On Deification and Sacred Eloquence: Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich 9781472489418, 9780429343209

Citation preview

Deification has emerged as a major topic in Christian theology in recent decades – not a new creation, but a re-discovery of what was already there. Orthodox Christianity has long insisted on the centrality of deification, but studies such as Louise Nelstrop’s On Deification and Sacred Eloquence demonstrate its importance in the West as well. On the basis of a masterful summary of current studies on deification, Nelstrop adds a new chapter to this ongoing theological recovery: the first in-depth study of how important deification was to two of the great English mystics. This is a book that will change the way we look at Late Medieval English mysticism. Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Divinity School, USA In recent decades, we have come to understand that the theme of deification is much more important in Western theology than was previously thought. Louise Nelstrop’s book offers a stimulating contribution by exploring two medieval English authors from this perspective. This exploration shows that both Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich have their own distinct and important place in the history of Western thought on deification. Rob Faesen, Jesuitica Chair, KU Leuven, Belgium, Francis Xavier Chair, Tilburg University, Netherlands and Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp, Belgium Louise Nelstrop’s new book is both scholarly and invigorating, shedding important new light on Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich, two wellknown figures from the pantheon of English Medieval Mystics. The analyses of Rolle and Julian are exemplary in their attention to detail and careful teasing out of their argument and its implications. Remaining careful throughout to clarify that a belief in deification is by no means always associated with heterodoxy, Nelstrop’s book does important work in redeeming an oftmisunderstood concept, and in justifying its position in Western Christian thought. Viewing Rolle and Julian from an original and challenging angle, while combining literary and theological perspectives, she does much to lay the ground for future research in this area. Annie Sutherland, Rosemary Woolf Fellow, Somerville College and Associate Professor of English, University of Oxford, UK

On Deification and Sacred Eloquence

This book considers the place of deification in the writings of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle, two of the fourteenth-century English Mystics. It argues that, as a consequence of a belief in deification, both produced writing that is helpfully viewed as sacred eloquence. The book begins by discussing the nature of deification, employing Norman Russell’s typology. It explores the realistic and ethical approaches found in the writings of several Early Greek Fathers, including Irenaeus of Lyons, Cyril of Alexandria, Origen and Evagrius Ponticus, as well as engaging with the debate around whether deification is a theological idea found in the West across its history. The book then turns its attention to Julian and Rolle, arguing that both promote forms of deification: Rolle offering a primarily ethical approach, while Julian’s approach is more realistic. Finally, the book addresses the issue of sacred eloquence, arguing that both Rolle and Julian, in some sense, view their words as divinely inspired in ways that demand an exegetical response that is para-biblical. Offering an important perspective on a previously understudied area of mysticism and deification, this book will be of interest to scholars of mysticism, theology and Middle English religious literature. Louise Nelstrop is Director of Studies at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology and a college lecturer at Saint Benet’s Hall, Oxford, both UK. She specialises in the English mystics. In addition to several articles, she co-authored Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Perspectives (2009) with Kevin Magill and Bradley B. Onishi. She has also co-edited a number of volumes for the Routledge Series Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism. She is co-convener (with John Arblaster, Simon D. Podmore and Lydia Shahan) of the Mystical Theology Network.

Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism Series Editors: Patricia Z. Beckman, Oliver Davies and George Pattison

This series facilitates new points of synergy and fresh theological engagements with Christian mystical traditions. Reflecting the plurality of theological approaches to Christian mystical theology, books in the series cover historical, literary, practical, and systematic perspectives as well as philosophical, psychological, and phenomenological methods. Although the primary focus of the series is the Christian tradition, exploration of texts from other traditions also highlight the theological, psychological and philosophical questions that Christian mysticism brings to the fore. Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice Renewing the Contemplative Tradition Edited by Christopher C. H. Cook, Julienne McLean and Peter Tyler Art and Mysticism Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Periods Edited by Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop Mystical Doctrines of Deification Case Studies in the Christian Tradition Edited by John Arblaster and Rob Faesen The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought Being, Nothingness, Love George Pattison and Kate Kirkpatrick Semiotic Theory and Sacramentality in Hugh of Saint Victor Ruben Angelici On Deification and Sacred Eloquence Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich Louise Nelstrop For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: www. routledge.com/Contemporary-Theological-Explorations-in-Mysticism/ book-series/ACONTHEOMYS

On Deification and Sacred Eloquence Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich

Louise Nelstrop

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Louise Nelstrop The right of Louise Nelstrop to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-4724-8941-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-34320-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Ann, Tony, John and Suzy

Contents

Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: Christian ideas on deification: historical and scholarly perspectives

x xii

1

1

Defining deification: realistic models

21

2

Defining deification: ethical models

52

3

Stilling the wandering mind: Richard Rolle’s implicit deification

77

Participation and deification in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love

126

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi: deification and sacred eloquence

175

Speaking in Christ: Julian’s Revelations as sacred eloquence

216

Conclusions

253

Bibliography Index

261 290

4

5

6

Acknowledgements

There are so many people that I would like to thank and without whom this book would certainly have been much the poorer that it is hard to know where to begin. A special thanks is owed to Rob Faesen. I am grateful for all his advice and support. It was he who first suggested to me that I present a paper on Julian and deification at the Mystical Theology Network Conference ‘Christian Doctrines of Divinisation East and West’ in Leuven in January 2015. Thanks to his encouragement this paper slowly grew into a book. I am incredibly appreciative for the fruitful discussions and comments made on early drafts of chapters. Bernard McGinn, Vincent Gillespie, Mark Edwards, Timothy Glover, Hannah Lucas and Michael Hahn all read drafts of chapters at various stages. I am deeply appreciative of their kindness in commenting on my work and for the insightful comments and suggestions that each made. The book is much the better for them – all remaining errors are entirely my own. Several of the chapters were presented at research seminars and conferences in earlier iterations. These include The International Medieval Congress, Leeds, (2012, 2016); Theosis and Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinisation East and West, Mystical Theology Network Conference, KU Leuven, Belgium (2015); The TRS Research Seminars, Glasgow University (2015 and 2016); 28th Annual Conference of the Eckhart Society (2015); Vijfde Interuniversitaire Masterclass Cultuur & Religie: Voices from Below, University of Ghent (2016); and The TRS Seminar, University of Roehampton (2017). I am thankful for these opportunities; the comments that I received improved each chapter. Thanks too are definitely owed to Jack Boothroyd and Josh Wells at Routledge, who guided the book through all the stages of publication, making the process seem smooth and painless. I am grateful too to Routledge for allowing me to rework parts of an earlier essay, ‘Julian’s Logophatic Discourse’, in L. Nelstrop and S.  D. Podmore (eds), Christian Mysticism and Incarnational Theology: Between Transcendence and Immanence (Ashgate, 2013; Routledge, 2016) within what is now Chapter 6. I would also like to extend my sincerely thanks to John Arblaster, Lydia Shahan and Sander Vloebergs for insightful comments on my work and for discussions about deification. In the final stages of the book I was

Acknowledgements

xi

extremely fortunate to receive an UCSIA scholarship at the Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp, under the guidance of Veerle Fraeter. The three months that I spent there enabled me to revise the final draft. I would like to thank all my colleagues in the Institute, but most particularly Veerle for her generous encouragement during this time. I also owe an incredible debt of gratitude to my friends, many of whom have listened to me talk continuously about deification, even when they surely did not want to. They have listened to draft presentations and given me a huge amount of support. In particular, I would like to thank Jaya Shrivastava, Francis Leneghan, Helen Appleton, Oliver Noble-Wood, Paul Howard and John Bradbury. Finally, but by no means least, I would like to express my thanks and debt to Pol Herrmann, my parents Ann and Tony Nelstrop – and the rest of my family – John, Siân, Suzy, Dan, Megan, Bronwen and Sebastian – who have supported me through this whole process and without whom I would not have written this book, nor indeed have accomplished many of the things that I have been fortunate enough to have done.

Preface

This book explores the appropriateness of discussing Middle English Mysticism in relation to ideas of deification, that is, the belief that one can in some sense become divine. The proposal is likely to induce some scepticism. Wolfgang Riehle pointed out in 1981, in a seminal study of the terminology of union employed by the five so-called Middle English Mystics, that none but Richard Rolle uses Middle English or Latin equivalents for deification, and Rolle mostly uses this language with qualification.1 The idea that deification is a key feature of Rolle’s early work, such as Incendium Amoris (the focus of Chapter 3), where the term does not appear, as well as an important concept in the Revelations of Julian of Norwich (the focus of Chapters 4 and 6), which likewise does not use the terminology, needs some justification. One of the most important factors that underpins this re-evaluation is the remarkable revision in theological thinking around deification and its place within Western Theology that has taken place over the last couple of decades. This has seen an outpouring of academic articles, essays and monographs, accompanied by introductions, to what is fast becoming a central theological concern in Western Theology (as it has long been in Eastern Orthodox Theology); it seems safe to say that theological scholarly interest in deification has never been higher.2 Indeed, those with an interest in Western Theology are driving this resurgence, even if, in other respects, Eastern Orthodox theologians are leading with new assessments of the place of deification in the Greek Patristic East. This movement is changing the way that deification is understood; many scholars are now arguing that it held an integral place within the history of Western Christianity.3 Deification has even been hailed as a new platform for ecumenism.4 The purpose of the book is to explore the senses in which we are entitled, in the light of this new scholarship, to apply the label ‘deification’ to Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle. Rolle and Julian may not seem the most likely bedfellows for a monograph. They are, after all, rather different kinds of mystical writers. Despite both being advocates of eremitical/anchoritic living, they not only differ in gender:5 Julian’s Revelations belong in many ways, as Elizabeth Salter has pointed out, to the Life of Christ genre and to a tradition of visualising the Passion and of Passion Meditation, which is far less prominent in

Preface

xiii

Rolle’s writings, particularly the Latin texts that form the focus of this study: Incendium Amoris, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, Contra Amatores Mundi and the vernacular Form of Living.6 Although Rolle clearly has a devotion to Jesus and possibly wrote a number of meditations on the Passion, Rolle’s mysticism is dominated by auditory and sensual experiences that do not sit comfortably with the heights of Julian’s ‘seeing’, despite the hotness of the blood that she experiences flowing from Christ’s head.7 In terms of contemporary scholarship these two authors are viewed very differently too. Julian is a hugely popular writer, heralded as a great mystic and even theologian.8 She is revered and compared to her continental counterparts.9 As Lynn Staley comments, With her description of God as both mother and father, her unwillingness to dwell upon sin and judgment, her carefully articulated discussion of divine love, and her refusal to claim for herself any special status, she speaks to the devotional needs of many who find themselves weary of the hegemonies of gender and power. She is a subtle theologian of quiet daring and one of the early masters of Middle English prose. Like other late fourteenth-century writers such as William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, she understood and exploited the inherent flexibilities of the vernacular as a medium of common and uncommon speech.10 Rolle, on the other hand, is largely ignored, cast in the shade, not so much by The Cloud-Author, who was much less widely read in the later Middle Ages, as by David Knowles, who severely doubted Rolle’s mystical capabilities. Perhaps no condemnation has ever done more harm to a mystical writer than this: What he may have gained as a figure of abiding significance in the history of English religious sentiment, Rolle perhaps lost as a mystic. Here, undoubtedly, the claims made for him are too high; rather, perhaps, we should say that he fails altogether, through lack of experience and of knowledge, to reckon with the higher degrees of the mystical life. . . . He proceeded gropingly, and mistook the first glimpses of the life of contemplation for the plenitude of grace; he lacked the wise cautions that his successors were to multiply. Whether his ‘heat’ and ‘song’ were purely a release of subconscious activity, whether they were an unusually vivid and lasting ‘sensible devotion’, or whether they were a psychological by-product or reaction of the natural powers to a real inflowing of grace we cannot tell. They were in any case, in technical mystical terminology, the experiences of a ‘beginner’, and they do not seem to have altered or become more pure in the years that followed. As a mystic, Rolle has little or nothing to teach, and he was soon to be put in the shade, in the eyes of those best able to judge, by the author of The Cloud, who explicitly distrusted some of his practices and advice.11

xiv

Preface

Harsh words. As will become evident, I do not agree. Yet, in part, it is precisely these kinds of differences that lie behind my decision to place Rolle and Julian side by side in this consideration of deification. I aim to illustrate that deification is a concept that, at least to some extent, binds together these two otherwise heterogeneous authors. In order to tease this out, I employ Norman Russell’s typological distinction between ‘realistic’ and ‘ethical’ approaches to deification. This acts as a useful heuristic framework through which to approach the discussions of deification that we find within the writings of Julian and Rolle, which I argue each align with one of Russell’s types.12 Although deification is fast becoming a hot topic in theology, few studies have addressed the effect of deification on the lives of those who experience it. Two recent studies do, however, gesture in this direction. Martin Laird offers an assessment of the writings of Cappadocia Father, Gregory of Nyssa, particularly his Homilies on the Song of Songs, as ‘logophatic discourse’ – a neologism that Laird uses to encapsulate a form of speaking in which the Word speaks in Gregory, transforming Gregory’s discourse into Christic speech.13 Bernard McGinn similarly draws attention to the scriptural-like authority which some continental female mystics who advance deification ascribe to their voice. McGinn describes Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete and Angela of Foligno as ‘the four female evangelists of the thirteenth century’.14 In the light of these studies, I consider whether Rolle and Julian also lay claim to a capacity to speak forth in some sense as Christ, an idea that I refer to as ‘sacred eloquence’ for reasons outlined in each chapter. It would have been desirable to discuss deification in all five of the Middle English Mystics: Richard Rolle (d. 1349), Walter Hilton (d. 1396), The Cloud-Author (late fourteenth-century), Julian of Norwich (c. 1342) and Margery Kempe (c. 1376), as well as in related texts, such as the Meditations of the Monk of Farne (mid- to late fourteenth-century), fifteenth-century Middle English translations of continental mystical works, and the Latin mystical material that was circulating in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.15 This, however, was well beyond the scope of this volume, in which a detailed study of deification across all of Rolle’s corpus has not been possible. Indeed, in contrast to the continent, very little recent work has been undertaken into the place of deification in England in the medieval period.16 With the notable exception in Francis Leneghan’s (2016) study of the Old English poem The Wanderer, which he reads in relation to the form of deification that Cassian transmitted to the West from the Desert Fathers,17 recent research has been mostly limited to late medieval Middle English translations of continental mystical texts.18 These considerations have tended to confirm a late medieval English spiritual milieu in which deification played little significant role. Nicholas Watson and Marleen Cré both view the Middle English translation of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls as an example of the ‘rhetoric’ of deification or ‘ecstasy’ over

Preface

xv

any sustained theological engagement with the idea.19 Cré holds the same largely true of the Middle English Ruusbroec.20 However, it is the contention of this book that there is more to be said about deification in late medieval England. The goal of this study is to show the diverse ways in which Julian and Rolle deal with deification and the impact of this diversity on their mystical voices. The book is intended as the beginning of a conversation about the place of deification within English mysticism in the later Middle Ages. The structure of the book is as follows. The introduction discusses the nature of deification and Russell’s typology. It also explores scholarly debates concerning whether deification is a theological idea found in the West across its history. I review the recent scholarly literature and draw attention to those topics within it that have drawn particular scholarly interest. Chapters 1 and 2 build on this, laying the groundwork for the studies of Rolle and Julian that follow by delineating the central features of several Greek Patristic accounts of deification which Russell has identified as either realistic or ethical; Chapter 1 focuses on realistic approaches and Chapter 2 focuses on ethical approaches. These two chapters clarify what I mean by deification. As well as outlining the contours of the ethical and realistic types, these chapters also explore whether these two different approaches can be said to have found a home in the Latin West prior to the later Middle Ages. Chapters 3 and 4 turn to deification in the thought of Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich. Chapter 3 examines the trajectories of deification in Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and The Form of Living. Although we lack a critical edition of Incendium Amoris, which makes absolute claims difficult, I try to show that a case can be made for reading this early work of Rolle’s as advocating some form of deification, albeit perhaps implicitly – the same being true of a work probably composed around the same period, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum. Comparisons are made between these works and Rolle’s final text, The Form of Living, which illustrates that similar ideas pertaining to deification appear in Rolle’s vernacular writing. I aim to show that Rolle’s account in each case owes a significant debt to the ethical tradition of deification that has its roots in the writings of the Desert Fathers, particularly those of Evagrius Ponticus. Chapter 4 explores deification in the Long Text of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. The chapter focuses particularly on the ideas of participation and indwelling, a concept which Rob Faesen has explored in Ruusbroec in similar regard. Julian too as an anchorite is clearly influenced by a spirituality grounded in the Desert tradition. However, I argue that the heart of her understanding of deification is realistic in ways that bring her close to Mark Edwards’ reading of Cyril of Alexandria. In both cases, I argue that, as in the Early Church, deification for these two writers is closely tied to Christology and in Rolle’s case is exegetical in nature. The two chapters that follow examine the effects of deification on each of these writers. Chapter 5 discusses whether Rolle lays claim to a

xvi

Preface

form of sacred eloquence in his later Latin work, Contra Amatores Mundi. This chapter draws particularly on Mary Carruthers’ work on the ductus of a text. Chapter 6 considers whether Julian’s Revelations also operate as deified sacred eloquence. This chapter makes particular use of Martin Laird’s typological of ‘logophasis’. In these ways and those outlined in Chapters 3 and 4, I tease out the different but nonetheless complementary approaches that Rolle and Julian take towards deification, even if in Rolle’s case it is more implicit than in Julian’s. The book concludes with a brief reflection on the extent to which Julian and Rolle’s accounts of deification differ from those found within the schools of the Rhineland and the Low Countries as exemplified in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls. The methodological approach that underpins this book is largely theological. However, the theology is continually brought into dialogue with the literary dimensions of Rolle’s and Julian’s writing, which are integral to the accounts of deification that each offers. Indeed Julian, for the most part, and Rolle, almost without exception, are authors who, within academic circles, are studied within faculties of English literature and language. This book operates at the interface of theology and English literature, a space that still feels uncomfortable despite the great strides that have been made in drawing these two disciplines into conversation. Yet at the same time it is a space that seems remarkably appropriate for a consideration of Rolle and Julian, who likewise functioned in ways that drew literary and theological methods into dialogue. In so doing, I am aware that I run the risk of alienating a number of potential audiences – those in theology by offering a discussion that moves, certainly in Rolle’s case, beyond those texts that are viewed as theologically canonical; those in English by pushing a theological schema over and against a more text-driven reading; and those outside of academia by providing an account of these two writers that may seem alien. However, I hope that readers from diverse backgrounds will not only be able to take from this monograph aspects that pertain to their own areas of interest but will find the whole book food for thought on the spiritual aspirations of these two Middle English mystics and their potential importance for wider contemporary discussions of deification. My hope is that this book will contribute to an area of increasing academic interest, namely the place of deification in the Christian traditions of the Latin West, as well as open up new avenues of research. The study of Rolle seems particularly pertinent in this regard given the wide circulation of a number of his writings both in England and on the continent in the later Middle Ages. For the purposes of this book, I will treat ‘deification’, ‘divinisation’ and ‘theosis’ as synonyms. What I precisely mean by these terms as applied to Rolle and Julian will emerge over the course of the discussion.

Notes 1 Wolfgang Riehle, The Middle English Mystics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Riehle’s position is further discussed in Chapter 3.

Preface

xvii

2 Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung conclude their 2007 collection of essays on deification, Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), with a detailed bibliography, including doctorates. This was updated in Vladimir Kharlamov’s most recent collection and it runs into tens of hundreds of citations: Theosis, Volume 2: Deification in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2012), ‘Resources for Deification in Christian Theology’, pp. 247–266. 3 For recent overviews of the field see: Paul L. Gavrilyuck, ‘The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once-Despised Archasim became an Ecumenical Desideratum’, Modern Theology, 25/4 (2009), 647–659 and Daniel A. Keating, ‘Typologies of Deification’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 17/3 (2015), 267–283. I have drawn on these in compiling the overview of the field in the introduction. 4 This point is made both by Gavrilyuck, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, and by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, ‘The Transformation of the Whole World: Contemporary Implications of the Orthodox Doctrine of Theosis’, in John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Theosis/Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, vol. 294 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), pp. 9–18. 5 Caroline Walker Bynum has argued that gender plays a significant role in the spirituality of the later Middle Ages. For example, see her Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). For an alternative reading, see Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 6 Elizabeth Salter, Nicholas Love’s ‘Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg: Institute für Englische Sprache and Literatur, Universität Salzberg, 1974). 7 The critical edition of meditations attributed to Rolle is found in Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. by Sarah Ogilvie-Thomson, vol. 293 (Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1988). All quotations from the Middle English writings of Rolle, excepting Rolle’s English Psalter, which is not included, are taken from this edition unless otherwise stated. Further short lyrics, possibly by Rolle, have recently been identified: Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse with Related Northern Texts, ed. by Ralph Hanna (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2007). On Rolle’s devotion to the name of Jesus see: Rob Lutton, ‘The name of Jesus, Nicholas Love’s Mirror, and Christocentric devotion in late Medieval England’, in Ian Johnson and A. F. Westphall (eds.), The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013), pp. 97–119; Rob Lutton, ‘“Love This Name of IHC”: Vernacular Prayers, Hymns and Lyrics to the Holy Name of Jesus in PreReformation England’, in E. Salter and H. Wicker (eds.), Vernacularity in England and Wales c1300–1550 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011), pp. 119–145; Denis Renevey, ‘Name above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s “Scale of Perfection I”’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland and Wales, vol. 6 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 103–121. There is a huge literature relating to Julian of Norwich. I will refer only to those works which appear particularly pertinent to my discussion of deification. An important work is Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, ‘The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 5 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 53–77, which I will refer to on a number of occasions. 8 Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich: Theologian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

xviii

Preface

9 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 297–323. 10 Lynn Staley, ‘Julian of Norwich’, in Larry Scanlon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 179–190. 11 David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition (London: Burns and Oates, 1964), pp. 53–54. 12 Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Nicholas Watson argues that the five English mystics are so heterogeneous that they have more in common with the wider literature than each other: ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in David Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 539–565 at 539. Whilst I believe that they have key common interests in contemplation and revelation which bind them together in ways that Watson perhaps is too quick to dismiss in this essay, Rolle and Julian differ in important ways from one another. 13 For example, see: Martin Laird, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and the Mysticism of Darkness’, The Journal of Religion, 79/4 (1999), 592–616; Martin Laird, ‘Apophasis and Logophasis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Canticum Canticorum’, Studia Patristica, 37 (2001), 126–132; and Martin Laird, Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge and Divine Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 14 Although McGinn does not focus specifically on deification, there would seem to be a close connection between deification, the kind of union which he discusses, and mystical voice: Bernard McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists of the Thirteenth-Century: The Invention of Authority’, in Walter Haug, et al. (eds.), Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang (Tübingen: Continuum, 2000), pp.  175–194. Angela’s Memorial is written by an amanuensis, yet she appears to have retained some level of authorial control over her words. I am grateful to Michael Hahn for drawing my attention to this. McGinn argues that in Angela’s case, the reader is offered a new Francis. 15 The extent to which Middle English translations of continental texts circulated outside of the Carthusian order is disputed. See Vincent Gillespie and Ian A. Doyle (eds.), Syon Abbey with the Libraries of the Carthusians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002). For a more positive analysis, see Anne M. Dutton, ‘Passing the Book: Testamentary Transmission of Religious Literature to and by Women in England 1350–1500’, in Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (eds.), Women, The Book and the Godley: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda’s Conference, 1993 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 41–54. Dutton notes there presence in fifteenth-century wills (p. 51). 16 There are recent studies of deification in the Low Countries and Spain: John Arblaster and Paul Verdeyen, ‘The Reciprocity of Spiritual Love in William of Saint-Thierry and Hadewijch’, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 78/1–2 (2017), 39–54; John Arblaster, ‘The Pious Jackal and the PseudoWoman: Doctrine of Deification in Medieval France’, in L. Nelstrop and B. B. Onishi (eds.), Mysticism in the French Tradition: Eruptions from France (Farham: Ashgate, 2015), pp.  121–148; Rob Faesen, ‘Relationality as the Hidden Side of the Apophatic: William of St. Thierry’s Appreciation and Critique of XIIth Century Apophaticism’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 25 (2016), 1–12; Rob Faesen, ‘Poor in Ourselves and Rich in God: Indwelling and Non-Identity of Being (Wesen) and Suprabeing (Overwesen) in John of Ruusbroec’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 21/2 (2012), 147–169; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, ‘Ruusbroec’s Notion of the Contemplative Life and his Understanding of the Human Person’,

Preface

17 18

19

20

xix

in Rob Faesen and John Arblaster (eds.), Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 73–88; Beverly Lanzetta, ‘Wound of Love: Feminine Theosis and Embodied Mysticism in Teresa of Avila’, in Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman (eds.), The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 225–244; Bentley Hart, ‘The Bright Morning of the Soul: John of the Cross on Theosis’, Pro Ecclesia, 12/3 (2003), 324–344. Francis Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Hesychasm and Theosis’, Neophilologus, 100/1 (2016), 121–142. Research into deification in the Middle Ages is in general still rather lacking. John Arblaster and Rob Faesen have recently published two collections of essays that examine deification East and West, with a number of essays focusing on the Medieval Latin West. The collections were published too late for consideration in the volume but include essays on The Meditation of the Monk of Farne, the Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood, and John of Fecamp: John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Theosis/Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 294 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), and John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). This work hopefully represents the beginning of wider interest in the place of deification in the Medieval period both inside and outside of the academic schools. Nicholas Watson, ‘Melting into God the English Way’: Deification in the Middle English Version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirour des simples âmes anienties’, in Rosalyn Voaden (ed.), The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), pp.  19–50 at 46; Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2006). Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse, ch. 4; Marleen Cré, ‘Take a Walk on the Safe Side: Reading the Fragments from Ruusbroec’s De geestelike brulocht in The Chastising of God’s Children’, in Rob Faesen, F. Hendrickx and K Schepers (eds.), De letter levende maken: Opstellen aangeboden aan Guide Baere bij zijn zeventigste verjaardag (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), pp. 233–246.

