words, I
counted my sins, and I considered my faults; how that I was unworthy of
so great a love. And I began to doubt these words; for which cause, my
soul said to Him who had spoken to it, ‘If thou wert indeed the Holy
Spirit, thou wouldest not speak thus; for it is not right or proper,
because I am weak and frail and might grow vainglorious thereat.’ He
answered, ‘Think and see if thou couldst become vainglorious because of
the things for which thou art now made glad....’ Then I tried to grow
vainglorious, that I might prove if He spoke truth; and I began to look
at the vineyards, that I might learn the folly of my words. And wherever
I looked, He said to me, ‘Behold and see! this is My creation’: and at
this I felt ineffable delight.”
This is the poetry of mysticism, an artistic reduction of supernal
intuitions, and is to be interpreted in poetic terms. But there is
another, and rarer, form of spiritual perception: that imageless
intuition of pure truth, which St. Teresa and other mystics call
intellectual, but which would be better named metaphysical vision.
Angela’s real importance amongst the mystics comes from the fact that
she possessed this power in a high degree of development. In virtue of
her immediate apprehensions of transcendent reality, she belongs to the
rarest and highest type of mystic seer: a class in which Plotinus holds
perhaps the first place, and of which Ruysbroeck is the most conspicuous
mediæval example. The poetry of Jacopone da Todi shows us that he too
knew the secret of those strange astounding regions, “beyond the polar
circle of the mind,” where Angela tasted of unconditioned reality, and
the language in which he describes them often reminds us of her. It is
an interesting question, whether these two great Franciscan
contemplatives directly influenced one another, or must be regarded as
the twin stars of a school of “Seraphic wisdom” which taught the deepest
mysteries of the spiritual life.
There are eight of these great visionary experiences recorded in
Angela’s book. In them she says that she apprehended God successively
under the attributes of Goodness, Beauty, Power, Wisdom, Love, Justice;
and that after this she beheld the totality of the Godhead “darkly”—a
way of describing her perceptions which is of course traceable to the
“Divine darkness” of Dionysius the Areopagite. Finally she beheld it,
“as clearly as is possible in this life.” All these visions seem to have
come to her when she was in a state of ecstasy or trance. She speaks of
being “exalted in spirit,” “rapt to the first elevation”; lifted to
wholly new levels of consciousness. She describes them as well as she
can, yet plainly she is only able to tell us a fraction of her
experience. Over and over again she declares the hopeless inadequacy of
human speech, the impossibility of “speaking as she saw.” Her state is
like that of Dante at the end of the _Paradiso_, save that her wings
were fitted for these flights.
“I beheld the ineffable fullness of God; but I can relate nothing of it,
save that I have _seen_ the fullness of Divine Wisdom, wherein is all
goodness.” Again, “inasmuch as this was a supernatural thing, I cannot
express it in words.” “Many other things were clearly set forth to me;
but I neither can nor will relate them.” “All that I say of this, seems
to me to be nothing. I feel as though I offended in speaking of it, for
so greatly does the Good exceed all my words that my speech seems to be
but blasphemy.”
Those things, however, which she does contrive to relate, have an
astonishing suggestive quality, a great philosophic sweep, combined with
an intimate appeal to our own deepest intuitions, which place them, so
far as mystical history is concerned, on a level with some of the
greatest passages in Jacopone da Todi and in Ruysbroeck; and in my
opinion far beyond the more celebrated intellectual visions of St.
Teresa.
Thus she says, “the eyes of my soul were opened and I beheld the
plenitude of God, by which I understood the whole world both here and
beyond the sea, the abyss, and all other things. And in this I beheld
nothing save the Divine Power, in a way that is utterly indescribable,
so that through the greatness of its wonder the soul cried with a loud
voice, saying, ‘The whole world is full of God.’ Wherefore I understood
that the world is but a little thing; and I saw that the power of God
was above all things, and the whole world was filled with it.”
Here we are reminded of Julian of Norwich—“He showed me a little thing,
the quantity of an hazel nut. I looked thereon with the eye of my
understanding and thought; What may this be? and it was answered
generally thus: It is all that is made.”
“After I had seen the power of God, His will and His justice,” says
Angela, again, “I was lifted higher still; and then I no longer beheld
the power and will as before. But I beheld a _Thing_, as fixed and
stable as it was indescribable; and more than this I cannot say, save
that I have often said already, namely, that it was all good. And
although my soul beheld not love, yet when it saw that indescribable
_Thing_, it was itself filled with indescribable joy, so that it was
taken out of the state it was in before, and placed in this great and
ineffable state. I know not whether I was then in the body or out of the
body. It is enough to say that all the other visions seemed to me less
great than this.”
