| 103. Mysticism. | ||||
Literature: The Works of St. Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Rupert of Deutz, and also of Anselm, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, all in Migne's Patrology. G. Arnold: Historie und Beschreibung d. myst. Theologie, Frankf., 1703. H. Schmid: D. Mysticismus des Mittelalters, Jena, 1824. J. Goerres (Prof. of Hist. in Munich, founder of German ultramontanism, d. 1848): D. christl. Mystik, 4 vols. Regensb., 1836-1842. A product of the fancy rather than of sober historical investigation. A. Helfferich: D. christl. Mystik, etc., 2 parts, Gotha, 1842. R. A. Vaughn: Hours with the Mystics, Lond., 1856, 4th ed., no date, with preface by Wycliffe Vaughan. Ludwig Noack: D. christl. Mystik nach ihrem geschichtl. Entwickelungsgang, 2 parts, Koenigsb., 1863. J. Hamberger: Stimmen der Mystik, etc., 2 parts, Stuttg., 1857. W. Preger: Gesch. der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, 3 vols. Leip., 1874-1893. The Mysticism of the twelfth and thirteenth cents. is given, vol. I 1-309. Carl du Prel: D. Philosophie der Mystik, Leip., 1885. W. R. Inge: Christ. Mysticism, Lond., 1899. The Lives of Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, etc. The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, Harnack, etc. | ||||
Side by side with the scholastic element in mediaeval theology was developed the mystical element. Mysticism aims at the immediate personal communion of the soul with the Infinite Spirit, through inward devotions and spiritual aspirations, by abstraction rather than by logical analysis, by adoration rather than by argument, with the heart rather than with the head, through the spiritual feelings rather than through intellectual prowess, through the immediate contact of the soul with God rather than through rites and ceremonies. The characteristic word to designate the activity of the mystic is devotion; of the scholastic, speculation. Mysticism looks less for God without and more for God within the breast. It relies upon experience rather than upon definitions. Mysticism is equally opposed to rationalism and to ritual formalism. | ||||
In the Apostle John and also in Paul we have the mystical element embodied. The centre of John's theology is that God is love. The goal of the believer is to abide in Christ and to have Christ abide in him. The true mystic has felt. He is no visionary nor a dabbler in occultism. Nor is he a recluse. Neither the mystics of this period nor Eckart and Tauler of a later period seclude themselves from the course of human events and human society. Bernard and the theologians of St. Victor did not lose themselves in the absorption of ecstatic exercises, though they sought after complete and placid composure of soul under the influence of love for Christ and the pure contemplation of spiritual things. God, said St. Bernard, is more easily sought and found by prayer than by disputation. God is known, said both Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor, so far as He is loved. Dante placed Bernard still higher than Thomas Aquinas, the master of scholastic thought, and was led by him through prayer to the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity with which his Divine Comedy closes. | ||||
Augustine furnished the chief materials for the mystics of the Middle Ages as he did for the scholastics. It was he who said, You have made us for yourself and the heart is restless till it rests in You. For Aristotle, the mystics substituted Dionysius the Areopagite, the Christian Neo-Platonist, whose works were made accessible in Latin by Scotus Erigena. The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Schoolmen, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura. | ||||
The Middle Ages took Rachel and Leah, Mary and Martha as the representatives of the contemplative and the active life, the conventual and the secular life, and also of the mystic and scholastic methods. Through the entire two periods of seven years, says Peter Damiani,1 Jacob was serving for Rachel. Every convert must endure the fight of temptation, but all look forward to repose and rest in the joy of supreme contemplation; that is, as it were, the embraces of the beautiful Rachel. These two periods stand for the Old and New Testament, the law and the grace of the Gospel. He who keeps the commandments of both at last comes into the embraces of Rachel long desired. | ||||
Richard of St. Victor devotes a whole treatise to the comparison between Rachel and Leah. Leah was the more fertile, Rachel the more comely. Leah represented the discipline of virtue, Rachel the doctrine of truth. Rachel stands for meditation, contemplation, spiritual apprehension, and insight; Leah for weeping, lamentation, repining, and grief. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. So reason, after the pangs of ratiocination, dies in giving birth to religious devotion and ardor. | ||||
This comparison was taken from Augustine, who said that Rachel stands for the joyous apprehension of the truth and, for that reason, was said to have a good face and beautiful form. St. Bernard spoke of the fellowship of the active and contemplative life as two members of the same family, dwelling together as did Mary and Martha. | ||||
The scholastic theology was developed in connection with the school and the university, the mystic in connection with the convent. Clairvaux and St. Victor near Paris were the hearth-stones of mysticism. Within cloistral precincts were written the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages, and the eucharistic hymns of Thomas Aquinas are the utterances of the mystic and not of the Schoolman. | ||||
The leading mystical divines of this period were Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, and Rupert of Deutz. Mystical in their whole tendency were also Joachim of Flore, Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schoenau, who belong in a class by themselves. | ||||