Introduction Christian ideas on deification: historical and scholarly perspectives

Writing just before the turn of the twentieth century, Adolf von Harnack argued that ‘the sure hope of the deification of man’ was a dangerous ‘speculation’, a pagan idea that ‘obscured’ the Gospel and the meaning of the Incarnation in the writings of Eastern Early Church Fathers.1 Following in von Harnack’s footsteps, Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics (1932–67) rejected deification as a dubious idea, one that shifted the centre of gravity away from the Incarnation to ‘a high-pitched anthropology’ that has no place within Christianity.2 Yet several years before Barth completed his Church Dogmatics, Jules Gross published a comprehensive study of deification in the writings of the Greek Fathers, La divinisation du chrétien d’après les pères grecs, in which he demonstrates that the Greek Fathers did not import pagan ideas of deification into Christianity. Rather, where they spoke of deification, they did so for reasons that arose from within Christian belief. Deification was a response to Christian problems that needed to be addressed. He highlights firstly the relationship between deification and the exegesis of Scripture that seems to imply it, such as 2 Peter 1.4: ‘you may be made partakers of the divine nature’.3 He demonstrated secondly that there is a close correlation between deification and soteriology in which Christology is key. Although the first definition of deification did not appear until the late fifth century, when Pseudo-Dionysius stated in his Eccelsiastical Hierarchy that it was to be ‘as much as possible like and in union with God’,4 and even though the first dedicated treatise on deification was only composed by Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century, Gross’s study demonstrates that it was nonetheless an issue of central importance in the Early Eastern Church, part of the warp and weave of theological discourse and exegesis, genres that were in the Patristic Period inseparable from one another.5 As Gross states, It is not that one expects to find treatises specially devoted to divinization with the fathers from the fourth to the fifth centuries: no ecclesiastical writer had studied it for its own sake. But one would make a big mistake if one concluded for this reason, that the theme of deification is an hors d’oeuvre to them. Quite to the contrary, with almost

2

Introduction all the Greeks this then makes up, as it were, the framework of their soteriology.6

His study nicely illustrates that early ideas of deification in the East were far from uniform, being ‘so varied and so rich’ that it proves hard to provide one definition.7 Daniel A. Keating likewise recognises this, even whilst attempting to identify a core set of ideas.8 Gross’s work, long ignored outside francophone scholarship, has finally been translated into English as part of a new wave of scholarly interest in the topic. Although still a relatively young field, the sudden and extensive interest in the place of deification in the thought of individual authors, resulting in several important essays9 as well as general introductions to the topic,10 has begun to illustrate much more clearly the Christian underpinnings of this idea and that there are different strands within Patristic accounts of deification. The most comprehensive of recent studies is Norman Russell’s The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (2004), which in many ways replaces Gross as the leading scholarly work in the field.11 Intentionally building on Gross, Russell reinforces the connections, first made by Gross, between deification and soteriology and deification and exegesis. He assumes a similar methodological approach, adopting what Eric Osborn has termed the ‘problematic’ as opposed to the ‘polemical’, ‘doxographical’ or ‘cultural’ approach.12 As such, he focuses on the problems that led the Early Church Fathers to have recourse to deification – the exegesis of difficult biblical passages being one such problem,13 a desire to clarify the nature of the Incarnation being another, related to which was the question of what it meant for human beings to be made in the image of God.14 Russell offers a careful analysis of the different terminology used in discussions of deification in the Patristic East, teasing out the multiple ways in which the Early Church Fathers used the vocabulary of deification and showing how they often chose to differentiate Christian and pagan ideas through differing terminology – thus filling a lacuna in Gross’s earlier work.15 Russell suggests that we find four distinctive usages of deification sitting within a threefold typology: the nominal, analogical and metaphorical.16 He subdivides the latter category into ‘ethical’ and ‘realistic’ treatments – the first being tied to ideas of becoming an image of a god and the second relating to a participation in God of a more ‘ontological’ nature. Russell’s first category, the ‘nominal’, is one that he uses solely to indicate the title of god being applied to a human. As he states, ‘the nominal interprets the biblical application of the word “gods” to human beings simply as a title of honour’.17 By the second usage, the ‘analogical’, Russell intends that an analogy is made – which makes it similar to the nominal usage: ‘The analogical “stretches” the nominal: Moses was a god to Pharaoh as a wise man is a god to a fool; or men become sons and gods “by grace” in relation to Christ who is Son and God “by nature”’.18 Russell’s second example here is perhaps a bit unfortunate, as it would seem to rather overlap with his

Introduction

3

‘metaphorical’ category, particularly its realistic dimension. As he states of the metaphorical: It is characteristic of two distinct approaches, the ethical and the realistic. The ethical approach takes deification to be the attainment of likeness to God through ascetic and philosophical endeavour, believers reproducing some of the divine attributes in their own lives by imitation. Behind this use of the metaphor [of deification] lies the model of homoiosis, or attaining likeness to God. The realistic approach assumes that human beings are in some sense transformed by deification. Behind the latter use lies the model of methexis, or participation, in God.19 By metaphorical Russell means both the idea that one imitates Christ, often through ascetic practice, in which the focus is on attaining God’s likeness through the acquisition of virtues and divine qualities or attributes (the ethical approach), and being both ontologically transformed as a consequence of the Incarnation and dynamically participating in Christ, an idea often expressed in terms of adoption, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and entering into the Trinitarian relationship (the realistic approach). By an ‘ontological transformation’ Russell has in mind a change first wrought within mankind through the sacrament of baptism as a consequence of Christ deifying human flesh by assuming it in the Incarnate.20 He does not intend to imply any form of pantheism. Absorption is not an idea which Russell finds in Early Church accounts of deification. Russell at times also refers to the realistic approach as the sacramental approach due to the stress that many Fathers who advocate it place on the sacraments as the gateway to it. He also incorporates more dynamic (i.e. faith-derived) participatory engagements with God into the realistic approach.21 Russell’s typology has, however, received some criticism for being overly complicated. Keating comments that, in effect, although identifying a range of uses, the first and second categories are basically titular and do not actually pertain to forms of transformation. Indeed, Keating notes that the sheer complexity of Patristic deployment of deification results in Russell often collapsing all three categories in his analyses, making this taxonomy, if not unworkable, certainly unwieldy.22 The term ‘metaphorical’ is, Keating suggests, also confusing – particularly since Russell considers ontological ideas of participation under it. Indeed, Russell terms all uses of deification in the Patristic Fathers in some sense metaphorical.23 Keating therefore suggests a reworking of Russell’s taxonomy to ‘nominal’, ‘realistic’ and ‘ethical’ – keeping the broad framework of Russell’s approach without potentially obscuring how ontological transformation fits within Greek ideas of deification. As he states, ‘Consequently, I would recommend retaining three of the terms he uses (nominal, realistic, and ethical), with the first indicating merely an honorific use, and the second two necessarily paired together to convey the true content of deification’.24 Indeed, Keating notes that Russell himself

4

Introduction

focuses on the latter two aspects in his subsequent work, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis. Keating observes too that these latter two aspects roughly map onto an earlier typology of deification proposed by Rowan Williams in a short dictionary entry, in which Williams suggests that there are two ‘strands’ to deification: ‘a communication of divine attributes’ and ‘participating in an intra-divine relationship’.25 In a recent article, ‘Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories’, Donald Fairbairn likewise claims that there are two approaches, which he terms ‘mystical’ and ‘personal’. However, he argues that they are quite different from one another: ‘I think it is important to recognize that in the patristic period, there were at least two very distinct ways of understanding deification or participation in God’.26 Like Russell, both Keating and Williams stress that these two categories are not in fact opposed, but rather work together. Keating moots that although we find different ‘accents’ within the Patristic Fathers, both the ethical and the realistic dimensions of deification are present across the tradition. As he states, partially quoting Russell: The ethical sense of deification – our progress in deification through ascetical effort and the full use of our graced capacities – must be founded on the realistic sense of deification and draw energy from what Christ has already done, and from the real indwelling of the Spirit (and so of the triune God) in the soul. Russell himself arrives at a similar position – that the ethical and the realistic senses must go together: ‘Neither approach is independent of the other. The realistic needs the ethical, and the ethical the realistic. Participation and imitation go hand in hand’.27 Keating argues persuasively that although there are different emphases across the Patristic accounts of deification, it would be a mistake to drive an absolute wedge between them in the manner that Fairbairn posits. Indeed, it is important to recognise that while they can be examined as two strands, no approach is wholly ethical or wholly realistic – the acquisition of virtues and imitatio Christi depend on Christ’s saving action, and so God’s grace manifest through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, just as sharing in the intra-divine relationship requires a life well-lived. However, Keating goes further than this, placing greater emphasis on the realistic dimension, claiming that the realistic is ‘foundational’. As Keating argues, We find in some Greek Fathers an accent on the realistic sense of deification, and in others an accent on the ethical sense. But even among the latter the foundation in the realistic sense is there, either explicitly or implicitly.28

Introduction

5

Here perhaps Keating goes too far. Even though Keating is surely right that all Christian forms of deification are realistic, in that they are participatory and have an ‘ontological’ element in the sense that Christ transforms the baptised Christian, Keating’s revised typology has the unfortunate side effect of subordinating the acquisition of virtues as a route to deification and perhaps also over-emphasising the idea of ‘ontological transformation’, which Russell is careful to qualify. As Russell points out, rather than realistic elements it is the ethical which drives and is foundation to certain Early Church accounts of deification, this route being particularly pronounced in ascetic writers such as Ignatius of Antioch (32–108), Clement of Alexandria (150–215) and Evagrius Ponticus (344–99) as well as within the Desert tradition more generally. As I hope to illustrate, it is important not to obscure these different accents. Early Church accounts of deification are, as Gross noted, rich and varied, and these elements help us to trace the ideas that underpin and shape them – a point which I believe is borne out in the studies of Rolle and Julian that follow. Russell’s approach, which offers a careful balance between Keating and Fairbairn, is the one that will be adopted in this study. Russell demonstrates that within Early Church accounts there is both overlap and symbiosis between the ethical and the realistic but that there are nonetheless two accents or approaches which are significant in their own right. Whilst the accents or approaches may of course result from the contexts in which the accounts were written or the audience for whom the discussions were intended rather than signalling an absolute distinction between these trajectories,29 in Chapters 1 and 2 I hope to show that there is merit in tracking these two strands, with which the thought of Julian and Rolle appears to align respectively. Another question, however, that needs to be addressed is whether we can speak of deification at all in relation to the Latin West. As Finlan and Kharlamov stress: ‘In [Western] lay theology the term [deification] is usually perceived as either blasphemous or absurd’.30 For medievalists familiar with the idea that the mysticism of the late medieval Rhineland and the Low Countries was marked by deification and by ideas of ‘indistinct union’, to borrow a phrase from Bernard McGinn,31 it may come as something of a surprise to learn that, historically, the modern discipline of theology in the West has had little time for deification or for notions of union with God, along with most mystical experience. Such ideas are relegated to the sidelines of – most probably heretical – spirituality.32 This attitude owes a great deal to Adolf von Harnack’s hatred of the idea of deification mentioned above, on which he expounds at length in his monumental History of Dogma (1886–89). Von Harnack’s work is an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Western theology and is renowned for its condemnation of Eastern Theology as tainted by Hellenistic philosophy, which he argues corrupted its understanding of Christianity proper. In dividing Christianity East and West in

6

Introduction

this manner, he argues that a juridical model of soteriology (the doctrine of salvation, in which Christology, atonement, sanctification etc., are all encompassed) governs Western Theology. The judicial model – rightly, in his opinion – was dominated by a concern over the forgiveness of sins, atonement and the saving work of Christ, as opposed to the participatory model that shapes Eastern Theology, in which the goal of the Christian life is deified union with God. To von Harnack’s mind, the latter is not an idea that held much traction with Western theologians like Tertullian and Augustine, who he identifies as ideal Christian thinkers, in comparison to the ‘commonplace succession of theologians and monks’ who shaped Eastern Theology.33 Tertullian and Augustine, he argues, also had little time for asceticism, being instead concerned with ‘real life’.34 Donald Fairbairn points out that scholars such as Hans von Campenhausen, writing in 1963, still echo von Harnack’s negative typology of Eastern Theology in comparison to its Western counterpart.35 For many Western theologians the mystical tradition in the Rhineland and the Low Countries is an unfortunate aberration, wisely rejected by Reformers such as Luther.36 Eastern scholars too appear to have taken von Harnack’s schema to heart, arguing conversely for the East’s superiority in terms of its thinking around deification, and viewing deification as an Eastern idea with little traction in the West. Although dated, von Harnack’s analysis continues to shape modern theological reception of the Early Church, particularly where soteriology is concerned.37 As Jaroslav Pelikan has commented: ‘Superseded but never surpassed, Harnack’s work remains, after more than eighty years, the one interpretation of early Christian doctrine with which every other scholar in the field must contend’.38 It seems fair to say that there has been and still is a reasonable amount of scepticism amongst contemporary theologians concerning the extent to which deification has an important heritage in the West. Writing in the 1950s, Gustav Bardy, in his entry on ‘divinization’ in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, argues that it would not be possible to compose a parallel volume to that of Gross’s about the Fathers of the Latin West,39 even though there is some evidence that the idea was not completely absent in the West: Il est seulement possible de rassembler, comme des fragment épars, un certain nombre de térmiognages, desquels il ressort que la doctrine de la divinisation n’est pas complètement absente de la pensée occidentale.40 In 2017 Stanley P. Rosenberg likewise noted, ‘One typically reads that deification, or theôsis, was the view held among the Eastern Churches and something quite foreign to the West’.41 Recent research, such as that undertaken by the Finnish School of Luther Interpretation, is however leading an increasing number of scholars to claim that deification was much more prevalent in Western Theology than had hitherto been realised.42 There is a growing body of literature that argues that the Reformers and a number of Latin Medieval theologians held to some form of deification.43

Introduction

7

Eastern Theologians, such Andrew Louth and Gösta Hallosten, have responded with alarm that models of deification are now being mooted that potentially diverge from contemporary Eastern understandings of it. Hallosten, in particular, has been influential in insisting on a distinction between doctrines and themes of deification.44 Whilst he admits that there is mention of deification in Western Theology across its history – indeed, many Western theologians speak of deification, including Augustine, Robert Grosseteste, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, to name but a few45 – such writings, according to Hallosten, exhibit only ‘themes’ of deification – they do not contain ‘doctrines’, which would require a seismic theological shift from seeing salvation as centred on the Fall to viewing it as part of a much larger process that begins with creation and ends in deified redemption. Hallosten’s account of Eastern theology is dependent on this latter trajectory, or more properly teleology, in which humanity is created with the potential to be godlike; it is not simply something that is acquired as a consequence of the redemption wrought through the Incarnation. As he states, ‘The whole structure of this comprehensive doctrine [of deification] is determined by a teleology that implies that creation and human beings from the very beginning are endowed with an affinity and likeness that potentially draws them to God’.46 For deification to be a ‘doctrine’ in the West would require a theological perspective that adopts what Andrew Louth terms this ‘great arch’ as opposed to the ‘lesser arch’ that he believes governs its fundamental shape. That is, it would need to embrace salvation as a participation in God that begins at creation and is brought to completion in Christ’s resurrection rather than a ‘juridical’ or legal model of soteriology. As Louth clarifies, Deification, then, has to do with human destiny, a destiny that finds its fulfillment in a face-to-face encounter with God, an encounter in which God takes the initiative by meeting us in the Incarnation, where we behold ‘the glory of the Only-Begotten from the Father’ (Jn 1:14), ‘the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor 4:6). It is important for a full grasp of what this means to realize that deification is not to be equated with redemption. Christ certainly came to save us, and in our response to his saving action and word we are redeemed; but deification belongs to a broader conception of the divine οἰκονομία: deification is the fulfillment of creation, not just the rectification of the Fall.47 Louth and Hallosten are both keen to guard against the idea of deification being pressed into an alien framework that misses this holistic movement and misconstrues it as a concept. In this respect, Hallosten in particular is deeply critical of recent scholarship that has claimed that deification played as seminal a role in the West as it does in the East – one that has been missed due to the negative perception of the idea proffered by the likes of von Harnack.

8

Introduction

An author of whom Hallosten has been particularly critical is Anna N. Williams and her comparative study of Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas, in which she draws a close affinity between sanctification and deification, as well as tying deification to key themes within the writings of both. Williams chooses Palamas (1296–1359) as a point of comparison, since he is roughly Aquinas’ contemporary and his account of deification has become something of a benchmark for how deification is understood in contemporary Orthodox Theology. Palamas differentiates deification from pantheism by distinguishing between sharing in God’s energies (an idea that equates somewhat to sharing in God’s qualities, which he believed possible) and sharing in God’s essence (which he believed impossible).48 Williams draws attention to key features in Palamas’ account of deification, such as adoption and the indwelling of God and notes that Aquinas often claims something similar. Whilst Hallosten accepts that this approach has traction for Palamas, whose dependence on the East lends such ideas a particular meaning, he is less convinced that this works for Aquinas. What he fears is an endresult that reduces deification to nothing more than a collection of themes that appear across Christian writings in all periods and therefore render it both vacuous and somewhat meaningless. As he states: However, with regard to Thomas it is misleading, or rather, it leads to an implied understanding of deification as equal to filiation, adoption, indwelling of God, or union with God. Those themes, as might be expected, are to be found in nearly every Christian author throughout the ages, regardless of provenience.49 For Hallosten, deification is ‘in fact much more comprehensive’ than this.50 Despite Williams offering some evidence of Aquinas embracing a more participatory model of soteriology,51 Hallosten remains sceptical of the value of simply comparing single themes from the writings of Palamas with others in the West – a trend which he notes extends beyond Williams’ study. The nub of Hallosten’s worry is that the sudden interest in deification, particularly from the perspective of Western Theology, is leading to accounts of deification that fail to do justice to this idea, identifying it with union, indwelling, participation in God or filiation in ways that simplify and distort it. To Hallosten’s mind, this would be to lose the comprehensive nature of the doctrinal parameters that underpin it. Hallosten’s concerns are not without merit – there are indeed important differences between Western and Eastern account of theology and soteriology. Few would also dispute the prevalence of more judicial models of soteriology in the West, nor the greater emphasis on participation in the East. Yet, new research is bringing into question the extent to which the soteriology in the West is really as distinct as von Harnack asserted from that of the East. A genuine turning point seems to have been experienced by Reformation Theologians and Historians as a consequence of the re-evaluations of

Introduction

9

Martin Luther conducted in the Finnish School of Luther Interpretation, as well as studies of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley by other Reformation scholars.52 Whilst these readings are disputed and Luther seems to have rejected the form of mysticism that he encountered through the Rhineland school,53 Tuomo Mannermaa and several other Finnish scholars argue that deification was a real and present hope that he did not abandon. Summarising the Finnish schools’ position and quoting Mannermaa, Dennis Bielfeldt writes, ‘In their view, justification occurs for Luther when Christ and the Christian form a “real ontic unity” in which “the presence of Christ [is] understood as fully real”’.54 Some recent scholarship on Calvin has likewise identified deification as a motif within his thought. Carl Mosser, for example, argues that it is an important facet of Calvin’s theology that has been overlooked: Can we then speak of ‘Calvin’s doctrine of deification’? No and Yes . . . he was simply teaching and, more often, presupposing the Church’s doctrine . . . In another sense, however, we can. The role deification plays in Calvin’s theology, its relation to other doctrines, and the minor developments one finds warrant comparative study.55 Notable also is Luke Davis Townsend, who has recently extended Anna Williams’ position, arguing that Aquinas held a ‘doctrine’ of deification when measured against the most stringent of Hallosten’s criteria.56 Such ideas are already filtering down into the public theological domain. Whilst a quick Google search did not find a proliferation of examples outside of more popular articles written by scholars in the field, and negative appraisals of deification from Protestant perspectives are also in evidence, online magazines and blogs are beginning to promote the idea that deification is part of the hope of salvation within both the Reformed and Catholic traditions. Two examples will hopefully suffice.57 The first is from an article for Credenda/Agenda magazine, an online theological non-peer reviewed journal, which offers short accessible articles on current topics from the perspective of ‘confessional classical Protestantism’ – an approach which underpins its editorial policy. In 2011 it contained a short piece by Steven Wedgeworth entitled ‘Reforming Deification’, in which he claims: The doctrine of deification (or theosis) is one of those doctrines that, in the words of one esteemed divine, ‘gives us the willies’. It certainly sounds dicey. . . . Even the Reformed taught this doctrine though. . . . Through love and the accompanying works of righteousness, we show ourselves to be as gods. A righteous man is a deified man because he shows the original image of God. Rather than confuse the creature and the Creator, the Reformed tradition proclaims that this was the original state of creation, and once sin is dealt with by God, creation can once again reflect His glory.58

10

Introduction

He here specifically links deification to ideas of righteousness in a way likely to make Hallosten uncomfortable. Von Harnack would no doubt have been furious. Although Wedgeworth evidently feels the need to justify the idea to his readership, it is clear that he holds deification compatible with Reformed soteriology. Indeed he suggests that Reformed soteriology embraces a participatory model of soteriology. The second example is found in a blog by Ruth Ortiz. Ortiz is admittedly the wife of one of the leading scholars in the field, Jared Ortiz. Yet she does not lay claim to any particular theological expertise. Her blog is rather intended as the reflections of a lay person for other interested lay people on theological ideas that are topical within the Catholic tradition. In a piece entitled ‘What Is Theosis? Christianity’s Most Radical Claim’, she writes, Our salvation is nothing less than God’s transforming us into Himself. This claim is so radical that at first we might balk. It sounds heretical. And yet it is the consistent teaching of the Church, starting with St. Peter (cf. 2 Peter 1:4) and St. Paul (cf. Galatians 4:4–7) and repeated in our day in the very first paragraph of the Catechism.59 Despite the reference to deification in the Catechism, she again feels the need to justify the idea of deification to her readers, referring to it here as ‘God’s transforming us into Himself’.60 The direction in which she moves accords with recent biblical scholarship, in which Stephen Finlan, James Starr and David M. Litwa all argue that there is more room in the New Testament for deification than has until now been recognised.61 Finlan and Starr argue respectively that Paul and the author of 2 Peter both accepted some form of deification or ‘christification’. However, much more firmly than either Ortiz or Wedgeworth, they stress, along with Litwa, that deification does not mean that ‘the mystic blends identities with a God’ as in Gnosticism of both the pre- and post-Christian kinds.62 As Starr states: Does 2 Peter mean deification? The answer to that question is that it depends on what is meant by deification. If the term means equality with God or elevation to divine status or absorption into God’s essence, the answer is no. If it means the participation in and enjoyment of specific divine attributes and qualities, in part now and fully at Christ’s return, then the answer is – most certainly – yes.63 Whether or not we accept Starr and Finlan’s re-evaluations of these aspects of the New Testament, it seems clear that an acceptance of deification has started to seep into popular Protestant and Catholic consciousness. Whilst not suggesting that this is necessarily a measure of its value, it nonetheless offers a barometer for the shifting centre of gravity within Western Christianity, one that echoes the direction of the scholarship, in which Paul Gavrilyuk notes that deification is now being mooted as an avenue for ecumenical