Again, “One time in Lent ... the eyes of my soul were opened, and I saw
Love advancing gently towards me, and I saw the beginning but not the
end. There seemed to me only a continuation and an eternity thereof, so
that I cannot tell its likeness nor colour; but directly this Love
reached me I beheld all these things more clearly with the eyes of the
soul than I could do with the eyes of the body. This Love came towards
me after the manner of a sickle. Not that there was any actual and
measurable likeness; but when first it appeared to me it did not give
itself to me in such abundance as I expected, but a part was withdrawn.
Therefore I say, after the manner of a sickle. Then I was filled with
love and a great satisfaction, but although it satisfied me, it
generated within me so great a hunger that all my members were loosened;
and my soul fainted with longing to attain to the All.”
I give one more, particularly interesting to English students because of
its parallels with our own great mystical work, _The Cloud of
Unknowing_: “There was a time when my soul was exalted to behold God
with so much clearness that never before had I beheld Him so distinctly.
But I did not here see Love so fully; rather I lost that which I had
before, and was left without love. Afterwards I saw Him darkly, and this
darkness was the greatest blessing that could be imagined, and thought
can conceive nothing equal to this.... Here likewise I see all Good....
The soul delights unspeakably therein, yet it beholds nothing that can
be spoken by the tongue or conceived by the heart. It sees nothing yet
sees all, because it beholds the Good darkly; and the more darkly and
secretly the Good is seen, the more certain it is, and excellent above
all things. Wherefore all other good that can be seen or imagined is
doubtless less than this, and even when the soul sees the Divine wisdom,
power and will of God (which I have seen marvellously at other times),
it is all less than this most certain Good. Because this is the whole,
and those other things are but part of the whole.... But seen thus
darkly, the Good brings no smile to the lips, no fervour of love to the
heart; for the body does not tremble or become moved and distressed as
at other times; because the soul sees, and not the body, which rests and
sleeps, and the tongue is dumb and speechless. All the many ineffable
kindnesses which God has shown me, all the sweet words and divine
sayings and doings, are so much less than this that I saw in the
darkness, that I put no hope in them.... But to this most high power of
beholding God ineffably through great darkness, my spirit was uplifted
three times only and no more.”
“This cloud,” says _The Cloud of Unknowing_, of that same Divine Dark,
“is evermore between thee and thy God ... therefore shape thyself to
abide in this darkness so long as thou mayest, evermore crying after Him
whom thou lovest, for if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him (in such
sort as He may be seen or felt in this life) it behoveth always to be in
this cloud or darkness.” So Angela: “When I behold and am in that Good,
although I seem to see nothing yet I see all things.” In this
achievement she reaches the goal of the mystic experience, the ecstatic
communion with the Absolute One.
I have called her a Franciscan mystic. If by Franciscan mysticism we
mean that exquisite sense of the Divine immanence in nature, that poetic
temperament, that peculiar and elusive charm, which we associate with
St. Francis himself; then, perhaps, there seems little that is
characteristically Franciscan in Angela. But if, looking past the
special character of the Founder, we try to seize the essence of that
secret he was seeking to impart, then, allowing for the inevitable
development which any idea undergoes when it enters the world of change,
we may regard her as a typical Franciscan of the second generation. She
was indeed conditioned at all points by the Franciscan environment in
which her religious life developed; that ardent society of “Spirituals,”
mostly recruited from the devout laity, which sprang up in her time in
the Italian cities. This society, with its advanced contemplative
tradition, its demand for a close imitation of Christ, was a
forcing-house of the mystical life. Angela shows her close connection
with it in the character of her penitence, in her passionate devotion to
the Cross and Passion, and also in the metaphysical quality of her
greatest mystical apprehensions. These three outstanding
characteristics, corresponding in a general sense to the three great
phases of the mystical life, are again seen in the poetry in which her
contemporary Jacopone discloses to us the stages of anguished contrition
and of uncontrolled fervour through which he moved to the heights of
union with God. These two great converts and initiates of love
illuminate and explain one another: for in them we see an identical
tradition of the spiritual life interpreted by different temperaments.
For each the Way is an education in love, and Jacopone speaks for both
of them when he says of it:
“Distinguese l’amore en terzo stato:
bono, meglio, sommo, sublimato;
lo sommo sí vole essere amato
senza compagnia.”
III
JULIAN OF NORWICH.
All that we know directly of Julian of Norwich—the most attractive, if
not the greatest of the English mystics—comes to us from her book, _The
Revelations of Divine Love_, in which she has set down her spiritual
experiences and meditations. Like her contemporaries, Walter Hilton and
the author of _The Cloud of Unknowing_, she lives only in her vision and
her thought. Her external circumstances are almost unknown to us, but
some of these can be recovered, or at least deduced, from the study of
contemporary history and art; a source of information too often
neglected by those who specialize in religious literature, yet without
which that literature can never wholly be understood.
