Ghostly GladnessThe Soul Music of Richard Rolle, Fourteenth Century Mystic
I. MEDIEVAL SPIRITUALITY
To appreciate the aims and achievements of Richard Rolle, the first and most influential of the great fourteenth-century English mystics, it is necessary beforehand to consider the spiritual temper of the age. The fourteenth century was a time of important transition in Western Christianity, a time when the faithful yearned to broaden and deepen their sense of God’s presence. The age of scholasticism had already reached its peak development in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), and though it was still the predominant force in theology it was beginning to decline. Monasticism and mysticism were on the ascendant, and a growing evangelical impulse characterized by the mendicant orders, particularly the Franciscans, was striving for a spiritual renewal, a reaffirmation of the values of love, humility, and simple faith preached in the Gospels. In England, the fourteenth century marked an unprecedented period of devotion to the eremetical life and a flowering of mysticism never equaled by English spiritualism before or since.
A. ScholasticismThe rediscovery of classical philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries prompted a complete shift in the development of Roman Catholic theology. Whereas before authority and tradition had been almost the sole pillars of doctrine, now Aristotelian logic was becoming the foundation upon which the schoolmen constructed their faith. Scholasticism was more than a new mode of thought; it also transformed the content of Christian orthodoxy, making Church doctrine more systematic, with less emphasis on the mysteries of revealed Truth. This new dialectic method of theological investigation flourished in the atmosphere created by the new universities: Paris, Milan, Bologna, Oxford, and many others throughout Europe. The universities, in fact, soon superseded the monasteries as intellectual centers. Students enjoyed the relative freedom to question and discuss the articles of Christian faith; any speculation, any assertion could be put to the litmus of logic and human reason. The age of scholasticism was characterized by the abstract nature of its controversies: whether the “active&edquo; life or the “contemplative” is more pleasing to God; which of the “two swords” — Church or State — was superior; what was the nature of the immaculate Conception of Jesus. One of the main disputes surrounded the question of being. Aquinas and his followers, inspired by Plato, held that the generic terms known as Universals — truth, beauty, goodness, and so forth — were more real than any particular expression of these ideals; hence they were called the Realists. The Nominalists, on the other hand, claimed that these Universals were simply names, abstractions, having no existence apart from the sensory experience of particulars. This ontological split was to prove an important factor in the mystical surge of the fourteenth century. Jean Leclercq has argued that theology lost sight of its spiritual mission when it became a “science” in the schools:
B. Christian MysticismMysticism has always been part of the Christian tradition, and to many minds it became particularly attractive when the speculative systems devised by the scholastics began to appear morally irrelevant and spiritually arid. What exactly is mysticism? In medieval times the mystical experience was called “contemplation,” meaning the direct and immediate experience of the presence of God, and moreover a union of the soul with that presence, infusing the contemplative with the highest and most unerring spiritual knowledge. Dionysius the Areopagite, an influential fifth-century mystic, wrote of “the secret knowledge or perception of God in contemplation.” In his Confessions St. Augustine claimed, “My mind in the flash of a trembling glance came to Absolute Being.” In the last century William James’s classic study of mysticism, The Varieties of Religious Experience, brought him to three conclusions: first, that the experience of contemplation in absolutely authoritative to the subject; second, that the ineffable nature of contemplation is such that it is virtually impossible for the mystic to communicate with others his impression of its authority; and finally, that the mystic cannot in fact reconcile contemplation with his own “rationalistic states,” but must accept it as a different kind of mental “function,” wholly different from but perhaps more real than his previous notions of God, the world, or himself. Christian doctrine holds that God is at once transcendent and immanent; He is transcendent insofar as He is the creator and all else is his creation; yet He is immanent in all things, their living essence without which nothing could exist. Dom David Knowles has pointed out that while “this is true of all creation, ” it is “eminently true of the spiritual world of soul.” Knowles goes on to cite scriptural passages which Christian authorities have taken as Jesus’s promise of the possibility of divine contemplation:
Mystics through the centuries have insisted that there can be no higher way to serve God than in contemplation. By the time of the Middle Ages, a traditional discipline had developed to shepherd the soul towards union with God. Although the mystical experience by its very nature is a gift of God’s grace and may be given by Him to anyone, regardless of his spiritual condition (witness the conversion of Paul), or lack of training (witness the ecstasies of Catherine of Siena), nevertheless the would-be contemplative normally had to surrender himself to a three-stage process. First, Purgation is necessary to cleanse the soul of sin and open it to God’s love. Purgation demands not only penitence in its three steps (contrition, confession, and satisfaction), but also the complete renunciation of all worldly joys in favor of the joy of prayer. The second stage, Illumination, is solely the gift of God and cannot be “earned,” only prepared for. It is a foretaste of contemplation, a brief glimpse of the divine presence, which makes the soul burn with the desire to root out all sin, all worldly satisfactions, and all sense of selfhood. An illuminated soul is said to yearn continually for the consummating third stage, Perfection (or Union), in which the soul has mastered all hindrances and glories in its total accordance with the divine will; spiritual union with God is completely; the soul has returned to its source at last.
C. Spirituality in Medieval EnglandChristianity in fourteenth-century England comprised to an eminent degree both of the paths to knowledge described above, scholasticism and mysticism. The chief opponent of Aquinas was a Scotsman teaching at Oxford, Duns Scotus. Whereas Aquinas and his followers — the Realists — had erected a marvelous system of theology, science, faith, and philosophy, all bound together by elaborate logical proofs and subtleties of definition, Duns — a Nominalist — had insisted that this system was all too abstract, that reality was simply a product of the will of God, to which each Christian must submit his own will. William of Ockham carried on this teaching when Duns died in 1308. According to Knowles, a principle consequence of Ockham’s message was “to discredit the claims of the human reason to make pronouncements upon the nature of God or the human soul, and to remove all limits to the absolute freedom of the divine will.” It probably was not Ockham’s aim to undermine scholasticism, since he too used its methods and enjoyed its freedoms, but he had, in effect, given scholastic justification to what Frances M. Comper calls
it is only natural that some students would hear in this the imperative to seek out Truth in their own ways, because if Ockham was right, then scholasticism — not only as a system but particularly as a method of inquiry — had reached the end of its tether. Another important aspect of scholarly life at oxford in the fourteenth century was the pervasive influence of the new evangelistic orders, especially the Franciscans. Ockham himself was an ardent Franciscan, just as Duns Scotus had been. Leclercq emphasizes that in the Franciscans theology and mysticism were never very far apart: “Even for those doctors who left a considerable body of theological work, like Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus, the essential thing was not to know but to live and to love.” This predominant stress on love, combined with the simplicity and directness maintained by their order, made the Franciscans a major spiritual force in England. W. A. Pantin has written that
All these elements — Ockham’s scholastic emphasis on individual faith; the Franciscans’ teaching of love, humility, and detachment; and the anti-intellectual climate of the times — composed the soil from which grew and blossomed the most remarkable period of mysticism in English history.
© Michael Fleming Oxford, England January, 1984
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