Introduction

11

advance, ‘a new wave of [theological] ressourcement’, now being embraced alike by ‘Roman Catholic, Evangelical, main-line Protestant and Anglican scholars’.64 Although he remains sceptical about the true similarities of soteriology East and West, Gavrilyuk nonetheless cautiously asserts that it will continue to undermine the confidence of Reformation theologians that the Reformers offered a unique approach to salvation that was and is not present in the Christian East: The renaissance of the theosis theme in contemporary systematic theology is a measure of the Western theologians’ willingness to engage constructively with a typically ‘Eastern’ idea. Clearly, the notion of theosis is no longer ‘owned’ by the Christian East, if such one-sided ownership was ever a historical possibility. . . . If I may venture a conditional forecast, deification, provided that its full implications are realized, will work like a time-bomb in due course producing a ‘creative destruction’ of the soteriological visions developed by the Churches of the Reformation. Whether the idea will have the power to move these churches closer to the Christian East in other respects, say by developing a sacramental understanding of the world or synergistic anthropology, time will show.65 What Gavrilyuk’s finds particularly appealing is the way that soteriology viewed through the lens of deification moves away from hard oppositional models – such as exemplarism or penal substitution – bringing into sharper focus the therapeutic effects of salvation across traditions. As he states, Deification offers a vision of redemption that moves the discussion beyond the traditional opposites of, say, penal substitution and moral influence theories of atonement. Certainly, the emphasis upon the transforming character of the gifts of grace, characteristic of the charismatic movement, can be best captured in therapeutic categories akin to deification, rather than in juridical categories.66 It is also an approach that ordinarily places ‘creaturely participation in God . . . at the heart of theology’ as a result of the larger ontological vision in which deification tends to be couched.67 The ‘dramatic change in the attitude of Western theologians towards the concept of deification’68 that studies of the Reformers and medieval authors such as Thomas Aquinas have sparked is now resulting in re-evaluations of those writers on whom the Reformers drew, such as Augustine, as well as those with whom they purported to disagree (i.e. medieval scholastics and mystics). Recent studies have begun to explore the place of deification in the thought of Augustine, Hilary of Poitiers, John Cassian, Anselm, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure, as well

12

Introduction

as the Cistercian William of St. Thierry.69 Yet there is still very little research into deification in the Medieval period, with the notable exception of the mystical writings of the Rhineland and Low Countries.70 Concerning the Early Church in the Latin West, Jared Ortiz states, ‘The secondary literature on deification in the Latin Fathers is limited, and what is available is of mixed value’.71 The same can I think be said of studies of later medieval theologians. Yet whilst more detailed research is needed to fully substantiate Ortiz’ claim that ‘the doctrine of deification is the common patrimony of Christians East and West’ (an assertion which, it must be stressed, he follows up with a call for further research),72 what is at least evident, and which Ortiz ably demonstrates, is that deification was known of even at a popular level in the Latin West from the fifth century onwards; it was part of a shared set of beliefs. Pointing to a number of fifth-century prayers and hymns that bear witness to this, Ortiz translates, amongst others, the following antiphon, which clearly echoes the exchange formula, that is, the idea that Christ transferred to humanity his perfection, an idea further discussed in Chapter 1: O wondrous exchange! The Creator of the human race, Assuming an ensouled body Deigned to be born of a Virgin, And coming forth as a man, with a seed He bestowed on us his deity [deitatem]73 Whilst by itself it does not provide evidence of what exactly was believed, it is proof that motifs of deification were present in the Latin West for much of its history and even before this, if the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons, Justin Martyr and Hippolytus are counted amongst its heritage. As Ortiz states, whilst ‘their influence on the Latin Church is debated . . . the fact that they all took deification for granted and lived in the West suggests that the idea is, at least, not geographically foreign’.74 Ortiz offers a host of further examples from the writings of major theologians and popular texts produced between the third and sixth centuries. He notes that we find mention of deification or ideas pertaining thereto in the Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, probably penned by Tertullian, as well as in the writings of Cyprian, Novatian, Lactantius, Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Prudentius, Cassian, Maximus of Turin, Peter Chrysologus, Leo the Great, Boethius, Benedict of Nursia and Gregory the Great. The Dictionnaire de spiritualité affirms the verb ‘deificari’, the substantive ‘deificatio’ and the adjective ‘deificus’ were all in use within Latin Christian texts by the fifth century, the later term appearing much earlier in the second-century works of Tertullian.75 Later authors, such as John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus and Robert Grosseteste all translated Pseudo-Dionysius’ term ‘theosis’ as

Introduction

13

‘deiformis’,76 a term employed by Bonaventure amongst others in the thirteenth century.77 Of course, this does not prove that Hallosten is incorrect, that these are not mere themes rather than fully developed doctrines. Much more research is needed to determine the use of deification within the thought of these authors. However, new studies, particularly a recent essay on Augustine by Rosenberg, do appear to indicate that deification may have been a soteriological concern in the West – just as it was in the East.78 Indeed, the presumptions that underpin Hallosten’s assertions pertaining to the juridical nature of Western theology are increasingly being brought into question. To get a better sense of this, Chapters 1 and 2 carefully map Russell’s two models of deification. Drawing on Russell and other relevant literature, I outline the key features of the realistic and ethical strands that Russell posits and stratify several accounts of deification that emerged within Early Christianity, starting with the realistic in Chapter 1, illustrating something of the variety that we find within these two approaches. I also discuss some of the routes through which scholars are now postulating that ideas of deification filtered westward prior to the later Middle Ages. This sets the scene for the considerations of Rolle and Julian that follow.

Conclusion The purpose of the introduction has been to introduce some of the debates that underpin current thinking on deification. Although it is acknowledged that thinking around deification emerged in the Latin West in the later Middle Ages in the Rhineland and the Low Countries this has always been viewed as something of an anomaly. However, current research is indicating that deification may be far more imbedded into the history of Western theology than has hitherto been recognised. Recent research is helping us to uncover not only this forgotten history but also the existence of different strands within deification, which are allowing us to appreciate that deification is not simply one thing. One way in which the East and West differ is that in the East treatises dedicated to deification emerge from the seventh century onwards. These do not occur in the West, where as far as we are aware ideas of deification remain tied to notions of Christology, soteriology and exegesis in ways that mimic Patristic models. Although more research is needed before we can say with certainty that doctrines of deification, as opposed to mere themes, are found in the Christian West, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain von Harnack’s position that deification was an alien idea in the Christian West.

Notes 1 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. by Neil Buchanan (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1901), vol. 2, p. 318.

14

Introduction

2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, vol. 4/2, ed. by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), §64, pp. 81–82 and Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, comment on this passage, p. 648. 3 All quotations are taken from the Douay Rheims edition of the Bible unless otherwise stated: The Holy Bible: Douay Version, Translated from the Latin Vulgate [Douay, A.D. 1609: Rheims, A.D. 1582] (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1956). 4 Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, ch. 1. Pseudo Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid with collaboration from Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 198. Charles M. Stang argues that liturgical participation facilitates an ‘apophatic anthropology’ in which we find Dionysius’ ‘“vanishing as a person” and becoming a “divine task” through whom the divine light passes’ (p. 39): Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: No longer ‘I’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 5 Although Patristic Theology in the East arguably extends to Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, I will concentrate on the period up to Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century since after this, discussion of deification largely disappears for several hundred years. When it reappears in the seventh century it is studied in its own right rather than simply being part of doctrinal theology: Russell, Deification, p. 205. 6 Jules Gross, The Divinization of the Christian According to the Greek Fathers, trans. by Paul A. Onica (Anaheim, CA: A&C Press, 2002), p. 267. 7 Gross, Divinization, p. 272. 8 Daniel A. Keating, Deification and Grace (Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), p. 6. 9 Many of these have appeared in edited collections: Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007); Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds.), Theōsis: Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2006), vol. 1; Vladimir Kharlamov (ed.), Theosis: Deification in the Christian Tradition, vol. 2; David Vincent Meconi, S.J. and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Be Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016); Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 10 See, for example, Christoforos Stavropoulos, Partakers in Divine Nature (Brookline, MA: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1976); Anthony Coniaris, Achieving Your Potential in Christ: Theosis: Plain Talks on a Major Doctrine of Orthodoxy (Brookline, MA: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1993); Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is (Essex, UK: Patriarchal Stravropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2008); Archimandrite George of Mount Athos, Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life (Mount Athos: Holy Monastery of St. Gregorios, 2006); George Maloney, The Undreamed Has Happened: God Loves within Us (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2003); Keating, Deification and Grace; Norman Russell, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking of Theosis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). 11 See Meconi, Union with Christ, p. 5. Russell is not alone in seeing the need for a new synopsis of this area. Writing slightly earlier, Paul M. Collins, Partaking in Divine Nature: Deification and Communion (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), also recounts different approaches to deification found in Greek society and philosophy, the Christian scriptures and the Patristic tradition up to Maximus the Confessor in the sixth century. Hilarion Alfeyev, ‘The Deification of Man in Eastern Patristic Tradition (with Special Reference to Gregory Nazianzen, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas)’, Colloquium, 36

Introduction

12 13

14 15

15

(2004), 109–122, likewise offers a comparative study of deification in Gregory of Nazianzen, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas. Several of the works of Dumitru Staniloae have also recently been translated into English, including Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar, trans. by Archimandrite Jerome Newville and Otilia Kloos (South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 2002) and The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2: The World: Creation and Deification, trans. by Ioan Ioanita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000). Other book-length studies published in the last ten years include Stephen Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and the essays in the exhibition catalogue: Konstaninos S. Staikos (ed.), From the Incarnation of Logos to the Theosis of Man: Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Icons from Greece (Athens: Hellenic Foundation for Culture, 2008). See Russell, Deification, pp. 7–8. The centrality of this issue and the inseparability of exegesis from doctrinal concerns in the thought of the Early Church Fathers has been further illustrated in two recent studies by Mark Edwards on Origen and Irenaeus: Origen against the Plato (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) and ‘Growing Like God: Some Thoughts on Irenaeus of Lyons’, in Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God, pp.  37–51. Cf. Carl Mosser, ‘The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Antecedents, and the Origin of Christian Deification’, The Journal of Theological Studies, 56/1 (2005), 30–74. Following Obsorn, Russell, Deification, p. 7 maintains this is the only useful approach. See Eric Francis Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). As Russell discusses in an appendix to Deification, pp. 333–344, we find development of technical terminology across the Greek Patristic period. Russell gives an extensive account of the range of terms used. He notes, for example, that in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, predating Christian usage, we find ‘the verbs θεόω and ἀποθέοω and the nouns ἐκθέωσις and ἀποθέοωσις’ (p. 342). However, the meaning was largely nominal – employed to refer to the deification of heroes and emperors. The second century saw θεόω used in philosophical contexts and the term ἐκθειόω was coined, which added a sense of completion to the idea of deification. Plutarch was the first to use the term ‘ἐκθειάζω’ (p. 343). This is the first philosophical usage of a technical vocabulary referring to deification. However, prior to the later Neoplatonists, particularly Proclus, whose writings coincide with those of the Early Church Fathers, pagan philosophers made little use of this language; it was in Christian circles that it was to be most pronounced. As Russell comments, Until the beginning of the Christian era there are only seventeen surviving instances of the use of the terms. By the end of the third century the number of instances has risen to sixty-eight, which is more than equalled by the Apologists, Clement, Origen, and Hippolytus, who use the term [for deification] more often by the middle of the third century than all their pagan contemporaries and predecessors put together. (p. 343) Clement was the first to employ specific terminology to describe deification, although he does not clearly define what he means by such terms. However, Christians tended to prefer Christian coinages and often differentiated between pagan and Christian ideas of deification through the terminology that they employed. As Russell states, ‘The second-century Apologists used θεοποιέω with

16

Introduction some frequency, but only with reference to pagan deification’ (p.  343). Russell concludes that the language of deification employed in the writings of the Greek Fathers should to be considered to have particular Christian meaning, reflecting the Christological and exegetical ideas in relation to which deification was discussed. The language that they coined allowed them to speak of this idea with a precision that helped them to avoid some of the more negative ideas of absorption and equivalence that the idea could otherwise have carried. In this relation he notes that Christian writers tended to avoid, or use only in a pejorative sense, some terms that came to be used with frequency in a pagan context, for example, ‘ἐκθέόω’ (pp. 339–340). Russell notes too that ‘θέωσις’ and ‘θεοποίησις’ – Christian coinages – were the most widely used: Christian authors show a marked preference for the verbs θεοποιέω and θεόω and the nouns θεοποίησις and θέωσις, both nouns being late coinages found almost exclusively in Christian writers. .  .  . The first verb is taken up by Athanasius, who is the first witness to the noun, theopoiesis, and the second by Gregory of Nazianzus, who produces the noun, θέωσις. (p. 343)

16 17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

The term θέωσις (theosis) is the mostly commonly used term for deification in modern Greek theology. Obsorn, Irenaeus of Lyons. Russell, Deification, p. 1. Russell, Deification, p. 1. Russell, Deification, p.  2. The term ‘methexis’ suggests the participation of a lower entity in its immediate ontological superior and therefore differs from the idea of ‘koinonia’, which means fellowship at table. The latter is the word that is translated as ‘partakers’ in 2 Peter 1.4. I am grateful to Mark Edwards for this observation. Russell, Deification, p. 163. Indeed, Russell (Deification) subdivides the realistic approach into ontological and dynamic strands, the former refers to a passive transformation that takes place as a consequence of the Incarnation, the latter occurs through a more active faith driven engagement with God (pp. 2–3). As Russell clarifies with reference to Athanasius, ontological deification occurs at baptism, it does not mean the Christian is able to share in the eternal logos – a position which he opposed contra Arius (p. 184). Keating, ‘Typologies of Deification’. Russell, Deification, pp. 1ff. Daniel A. Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, in David Vincent Meconi and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Be Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), pp. 40–58 at 57. Rowan Williams, ‘Deification’, in Gordon S. Wakefield (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1983), pp. 106–108 at 106. Donald Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories’, Journal of the Evangelical Theology Society 50/2 (2007), 289–310 at 289. Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, p. 57, quoting Russell, Fellow Workers, p. 26. Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, p.  57. The overlapping nature of these dimensions is reinforced by rather porous boundaries that Russell creates in his discussions of these categories which interweave in much in the same way that senses of scripture run into one another within Patristic and Medieval exegeses. Doctrine and exegesis are likewise symbiotic in the thought of the Early Church Fathers. Keating argues that we might think of the realistic and ethical as paralleling the Christological and the moral sense of scripture: Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, p. 57.

Introduction

17

29 I am grateful to Rob Faesen for this observation. 30 Finlan and Kharlamov, introduction, vol. 1, p. 8. 31 Bernard McGinn, ‘Unio Mystica/Mystical Union’, in Amy Hollywood and Patricia Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion of Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 200–210. 32 See, for example, Chris Jensen, ‘Shine as the Sun: C. S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification’, In Pursuit of the Truth: A Journal of Christian Scholarship, Journal of the C. S. Lewis Foundation (31 October 2017), n.p. www.cslewis.org/journal/ shine-as-the-sun-cs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/ (accessed 6 June 18). Jensen stresses that although many people today might find these ideas ‘heretical’, Lewis accepted the idea of deification as the goal of the Christian Life. 33 Von Harnack, History of Dogma, 5.14–15. 34 Von Harnack, History of Dogma, 5.22. 35 Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, p. 292. 36 On Luther’s rejection of a mystical anthropology see, for example, Antony J. Caroll, ‘Luther, Loyola and La La Land’, New Blackfriars 99/1080 (2018), 163– 176. On potential problems with the Finnish School’s reading of Luther in terms of deification see: Klaus Schwarzwäller, ‘Verantwortung des Glaubens’, in Dennis Bielfeldt and Klaus Schwarzwäller (eds.), Freiheit als Liebe bei Martin Luther (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), pp. 133–158. 37 Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’. 38 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition [100–600] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 359. 39 Gustav Bardy, ‘Divinisation: Chez les Père Latins’, in Édourd de Place et al. (eds.), Dictionnaire Spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), pp.  1370–1459 at 1389–1393. 40 Bardy, ‘Divinisation’, p. 1390. 41 Stanley P. Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien and Unnatural after All: The Role of Deification in Augustine’s Sermons’, in Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God, pp. 89–117 at 89. 42 See n. 54. 43 It is even being claimed that authors as diverse as Nietzsche and Jonathan Edwards promoted forms of deification: Kyle Strobel, ‘Jonathan Edwards and the Polemics of Theosis’, Harvard Theological Review, 105/3 (2012), 259–279; Hazel A. Barnes, ‘Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley’, Philosophy and Theology, 1/1 (1976), 3–24. 44 Andrew Louth, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, in Michael J. Chistensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 32–44; Gösta Hallosten, ‘Theosis in Recent Research: A Renewal of Interest and a Need for Clarity’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 281–293. For a relatively sympathetic discussion of Hallosten’s position see: Gavriluyks, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, pp. 8–12. 45 For Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux see discussion in chapter 1. For Aquinas see, for example, Luke Davis Townsend, ‘Deification in Aquinas: A Supplementum to The Ground of Union’, Journal of Theological Studies, N.S. 66/1 (2015), 204–234; Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2015); Richard Cross, ‘Deification in Aquinas: Created or Uncreated’, The Journal of Theological Studies, 69/1 (2018), 106–132. For Albert the Great and Bonaventure see: HumbertThomas Conus, ‘Divinisation: Théologiens du 13e siècle’, in Dictionnaire Spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), vol. 3, pp. 1413–1432. For Grosseteste see, for example, Robert Grosseteste, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, trans. by F.A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 14.

18

Introduction

46 Hallosten, ‘Theosis in Recent Research’, p. 285. 47 Louth, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, pp. 34–35 (my emphases). 48 For an introduction to Gregory Palamas see: John Meyerdorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. by Lawrence George (London: Faith Press, 1964). 49 Hallosten, ‘Theosis in Recent Research’, p. 283. 50 Hallosten, ‘Theosis in Recent Research’, p. 282. 51 In contrast to Hallosten, Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 156–161 argues that Williams’ reading is ‘simple’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘brilliant’. 52 See, for example, Tuomo Mannermaa, Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus: Rechfertigumg and Vergottung (Hannover: Arbieten zur Geschichte und Theologie des Luthertums, 1989). Mannermaa’s research was the inspiration for a resurgence of interest in deification in Finland; the school is also referred to as the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa. Dennis Bielfeldt, ‘Deification as a Motif in Luther’s Dictata Super Psalterium’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 28/2 (1997), 401–420, lists early scholarship by the Finnish School; Carl Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and Deification’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 55/1 (2002), 36–57 (in which he argues that Calvin advocated deification); Yang-Ho Lee, ‘Calvin on Deification: A Reply to Carl Mosser and Jonathan Slater’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 63/3 (2010), 272–284 (in which he sums up recent research in Calvin studies concerning whether deification is a key idea or not); Kyle Strobel, ‘Jonathan Edward’s Reformed Doctrine of Theosis’ (where he responds to earlier studies of theosis in Edward’s thinking by Oliver Crisp and Michael McCylmond). Cf. Michael J. Christensen, ‘John Wesley: Christian Perfection as Faith Filled with the Energy of Love’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 219–229. 53 See Heiko Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986). 54 Bielfeldt, ‘Deification as a Motif in Luther’s Dictata Super Psalterium’, p. 402. 55 Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing’, pp. 56–57. 56 Luke Davis Townsend, ‘Deification in Aquinas: A Supplementum to The Ground of Union’: Daniel A. Keating likewise draws parallels between Aquinas and Palamas: ‘Justification, Sanctification and Divinization in Thomas Aquinas’, in Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating and John P. Yocum (eds.), Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 139–158. 57 The idea of deification is viewed as problematic in some Protestant circles due the perfectionism that is potentially implied. I am grateful to Mark Edwards for this observation. 58 Steven Wedgeworth, ‘Reforming Deification’, Credenda/Agenda, 05/01/11. www. credenda.org/index.php/Theology/reforming-deification.html (accessed 18 July 2017). Cf. Jensen’s online article on C. S. Lewis cited n. 32. There are of course lay websites that are staunchly against deification. For example, Neil Rivalland, ‘The Doctrine of Deification’, Apologetics Coordination Team. www.deceptioninthechurch.com/deification.html (accessed 18 July 2017). 59 Rhonda Ortiz, ‘What Is Theosis? Christianity’s Most Radical Claim’, 15 March 2016. www.rhondaortiz.com/blog/what-is-theosis (accessed 18 July 2017). 60 Ortiz, ‘What Is Theosis? Christianity’s Most Radical Claim’. On the reference to deification in the catechism: see Keating, Deification and Grace, pp. 1–3. 61 See, for example, M. David Litwa, ‘The God “Human” and Human Gods: Models of Deification in Irenaeus and the Apocyphon of John’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal for Ancient Christianity 18/1 (2013), 70–94; James M. Starr, Sharers in Divine Nature: 2 Peter 1.4 in Its Hellenistic Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003); James M. Starr, ‘Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak of Deification?’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers

Introduction

62

63 64

65 66 67 68 69

19

of the Divine Nature, pp. 81–92; Stephen Finlan, ‘Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp.  68–80; Stephen Finlan, ‘Deification in Jesus’ Teaching’, in Vladimir Kharkamov (ed.), Theosis, vol. 2, pp. 21–41; Stephen Finlan, ‘Second Peter’s Notion of Divine Participation’, in Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds.), Theosis, pp. 32–50; Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); L. Ann Jervis, ‘Becoming Like God through Christ: Discipleship in Romans’, in Richard N. Longenecker (ed.), Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 143–162; Robert C. Tannehill, The Shape of the Gospel: New Testament Essays (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007), esp. pp.  223–237; Stephen Finlan, ‘Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?’ Cf. Veli Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2004), which opens with an overview of recent scholarly approaches to deification in the New Testament. The final essay in Vladimir Kharlamov (ed.), Theosis, vol. 2: Mark S. Medley, ‘Participation in God: The Appropriation of Theosis by Contemporary Baptist Theologians’ (pp.  205–245) likewise explores contemporary Baptist ideas on deification and also considers deification in 2 Peter 1.4 – this time through the lens of Harink’s contemporary readings; David Crumps, ‘Re-Examination of the Johannine Trinity: Perichoresis or Deification’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 59 (2006), 395–412. Finlan, ‘Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?’ p. 79. On the difference between Christian and Gnostic approaches to deification, see a series of articles by Litwas, ‘The God “Human” and Human Gods’; M. David Litwas, ‘You Are Gods: Deification in the Naassene Writer and Clement of Alexandria’, Harvard Theological Review, 110/1 (2017); M. David Litwas, ‘“I Will become Him”: Homology and Deification in the Gospel of Thomas’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 134/2 (2015), 427–447. Note that this reading the Gospel of Thomas, however, runs counter to Stephen Finlan’s discussion in ‘Deification in Jesus’ Teaching’. Starr, ‘Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak of Deification?’ p. 90. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, p.  656. Cf. David Vincent Meconi, ‘Consummation of the Christian Promise: Recent Studies on Deification’, New Blackfriars, 87 (2006), 3–13; Norman Russell, ‘Why Does Theosis Fascinate Western Christians?’ Sobornost, 34 (2012), 5–15; Roger E. Olson, ‘Deification in Contemporary Theology’, Theology Today, 64/2 (2007), 186–200. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, p. 657. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, p. 656. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, p. 656. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Retrieval of Deification’, p. 648. For Aquinas, see n. 56. Russell (Deification) briefly discusses deification in both Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine. A more extensive study of Augustine has been undertaken by David Vincent Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). Also on Augustine see Robert Puchniak, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification, Revisited’, in Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds.), Theosis, pp.  122–133; Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’; Augustine M. Casiday, ‘St Augustine on Deification: His Homily on Psalm 81’, Sobornost, 23 (2001), 23–44; Ronald J. Teske, ‘Augustine’s Epistula X: Another Look at deificari in otio’, Augustinanum, 32 (1992), 289–299. For a brief mention of St. Francis in this regard, Bernard McGinn, ‘Regina Quondam . . .’, Speculum, 83/4 (2008), 817–839 at 836. Although McGinn does not specifically claim that Francis was a mystic, he reads him within a tradition of thought related to deification. Not much recent work has been conducted into deification in the medieval schools and universities. For

20

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78

Introduction Albert the Great see: Édourd de Place, et al., ‘Divinisation’, Dictionnaire Spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), vol. 3, pp. 1370–1459. More recent studies of scholarly discussions include Nancy J. Hudson, Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007); Nathan R. Kerr, ‘St Anselm: Theoria and the Doctrinal Logic of Perfection’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 175–188; and Ilia Delio, Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Press, 1998). Cf. Ben Morgan, On Becoming God: Late Medieval, Mysticism and the Modern Western Self (New York: Fordham, 2013). For scholarly discussions of Cassian, see Chapter 2. John Arblaster and Rob Faesen’s two 2018 volumes also have a number of essays which discuss deification in the Medieval Christian West include John of Fecamp, the Monk of Farne and The Dream of the Rood. For recent research into deification in the Low Countries, see preface n. 15. Jared Ortiz, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’, in David Vincent Meconi S.J. and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), pp. 59–81 at 81. Ortiz, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’, p. 80. Ortiz, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’, p.  61, cf. n. 7. For discussion of the exchange formula, see Chapter 1. Ortiz, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’, p. 62. de Place et al., ‘Divinisation’. See, Detlef Metz, Gabriel Biel and die Mystik (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), p. 294. Conus, ‘Divinisation’, pp. 1420ff, esp. p. 1419. This entry on divinisation notes that the term carries a certain ambiguity in Bonaventure’s writing. Bonaventure uses the term ‘deiformis’ to speak of grace which divinises and the natural divinity of grace. He also used the term to speak of the soul being deiform and spiritual because of its origin. Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’.