Julian, who was born about 1342, in the reign of Edward III, grew up
among the surroundings and influences natural to a deeply religious East
Anglian gentlewoman at the close of the Middle Ages. Though she speaks
of herself as “unlettered,” which perhaps means unable to write, she
certainly received considerable education, including some Latin, before
her _Revelations_ were composed. Her known connection with the
Benedictine convent of Carrow, near Norwich, in whose gift was the
anchorage to which she retired, suggests that she may have been educated
by the nuns; and perhaps made her first religious profession at this
house, which was in her time the principal “young ladies’ school” of the
Norwich diocese, and a favourite retreat of those adopting the religious
life. During her most impressionable years she must have seen in their
freshness some of the greatest creations of Gothic art, for in Norfolk
both architecture and painting had been carried to the highest pitch of
excellence by the beginning of the fourteenth century. The great East
Anglian school of miniature painting had already produced its
masterpieces and was in its decadence. But if we look at these
masterpieces—the wonderful manuscripts illuminated at Gorleston near
Yarmouth, and other religious houses of the district—and remember that
these are merely the surviving examples of an art which decorated the
walls of the churches as richly as the pages of its service-books, we
begin to realize the sort of iconography, the view of the Christian
landscape, from which Julian’s mental furniture was derived. Some of the
best of these manuscripts are in the British Museum; and those who wish
to understand the atmosphere in which the mediæval mystics flourished
would do well to study Julian’s _Revelations_ in their light. There they
will find expressed in design that mixture of gaiety and awe, that
balanced understanding of the natural and the divine, which is one of
her strong characteristics. She, like these artists, can afford to
wreathe her images of supernatural mysteries in homely details drawn
from the common life. Moreover, the more pictorial her revelations
become, the more closely they approximate to the pictures in the
psalters and Books of Hours of her time. From this source came her
detailed visions of incidents in the Passion—the blood that she saw
running down under the garland of thorns, the dried, discoloured body,
the gaping wounds, and “rueful and wasted” face of Christ—and those of
the Blessed Virgin as a “little maiden,” as “Mater Dolorosa,” and as the
crowned Queen of Heaven. All these were common subjects with the
miniature artists and wall painters of the time, and the form which they
took in Julian’s revelations must be attributed to a large extent to
unconscious memory of those artists’ works.
Another more inward aspect of contemporary religion has also affected
her: the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus. This beautiful devotion was
specially characteristic of English personal religion in the late Middle
Ages, and is strongly marked in the writings of the mystics; especially
Hilton and Rolle. The great popularity in England of the hymn _Jesu
Dulcis Memoria_, and the many vernacular imitations of it current in
Julian’s day, helped in the spread of this cult; with which was
associated that intense and highly emotional preoccupation with the
physical accidents of the Passion so constantly reflected in her
visionary experience. “O good Jesu!” cried Rolle, “my heart thou hast
bound in love of Thy Name and now I cannot but sing it”; and he spoke
not for himself only but for all the best religious lyrists of the early
fourteenth century, whose characteristic mood was that of personal,
intimate, and sorrowing love of Jesus.
“Sweet Jesu, now will I sing
To thee, a song of love longing.
Teach me, Lord, thy love song
With sweet tears ever among.”
Thus, one of these Middle English poets could write:
“Jesu, well owe I to love thee
For that me showed the roodë tree,
The crown of thorns, the nailës three,
The sharp spear that through-stong thee,
Jesu of love is sooth tokening
Thy head down-bowed to love-kissing,
Thine arms spread to love-clipping,
Thy side all open to love-showing.”
Of such poetry as this—with which she was probably familiar—Julian often
reminds us; and sometimes her parallels with it are close. Thus she says
in her tenth Revelation: “Then with a glad cheer our Lord looked into
his side, and beheld rejoicing. With his sweet looking he led forth the
understanding of his creature by the same wound into his side within.
And then he showed a fair delectable place and large enough for all
mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and in love.... And with
this our good Lord said full blissfully: Lo! how that I loved thee.” In
such passages as this, in her highly visualized meditations on the Crown
of Thorns and the Precious Blood, and in such phrases as “I liked none
other heaven than Jesus, who shall be my bliss when I am there,” and
other ardent expressions of religious love, she is speaking the common
devotional language and using the common devotional imagery of her own
day. Hence those merely visionary experiences with which her book opens
and which form by far the least important part of it, can be accounted
for as the result of unconscious memory, weaving new vivid pictures from
the current religious and artistic conceptions in which she had been
reared. A correspondence has indeed been detected between the order of
these fifteen “showings,” and the fifteen prayers on the Passion known
as the “XV Os,” which occur in the _Sarum Horæ_. They are, in fact,
dreams of which any devout and imaginative person of that time was
capable; and need not be taken too seriously when estimating the
character of Julian’s mysticism.