1

Defining deification: realistic models

Deification is an arresting term, capturing everything God has destined for us, everything Christ desires to achieve in us.1

Introduction The above quotation is taken from David Meconi’s short introduction to Orthodox thought in the Patristic East, Union with Christ: Living with God, which may seem an odd opening to a book on two fourteenth-century English mystics. However, I hope to show that discussion of deification in the Early Church is a fruitful place to begin an evaluation of Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich. Meconi’s quotation signals that deification is central to the theology of the Early Church, a position that theologians of all persuasions are increasingly embracing. I hope to illustrate that an understanding of Early Christian thinking on deification is helpful in elucidating the extent to which Rolle and Julian also advocate forms of deification. For this reason, this book begins with a study of Patristic ideas on deification in the Christian East and in the light of this considers the extent to which similar ideas are now being mooted across the theological history of the Christian West. This focus on the Christian East is to some extent necessitated by the paucity of research into deification in the Christian West and scholarly disagreement as to whether deification formed a central concern within the West prior to its evident existence in late medieval mystical texts from the Rhineland and the Low Countries. However, even admitting a greater understanding of the West’s theological relationship to deification, I believe that an understanding of how ideas of deification developed within the Early Church provides a useful sounding board against which to measure the writings of Julian and Rolle. In approaching the study of these two mystics from this angle, it is important to stress that I am not suggesting that either was directly influenced by Greek Patristic thought. What I hope to achieve in the opening two chapters of this book is to detail ideas of deification found in some of the writings of Greek Early Church Fathers, exploring whether such thinking was also in evidence in the Latin

22

Defining deification: realistic models

West. The chapter makes use of Norman Russell’s typology, in which, as I discussed in the introduction, he divides Greek Patristic accounts into two types – the realistic and the ethical – which I believe Julian and Rolle respectively mirror. I also aim to elucidate the important relationship between deification and Christology in Early Church thinking, which also appears to be an important concern for both Rolle and Julian. There has been far more scholarly interest in authors who advocate the realistic model, perhaps because many of those within the ethical strand have, for reasons other than their thinking on deification, been viewed as potentially heretical. We will therefore begin with realistic models, focusing in this chapter on accounts which revolve around ideas of adoption, sharing in the Trinitarian relationship, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and some form of ontological transformation. To repeat Russell’s statement quoted earlier: ‘The realistic approach assumes that human beings are in some sense transformed by deification. Behind the latter use lies the model of methexis, or participation, in God’.2 The realistic is an approach to deification that Russell finds particularly within late Alexandrian theology. It is an approach that is tied into the christological discussions through which the Church established its thinking over the nature of the Incarnation. As Russell states, ‘The realistic or sacramental approach, which envisaged an ontological transformation of the believer by the Incarnate Christ, was to be developed during the christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries by Athanasius and Cyril’.3 Yet although its fullest form before the seventh century is found in the thought of Cyril of Alexandria, Russell argues that its roots lie in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons.4 These two rather different realistic accounts nicely illustrate many of the key contours within Russell’s realistic trajectory. It is important to stress, however, that for neither Father was deification a theme discussed in its own right. Irenaeus does not even mention it by name and neither author treats the topic systematically. In what follows I will outline Russell’s approach to these two Fathers as well as more recent thinking on the meaning of deification in their thought since despite Russell’s being a relatively recent monograph, a number of the studies on which Russell draws have already been challenged and superseded.5

1. Irenaeus of Lyons Although themes relating to deification appear in the late first to early second-century Apologists,6 it is widely accepted that the idea of deification was first properly introduced into Patristic Theology in the late second century by Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus developed an extremely complex soteriological schema over which there is some scholarly disagreement,7 the same holds true of his account of deification.8 As Gross and Russell note, the material that relates to deification in Irenaeus’ writing was, for the most part, written in opposition to Gnostics who denigrated the body. In

Defining deification: realistic models

23

mooting a route to deification Irenaeus intentionally emphasised the body’s worth, which he held to be made in God’s image.9 In this relation Gross attributes to him a ‘physical’ idea of deification, meaning that it includes the body.10 Fairbairn comments that ‘this [latter] emphasis is so strong in Irenaeus that Harnack and others have argued that he understood salvation to be little more than the attaining of immortality for the human body’.11 This is, however, too narrow a understanding of Irenaeus’ soteriology, and so thinking on deification, in which he also stresses the restoration of the human spirit through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.12 Irenaeus links the latter to the restoration of the divine likeness that humanity lost at the Fall. Although it is not entirely clear whether the likeness restored through the Incarnation and the indwelling of the Spirit is the same as that which was lost or something greater, what seems more certain is that for Irenaeus likeness to God was always a state into which humanity was intended to grow.13 The need to restore this possibility led Irenaeus to argue that restoration was therefore contingent on Christ having lived through all life’s stages from childhood to adulthood, thus redeeming each one. As Irenaeus states, For, in what way could we be partaken of the adoption of sons, unless we had received from Him through the Son that fellowship which refers to Himself, unless His Word, having been made flesh, had entered into communion with us? Wherefore also He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all communion with God.14 Irenaeus maintained that it was only because he was fully human that Christ was able to restore this possibility of sharing in God’s likeness.15 Yet restoration was also dependent on Christ being fully God, since only as such was he able to offer humanity a share in his incorruption. As Russell clarifies, Against the docetism of the Gnostics, Irenaeus taught that the Incarnation was a true union of God with man, of created with uncreated. Without this ontological basis the soteriological purpose of the Incarnation could not have been made effective. The Incarnation took place in order to recover what was lost in Adam and to complete humanity’s growth to full maturity.16 Full maturity for Irenaeus meant deification – a state always intended but which the Fall had disrupted. It was a spiritual pathway which the Incarnation had restored albeit, according to Mark Edwards, via a different route.17 As Edwards puts it, ‘there was therefore a Plan A which was not identical with the one that is now unfolding’.18 Not that deification was fully attained in this life exactly – for Irenaeus deification was a journey towards God that the Christian begins at the moment of baptism, but it remains nonetheless

24

Defining deification: realistic models

a future hope – the fullness of which the Christian looks forward to.19 As Edwards clarifies, Irenaeus could not say of us that whatever is to be done is done already, but he could say this of Christ, whose eternal ministry has no end any more than it has a beginning, while his ministry on earth is already complete. .  .  . At some point in history, God in his plenitude became man, in order that at some unrevealed date in the future man in his fullness may become god.20 This latter point is also one that we find stressed by later Church Fathers, such as Gregory of Nyssa.21 For Russell, the realistic nature of Irenaeus’ account of deification is most clearly evidenced in what has become known as the ‘formula of exchange’ (tantum quantum or admirabile commercium), an idea that Irenaeus developed in relation to several scriptural passages, including 2 Corinthians 8.9 and Philippians 2.6–8.22 Irenaeus claims that God became man in order that humans might take on the qualities of Jesus via adoption. This idea appears several times in Irenaeus’ anti-Gnostic writing, Against Heresies (Adversus haereses). For example, in Book Five he states: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through his transcendent love become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself’.23 Or as he states in Book Three: For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and he who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God.24 In the latter passage, we clearly see Irenaeus linking the idea of exchange to that of adoption. As Russell clarifies quoting Irenaeus, what this entailed was that ‘through the divine sonship a human being is “mingled with the logos” and becomes a dwelling-place of God (AH 3.19.1; 3.20.2)’.25 Likewise, Fairbairn stresses that for Irenaeus what amounts to deification depends on entering into a relationship with God from which incorruption results. As Fairbairn writes of Irenaeus: ‘to be united to Christ is to share in his eternal life, his incorruption’.26 In contrast to von Harnack who held deification an incursion of Greek philosophy into early Christian thought, Russell stresses that the principle underlying Irenaeus’ exchange formula is biblical.27 As in the early secondcentury writings of Justin Martyr, Psalm 82.6 acts as a stimulus for Irenaeus.28 In his Against Heresies, Irenaeus cites the verse three times, on each occasion interpreting it in like manner.29 His first usage appears in Against Heresies 3.6.1, and Carl Mosser argues that it seems clear that his opponents had quoted various scriptural verses as evidence that there was a multiplicity of gods – thereby bringing Jesus’ full divinity into question.30 Irenaeus

Defining deification: realistic models

25

appears to use this verse to counter such a position, stressing that when the Psalmist speaks of ‘gods’, in both verses 6 and 1,31 he does so to indicate that Christians have been adopted as sons and are therefore gods, but only by adoption through grace. They are not gods by nature as Christ is. As Irenaeus states: He [the Psalmist] refers [in verse 1] to the Father and the Son, and those who have received the adoption; but these are the Church. For she is the synagogue of God, which God – that is, the Son himself – has gathered by himself. . . . But of what gods [does he speak in [verse 6]]? . . . To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the ‘adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father’.32 Mosser demonstrates that Irenaeus bases his exegetical approach here on the Jewish exegetical technique ‘gezerah shavah’, in which one verse is interpreted in comparison to other similar verses; in his exegesis of this passage, Irenaeus points to Psalm 50.1, which speaks of God judging his people. Mosser notes that this principle leads Irenaeus to prefer a reading of these ‘gods’ as people, specifically the Church, over an interpretation of them as either idols or angels (an interpretation of ‘gods’ evidenced elsewhere in Scripture). We also find the entire process of adoption being attributed to Christ; human beings, although clearly gods, have no equivalency with Christ.33 Edwards notes that a similar point is made by Irenaeus with reference to Ephesians 1.10.34 Thus even though Irenaeus does not speak of deification by name and there is scholarly disagreement concerning Irenaeus’ Christology, such that Irenaeus’ understanding of deification is not always clear, Irenaeus is nonetheless acknowledged as the first Father to promote the idea – doing so in ways that Russell argues are primarily realistic, despite the ethical dimension of imitating Christ and sharing in God’s likeness/qualities that are also pivotal to his thought.35 This mysterious dynamic of being taken into the Trinitarian relationship as a consequence of the Incarnation through the inward working of the Holy Spirit enacted in the context of the Church through the sacraments is extended in subsequent accounts of deification in the Alexandrian tradition. Those who emphasise this realistic dynamic draw on Irenaeus and produce versions of the exchange formula. Its most concise rendering is found in the writings of the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, who puts the idea succinctly in his On the Incarnation: ‘For he became man that we might become divine’.36 Despite Athanasius importance in further developing the exchange formula and although mention of deification is scattered across Athanasius’ corpus, it is nonetheless somewhat unclear exactly what he means by it. As Vladamir Kharlamov comments: Athanasius argues for deification more than he attempts to explain the precise meaning of this concept. Even Gross, who sees in him a doctrinal

26

Defining deification: realistic models synthesis for the concept of deification, had to acknowledge that ‘with Athanasius we would search in vain for a systematic and well-balanced exposition of the matter’.37

A much more nuanced account of deification is found in the writings Cyril of Alexandria (376–444), who clarifies key elements within the realistic approach in the wake of the fourth- and fifth-century christological controversies.38

2. Cyril of Alexandria Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria between 421 and 444, is best known for his christological debates with Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, between 428 and 431, which culminated in the Council of Ephesus in 431 and Nestorius’ deposition. Scholars continue to discuss the extent to which Cyril’s Christology underpins Chalcedon.39 The scholarship that focuses specifically on Cyril’s account of deification stresses that it can no more be prised apart from his Christology than the exegesis in which he couches it.40 Indeed Russell comments, where deification is concerned, ‘Cyril does not lend himself to easy excerption. His remarks on deification, at least in his later more discursive works, are always embedded within broader theological structures’.41 Keating notes that ‘a perennial question that has beset and beleaguered Cyril’s account of salvation’ is whether or not ‘Cyril’s Christ possess a real, concrete, individual humanity’ as opposed to being ‘merely ideal, a kind of representative and abstract humanity’.42 In short, there is no agreement within the scholarship as to Cyril’s Christology. Although the idea that Cyril promoted deification is not in dispute, how we interpret his Christology will govern our understanding of his account of deification. Much recent scholarship, such as that of John Anthony McGuckin, Graham Gould, Mark Edwards and Daniel Keating, is sympathetic to a reading that emphasises the importance of the individual dimension in Cyril’s understanding of the Incarnation. Both Edwards and Keating offer new accounts of Cyril’s thinking on deification along these lines.43 Edwards, for example, explores the issue of deification in response to readings that posits Cyril to have held Christ to have more than one nature.44 It is widely accepted that Cyril holds what is best described as a ‘Word-flesh’ Christology, albeit without the negative Apollinarian attribution that this idea sometimes carries since it is clear that Cyril maintains that Christ is endowed with a rational human soul.45 What interests Edwards is how we are to understand Cyril’s Incarnational formula: ‘one enfleshed nature of the divine Word’. Edwards moots that the term ‘flesh’ does not refer to a nature within Christ, his human nature, for he argues that Cyril did not hold that Christ had a human as well as a divine nature, which would entail two diametrically opposed natures undermining his ontological unity.46 Although humans have human nature, Edwards argues that Cyril believed that, in

Defining deification: realistic models

27

contrast, Christ had a divine nature that assumed flesh, which flesh was deified by his divine nature. However, Edwards holds that it is wrong therefore to say that Cyril believes Christ assumed humanity in the abstract. What Christ assumed is concrete flesh, using the term ‘flesh’ to speak of Christ’s whole person, in which relation he was a man (rather than humanity). As Edwards puts it: No human is identical with the essence of humanity, which exists only insofar as it is predicated of discrete individuals. It is logically impossible for this essence to become identical with that of God, because an essence is immutably determined by its properties. It is, however, possible for the Word, as second person of the Trinity, to become identical with the one man who is Jesus of Nazareth if we suppose that not the one essence has been illogically transformed into another, but that the flesh of this one man has become, and remains, divine.47 Edwards therefore favours a reading of Cyril’s Christology that reinforces the sense that an individual can become divine without losing his/her human nature. It avoids any accusation of pantheism, in which the human is simply absorbed into the divine or attains some level of equivalence. Edwards argues that for Cyril, just as Christ did not require a new nature to become human, but put on flesh, humans too do not need a new nature to become divine, they put on Christ. As Edwards clarifies: The simple and eternal nature of God admits no change or addition: in becoming flesh he makes his own a human body and soul – otherwise what would it mean to become? – but he does not acquire a new nature. Our flesh becomes his flesh, but it remains our nature, not his. Because our flesh is his flesh, it is deified – and therefore we are deified – in him.48 Edwards holds that Cyril does not claim that human nature in the abstract is itself deified. Nor does he see Cyril asserting that humans assume the divine essence.49 It is a reading that is offered further support by Donald Fairbairn’s discussion of how Cyril guards against any confusion of natures when speaking of deification. Fairbairn argues that Cyril makes a distinction between two Greek terms for identity – ‘ἰδιότης’ and ‘οἰκειότης’ – that were otherwise treated as synonyms.50 He advocates that Cyril uses the first to reference the identity of substance in which the persons of the Trinity share and the second to signify the fellowship in which the members of the Trinity share whilst retaining their distinction as persons. It is this latter relationship into which human beings are invited, such that, they too are able to retain their own individuality. Indeed, Fairbairn holds that Cyril presses this point by speaking of a ‘natural fellowship’ (οἰκειότης φυσική) between the members of the Trinity in which human beings can participate. Although Cyril argues

28

Defining deification: realistic models

that human beings can share in the intimate relations of the Trinity, on this reading they do not become identical with God’s essence. Indeed Fairbairn argues that Cyril always maintained an essential distinction between the sonship of Jesus and the sonship into which human beings are invited, even though Fairbairn stresses that sharing in God’s qualities is predicated on ‘the warm communion and intimacy which the persons of the Trinity have as a result of their unity of substance’.51 As he further clarifies: Cyril of Alexandria . . . guards sedulously against any idea of mystical absorption into God, and he tirelessly promotes a personal concept of participation in which we share in the very love between the Father and the Son. Whilst Keating would to a large extent concur with this and Edwards reading, he argues that the question of whether Christ assumes individual humanity or human nature more universally should not be answered either/or, but rather both/and – for him, Cyril’s Christ is both representative of humanity as a whole and is a concrete individual. How Cyril gets from the latter to the former is, Keating argues, somewhat unclear, the point however remains that a concrete individual Christ saves humanity: in the end, he does not attempt to explain precisely in what sense Christ in his own individual humanity is representative of our humanity, but he plainly wants to maintain that the Word, by the real assumption and transformation of our fallen human nature, brings about in his own concrete humanity a new human nature.52 Like Irenaeus, Cyril also draws on biblical texts when speaking of deification. Cyril tends to use the language of 2 Peter 1.4: ‘you may be made partakers of the divine nature’. Indeed, Russell notes that this verse was Cyril’s preferred way of speaking of deification, and was a passage that he cited with great regularity.53 For example, in his Commentary on John, Cyril writes, ‘For we are justified through faith and rendered sharers in the divine nature by participation in the Holy Spirit’.54 Or again, ‘But when God sent out his Spirit and made us partakers in his own nature and through that Spirit renewed the face of the earth, we were transformed to “newness of life”’.55 Like Irenaeus, Cyril also stresses the importance of the work of the Holy Spirit within deification. Russell notes that role of the Spirit is, for example, emphasised in Cyril’s Dialogues on the Trinity, where he writes that ‘it is through him [the Spirit] that we are called “god’s”, since by union with him we have become partakers of the divine and ineffable nature’.56 It is a point that Cyril further reiterates in his Commentary on John, where he again stresses that just as the Son, the Word, partakes in our flesh, so our flesh is able to partake of God, as we partake of Christ through the working of the Spirit:

Defining deification: realistic models

29

So he came to share in flesh and blood, that is, he became a human being . . . he likewise has us in himself in that he bore our nature, and our body is called the body of the Word. . . . He bore our nature and thus fashioned it in conformity with his life. And he himself is in us, since we have all become partakers in him, and we have him in ourselves through the Spirit. Therefore, we have become partakers in the divine nature and we are called children, since we have the Father himself in us through the Son.57 Russell comments that this likewise demonstrates the divinity of the Spirit, who would not otherwise be able to save us and who as a consequence of his divine nature ‘is operative together with the Son in baptism, in the Eucharist, and in the moral life’.58 Indeed, Russell stresses that Cyril draws particular attention to the role that the sacraments play within deification.59 Russell stresses too that deification for Cyril is not simply a future hope (although there is an eschatological element to Cyril’s thinking), its ‘fundamental “moment”’ takes place when the Logos assumes flesh, and it is this in which the Christian comes to participate.60 Here it is important to note that Cyril’s main image for sharing in God is drawn from 2 Peter where the author speaks of being a partaker of God, which translates the Greek word ‘κοινωνός’ which was used to speak of fellowship at the table – an image which reflects the emphasis on the Eucharist that we find in Cyril. It does not necessarily therefore imply methexis, which is a philosophical term for participating in an immediate ontological superior.61 In addition to the language of partaking of the divine nature which marks Cyril’s discussion of deification, Jonathan Morgan notes that we also find an emphasis on doing good works and having a clean heart. He draws attention, for example, to the following passage in Cyril’s Commentary on John, where when discussing John 14.24, Cyril writes: So if anyone thinks it is good and desirable to partake in the divine nature and to have the God and Father of the universe indwelling and abiding in the shrine of their heart through the Son in the Spirit, let them clean out their soul and wash away the stain of wickedness by any means possible, or rather through every good work. . . . Therefore, let us cleanse our heart from every defilement. This – this is how God will dwell in us, and make us greater than all the malice of the devil, and make us happy and blessed, and render us partakers of his divine and ineffable nature.62 Morgan argues that although Cyril does not often stress the importance of the ascetic life, a far greater emphasis on askesis is found in his Festal Letters. Despite eschewing formal discussion of deification here, Morgan argues that the same principles underpin his more pastoral concerns as expressed in these letters: ‘Cyril’s soteriology is synergistic; deification cannot occur

30

Defining deification: realistic models

without God but neither does it come to completion without human cooperation’.63 Despite his account of deification seemingly being driven by realistic elements, such as the ‘ontological’ change that is brought about as a consequence of the Incarnation and sharing in the Trinitarian relationship,64 Cyril’s discussion is far from devoid of ethical elements. Russell likewise argues that for Cyril our bodies will also be glorified, just as Christ’s was in the transfiguration.65 Cyril’s account, like that of Irenaeus, reinforces Keating and Russell’s observations that Patristic accounts of deification have both realistic and ethical elements, although we find an emphasis on one aspect. Importantly, despite sharing in the inter-Trinitarian relationship absorption is not implied. For Cyril and Irenaeus, although deification occurs in the present, it also awaits its consummation, where even then there will be a difference between God and the deified soul.66 Scholars are now beginning to argue that we find similar ideas at play within the West from the Patristic period onwards. As we noted in the introduction, a number of the Fathers from the Latin West mention deification – including Tertullian, Augustine and Hilary of Poitiers, yet it has traditionally been held that deification played little role in their wider appreciations of soteriology – a position that was strongly promoted by Adolf von Harnack. However, there would seem to be grounds for arguing that realistic approaches to deification also existed in the Patristic West. In terms of the realistic approach we might point to two early authors – Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine and a number of medieval mystics from the Rhineland and the Low Countries, as well as at least one early twelfth-century writer, William of St. Thierry. Although Hilary (fourth century) clearly affirmed the idea of deification, even if only as a future hope, writing in his Commentary on Matthew prior to his contact with the Greek speaking world that in Christ ‘God became man [through whom] man in turn becomes a god’,67 since his writings did not much circulate, his views on deification are often considered an isolated example.68 However, Augustine is starting to excite real interest as an advocate of deification; the very champion of Western soteriology in whose writings von Harnack flatly denied the existence of the idea.69

3. Augustine of Hippo Amongst recent scholarly appraisals of deification in Augustine (354–430), there is some tentative agreement that he held the idea of deification to have scriptural foundations.70 As Russell notes, ‘its biblical basis in Psalm 82 seemed to him incontrovertible’.71 He also appears to have connected it to Christology; Russell affirms a certain similarity with the approach found in Cyril of Alexandria: ‘As for his contemporary, Cyril of Alexandria, the deification of humans beings is the purpose for which the Word became Incarnate and is appropriated by them through baptism’.72 Likewise, when writing about deification as participation in God, he notes that Augustine was careful to distinguish between the creature and the Creator, as for

Defining deification: realistic models

31

example, when he writes in De Natura et Gratia that ‘the creature will never become equal with God even if perfect holiness were to be achieved in us. Some think that in the next life we shall be changed into what he is; I am not convinced’.73 Yet references to deification in Augustine’s major writings are few and far between. As Rosenberg comments of recent re-evaluations: A handful of works have begun to strip away this misunderstanding [that Augustine did not advocate deification], demonstrating that Augustine held some form of deificatio; such scholars have had to justify this very substantial change in interpretation, apparently, on a relative handful of texts.74 Indeed, Gerald Bonner identified only fifteen usages of ‘deificari’ and ‘deificatus’, of which seven he thought not relevant to a study of Augustine’s thinking on the idea,75 a fact which Rosenberg notes, given that Augustine authored some 93 to 120 books, makes the evidence base seem rather thin.76 It is perhaps this, as well as the lack of any immediate successor, that leads Russell to rather minimise the importance for the Latin West of this idea within Augustine’s thought, this despite noting that Augustine referred to the idea when working through problems of soteriology in relation to extreme Pelagians such as Coelestius.77 Yet while the terminology of deification is seldom found in Augustine’s treatises, Rosenberg notes that it appears more frequent in his sermons, which far exceeded his books – some 4,000 to 10,000, around 900 of which are still extant. Rosenberg asks why this evidence has been overlooked. He concludes that the fault lies with a modern (rather than antique) bias for the written word, particularly the book, which ignores that Augustine was first and foremost a pastor operating within a largely oral-aural culture.78 Although Rosenberg notes that Augustine does not make use of experimental ideas in sermons (a trait which we find in his books), he nonetheless draws attention to the fact that in his Retractationes Augustine claimed to have solved several theological problems in sermons – obviating the need to revisit them elsewhere in his writing. Indeed, Rosenberg comments that the Retractationes give the impression that Augustine held his sermons to be an important part of his corpus, one which he planned to revise in the same way as his books. Rosenberg concludes that a failure to understand the extent to which learning was still conducted through oral-aural means in North Africa in the fourth century has led scholars to pay little attention to Augustine’s sermons and thus underplay the emphasis that he places on deification. Indeed, he argues that given that Augustine does not experiment in sermons, the appearance of deification within this context implies that Augustine considered it to be a fairly uncontroversial idea (albeit one that needed to be clarified): ‘that deification features in sermons in particular argues for the centrality and normality of such a position in his theology and North African theology at the time’.79

32

Defining deification: realistic models

When this material is examined in detail, Rosenberg argues that it becomes clear that for Augustine deification was an important soteriological concern, one that he suggests needs to be understood in relation to Augustine’s belief in creation ex nihilo, and more particularly, Augustine’s thinking around privation theory. By the latter, Rosenberg intends the privation of good that Augustine understood entailed by the Fall that caused a corruption in human nature that needed correction or perhaps better ‘repair’. Whilst this is uncontroversial, Rosenberg argues that ransom theory fails to do justice to the problem which Augustine reports, which involves a healing that demands ‘an infusion of [God’s] righteousness into the soul of the corrupted person’.80 More than simply requiring a ransom, he notes that Augustine speaks of the need for a ‘substantive’ change in human nature, an idea which appears to be particularly prevalent in the sermon material, where we find great emphasis placed on the restoration of a lost good. Soteriology is, Rosenberg argues, operating beyond the boundaries of ransom theory when Augustine speaks of Christ’s deformity giving us a new form, or reconstituting us such that we become loveable. Although the idea of ransom is important and fully operative within the sermons, Rosenberg feels that Augustine places it within a larger soteriological framework, in which therapeutic transformation is the driving force. He argues, ‘Ransom theory was a tool for Augustine: important as an explanation for the means, but rather limited since he was primarily concerned with the end’.81 Rosenberg suggests that a clear example of this move beyond ransom theory can be seen in his Expositions on the Psalms, where in Enarratio 94 Augustine alludes to Jesus’ famous discussion of whether or not Christians should pay taxes by taking a coin and asking whose head is embossed on it – and then arguing that one should render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God (Matthew 22.21). He argues that Augustine appears to take this to mean that just as coins were reminted with the accession of each new emperor, so too the soul, in being forgiven, is reminted, such that the image of God is impressed once again onto its form. As Augustine states here, ‘Thus the image of our God is engraved anew on his coin, which is our soul, so that we may return to his coffers’.82 Such imagery to Rosenberg’s mind – one of reinforcing, reforming and recreating – is suggestive of a soteriology that is driven by renewal and restoration rather than ransom. He believes that such a soteriology also makes better sense of statements like the following that appears in sermon 192, and which seems to come close to Greek Patristic discussions of deification by laying claim to a future hope exceeding that from which Adam fell: In order to make gods of those who were merely human, one who was God made himself human; without forfeiting what he was, he wished to become what he himself had made. He himself made what

Defining deification: realistic models

33

he would become, because what he did was add man to God, not lose God in man.83 Indeed, Rosenberg argues that there is a strong correlation between the language of image and likeness in Augustine’s thought and participation. When we note this, he moots, despite a limited use of technical vocabulary referring to deification, it suddenly becomes apparent that a belief in deification is also far more prevalent in Augustine’s books that has hitherto been realised. The view that Augustine’s soteriology needs to be read more cosmologically is also upheld by David Vincent Meconi, to whose thinking on Augustine’s understanding of deification Rosenberg often defers. Meconi outlines his understanding of Augustine’s account of deification in his monograph, The One Christ: Augustine’s Theology of Deification and in a recent essay, where he draws particular attention to statements in Augustine’s sermons. He notes, for example, the following passage, in one of Augustine recently discovered Mainz sermons, To what hope the Lord has called us . . . we carry mortality about with us, we endure infirmity, we look forward to divinity. For God wishes not only to vivify, but also to deify us. When would human infirmity ever have dared to hope for this unless divine truth had promised it?84 Meconi is particularly struck by the way in which Augustine differentiates between being ‘vivified’ and being ‘deified’ – that is, between being redeemed and raised up to be gods. Meconi also argues that deification for Augustine is primarily an ecclesiological process. Indeed, he holds that compared to his contemporaries Augustine has a particularly advanced ecclesiology, in which Augustine maintains that Christians identify most closely with God through the Church where they encounter and experience the workings of the Holy Spirit. It is an idea that Meconi argues that Augustine reinforces with his term, ‘the whole Christ’, by which Augustine means that Christ’s work is only brought to completion through the operation of the Church, or as Meconi puts it, ‘Christ is truly complete only with his disciples in eternal communion with him’.85 In this context, Meconi remarks that, using the words of Psalm 63.8, Augustine speaks in De Trinitate of being ‘glued’ to God and to fellow believers.86 It is the Holy Spirit that actualises this by indwelling in human hearts. The love that is engendered is, Meconi observes, transformative. Indeed, he stresses that it is a key Augustinian belief that love has a transformative effect and that for Augustine one is transformed into what one loves – an idea that has been previously affirmed by Margaret Miles.87 It is as such, caught up in the body of Christ, the Church, through the workings of the Holy Spirit, that Augustine holds that Christians come to see what God sees, thereby assuming a God-like capacity for knowledge. Meconi notes

34

Defining deification: realistic models

that this is an idea that appears both in Augustine’s Confessions and in his Expositions on the Psalms.88 In the former Augustine writes of how God sees through the eyes of those who are filled with the Spirit: It is different for people who see creation through your Spirit, for you are seeing it through their eyes. . . . No one really knows the reality of God except the Spirit of God. How, then, can we too. The answer that comes to me: if we know something through his Spirit . . . so it is rightly said to those who know anything in the Spirit of the God.89 In the same work he also states that those filled with the Spirit likewise have a God’s-eye perspective: ‘What you see through my Spirit, I see, I say. You see these things in terms of time, but I do not see in time, nor when you say these things in temporal fashion, do I speak in a way conditioned by time’.90 Yet Meconi comments that whilst in Augustine we see a transference of abilities from God to the Christian there is always a distinction, even when seeing as God sees and speaking through the Spirit.91 Nonetheless, Meconi takes such ideas to be a sign of deification in Augustine’s thought, commenting, ‘Human divinization thus allows the creature to see and speak like God but in a way commensurate with still and always being a creature’.92 Following Fairbairn, we might say that what Meconi identifies in Augustine is a particular effect of ‘christological grace’, that is, the effect of the Incarnation at work in the Christian through the operation of the Holy Spirit. As Fairbairn puts it, such grace amounts to ‘what God gives us in salvation and . . . who Christ must be in order to give us this grace’.93 Although a more detailed discussion of the scholarship than this overview permits would be needed to convincingly challenge Hallosten’s assertion that only Eastern accounts of deification are shaped by participatory soteriologies, Rosenberg’s and Meconi’s analyses certainly go some way towards undermining his position. On their readings Augustine, it would seem, promotes a realistic model of deification. With the idea of christological grace in mind, Fairbairn posits that there are also many resonances between the christologies of Cyril of Alexandria and that of another Western author, John Cassian, who worked and wrote in the West in the fourth century.94 Indeed, it was Cassian, Fairbairn notes, not his contemporary Augustine, who Pope Leo I charged with writing a condemnation of Nestorianism in Latin – a parallel work to those being composed by Cyril of Alexandria in Greek in the East. However, although Fairbairn draws attention to a number of realistic elements in Cassian’s account of deification, the accent that passes into the West in his case appears to be more ethical than realistic. We will therefore reserve Cassian for the next chapter. Russell notes that there would seem to be no obvious immediate successors of Augustine’s thinking on deification. It has traditionally been held that all we find is a sudden explosion of writings that discuss deification emerging in the Rhineland and the Low Countries from the thirteenth

Defining deification: realistic models

35

century onward. Jared Ortiz’ research is however, bringing this assumption into question. Greek Patristic writing was also known to the Anglo-Saxons and it is quite possible that discussions of deification have been overlooked, especially when John Scotus Eriugena is taken into account. Eriugena was at the court of Charles the Bald. His work was condemned and since it did not circulate in the later Middle Ages it has, perhaps rather unfairly, not been considered as an example of Western thinking on deification. It does, however, demonstrate that such ideas were known into the ninth century.95 Jeffrey Hamburger has shown that St. John the Evangelist was portrayed in later Western medieval art as deified.96 Recently, John Arblaster has also identified a twelfth-century account of deification in the writings of William of St. Thierry. Indeed, Arblaster has shown that William’s account laid the groundwork for the seemingly uncompromising discussions of deification that emerge on the continent in the later Middle Ages. Arblaster’s reading of William’s account of deification is more radical than anything postulated of Augustine by Meconi or Rosenberg.97 Research into the intervening period remains to be done. To get a flavour of what deification entailed for William, and so for the tradition that follows him, I will outline Arblaster’s reading of him and compare this to the brief discussion of deification that we find in Bernard of Clairvaux’s On Loving God.

4. William of St. Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux William of St. Thierry (1085–1148) was a Benedictine abbot who joined the Cistercian Order late in life. Most of his writings circulated under the name of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) during the Middle Ages. Arblaster stresses that more work still needs to be done to prise the thinking of these two monastic mystics apart, however, where deification is concerned he argues that it appears that they did not entirely agree.98 Arblaster cautions that since Bernard never criticised William, and Bernard was not one to hold back when faced with a theological position which he considered suspect, their views should not be considered opposed. Nonetheless he moots that Bernard’s view of deification is less radical than William’s. Arblaster argues that Bernard suggests a form of union at the level of the will, whereas William has something more in mind.99 Bernard refers to deification rarely, doing so only twice in On Loving God. He discusses the idea in the tenth chapter: O pure and sacred love! O sweet and pleasant affection! O pure and sinless intention of the will, all the more sinless and pure since it frees us from the taint of selfish vanity, all the more sweet and pleasant, for all that is found in it is divine. It is deifying to go through such an experience (Sic affici, deificari est). As a drop of water seems to disappear completely in a big quantity of wine, even assuming the wine’s taste and color; just as red, molten iron becomes so much like fire it seems to lose

36

Defining deification: realistic models its primary state; just as the air on a sunny day seems transformed into sunshine instead of being lit up; so it is necessary for the saints that all human feelings melt in a mysterious way and flow into the will of God. Otherwise, how will God be all in all if something human survives in man? No doubt, the substance remains though under another form, another glory, another power.100

Yet although Bernard speaks here of the possibility of being ‘deified’, he is quick to qualify the idea, as we can see in the passage above, arguing that the soul is not absorbed into God. In the lines that follow, he also stresses that he does not believe that such perfection is possible in this life, where we must always attend to the needs of the body which constantly distract us and draw us from God: ‘For it is impossible to assemble all these and turn them towards God’s face as long as the care of this weak and wretched body keeps one busy to the point of distraction’.101 Deification is, he writes, only possible when we come to possess our ‘spiritual and immortal body’, the possession of which involves a level of love that is a gift of grace that ‘is not attained by human efforts’.102 That said, Bernard is willing to admit that the saints and martyrs experienced this to some extent in this life, maintaining that ‘the feeling of intense pain could only upset their calm; it could not overcome them’.103 Earlier in the same treatise, in Chapter 4, Bernard also speaks of deification this time when describing the perfect love that the elect will experience in heaven, a love of which he claims there is no end, ‘In the meanwhile, memory is a pleasure for those who seek and long for God’s presence, not that they are completely satisfied but that they may long all the more for him that they might be filled. Thus he testifies that he himself is food: “Who eats me, will hunger for more”’.104 Bernard goes on to describe the effect of this love as deifying, writing that when the soul is finally united to God in the eschaton, we will come to sit at the right hand of God. Quoting Psalm 16.11 he states, ‘The vision of God which makes us resemble him (Merito illa Dei et deifica visio), and its incalculable delight are rightly figured by the right hand, as the Psalmist joyfully sings: “In your right hand are everlasting joys”’.105 The result of being in God’s presence is, Bernard states here, a joy that makes one in some sense divine. As in the later passage discussed above, he stresses that this is a state which only truly occurs in the afterlife. Bernard is also at pains to emphasise how integral bodies are to human persons; although the body limits us now, he maintains that we will always need the body to access the divine. Thus he asserts that the faithful who have already died will not experience the fullness of deified union until the end of time when all are clothed in their resurrection bodies: Consequently, until death is swallowed up in victory and eternal light invades from all sides the limits of night and takes possession to the extent that heavenly glory shines in their bodies, souls cannot set themselves aside

Defining deification: realistic models

37

and pass into God. They are still attached to their bodies, if not by life and feeling, certainly by natural affection, so that they do not wish nor are they able to realize their consummation without them. This rapture of the soul which is its most perfect and highest state, cannot, therefore, take place before the resurrection of their bodies, lest the spirit, if it could reach perfection without the body, would no longer desire to be united to the flesh.106 It is such souls, those that have received their resurrection bodies, that can rightfully be called the ‘beloved’ of God, rather than the ‘friends’ who make progress in this life or await their resurrection bodies. Bernard teases out this difference using the image of drunkenness; after death we can drink of God but even then we are not fully inebriated. This will happen only at the eschaton. The soul who awaits her glorified body is as one flushed from wine but transported to a place where she becomes forgetful of herself. To fully know herself she requires her glorified body. It is only then – deified but still embodied (and thus still a creature although in complete union with God) – that the soul truly attains that for which it was created – full deified union. As he goes on to state, ‘The flesh is clearly a good and faithful partner for a good spirit’.107 Even in our most intimate union with God, Bernard stresses that we never disappear into God; even in the resurrection we retain our created status. It is only as such for Bernard that we find the soul ‘taking leave of itself and passing into God entirely’.108 Yet in this life and the next Bernard maintains that a union of will is all that is possible between the soul and God, nothing more. As Arblaster clarifies, ‘unitas spiritus [for Bernard] amounts to no more, but also no less, than unitas voluntatum [. . . because there is] an unbridgeable divide between the soul’s love and God’s love’.109 Just as Bernard places great emphasis on Christ’s humanity in his Christology – an emphasis that he adds to the exegesis on the Song of Songs that he inherits from Origen – so too we find Bernard stressing the embodied nature of the soul, which even in deified union, remains nonetheless a creature.110 However, Arblaster argues that a more radical account of deification is found in the writings of William of St. Thierry. Although William never once uses the vocabulary of deification to describe union with God, in a recent essay, ‘The Pious Jackal and the Pseudo-woman: Doctrines of Deification in Medieval France’, as well as in his doctoral dissertation, Arblaster makes a convincing case for viewing William as an advocate of deification.111 Drawing attention to a passage in On the Nature and Dignity of God, a text which circulated under the name of Bernard,112 Arblaster argues that William appears to go beyond union at the level of the will, proposing instead a union of love. As William writes: Yes, love enlightened is charity: a love from God, in God, for God is charity. Yet, charity is God. Scripture says: God is charity. Brief praise, but it says everything. Whatever can be said of God can also be said of

38

Defining deification: realistic models charity. Thus, charity considered according to the natures of the gift and the giver is the name of the substance in the giver and of a quality in the gift. But, for the sake of emphasis, God is called the gift of charity; in that the virtue of charity is above all the other virtues it clings to and is made like to God.113

Here William, he suggests, moves beyond the idea of a union of wills to advocate a union ‘[in which] the substantial charity of God is infused in the human spirit and God loves himself in us’.114 Arblaster argues that similar ideas are found within William’s Golden Epistle, where William writes, ‘For the love of God, or the love that is God, the Holy Spirit, infusing itself into the person’s love and spirit, attracts the person to itself; then God loves himself in the person and makes it, its spirit and its love, one with himself’.115 Arblaster holds that for William, the Holy Spirit both unifies the Godhead and is directly active within the deified person, infusing them with God’s love and drawing them to participate in the life of God. As he states, commenting on the above passage, William here concisely articulates the idea that the Holy Spirit is the unifying principle not only of the Godhead itself (‘the love that is God’) but also the active principle that deifies the human person by (i) being infused into the person’s love and (ii) attracting the person to participate in God’s very life. The idea of deification suggested here, at least on first reading, sounds very radical indeed. Bernard McGinn has argued, for example, that ‘the new emphasis on substantial union is remarkably similar to the conception of union as identity or fusion found in the thought of Plotinus and Proclus’.116 However, Rob Faesen argues that we should understand William of St. Thierry’s expression of deifying love as engaging in and imitative of the love that we find between the persons of the Trinity, who mutually indwell one another (much as we saw Fairbairn posit of Cyril). For Faesen, it is such love, that William maintains the soul is being invited into.117 Faesen stresses that where there is love there cannot be indistinction, for love demands an object, a point that he makes with particular reference to the later Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec but which also applies to William.118 In the light of Faesen’s argument Arblaster suggests that in William’s case it is perhaps better to speak of a union of love: William conceives of this love as perfect not simply because it entails the complete gift of self to God (as in Bernard’s view), but because the soul becomes, as it were, a transparency through which and in which God loves himself. . . . Whatever might be predicated of the Holy Spirit as it unites the first and second persons of the Trinity might be

Defining deification: realistic models

39

predicated of the way the Holy Spirit draws the soul into the divine life by grace suo modo.119 Arblaster argues that for William deification is a ‘radical conception of relational anthropology . . . namely “being what God is” (i.e. divine love)’.120 There is no doubt, however, that William’s idea is pantheistic-sounding and the formulation of such a union of love as it appears in Peter Lombard’s sentences was subject to criticism in the later Middle Ages. Arblaster notes that Thomas Aquinas was later to refute just such an understanding: ‘Thomas Aquinas would also formulate a doctrine of “participation” precisely to refute William’s identification of charity and the Holy Spirit (though as articulated by Peter Lombard, not William himself)’.121 Bonaventure too, likewise writing in the thirteenth century, argues that a distinction must be made between uncreated grace (the Holy Spirit) and create grace, a habitus within the soul which the Holy Spirit indwells.122 In either case, Arblaster argues that very similar approaches to deification to that which he identifies in William are present in the writings of a number of female mystics who wrote in the centuries that followed, particularly Hadewijch, Marguerite Porete and Beatrice of Nazareth. Indeed, Arblaster has traced lines of direct influence. Faesen demonstrates that Ruusbroec likewise promotes similar ideas.123 Although these accounts can and have been read as promoting absorption, Arblaster and Faesen show that they need not be; the idea that the soul disappears into God in deification is von Harnack’s, it is not necessarily supported either by Patristic texts or within medieval mystical texts, even those produced on the continent in the later Middle Ages. Indeed, McGinn concedes that if when Ruusbroec speaks of union without distinction he is not referring to essence in an Aristotelian sense but to a presence, as Paul Mommaers has suggested, then ‘Ruusbroec’s notion of union is far from simple monism’,124 this despite the fact that he speaks of ‘a union of essence that takes place in the Godhead, above the distinction of Persons, in a way that seems remarkably close to Eckhart’.125 We will revisit this issue in the final conclusion, when we consider the extent to which Julian and Rolle promote ideas of deification similar to those found within the Rhineland and Low Countries by comparing their thinking on deification to that found in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, quite possibly one of the most radical texts within the tradition. However, there is much work to be done before we can arrive at this point. In the next chapter, I will consider what Russell has in mind when he speaks of ‘ethical’ approaches to deification.

Conclusion This then is an overview of realistic approaches to deification. In this chapter I have attempted to outline what Russell means by the realistic approach in the Patristic East. I have extended Russell’s analysis to include more recent studies of the Early Church Fathers. I have also incorporate into this model

40

Defining deification: realistic models

thinking on deification from the Latin West which I believe we are justified in describing as realistic. Although this brief overview has not demonstrated that either Augustine or William promote accounts of deification that meet all of Hallosten’s criteria for a doctrine of deification, I hope that it has indicated that there is a growing body of evidence that what we might term realistic accounts of deification are to be found in Latin West.126 It is the tradition of deification with which I hope to show that Julian’s account most closely aligns. However, the realistic is only one of the forms of deification that Russell draws attention to in his study of the Early Church. The other form that discussions of deification take are what he refers to as ‘ethical’. We will turn now to such accounts of deification which, in the chapters that follow, I hope to show that some of Rolle’s writing in many ways mirror.

Notes 1 David Vincent Meconi, Union with Christ: Living with God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2006), p. 6. 2 Russell, Deification, p. 2. 3 Russell, Deification, p. 163. 4 A similar point is made by Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, pp. 294ff. 5 In addition to Russell, I draw particularly on Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’ and Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’; Donald Fairbairn, Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Mark Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, in Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God, pp. 74–88. 6 See Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’; Daniel A. Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 7 For a discussion of the complex system of soteriology found in the thought of Irenaeus, see Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons and Matthew C. Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Leiden: Brill, 2008), vol. 91. Also see John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); John Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Denis Minns, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994); Robert McQueen Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London: Routledge, 1997), as well as the slightly older study of Richard A. Norris, Jr., God and the World in Early Christian Theology: A Study of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966). However, most of this material does not specifically address the topic of deification. 8 For slightly different accounts of deification in Irenaeus thought see: Russell, Deification, pp. 105–110; Gross, Divinisation, pp. 120–131; Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, pp. 294–297; and Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’. 9 See Gross, Divinisation, esp. pp. 121–123; Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’, p. 43. 10 Russell, Deification, pp. 109–110; Gross, Divinisation, esp. pp. 121–125. 11 Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, pp. 294–295. 12 See Gross, Divinisation, esp. pp. 122, 126–129. Gross views Irenaeus as one who, in embryonic form, anticipates the difference between created and uncreated grace. 13 Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons, p. 215 stresses that Irenaeus argues that Adam and Eve were created in a sense as children. Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’, p. 43

Defining deification: realistic models

14

15 16

17

18

19 20 21

22 23

41

interprets this to mean that Irenaeus maintained that Adam lacked the full likeness even at creation. He lost only the potential for full likeness, a status into which it was intended that Adam would grow. It was this that the Incarnation restored. Edwards therefore maintains that Irenaeus held that the indwelling of the Spirit that was received after the Incarnation was of a different order to that which Adam lost. However, see Matthew C. Steenberg, ‘Children in Paradise: Adam and Eve as “Infants” in Irenaeus of Lyons’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 12 (2004), 1–22, who argues against a metaphorical readings of their infancy. Although he does not insist that this means that Irenaeus held that they were literally children, he argues that what is implied is that they were in a ‘state of want’ (p. 14), unable to attain perfection and that this lack was in some sense natural. It is a ‘created imperfection’ that is to be distinguished from the telos of humanity which Christ exemplifies (p. 15). Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, trans. by Philip Schaff et al., Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Reproduced, Originally Printed, 1885), 3.18.7, p. 448 (1128). I have used this translation unless otherwise stated, the page numbers in the CCEL edition are in brackets. The original Greek is lost, although we have a few fragments. The work has, however, survived in Latin. The critical edition is Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre III, ed. by F. Sagnard O.P., Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 34 (Paris: Cerf, 1952), p. 326. I have not usually provided the original text in the footnotes unless it has seemed particularly pertinent to the discussions of Rolle and Julian that follow. Russell, Deification, p. 108. Russell, Deification, p.  108. Cf. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.18.7, p. 448 (1128): ‘For unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again: unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely’. See, for example, Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.19.1; 3.18.7 and 4.33.4. As Russell puts it, ‘The Incarnation is part of a larger economy that enables us to participate in the divine attributes of immortality and incorruption and attain the telos which had been intended for Adam. This is why the development of the doctrine of deification in its realistic elements will be closely linked to the development of Christology’. Russell, Deification, p. 113. Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’, p.  44. Edwards has in mind particularly Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.34.4. John Behr takes the opposite view however in Irenaeus of Lyons, pp. 146–147. Behr argues that the Incarnation was always intended and should not be seen as a sort of Plan B. In either case, deification was the intended outcome for humanity fully grown – a status that he considered exemplified in Christ. For a brief discussion of the difference between their positions see Edward’s review of Behr’s monograph: Mark Edwards, ‘Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (review)’, Theology, 117/3 (2014), 228. Russell, Deification, p. 105. Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’, p. 49. John A. McGuckin, ‘The Strategic Adaptation of Deification in the Cappadocians’, in Michael Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 95–114. Cf. Lewis Ayres, ‘Deification and the Dynamics of Nicene Theology: Contribution of Gregory of Nyssa’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49 (2005), 375–394. Russell, Deification, p.  108. The idea became pivotal to realistic notions of deification in the centuries that followed, particularly that of Athanasius. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 5, praef, p. 526 (1299) (slightly amended). The formula of exchange is particularly important for the development of

42

24

25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

Defining deification: realistic models Christian ideas of deification. I have therefore included the Latin – although there is no evidence that Irenaeus circulated in late Medieval England: ‘Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum, qui propter immensam suam dilectionem factus est quod sumus nos, uti nos perficeret esse quod est ipse’. Latin is from Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, vol. 5 ed. by Adelin Rousseau, Loui Doutreleau S.  J. and Charles Mercier, Sources Chrétiennes vol. 153 (Paris: Cerf, 1969), p. 14. This passage also survives in a Greek Fragment: Contre les Hérésies, Livre V, p. 14. For a discussion see: Russell, Deification, p. 106. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.19.1, p. 448 (1130). ‘Propter hoc enim Verbum Dei homo et qui Filius Dei est Filius hominis factus est [ut homo] conmixtus Verbo Dei et adoptionem percipiens fiat filius Dei’, Contre les Hérésies, p. 332. This passage likewise survives in a Greek Fragment: Contre les Hérésies, p. 332. Russell, Deification, p. 109. Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, p. 296. He is here following Trevor Hart. Russell, Deification, pp.  105–110; Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’ likewise stresses the importance of exegesis for Irenaeus. Cf. Keating, Deification and Grace, pp.  16ff. Cf. Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’ (p.  42): ‘the earliest prompt for the language of deification itself appears to have been an interpretation of Psalm 82.6 [81.6 in the Vulgate]’. Keating notes that exegesis was integral to the way in which the Fathers developed their discussion of this idea. In addition to Psalm 81.1 and 81.6–7, which Jesus quotes in John 10.34–35 and 2 Peter 1.4, which we have already discussed, Keating argues that ideas that support deification appear in all the following passages, many of which the Fathers refer to. We find participation in God described in Hebrews 2.14, Hebrews 6.2, 2 Corinthians 13.13, Philippians 2.1 and 1 Corinthians 10.14–22, the exchange formula is underpinned by 2 Corinthians 8.9, which, as noted, Irenaeus builds on. Divine filiation is found in Galatians 4.4–6, Romans 8.14–17, 29 and 1 John 3.1–2, while 1 Corinthians 6.11, 19, Galatians 3.26–27, John 3.3–8, 1 Corinthians 10. 16–17 and John 6. 51–59 all speak of the indwelling in God through baptism and the Eucharist – ideas which, as we noted earlier, were key to Cyril’s understanding of deification. 2 Corinthians 4.10–12, Philippians 3.7–11 and Colossians 3. 5–17 also describe participation in Christ’s death and resurrection. A number of further passages likewise describe being confirmed and transformed into the image of God, such as Matthew 5.48, Hebrews 5.14, 6.1, 1 Corinthians 14.20, Colossians 1.28, Ephesians 4.13, James 1.4, Genesis 1.26–37, Genesis 3.5 and 2 Corinthians 3.18), as well as 2 Peter 1.5–8, Romans 13.12–14, Galatians 5.19–24, Ephesians 4.17–32 and Colossians 3.5–17 (which describe growing in virtue), Deification and Grace, esp. pp. 16–21, 117–118. Carl Mosser has shown that the idea first appears in the early second-century writings of Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Typho: ‘Psalm 82’. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.6.1; 3.19.1; 4.38.4 (see Mosser, ‘Psalm 82’, p. 41). Mosser, ‘Psalm 82’. Mosser’s study builds on that of Russell, who points out the use of the verse in Justin and the instances of its occurrence in Against Heresies: Deification, p. 106. Psalm 82.1: ‘God hath stood in the congregation [synagogue] of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods’. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.6.1, p. 419 (1068); Contre les Hérésies, p. 130; Keating, Deification and Grace, p. 32 notes that Irenaeus refers here to (Romans 8.15). Mosser, ‘Psalm 82’, pp. 46–47. Indeed Mosser stresses that Irenaeus only refers to humans as gods here because his opponents had done so.

Defining deification: realistic models

43

34 See Mosser, ‘Psalm 82’, p.  47, who follows Mary Ann Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1997). For further study of the importance of scripture for Irenaeus’ model of deification see: Edwards, who as noted, draws particular attention to the importance of Ephesians 1.10: ‘Growing Like God’, esp. pp.  46ff. Focusing on the relationship between the Spirit and the human spirit Gross too argues that Irenaeus seems to have maintained a distinction between God and man even in deified union, Divinisation, esp. pp. 126–129. 35 Russell’s realistic reading is supported by the most recent study of Irenaeus’ account of deification: Daniel Wilson, Deification and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in Hellenistic Culture (Bloomington, IN: CrossBooks, 2010). Wilson does not discuss Russell’s typology but the way in which he draws parallels between Irenaeus’ and Athanasius’ account of deification suggests that the two accounts are close in ways that mirror Russell’s position. 36 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54 in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. by Robert. W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp.  135–277 at 269. Russell argues that in stating this Athanasius is not arguing that it is possible to share in the life of the eternal logos, only that of the Incarnate Christ – an idea that appears to be further developed by Athanasius successor Cyril of Alexandria. It is the former that Russell has in mind when he speaks of ontological transformation within realistic approaches rather than the latter. 37 Vladimir Kharlamov, ‘Rhetorical Application of Theosis in Greek Patristic Theology’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature, pp. 115–131 at 120. 38 Gross, Divinization, p. 233. Gross holds that in many ways Cyril of Alexandria represented the culmination of Patristic accounts of deification. Although Gross does not think that Cyril made any attempt to synthesise previous ideas into a coherent whole, he nonetheless thinks that he offers a holistic understanding that has a place for both Christ Incarnate and the Holy Spirit. 39 For scholarly discussions of Cyril and deification see: Gross, Divinization, pp. 219–233; Russell, Deification, pp. 191–202; Jonathan Morgan, ‘The Role of Asceticism in Deification in Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters’, The Downside Review, 135 (2017), 1–10; Keating, Cyril of Alexandria; Fairbairn, Grace and Christology. 40 Cyril’s Christology differs markedly from that of Irenaeus, reflecting the Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. On this, for example, see: John A. McGuckin, Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). For some of the differing scholarly opinions on Cyril’s Christology see: John J. O’Keefe, ‘Impassible Suffering: Divine Passion and Fifth Century Christology’, Theological Studies, 58 (1997), 39–60; Russell remarks that as well as discussing the issue in relation to his disagreements with Nestorius we also find the topic earlier in Cyril’s writing, in texts concerned with combating the heresy of Arianism (Deification, pp. 194–197). 41 Russell, Deification, p. 193. 42 Keating, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 46. Keating discusses this issue particularly in chapter 1, esp. pp. 46ff. 43 Graham Gould, ‘Cyril of Alexandria and the Formula of Reunion’, The Downside Review, 106 (1988), 235–252; See Thomas G. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), pp. 33–34; McGuckin, Cyril of Alexandria, esp. p. 216ff; Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John M. Lewis, ‘An Examination of Nestorius of

44

44 45

46

47

48 49 50 51 52

Defining deification: realistic models Constantinople’s Appeal to Christological Compatibility with Athanasius of Alexandria as Represented in Le Livre de Héraclide de Damas’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005). For a more philosophically detailed account of Cyril’s account of the Incarnation and whether or not he proposes a ‘mixture’ of divinity and humanity see: Sergey Trostyanskiy, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), esp. pp. 67–75 (who argues that he does not in terms of classical categories of ‘mixture’). Edwards particularly has Alois Grillmeier in mind: Christ in the Christian Tradition (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975 repr. 1996). Although Edwards moots that Apollinarius possibly needs to be revisited and his accusations for heresy reassessed, he asserts that Cyril avoids the errors of which Apollinarius was accused by making an eternal association between the flesh and the Word (prior to the Incarnation) and by affirming his belief in the immutable nature of the Godhead. In seeking to defend Christianity against Arianism, which denied full divinity to Christ, Apollinarius is often held to have maintained that Christ was fully divine to the extent that he did not have a rational soul, this role being performed by the Logos instead: Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p. 79. Speaking of the Word and his flesh in this way, Edwards notes that Cyril employs biblical terminology (‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p. 80) an idea that Edwards argues is obfuscated by the Chalcedonian language of Christ as one person in two natures – although later theologians appear to have held that the intention of Chalcedon was to capture Cyril’s position. Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p.  82. Although Cyril agrees that Christ shares in human hunger and emotions, not having assumed human nature, Cyril argues that Christ is not governed by them in the same way that we are. As he states in his Commentary on John, ‘In Christ, as the first-fruits, human nature was returned to newness of life. In him we have gained what is above our nature. That is why he is called the “second Adam” by the divine Scriptures [1 Cor. 15.45]. Just as he hungered and thirsted as a human being, so also he accepts the mental anguish that comes from suffering, since that is a human characteristic. However, he is not troubled like we are, but only to the point of undergoing the sensation of the experience. Then he immediately returns to the courage that is fitting for him’. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. by Joel Elowsky, trans. by David Maxwell (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2015), vol. 2, book 8 [fragments] p. 105. For the Greek Text: Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archepiscopi Alexandrini Opera, vols. 1–7, ed. by P. E. Pusey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1868–1877). Although books 7 and 8 are lost, Pusey includes fragments and more have since been identified by Joseph Reuss, Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John Volume 2, translators introduction, p.  xxi. For a discussion see Russell, Deification, p. 198. For a discussion of suffering in Cyril and Nestorius see Paul Gavrilyuk, ‘Theopatheia: Nestorius’s Main Charge against Cyril of Alexandria’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 56/2 (2003), 190–207 and O’Keefe, ‘Impassible Suffering’. Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p. 86. The term ‘flesh’ also brings a sense of Christ’s embodiment, rather than the abstraction that can be implied by human nature. See Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p. 86. See Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, p. 305. Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology’, p. 305. Keating, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 49.

Defining deification: realistic models

45

53 Russell, Deification, pp. 200–201; Norman Russell, ‘“Partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4) in the Byzantine Tradition’, in Kathēgētria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her 80th Birthday, ed. by Joan Mervyn Hussey (Camberley: Porphyrogentius, 1988), pp. 51–67. 54 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, book 9, p. 149: commenting on John 14.5–6. This biblical phrase appears numerous times in book 9 alone. For a discussion see: Russell, Deification, p. 201. 55 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, book 9, p. 189: commenting on John 14.20. 56 Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogue on the Trinity, p. 194. The critical text is found in Cyrille D’Alexandrie, Dialogues Sur La Trinité I and II, ed. by George Mattieu de Durand O.P, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 231 (Paris: Cerf, 1976) and Cyrille D’Alexandrie, Dialogues Sur La Trinité III, IV and V, ed. by George Mattieu de Durand O.P, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 237 (Paris: Cerf, 1977), p. 166. 57 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, book 9, p. 188: commenting on John 14.20. On this passage cf. Keating, Deification and Grace, p. 21 and Keating, ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, where he notes the emphasis that Cyril places on the Eucharist and baptism in this process, p. 51. 58 Russell, Deification, p. 200. 59 Russell, Deification, pp. 202–203. 60 Russell, Deification, p. 205. 61 I am grateful to Mark Edwards for this observation. 62 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, book 10, pp. 195–196. For a discussion see: Morgan, ‘The Role of Asceticism’, p. 3. 63 Morgan, ‘The Role of Asceticism’, p. 2. 64 As with Athanasius, Edwards clarifies that Cyril appears to advocate a sharing in the Incarnate Christ rather than in the eternal logos. See n. 36. 65 The transfiguration is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels (Mark 9.2–8; Mathew 17.1–13; Luke 9.28–36). 66 This is an idea that is reinforced in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, whose account is perhaps more ethical than realistic. As Mark Edward notes, Gregory insists that the transformation from glory to glory continues in the life to come: ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p.  85. On Gregory’s approach to deification; cf. McGuckin, ‘The Strategic Adaptation’. 67 Hilary of Poitiers, ‘Commentary on Matthew’, Patrologia Latina vol. 9, col. 950CD, trans. by Russell, Deification, p. 327. Hilary’s Commentary on Matthew has recently been translated by D.  H. Williams (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Hilary stresses that we only become sons of God by adoption in contrast to Christ who is the Son of God. See for example, Commentary on Matthew, 2.6, p.  53. For a discussion of Hilary’s thinking on deification: Philip Theodore Wild, The Divinisation of Man According to St Hilary of Poitier (Mundelein: St Mary’s of the Lake Seminary, 1950). For a more recent discussion of Hilary and Wild’s position see: Ellen Scully, Physicality Soteriology in Hilary of Poitiers (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 68 On the relationship between Christ’s humanity and humanity in general see: Mark Weedham, The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 198. For a recent discussion of deification in his thought: Ellen Scully, The Assumption of All Humanity in Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus super Psalmos (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Marquette University, 2011). 69 There were also earlier studies that advocated some form of deification in Augustine’s thought: Particularly important is Gerald Bonner, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification’, Journal of Theological Studies, 37 (1986), 369–386. For a list of recent studies see: Introduction, n. 68.

46

Defining deification: realistic models

70 The most detailed study is that of Meconi in which he stresses the importance of scripture: The One Christ. 71 Russell, Deification, p. 329. 72 Russell, Deification, p. 331. 73 Augustine of Hippo, ‘De Natura et Gratia’, Patrologia Latina, vol. 44 (Paris, 1841), cols., 247–292 at 265, trans. by Henry Chadwick in an unpublished article intended for Revue des Sciences Religieuses: quoted by Russell, Deification, p. 332. 74 Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p.  89. He is thinking particularly of Bonner here (Bonner, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification’). Rosenberg’s position is similar to that of Meconi, The One Christ, which he suggests his study supplements. Cf. Puchniak, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification, Revisited’, who draws attention to Mainz sermon 13 (also known as Dolbeau 6) in which Augustine addresses Psalm 81: Augustine of Hippo, Vingt-Six Sermones au Peuple d’Africa ed. by François Dolbeau (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996), pp. 97–106. Such texts, Rosenberg argues, allow ‘a modest addendum to Bonner’s work’ (p. 122). For an earlier discussion of deification in Augustine, see: Victorino Capánaga, ‘La deificación en la soteriología augustiniana’, Augustinus Magister: Congrès international augustinien, Paris 21–24 Septembre 1954, 3 vols. (Paris: Études Augustinienne, 1954), vol. 2, pp.  745–754; Chadwick, ‘New Sermons of Augustine’. 75 Puchniak, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification, Revisited’, p. 123, who notes that the references Bonner held significant were in Epistle 10.2, Enarratatione in Psalmos 49.2, Enarrationes in Psalmos 117.11, Sermon 126.14 and Sermon 166.4. 76 Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 95. 77 Especially when we take account of the recently discovered ‘Mainz’ sermons, Russell concedes that Augustine, like the Greek Fathers, seems to have connected deification and soteriology in ways that bring him close to Cyril of Alexandria, the author who Russell most admires. The idea of participating in God – although more frequent in the sermons – is even attested to in the City of God, where Russell notes that Augustine states, ‘“for it is one thing to be God, another thing to be a partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this inability from God (De Civ. Dei 22.30)’” (Deification, p. 332). Statements such as these demonstrate that Augustine connects such ideas to soteriological concerns pertaining to the operation of grace and used it to present counter arguments against the likes of Coelestius, who is held to have equated deification with a state of sinlessness thereby demonstrating that the soul had an inherent capacity to attain perfection (an extreme form of Pelagianism), views which Pelagius denied. Coelestius is reported to have been condemned for such views at the Council of Diospoles. See Russell, Deification, p. 332. 78 He notes that although Christians may have been more literate than their pagan counterparts, due to the emphasis on studying the scriptures, the capacity for oral-aural learning in Roman culture in this period needs to be taken far more seriously than it has. 79 Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 91. 80 Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 102. 81 Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 105. 82 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms, the Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. by Maria Boulding, O.S.B, ed. by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. (New York: New City Press, 2002), III/18, vol. 4., pp. 409– 422 (410–411). For the Latin: Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, ed. by D. E. Dekkers O.S.B. and J. Fraipont CCL, xxxviii (Turnhout: Brepols

Defining deification: realistic models

83

84

85 86 87

88 89

90 91

47

Publishers, 1956), 94.2. For a discussion see: Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 107, who quotes the entire section at length. On the difference between the soul as the image of God and Christ as the image of God in Augustine see: Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 [first edition Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981]), p. 142. Note that Augustine stresses at both the end and beginning of this sermon that likeness to God requires proximity to God and that as we move away from God we lose our likeness. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, the Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. by Edmund Hill O.P., ed. by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. (New York: New City Press, 1993), III/6, pp. 46–49 (46) [sermon 191]. Augustine, sermon 192.1.1: ‘Deus facturus qui homines erant, homo factus est qui Deus erat: nec amittens quod erat, fieri voluit ipse quod fecerat. Ipse fecit quod esset, quia hominem Deo addidit, non Deum in homine perdit’. Augustine of Hippo, ‘Sermones ad Populum’, in Sancti Aurelii Augustini, Hipponensis Episcipi, Opera Omnia, ed. by J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 34 (1845), 173–220; Patrologia Latina 38, 1012. For a discussion see: Rosenberg, ‘Not So Alien’, p. 108. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 23B.1, trans. by Edmund Hill, Sermons: Newly Discovered Sermons, part 3 (New York: New City Press, 1997), vol. 11, p. 37. For a discussion see: David Vincent Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian But Christ: St Augustine on Becoming Divine’, in David Vincent Meconi and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), pp. 82–100 at 89–90. This is one of the newly discovered Mainz sermons. For the Latin: Augustine of Hippo, Vingt-Six Sermones au Peuple d’Africa. Chadwick (‘New Sermons of Augustine’), and Russell (Deification, 329, n. 10) also draw attention to these newly discovered Mainz sermons in attesting to the importance of deification in Augustine’s thought. Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, p. 95. We find a similar idea in his Enarrationes in Psalmos 77, where he writes of being ‘adhaesit Deo’, 77.8. Margaret Miles, ‘Vision: The Eyes of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’, The Journal of Religion, 63 (1983), 125–142 at 135. It was a belief which came to underpin the idea that simply viewing the host resulted in salvation, an opinion that in the later Middle Ages caused worshippers to rush from one elevation of the host to another. See Christopher Joby, who links it to Augustine’s belief in extramission: ‘The Extent to Which the Rise in Image Worship in the Later Middle Ages Was Influenced by Contemporary Theories of Vision’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 60/1 (2007), 26–44. Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, pp. 87, 91. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 13.31.46, in The Confessions with an Introduction and Contemporary Criticism, trans. by Maria Boulder, ed. by David Vincent Meconi S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), pp. 453–454. For the Latin text: Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Augustine, an electronic edition/ text and commentary ed. by James J. O’Donnell, SGML encoding and HTML conversion by Anne Mahoney for the Stoa Consortium (Medford, MA: Stoa Consortium, 1992). For a discussion see: Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, pp. 98–99. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 13.29.44, p. 441. For a discussion see: Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, p. 98. On this point, see David Vincent Meconi, ‘Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification’, in David Vincent Meconi and Elenore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge

48

92 93 94 95

96 97

98 99

100

101

Defining deification: realistic models Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014: second edition; first edition 2001), pp.  208–228. Meconi notes that Augustine continually stresses that God and the deified human are different, as in sermon 23B (117). Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, p. 98. Fairbairn, Grace and Christology, p. 173. The idea is one that Fairbairn discusses throughout the book. Fairbairn, Grace and Christology, esp. pp. 173–199. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli considers Eriugena to be ‘the last patristic thinker in the West’ because of his heavy reliance on Patristic sources. She stresses that he advocates both universal salvation and deification: ‘Reply to Professor Michael McClymond’, Theological Studies, 76/4 (2015), 827–835 (831). For a detailed discussion of her reading of Eriugena on deification and universal salvation see her monograph: The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Leiden: Brill, 2013), vol. 120. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Much more research into medieval accounts of deification is needed. John Arblaster and Rob Faesen have edited two very recent volumes of collected essays: John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, Mystical Doctrine of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition; and John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, Theosis/ Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, which were published when this book was in the final stages of production. For another but related perspective see: Morgan, On Becoming God. Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’. The following analysis of Bernard is my own. On Bernard’s mystical theology: Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955); Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Christian Mysticism: The Presence of God (New York: New City Press, 1994), vol. 2; McGinn, ‘Mystical Union’, p. 204; McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Unio Mystica in the Western Christian Tradition’, Bernard McGinn, Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. by M. Idel and B. McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp. 59–86. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, trans. by Emero Stiegman with an analytical commentary, CS 13 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1973, repr. with analytical commentary, 1995), X.28, p.  30. ‘O amor sanctus et castus! o dulcis et suavis affectio! o pura et defaecata intentio voluntatis! eo certe defaecatior et purior, quo in ea de proprio nil jam admistum relinquitur: eo suavior et dulcior, quo totum divinum est quod sentitur. Sic affici, deificari est. Quomodo stilla aquae modica, multo infusa vino, deficere a se tota videtur, dum et saporem vini induit, et colorem; et quomodo ferrum ignitum et candens, igni simillimum fit, pristina propriaque forma exutum; et quomodo solis luce perfusus aer in eamdem transformatur luminis claritatem, adeo ut non tam illuminatus, quam ipsum lumen esse videatur: sic omnem tunc in sanctis humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo necesse erit a semetipsa liquescere, atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem. Alioquin quomodo omnia in omnibus erit Deus, si in homine de homine quidquam supererit? Manebit quidem substantia, sed in alia forma, alia gloria, aliaque potentia’. Latin from J.-P. Migne (ed.), ‘Liber De Diligendo Deo’, Patrologia Latina [henceforth PL] vol. 182, cols., 973A-1000B at 991AB. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, X.29, p. 31. ‘Impossibile namque est tota haec ex toto ad Deum colligere, et divino infigere vultui, quandiu ea huic fragili et aerumnoso corpori intenta et distenta necesse est subservire’. PL, vol. 182, col. 992A.

Defining deification: realistic models

49

102 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, X.29, p.  31. ‘in corpore spirituali et immortali’, ‘non humanae industriae assequi’, PL, vol. 182, col. 992AB. 103 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, X.29, p. 31. ‘[Putamusne tamen hanc gratiam vel ex parte sanctos martyres assecutos . . .] at profecto doloris acerrimi sensus non potuit non turbare serenum, etsi non perturbare’. PL, vol. 182, col. 992C. 104 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, IV.11., p. 13, ‘Dei ergo quaerentibus et suspirantibus praesentiam, praesto interim et dulcis memoria est, non tamen qua satientur, sed qua magis esurient unde satientur. Hoc ipsum de se cibus ipse testatur, ita dicens, Qui edit me, adhuc esuriet (Eccli. xxiv.29), PL, vol. 182, col. 980C. 105 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, IV.12., p. 15. ‘Merito illa Dei et deifica visio, illa divinae praesentiae inaestimabilis delectatio in dextra deputatur, de qua et delectabiliter cantiur; Delectationes in dextera tua usque in finem’. (Psalm XV.11), PL, vol. 182, col. 981D. 106 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, XI.30, p. 32. ‘Donec ergo absorpta sit mors in victoria, et noctis undique terminos lux perennis invadat et occupet usquequaque, quatenus et in corporibus gloria coelestis effulgeat; non possunt ex toto animae seipsas exponere, et transire in Deum, nimirum ligatae corporibus etiam tunc, etsi non vita vel sensu, certe affectus naturali, ita ut absque his nec velint, nec valeant consummari’. PL, vol. 182, col. 993AB. 107 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, XI.31, p. 32. ‘Bonus plane comes caro spiritui bono’, PL, vol. 182, col. 993C. 108 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, XI.32, p. 34. ‘eoque sibi penitus dissimillimam fieri, quo Deo simillimam effici donatur’, PL, vol. 182, col. 994B. 109 Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 131. 110 On the difference between Origen and Bernard in their accounts of erotic love see: Louise Nelstrop, ‘Eros and Nuptial Imagery’, in E. Howells and M. McIntosh (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 forthcoming). The idea that at its height such love is also insatiable is also briefly explored here. 111 Arblaster (‘Pious Jackal’) notes that there is some disagreement as to whether William altered his thinking around union in later life (perhaps as a result of the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux), offering a less radical account in his later works, or whether it is always less radical than it perhaps appears in early works such as On the Nature and Dignity of God. Arblaster has some sympathies with David N. Bell’s reading that attempts to synthesise William’s position across his corpus, however, Arblaster feels that the early works do present a radical account of deification, albeit one that should be seen as advocating a union of love rather than a substantial union. 112 Arblaster (‘Pious Jackal, pp. 121–122) notes that this work was also known to thirteenth-century Flemish mystic Hadewijch. 113 William of Saint-Thierry, The Nature and Dignity of Love, trans. by Thomas X. Davis, Cistercian Fathers Series 30 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), p.  67. ‘Amor quippe illuminatus caritas est; amor a Deo, in Deo, ad Deum, caritas est. Caritas autem Deus est: Deus, inquit, caritas est. Breuis laus, sed concludens omnia. Quicquid de Deo dici potest, potest dici et de caritate; sic tamen ut considerata secundum naturas doni et dantis, in dante nomen sit substantiae, in dato qualitatis; sed per emphasim donum etiam caritatis Deus dicatur, in eo quod super omnes uirtutes uirtus caritatis Deo cohaeret et assimilatur’. William of Saint-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris, ed. by Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 88 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003), pp.  175–212 at 186–187. For a discussion see Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 129. Arblaster, (‘Pious Jackal’, p. 130) draws a comparison between this passage and one found in Bernard of Clairvaux’s On

50

114 115

116

117

118 119

120

121 122 123

Defining deification: realistic models Loving God, XII.35, where he writes: ‘[Charitas . . .] substantia illam divina [est . . .] dicente Joanne: Deus caritas est (Joan. iv, 8). Dicitur ergo recte charitas, et Deus, et Dei donum. Itaque charitas dat charitatem, substantiva accidentalem. Ubi dantem significat, nomen substantiae est; ubi donum, qualitatis’, PL, vol. 182, col. 996B. Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 131. William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren of Mont Dieu, trans. by Theodore Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series 12 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971), p. 67. ‘Hunc fides concipit, spes parturit, caritas, quae est Spiritus sanctus, format et uiuificat. Amor enim Dei, uel amor Deus, Spiritus sanctus, amori hominis et spiritui se infundens, afficit eum sibi; et amans semetipsum de homine Deus, unum secum efficit et spiritum eius et amorem eius. Sicut enim non habit corpus unde uiuat nisi de spiritu suo, sic affectus hominis qui amor dicitur non uiuit, hoc est non amat Deum, nisi de Spiritu sancto’. William of Saint-Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, ed. Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 88 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003), pp. 263–264. For a discussion see: Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’. Bernard McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries’, Church History, 56/1 (1987), 7–24 at 14. In this article McGinn discusses different approaches to union and the development of what he views as more substantial ideas of union in the High and Later Middle Ages. See Rob Faesen, ‘The Radical Humanism of Christian Mystics: William of Saint-Thierry, Hadewijch and Ruusbroec versus Abaelard and Ockham’, in Hein Blommestijn et al. (eds.), Seeing the Seeker: Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality: A Festschrift for Kees Waaijman on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 263–278. Faesen, ‘“Poor in Ourselves”’. Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 130. Although as Bell notes William maintains the union with God into which the soul is drawn differs from that which the Son experiences, being a union of adoption, that is of participation, rather than a union of nature, Arblaster points out that the problem lies in what exactly participation means for William. Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 135. For an outline of the theological heritage of this phrase and the claim that William’s use of ‘unitas spiritus’ is unique – in using it to speak of the soul’s union to God (rather than Trinitarian unity or Christian unity, which is what we find elsewhere in the tradition with the sole exception of Guerric of Igny) see: F. Tyler Sergent, ‘Unitas Spiritus and the Originality of William of St. Thierry’, in F. Tyler Sergent, Aage RydstrømPoulsen and Marsha L. Dutton (eds.), Unity of Spirit: Studies of William of Saint-Thierry in Honor of E. Rozanne Elder (Ohio: Liturgical Press, 2015, pp. 144–170, esp. pp. 162, 169–170. Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p. 134. Conus, ‘Divinisation’, pp. 1413–1432. We will further discuss these ideas in the final conclusion with particular reference to Arblaster and Faesen’s essay, ‘Common Love in Beatrice of Nazareth and Marguerite Porete’, Ons Geestlijk Erf, 84/4 (2012), 297–323. McGinn differs in his understanding of the union that we find in the mystics of the Low Countries, arguing in the ‘The Four Female Evangelists’ (p. 178) that Hadewijch, for example, makes radical claims for her union with God, speaking in cosmological terms of deification as the intended endpoint of redemption. Although her writings have an intensely Christological focus, she describes her union with God as a return to her own pre-creational union with God. As

Defining deification: realistic models

51

McGinn states, she claims ultimately to speak ‘out of her precreational status in God’, laying claim to ‘an exemplary or virtual existence’. As Gordon Rudy notes, in Hadewijch’s case such union also has clear christological and sacramental dimensions: Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 94–95. In addition see: Veerle Fraeters, ‘Mi smelten mine sinne in minnen oerewoede: reflecties over genre en subjectiviteit in de Liederen van Hadewijch’, Spiegel der Letteren, 55/4 (2013), 427–457; and Saskia Murk-Jansen, ‘Hadewijch’, in Alistair J. Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden (eds.), Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2010), pp. 663–685. 124 McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union’, p. 20. 125 McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union’, p. 19. 126 Two recent studies have likewise highlighted its place within fifteenth-century Spanish mysticism: Lanzetta, ‘Wound of Love’, and Hart, ‘The Bright Morning of the Soul’.

2

Defining deification: ethical models

[Paul] says that Christ is formed in those who strive for perfection [see Gal. 4:19]. . . . The same applies with all that Christ is, whether righteousness, sanctification, or any of the other virtues. If these are clearly formed in [the Christian], having become conformed into his image they will be seen in that form in which [Christ] is in the form of God.1

Introduction I have chosen to begin this chapter with a quotation taken from Origen’s Commentary on Romans, since in many ways it sums up the ethical approach to deification. Unlike realistic approaches, which centre on ideas of participating in God, foregrounding metaphors like ‘adoption’, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and entering into the Trinitarian relationship, Russell argues that what he terms ‘ethical’ approaches to deification revolve around ideas of attaining God’s likeness, in which a strong connection is made between the acquisition of virtues and becoming Christ-like, even to the point of being deified. As he states: ‘Behind this use of the metaphor [of deification] lies the model of homoiosis, or attaining likeness to God’.2 At the same time, these accounts are still concerned with Christology and are underpinned by exegesis, ideas that we noted in the previous chapter were central to realistic accounts of deification. Sharing in God’s likeness happens because of being ‘in Christ’, to borrow a Pauline expression. Russell moots that the difference lies in the fact that ethical accounts are more overtly focused on attaining Christ’s attributes than on notions of participation and adoption. Indeed, ethical approaches to deification are, more often than not, closely connected to living a moral ascetic life. Whilst this might seem like splitting hairs, as we will see in this chapter, it results in rather different treatments of deification. The ethical is an approach that Russell closely associates with the writings of the early Alexandrians – Origen and Clement, as well as Ignatius of Antioch and to some extent Gregory of Nyssa.3 It would likewise seem to be embedded into the complex philosophical thought of Evagrius Ponticus, as well as the Desert tradition more generally. In the Latin West it also seems to be found in the writings of John Cassian. In this chapter I focus

Defining deification: ethical models

53

particularly on these authors. As with the accounts of deification that we considered in Chapter 1, none of these writers treats deification systematically. What is more, those Fathers who we can more closely identify with the ethical approach have received far less scholarly attention than those associated with the realistic approach. This is undoubtedly because some of their wider thinking has been interpreted as heretical; christological ideas attributed to Origen and Evagrius were condemned as heretical at various Church Councils and Cassian has been accused of semi-Pelagianism.4 Several recent studies have, however, attempted to rehabilitate these writers. Mark Edwards has drawn particular attention to the biblical underpinnings of Origen’s thought, pointing out that he was less subordinationist than many of his contemporaries, Augustine Casiday argues that Evagrius’ theology has been misunderstood, and Donald Fairbairn moots that Cassian’s Christology is far closer to Cyril of Alexandria’s than has hitherto been realised.5 In the light of such studies, new accounts of deification are beginning to be offered.6 However, it seems fair to say that the scholarship on deification in these writers is far more embryonic than on those authors that we considered in Chapter 1, and just as with those writers, since their thinking on Christology is disputed so too are their understandings of deification. Given that Russell largely follows an earlier scholarship with more negative readings of both Origen and Evagrius and does not mention either Cassian or the Desert tradition, instead of closely following Russell I have drawn on recent re-appraisals, teasing out ideas pertaining to deification from more general discussions of their thought.7

1. Origen of Alexandria Although early scholars read Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 253) as a Christian Platonist, this view has received significant challenge in recent scholarship in the work of Henri Crouzel, Mark J. Edwards, Ilaria L. E. Ramelli and Matthew Kuhner amongst others, with Henri de Lubac commenting that ‘whatever might be the other sources of his thought, it was truly from the Bible that he [Origen] drew the marrow of his theology’.8 On this point Russell concurs, stressing that as far as deification is concerned Origen is first and foremost an exegete: ‘It is significant that the language of deification occurs not in the more speculative De Principiis, but in works that are concerned with the exegesis of biblical texts’.9 Russell notes that this is particularly true of Origen’s commentaries on John and Matthew. The idea also seems to be fundamental to Origen’s Commentary on Romans. Indeed Origen’s motivation for discussing deification appears to be exegetical. Like Irenaeus, he refers to Christians as ‘gods’ in relation to Psalm 82.6. He also talks of the possibility of ‘becoming partakers of Christ’ (Hebrews 3.14) and ‘partakers of God’.10 He was also the first to discuss deification in relation to 2 Peter 1.4. As such Russell stresses that Origen’s technical vocabulary of deification is not philosophical even though he uses such terms ‘[to] express

54

Defining deification: ethical models

the relationship of the believer through the Logos to the source of all being and life’.11 Given the disputed nature of Origen’s Christology, a fruitful way to approach his understanding of deification would seem to be in terms of both his eschatology and his account of participation in Christ’s epinoiai (ἐπίνοιαι). I will begin therefore by briefly outlining the relationship between deification and his eschatological hope of ‘apokatastasis’ (ἀποκατάστασις) (i.e. universal restoration), to which Ramelli draws attention, before turning to Origen on Christ’s epinoiai or aspects. The latter for him anticipate the future realised hope that everything will return to God at the eschaton.12 In her recent monograph, The Christian Doctrine of Apopkatastasis, Ramelli argues that the idea of ‘apokatastasis’ (ἀποκατάστασις) is a Christian idea with roots in the New Testament.13 Although the term had more than one meaning, she argues that within the Early Church it represented a belief in universal salvation. As she states: This term had a variety of applications in antiquity, but as a Christian and a late-antique philosophical doctrine . . . it came to indicate the theory of universal restoration, that is, of the return of all beings, or at least all rational beings or all humans, to the Good, i.e. God, in the end.14 What is particularly significant for this study is the close link that Ramelli draws between apokatastasis and theosis. Indeed, she claims that for Origen deification and universal salvation are essentially the same: ‘Origen indeed designated apokatastasis – both anticipated and realised – as θέωσις [theosis]’.15 Like deification Origen held apokatastasis to be a biblical idea for which he found support not only in the New Testament but also in the Song of Songs and the Psalms.16 Pivotal for Origen was that both were brought about through Christ and by following Christ – a point which he makes in several writings including his Homily of Leviticus 9.11.3.17 In this vein Origen speaks of the apokatastasis of Christ – not meaning by this that Christ requires some form of restoration, but with reference to the restoration of humanity which is Christ’s body. Origen looked forward to a time in which all evil would be wiped away and God would be ‘all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15.28). Origen understood this as the destruction of sin, such that sinners in ceasing to be sinners would be saved. It would be a moment when everything would finally be deified – a realised deification – in which people would see God as God is because they share in God. As Ramelli puts it: ‘in the eventual restoration we shall finally see the divinity as it is, not, like now, as it is not, since we shall share in divine life’.18 Deification was in a sense a future hope for Origen waiting to be realised. As Ramelli clarifies, Origen looked forward to an ‘eventual θέωσις [theosis]’ that was the same as fully realised apokatastasis.19 Yet at the same time both were for him anticipated in the soul’s movement towards God as it voluntarily adhered to God. This again was a process in which Christ assisted, enabling the soul to resist evil.20 This movement involved participation in the Trinity, in and through

Defining deification: ethical models

55

Christ, through which the soul acquired knowledge of God – the moral and the intellectual operating symbiotically. As Ramelli states, ‘Only God is substantial Good; creatures participate in it to a lesser or greater degree, and this is why they can fall away from it; only their adhesion to the Good – which goes hand in hand with their full knowledge of the Good – will bring about their deification’.21 It is in this context that we must understand Origen’s thinking of sharing in Christ’s epinoiai or aspects through which the soul comes to participate in God through Christ. Russell notes that the idea that one could share in Christ’s epinoiai seems to have originated with Origen despite Origen’s adoption of Clement’s vocabulary of deification.22 By epinoiai Origen has in mind names predicated of Christ that indicate who Christ is, an idea that Matthew Kuhner finds clearly expressed in the following passage from Origen’s Commentary on John, where Origen stresses that ‘Jesus is many good things’ including life and truth: And let no one be surprised if we have understood Jesus to be announced by the plural ‘good things’. For when we have understood the things of which the names which the Son of God is called are predicated, we will understand how Jesus, whom these whose feet are beautiful preach, is many good things. For life is one good thing, and Jesus is life. And ‘the light of the world’ [John 8:12] is another good thing, which is ‘the true light’ [John 1:4] and ‘the light of men’ [John 1:4]. The Son of God is said to be all these. The truth is another good thing in concept over and above the life and the light; the way which leads to it is a fourth in addition to these. Our Savior teaches that he himself is all these when he says, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life’ [John 14:6].23 Origen holds that there are more than 10,000 such names in the Gospels and the writings of the prophets,24 yet Christ is still a unity; it is from a human perspective that Christ is many things. In terms of these ‘economic epinoiai’, Kuhner comments that we find no particularly hierarchy in Origen’s thought.25 This said, Kuhner points out that Origen does give special attention to four titles – Truth, Life, Word and Wisdom – which Daniélou believed were names that Origen held belonged to Christ regardless of the Incarnation: As Daniélou summarizes, ‘some of these epinoiai, such as the names Wisdom, Word, Truth, and Life, denote the Word as he is eternally in himself; others are bound up with the economy of the Redemption’. The four aspects initially mentioned by Origen could appropriately be said of the Logos irrespective of his Incarnation.26 Of these, Kuhner notes that Wisdom is considered the most fundamental. Even though Origen holds that Christ manifests himself in the way that

56

Defining deification: ethical models

seems most appropriate to the needs of each believer, there is a sense in which one can imitate Christ more closely and so more closely approximate to Christ. Russell stresses that for Origen Christ’s epinoiai allow Christ to act as mediator between God and the soul: ‘Participation in Christ in the supernatural or dynamic sense is made possible through his epinoiai’.27 As Kuhner argues with reference to Origen’s Commentary on Romans,28 sharing in the aspects of Christ, that is the virtues, equates to sharing in his divinity. Kuhner clarifies, ‘Origen points to Christ as the point of unity between divinity and virtue: if one is to participate in the divinity, that person necessarily must participate in his virtue’.29 In this latter work Origen argues that the virtuous person shares in Christ, so long as the virtues s/he has cultivated arise through the Spirit of Christ, that is, the outworking of the Holy Spirit. Any other virtuous behaviour is not properly virtuous in Origen’s eyes, since it does not entail a sharing in Christ. However, for Origen, love, goodness, righteousness and sanctification are proof of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, since these virtues find their perfection in Christ.30 Kuhner draws attention to the following passage in Origen to support this reading: Moreover, each person shall be tested to see if he has the Spirit of Christ within him. Christ is wisdom [Christus sapientia est]; if he is wise according to Christ and sets his mind on the things of Christ, he has the Spirit of Christ in himself through wisdom. . . . So also love, so also sanctification. . . . It must be believed that the one who possesses these qualities has the Spirit of Christ in himself and hopes that his own mortal body will be made alive because of the Spirit of Christ that dwells within him.31 Since Origen holds that Christ is indistinguishable from his attributes, to attain virtues is to be in Christ and although Kuhner does not say so explicitly, this would seem to equate to deification, at least of an anticipated kind, since all divine epinoiai will disappear at the eschaton when we see Christ as he truly is. Kuhner stresses that although human effort is clearly involved in this process, in his Commentary on Romans Origen emphasis on the role performed by the Holy Spirit ensures that he is not advocating an early form of Pelagianism: ‘the epinoiai are precisely what makes possible the synthetic relationship between faith and works’.32 Whilst it is not entirely clear what Origen means when he speaks of the Christian being ‘conformed’ to Christ, Kuhner suggests that Origen held that Christ has two ‘forms’ – the ‘form’ that he assumed in the Incarnation, which Origen describes by alluding to Philippians 2.6–7, in which Paul writes that Christ empties himself ‘taking on the form of a servant’, and his divine form, which he has had since the beginning.33 Kuhner argues that for Origen Christians can take on the form that they are capable of assuming. For some it will be an imitation of Christ in his human form, for others this

Defining deification: ethical models

57

will lead to an imitation of Christ in his divine form. It is a process that occurs through the cultivation of virtues, through which the soul is led, step by step, as it were, until it truly cultivates wisdom, which is Christ in all his divinity. Kuhner notes that in his Commentary of Romans Origen, however, stresses, quoting 1 John, that this does not mean that the Christian will be without sin, only that there is the possibility of progress towards perfection.34 If one is to be divinised one must be virtuous, the two ideas go hand in hand, they cannot be separated. Or as Kuhner puts it, ‘if one is to participate in divinity, that person necessarily must participate in his [Christ’s] virtue’, which is, of course, to participate in Christ.35 Whilst deification proper is an eschatological hope tied for Origen to apokatastasis, in which God will be ‘all in all’ when all divine epinioia will disappear, at the same time, the process of deification is closely tied to acquisition of virtues. It is a sharing in Christ that awaits perfection, that is, it is economic deification that Origen speaks of in this life. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider the scholarly debates relating to Origen’s Logos-Christology. However, it seems worth noting that although Origen was long-held to have subordinated the Son to the Father in ways that made him almost a second ‘god’, which raised questions as to how the Logos differed from the logikoi, that is, spiritual creatures, which included both humans and angels, in his discussion of epinoiai Kuhner points out that, at least in his Commentary on Romans, Origen seems to draw a clear distinction between Christ’s divine nature and the perceptions of the logikoi.36 Although he notes that it is difficult to fully assess Origen’s Christology without being able to refer to the lost original Greek, in terms of human participation in the epinoiai we do not find evidence of an equivalence between Christ and human souls, even though both come to share in Christ’s divinity through the Holy Spirit. A similar point is made by Mark Edwards, who argues that for Origen the Son was not a creation of the Father. Rather it was ‘as ruler of the logika and logikoi – of things and of sentient agents that belong to the rational order – that the second Hypostasis is styled the Logos’.37 As Edwards clarifies: Although there are gradations in divinity, and the soul of Christ is the image of the Logos as the Logos is the image of the Father, we should not press the analogy so far as to say that Christ within the Trinity was a hybrid even before his Incarnation: is it not the essential premise of the argument for a human soul in Jesus that the pre-existent Word is truly God?38 It seems important to draw attention to this since Fairbairn has argues that Origen’s approach to deification ‘paves the way for a view of salvation that comes dangerously close to blurring the distinctions between individual creatures, and even the distinction between God and all creatures’,39 and as such he condemns the ethical or what he terms ‘mystical’ approach to

58

Defining deification: ethical models

deification. Whilst Origen can be read in this light, and often has been viewed as dangerously subordinationist, more recent scholarship demonstrates that Origen does not have to be understood in this way.40 Kuhner’s analysis likewise indicates that Origen can be read, at least as far as his Commentary on Romans is concerned, as offering an mechanism for deification that is first and foremost ethical, in which relation he maintains a distinction between Christ and the deified soul. Although there is clearly a participatory element at work here – in which sense we might say that there are aspects that are realistic – the emphasis on becoming as virtuous as Christ and so becoming Christ-like, homoiosis, is ethical. I think Russell is right to view this as a slightly different approach to deification, with perhaps a different sense of what it means to be deified, or at least a different perspective on how this status is to be understood. The discussion of epinoiai is not the only motif associated with deification that Origen bequeathed to later writers. Connected to the idea of virtues we also find discussion of its inverse: vice. As Richard Sorabji notes, Origen developed and altered Stoic thinking in relation to passions or emotions – which for Origen, like the Stoics before him, were viewed negatively.41 Sorabji argues that for the Stoics a difference existed between pre-passions or thoughts and passions or emotions proper. The former did not make those who experienced them blameworthy. Only the latter, which involved consent, were undesirable.42 Origen and Didymus the Blind both argued along these lines that Jesus only experienced pre-passions, not passion proper.43 At the same time Sorabji notes that Origen is not always faithful to Stoic thought.44 He sometimes conflates passions and thinking or pre-passions when referring to both as ‘logismoi’ (λογίσμοι), which he understands as bad thoughts. Such thoughts, for Origen, result from demonic influence.45 The Desert Father, St. Antony, writing after Origen, likewise viewed logismoi as thoughts produced by demons.46 Origen’s thinking on logismoi, the acquisition of virtues and his eschatological belief in apokatastasis left a legacy for the Desert tradition, in which the overcoming of Passions or bad thoughts (logismoi) became the key to ascetic living. Such ideas are most fully developed in the thought of Evagrius Ponticus, for whom this is also ultimately connected to the idea of deification. In what follows, I will focus particularly on Evagrius’ treatment of logismoi, which needs to be understood in the Origenist eschatological context outlined above, in which deification is both anticipated and awaiting its full realisation (i.e. deification should not be thought of as a state of already attained perfection) – indeed Gregory of Nyssa held that one continues to grow in deification even in the life to come.47

2. Evagrius Ponticus Evagrius Ponticus (344–99) was an ascetic monk who wrote extensively about the spirituality of the Egyptian desert in the fourth century, ‘the age of the great desert saints’.48 He studied under the ascetic masters Macarius

Defining deification: ethical models

59

the Great and Macarius of Alexandria, and also interacted with the Cappadocian Fathers – Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa.49 However, it was his association with Origen that, as Augustine Casiday comments, has seen Evagrius ‘languish on the margins of respectability’ in both medieval and modern scholarship, notwithstanding the great influence his thought exerted in the medieval period East and West.50 Caught up in the second Origenist controversy, Evagrius’ thought became tainted with suggestions of radical subordinationism, that is, that belief that the Son was not divine in the same sense as the Father. In this vein he is accused of believing that Christ and the logos are distinct and that all rational creatures can potentially enjoy the same status as Christ.51 Russell largely views Evagrius in these terms.52 However, although study of Evagrius is hampered by the state of his writings, few of which survive in their entirety in Greek – indeed, many appear only in fragments in other texts and in translations, including Ancient Syriac, Armenian and Latin53 – since the turn of the century there has been a surge of interest in Evagrius and scholars have now begun to recover his writing, in the light of which re-evaluations of his theology are being made.54 Augustine Casiday provides a new, albeit brief, reappraisal of Evagrius’ thinking on deification. Casiday admits that some of the passages in Evagrius’ writings are ‘very challenging’. However, he finds no evidence to support either radical subordinationism55 or deification which ‘compromise[s] the divine essence’.56 To the contrary, Casiday notes that in his Epistula 57 Evagrius maintains a sense of distinction between Christ and the soul, stressing that although in a sense the Father is the father of each soul, this is a relationship of grace not a nature, and thus different from that which the Father has with Christ and the Holy Spirit. Casiday notes that Christ is also spoken of as the adoptive father and even mother of the soul and as the ‘inhabitant’ of the soul; all ideas that would seem to differentiate Christ from the deified soul and suggest that Evagrius held deification to be wrought through Christ. Although he admits that Evagrius held that Christ was a mediator between God and the creation, without which humanity would have had no knowledge of God, this he argues was meant in the sense that Christ created a ‘Holy Unity’ between the Creator and his creation. Casiday also find evidence of ‘a robust Trinitarian aspect’ to Evagrius’ understanding of deification, in which adoption is spoken of both as ‘a gift of the spirit’, and as creating ‘sons of the Son’.57 Casiday moots too that Evagrius’ understanding of deification emerges out of exegesis,58 particularly of the Psalms, and is operative within ‘Christological parameters’ similar to those that we find elsewhere in the Patristic East.59 In this vein, Casiday maintains that for Evagrius ‘deification does not result in many Christs’,60 at least he finds nothing to support this position within Evagrius’ extant works. Although a number of these features might suggest a realistic approach to deification, particularly the Trinitarian aspect and mention of adoption, Evagrius’ approach to deification is largely ethical in nature. Central to his

60

Defining deification: ethical models

thinking on deification we find the idea of apatheia (ἀπάθεια) or the calmed mind. As John Eudes Bamberger comments, for Evagrius it is ‘the key-stone of his whole structure of ascetic practice’.61 Evagrius is not the first Christian author to discuss apatheia.62 It is also found in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (35–108) and Clement of Alexandria (150–215), both of whom associate apatheia with Christ and a Christ-like state of imperturbability, an idea which Bamberger argues Clement made the heart of his ascetic theology.63 Clement held that apatheia entailed the complete overcoming of the passions rather than simply their moderation.64 Although Bamberger argues that this should not be seen so much as a diminution of the affective appetites as their redirection, arguing that Clement viewed apatheia as ‘the full possession, under the influence of divine contemplation, of the affective faculties, so that disordered passions are resolved into a state of abiding calm’, Joseph H. Nguyen argues that Clement understood apatheia to be the negation of passion.65 Evagrius in many ways follows in Clement’s footsteps, as understood by Nguyen. He also, like Origen, held that the passions are manipulated by demons via thoughts or logismoi. Evagrius stresses that although the passions themselves are not demonic, nonetheless they opened the door for demonic manipulation. Although demons work upon the body, in the case of ascetics they more often attack the mind, implanting tempting thoughts or logismoi that lead away from God.66 This is an idea that Evagrius develops in both his Praktikos and Peri Logismon (On Thoughts), where he describes how demons take objects, particularly objects stored in the memory, and use them to excite the senses in ways that lead the monk to sin. He reports, for example, how the demon of sadness creates a longing for places and people who are far away.67 The goal of ascetic practice is to overcome such attacks by attaining a state of apatheia. The extent to which one has achieved apatheia is best measured by one’s dreams, or when faced with great temptation such as the touch of a woman. As he states in On Thoughts, when one’s mind is untroubled and unperturbed even in these circumstances, and angrily rejects wicked or tempting thoughts, one knows that apatheia has been achieved: If one of the anchorites should be untroubled by frightening or impure appearances among those that come during sleep, but is instead angered that they are shamefully near him, and strikes them; again, if he should be unaroused when for the sake of healing women’s bodies – for the demons also show this – he touches them, and rather counsels some of them about moderation, then he is truly blessed with such imperturbability.68 The same idea is echoed in his Praktikos, where he again reiterates that the proof of apatheia is how one reacts to the attacks that occur whilst one is asleep and the calm that one maintains no matter what worldly activities one is engage in: ‘The proof of apatheia is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the

Defining deification: ethical models

61

images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life’.69 The result is a pure form of prayer in which nothing distracts the soul from God.70 Bamberger argues that it differs from stabilitas in the Latin tradition, which is transitory; Evagrius claims that apatheia is constant. At the same time temptations will always arise – logismoi are never completely overcome in this life – one always has to do battle against bad thoughts, even when one has attained to the highest spiritual state (i.e. constant apatheia).71 According to Evagrius, apatheia grows out of discipline (ascesis). Indeed, he suggests humility and almsgiving as ways of controlling the body, and reading, vigils and prayers, as well as fasting and psalm singing, as ways of controlling the mind, albeit in proper measure, so that the latter calm rather than excite the passions.72 As he states in Praktikos, 15: Reading, vigils and prayer – these are the things that lend stability to the wandering mind. Hunger, toil and solitude are the means of extinguishing the flames of desire. Turbid anger is calmed by the singing of Psalms, by patience and almsgiving. But all these practices are to be engaged in according to due measure and at the appropriate times. What is untimely done, or done without measure, endures but a short time. And what is short-lived is more harmful than profitable.73 Evagrius also asserts that all the spiritual songs in the Bible are useful for combatting wicked thoughts, and as Luke Dysinger comments, he offers his readers short biblical phrases for the same purpose, most often taken from the Psalter.74 As Evagrius writes in Praktikos, ‘“psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles” invite the spirit to the constant memory of virtue by cooling our boiling anger and by extinguishing our lusts’.75 He connects the acquisition of virtue to both overcoming demons and apatheia. He even encourages ascetics to analyse the thoughts that trouble them, praying to Christ for insight that will help them to combat such troublesome thinking. As he states in Praktikos, 50: If there is any monk who wishes to take measure of some of the more fierce demons so as to gain experience in his monastic art, then let him keep careful watch over his thoughts. Let him observe their intensity, their periods of decline and follow them as they rise and fall. Let him note well the complexity of his thoughts, their periodicity, the demons which cause them, with the order of their succession and the nature of their associations. Then let him ask from Christ the explanations of these data he has observed.76 As Bamberger points out, apatheia is in many ways equivalent to purity of heart.77 It gives birth to love (agape),78 and leads the soul to contemplation. Through this souls also attains the knowledge of God that culminates in

62

Defining deification: ethical models

deification.79 Evagrius describes this as being in ‘the place of God’. As he writes in On Thoughts: The mind could not see the place of God in itself, unless it had become loftier than all [concepts] from things. But it would not become loftier, unless it had put off the passions that bind it to perceptible things through concepts. It will put aside the passions through virtues: it will put aside the base thoughts through contemplation; it will even put aside contemplation itself, when there appears to it that light at the time of prayer which sets in relief the place of God.80 We see here the intimate connection made between putting aside the passions (i.e. calming the mind), the acquisition of virtues, entering into ‘the place of God’ and experiencing the light of God in the time of prayer. Douglas Burton-Christie argues that such seeking after ‘the place of God’ stands at the heart of the Desert tradition, where it equates to an arrival at an understanding of both oneself and God in which one truly rests in God’s presence. As he states, The literature of early Christian monasticism suggests that the monk’s quest for the place of God involved an almost unbearably demanding and arduous process of relinquishment, a stripping away of the many layers of illusion and attachment that prevented the monk from arriving at an honest knowledge of self and God.81 He notes that for Evagrius this constitutes an imageless form of knowing, a form of undistracted prayer, in which one has truly overcome the wandering mind and the images that otherwise fill it. It constitutes ‘a profound and abiding sense of God’s presence’82 in which the mind no longer grasps after many things but is content with simplicity. Evagrius relates the idea of ‘the place of God’ to that of experiencing ‘a sapphire-blue light’ – an image that, Burton-Christie notes, is grounded in Moses theophanic encounter with God (Exodus 24.10–11), when his senses were overwhelmed by God’s presence. In this relation, Burton-Christie comments that Evagrius conflates the ideas of ‘the place of God’ and ‘the place of prayer’: ‘Evagrius transposes the geographical image of Moses’s encounter with God on Sinai to the inner life of the monk, so that the “place of God” becomes almost indistinguishable from the “place of prayer”’.83 Burton-Christie observes that what Evagrius has in mind by this latter phrase is the idea that the soul itself becomes God’s dwelling place.84 Quoting Evagrius to this effect, Burton-Christie remarks that for Evagrius the ultimate goal of the Desert quest is to so submerge one’s life in God that it is only here that one’s life is to be found: ‘When the mind has put off the old self and shall put on the one born of grace’ (cf. Col 3:9–10), then it will see its own state in the time of prayer

Defining deification: ethical models

63

resembling sapphire or the color of heaven; this state scripture calls ‘the place of God that was seen by the elders on Mount Sinai’ (Ex 24:9–11). This [is a] vision of the monk completely subsumed into the life of God, living in God.85 As Evagrius stresses in the above passage from On Thoughts 39, it is not a process that the monk simply accomplishes, it is a God-given state brought about through the working of God within the soul such that the monk is ‘born of grace’. We thus see a movement from theoria (contemplation) to theosis (deification). Yet even though deification for Evagrius was ‘a gift of the Spirit’, as Casiday notes, it was underpinned by the controlling the wandering mind. It was this that Evagrius held allowed the soul to share in Christ’s virtues and so enter into the place of God since it gave the monk a Christ-like mind.86 It was both anticipated in this life and to be fully realised at the eschaton. Just as in the realistic accounts that we examined in Chapter 1, deification within ethical approaches was not discussed for its own sake. It rather bore witness to the spiritual status of those who followed the ascetic path in which they became Christ-like, although not Christ. Although Evagrius ideas were condemned as heretical, they continued to circulate in his Kephalaia Gnostika and some of them were known to the Anglo-Saxons.87 More generally, they found their way into the Latin West through the writings of John Cassian, who developed Evagrius’ thinking on apatheia, using it to underpin his thinking on how scripture ought be read.

3. John Cassian John Cassian (c. 360) is an author whose thought has suffered from the idea that he was semi-Pelagian, an accusation which recent studies by Fairbairn and Casiday challenge, particularly with reference to Cassian’s understanding of deification.88 Best known for his Conferences and Institutions, Cassian also produced a treatise: On the Incarnation. Indeed, Fairbairn notes that it was Cassian, not Augustine, who was chosen by Pope Leo I to write a response to Nestorianism. Fairbairn moots that it is in this context that we find a discussion of ‘christological grace’ which pertains to deification. The way in which this operates has been teased out most fully by Casiday. Casiday notes that, responding to what he views as Nestorius’ claim that Christ is a ‘God-receiver’ (theodochus), thereby implying that God merely dwelt within Jesus rather than Christ being both God and man, Cassian stresses that one must not confuse Christ’s status with that of the saints and prophets in the Old Testament. The latter are those that Christ indwelt and thus those through whom God spoke. Reappropriating Nestorius’ terminology to speak of them, Cassian argues that it is the prophets who are the ‘God-receivers’, for they are ‘inhabited’ by God, Christ in contrast is the inhabitant of such souls.89 It is through Christ’s inhabitation that the saints are made divine – they, unlike Christ, cannot inhabit another. Casiday

64

Defining deification: ethical models

draws attention to the following passage in On the Incarnation where Cassian states: All therefore, whether patriarchs or prophet, whether apostles or martyrs – in short, all the saints did indeed have God in themselves and all became sons of God and all were God-receivers (omnes Theotoci fuerunt), but by diverse and (as it were) very similar means. Truly, all who believe in God are sons of God by adoption, but the Only-begotten Son is such by nature.90 Here we see Cassian making a clear distinction between Christ’s status as God and deified humanity. Fairbairn argues that this brings Cassian’s Incarnational theology close to that of his Greek contemporary Cyril of Alexandria. He stresses that it is clear that Cassian also shows deification to be the result of grace – an outworking and consequence of the Incarnation, rather than something that is simply earned. This Fairbairn terms ‘christological grace’, in that Christ, through grace, transfers what he has to the Christian.91 Yet although there are clearly realistic elements in Cassian’s account, it was the ethical dimensions of his thinking that came to be particularly influential in the Latin West. Along similar lines to those that we noted in Evagrius, Cassian stresses the importance of controlling the wandering mind. Mary Carruthers has shown that the calming of the mind is a feature that Cassian embeds into the monastic practice of lectio divina, which he devises.92 Cassian connects this practice to the idea of unceasing prayer and it is here, as Christine Beu has shown, the Cassian explicitly links deification and the calming of the mind. These ideas are particular developed in Cassian’s Conferences. Cassian describes the possibility of unceasing prayer in his ninth Conference, for example, when discussing how the acquisition of virtues through prayer leads to a state in which one’s whole way of life becomes prayer. As Cassian states: Therefore, so that prayer may be made with the fervour and purity that it deserves. . . . First, anxiety about fleshly matters should be completely cut off. Then, not only the concern but in fact even the memory of affairs and business should be refused all entry whatsoever; detraction, idle speech, talkativeness. . . . Then the spiritual structure of the virtues must be raised above it [the foundation of deep humility], and the mind must be restrained from all dangerous wandering and straying, so that thus it might gradually begin to be elevated to the contemplation of God and spiritual vision. . . . For the mind in prayer is shaped by the state that it was previously in. . . . Therefore, before we pray we should make an effort to cast out from the innermost parts of our heart whatever we do not wish to steal upon us as we pray, so that in this way we can fulfill the apostolic words: ‘Pray without ceasing’.93

Defining deification: ethical models

65

Beu points out that Cassian links such unceasing prayer to deification. Cassian claims that unceasing prayer leads one to become not simply angelic but to arrive at an intimate union with the Trinity. Echoing the words of John 17, in Conference 10 Cassian asserts that through unceasing prayer the soul shares in the union between the Father and the Son, such that one also participates in the intimate love that flows between them. As Cassian states in Conference 10.7.2: When that unity which the Father now has with the Son and which the Son has with the Father will be carried over into our understanding and our mind, so that, just as he loves us with a sincere and pure and indissoluble love, we too may be joined to him with a perpetual and inseparable love.94 In the above passage we see Cassian claiming the possibility of being joined to Christ by ‘perpetual and inseparable love’. Cassian asserts that to do this is to begin to experience one’s future hope, such that all that one is becomes prayer. As he continues: This must be his whole intention – to deserve to possess the image of future blessedness in this body and as it were to begin to taste the pledge of that heavenly way of life and glory in this vessel. This, I say, is the end of all perfection that the mind purged of every carnal desire may daily be elevated to spiritual things, until one’s whole way of life and all the yearnings of one’s heart become a single and continuous prayer.95 On first reading the preceding passages suggest that Cassian is claiming that the soul is quite literally taken up into the Trinity and achieves a status of some equivalence. This would be a bold claim indeed and would bring him close to how earlier scholars interpreted Evagrius. However, as noted above, Casiday and Fairbairn argue that Cassian does not maintain that there can be many Christs – by stressing that Christ inhabits the soul and by placing an emphasis on ‘christological grace’, he clearly differentiates the deified soul from Christ.96 Cassian’s enormous influence in the Latin West came mainly through the Rule of Benedict of Nursia which promotes the practice of lectio divina outlined in Cassian’s Conferences and recommended in his works.97 It is not an exaggeration to say that Benedictine Monasticism became the model of monasticism in the Latin West, shaping its spiritual heritage until the thirteenth century, when the mendicant orders were formed. Richard Southern moots that one reason for the Rule’s popularity was its flexibility: Yet despite the great emphasis on detail, there is a remarkable absence of rigidity. The Rule leaves plenty of room for development and improvisation. It would be hard to tell simply from reading it whether it was intended mainly for a society of scholars or labourers, of noblemen

66

Defining deification: ethical models or peasants, for a richly endowed community supporting its army of craftsmen and artists or for a poor house scratching a living from an infertile soil. All are possible, and in due course claimed to be expressions of the original ideal.98

The popularity of the Rule saw the writings of Cassian become recommended reading in the Latin West.99 Francis Leneghan has recently argued that the thinking on deification and calming the wandering mind that we find within Cassian’s Conferences and in Evagrius’ writings – both of which were known to the Anglo-Saxons – offer insight into the Old English lament poem, The Wanderer.100 The poem, which survives only in the Exeter book, was copied in a Benedictine Reform monastery in the tenth century alongside works pertaining to the solitary life.101 The poem details the mind of its protagonist filled with anguish and melancholy at the memory of absent friends and lost treasures. Although the poem is often read as the lament of a secular warrior, Leneghan argues that the emphasis that we find on wandering thoughts and the need to overcome them is best explained with reference to the tradition of calming the wandering mind detailed in these writings. It is a reading which he moots potentially alleviates some of the difficulties that the poem otherwise presents: Reading The Wanderer in the context of monastic writing on thoughts and prayer helps to account for some of its idiosyncrasies of structure and theme and may also shed some light on its manuscript context.102 For Leneghan, the poem offers an account of the struggle to overcome the wandering mind, or at least could have been so interpreted by a monastic reader, for whom it would have acted as an aid to contemplation and deification. As Leneghan puts it: For an Anglo-Saxon monk, the poem might, therefore, have served as a useful meditative tool, inviting them to turn their thoughts away from the self towards the vision of God (theoria); away from the Evagrian passions and towards the luminosity of the place of God.103 Although we have no record of Evagrius being known in the later Middle Ages in England, his thinking on calming the wandering mind was, as we noted, transferred to the West through the writings of Cassian.104 As we will discuss in the next chapter, the calming of the wandering mind seems to form an essential component of the approach to deification that we find in the writings of Richard Rolle.

4. The Desert tradition and the body Whilst Cassian seems to have understood the fiery nature of ‘pure prayer’ as a form of rapture or ecstasy,105 as Daniel Lemeni has shown, deification in

Defining deification: ethical models

67

much Desert Spirituality was more often evidenced by a transformation in physical appearance – such as a shining face, fire, or an incorruptible body, all of which bore witness to a return to a prelapsarian state or a higher state that prefigured the resurrection body. Examining many of the collected sayings of the Desert Fathers, as well as The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, Lemeni argues that a shining face is continually associated with inner spiritual transformation or perhaps better the transfiguration of the ascetic. He notes, for example that Abba Pambo’s face, like that of Moses, was seen to ‘shine like lightning’; Abba Arsenius was said to appear ‘angelic’; Abba Silvanus to have a ‘face and body shining like angels’; and another Father was seen to shine after engaging in the liturgy (having previously seemed dark in countenance).106 Likewise, Lemeni remarks that in Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony, Antony’s body appears to have become incorruptible after nearly twenty years of fasting, much to the astonishment of those who witnessed it.107 As The Life states: So he spent nearly twenty years practicing the ascetic life by himself, never going out and but seldom seen by others. After this, as there were many who longed and sought to imitate his holy life and some of his friends came and forcefully broke down the door and removed it, Antony came forth as out of a shrine, as one initiated into sacred mysteries and filled with the spirit of God. It was the first time he had showed himself outside the fort to those who came to see him. When they saw him, they were astonished to see that his body had kept its former appearance, that it was neither obese from want of exercise, nor emaciated from his fastings and struggles with the demons: he was the same man they had known before his retirement.108 As this passage suggests, rather than damaging the body, the ascetic life was believed to lead to its glorification and wholeness, such that Antony was neither fat nor emaciated after twenty years of fasting. It was this that the Desert tradition emphasised, the need to control the passions through ascetic practice; one should not deliberately mutilate or harm the body. Lemeni notes that we have evidence of those being reprimanded who misunderstood the difference. Abba Poemen, for example, corrects Dorotheus, ‘We were taught, not to kill the body, but to kill the passions’.109 The intimate connection between body and inner state is, Lemeni notes, reiterated by Georgina Frank, who likewise argues that it was one of the indicators of deification within the Desert Tradition: Radiance and Light were typically thought to be features of divinized bodies for ascetics. Rather than present a body broken by ascetic practice, the pilgrims could use references to light and angels to show asceticism’s highest achievement, the reversal of the body’s decay and its transformation into the glorified body of the resurrection.110

68

Defining deification: ethical models

In a comparative study of asceticism across religious traditions, Gavin Flood comments that such control of the body can be seen to correlate with the philosophical beliefs that underpin the thought of leading proponents of a given tradition; in the case of the Christian tradition, the thought of an author such as Evagrius Ponticus. Flood remarks that a close connection can be seen between the ascetic practises advocated and intellectual concerns relating to the transformation of the soul: The body is not a prison for those who can become detached from the passions, but a vehicle for the elevation of the soul back to a state of the pure contemplation of God and part of a chain of being, a chain of bodies, . . . for through the ascetic control of the body, the body is transformed and the soul comes to realise itself as a pure intellect. The development of soul and body are inseparable: the transformation of the body in asceticism is the transformation of the soul, and to develop the soul’s virtues is to transform the body, for a soul is soul only by virtue of embodiment.111 The link between mental and bodily practice is nicely illustrated in an apothegm found in the Saying of the Desert Fathers, where we see Abba Anthony, struggling to control his wandering thoughts, being told to control his body by plaiting a rope. The implication is that this will lead him to control his mind: When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie [despondency, depression, listlessness, a distaste for life without any specific reason] and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?’ A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, ‘Do this and you will be saved’. At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.112 It is in relation to such stories that Lemeni draws attention to the emphasis that was placed on controlling tempting thoughts or ‘logismoi’, an idea that, as we have seen, is integral to both Evagrius’ and Cassian’s account of the acquisition of virtues and deification. Lemeni suggests that the following passage from the writings of Macarius perhaps best sums up deification in this tradition: The face of the soul is unveiled and it gazes with fixed eyes upon the heavenly Bridegroom, face to face, in a spiritual and ineffable light. Such

Defining deification: ethical models

69

a person [. . .] believes that he will obtain liberation from his sins and dark passions through the Spirit, so that, purified by the Spirit in soul and body, he may become a pure vessel to receive the heavenly unction and become a worthy habitation for the heavenly and true King, Christ. And then such a person is considered worthy of heavenly life, having become a pure dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.113 In this passage we see that the goal, in striving to control the body, is to make the soul a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit and Christ. The passions themselves are likewise only stilled through the operation of the Spirit. As in Origen’s account, for Macarius, faith and works operate in symbiosis, both body and soul play a fundamental role in deification and in the receipt of its effects. The role of the body in the Desert tradition and within deification in general is an under-researched area. It is an issue that we will pick up when we consider Richard Rolle’s approach to deification. Indeed, it is in Rolle’s writings rather than Julian’s Revelations that I hope to show that we find an ethical approach to deification; albeit rather unsystematically developed.

Conclusion The purpose of this and the previous chapter has been to outline the two strands within Greek Patristic accounts of deification that Russell identifies – the realistic and the ethical – extending Russell’s analysis to include writers from the Latin West. Although no account of deification in the Patristic East is wholly realistic or wholly ethical, it seems that different approaches to deification existed within the Patristic East and that some authors are better placed within one or the other of these strands. As we discussed in the previous chapter, the realistic strand is closely wed to concerns over Christology. As we have seen in this chapter, the ethical strand approaches deification via the need for virtuous living and privileges imitatio Christi. For the authors discussed in this chapter, it seems clear that in its fullest sense deification is a future hope. Yet, for some, the effects of deification and a share in deification begin in this life, even if the fullness is reserved for the life to come.114 This is particularly true of writers who propose ethical accounts of deification. Another facet of deification across the accounts has been the difference between God and deified humanity. Although it has long been argued that the idea of deification played little role in the theology of the Latin West, as we have seen, a number of scholars – including Rosenberg, Meconi and Casiday – all moot that deification was important in the West in ways that challenge traditional understandings of Western soteriology.115 This, of course, does not demonstrate that what they proposed were doctrines rather than mere themes; far more research is needed before we can conclusively respond to Hallosten. Nevertheless, in these chapters I have attempted to illustrate the key elements that we find within Christian discussions of deification. I have tried to paint as clear a

70

Defining deification: ethical models

picture as possible of what deification was believed to entail in the Early Church. In the chapters that follow, I explore the writings of Rolle and Julian in the light of these beliefs, arguing that each promotes an understanding of deification. Julian’s view appears to align most closely with the realistic strand discussed in Chapter 1; as with the authors discussed there, ideas pertaining to deification that we find in her thought cannot be extracted from her discussions of soteriology and Christology. Rolle’s approach appears to be ethical. It is in promoting concepts central to ethical accounts of deification – in particular the calmed mind – that Rolle offers his readers a mystical trajectory that is deifying. As Rolle is the earlier of these two Middle English Mystics, it is to his thought that we will turn first.

Notes 1 Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6–10, trans. by Thomas Scheck (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2002), 7.7.4, pp.  84–85. This translation is used throughout. The passage is discussed by Matthew Kuhner, on whose article ‘Aspects of Christ’ I have based my discussion of Origen: ‘The “Aspects of Christ” (Epinoiai Christou) in Origen’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans’, Harvard Theological Review, 110/2 (2017), 195–216 at 208–209. For the Latin text (the Greek is lost): Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 1–3, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1990); Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 4–6, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1997); Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 7–10, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1998), 7.5.42–57 (the numbering of the Latin differs from translation). I have not usually provided the original text in the footnotes for the authors in the chapter unless it seems particularly pertinent to the discussions of Rolle and Julian that follow. 2 Russell, Deification, p. 2. 3 Fairbairn firmly believes that Gregory of Nyssa belongs within this tradition and he therefore treats Gregory’s account with some suspicion: ‘Patristic Soteriology’, pp. 300ff. We will further discuss Gregory’s account in Chapter 6. 4 Some of Origen’s ideas appear to have been condemned in 553 at the Fifth Ecumenical Church Council. Although it is often claims that Evagrius was condemned at the same time, his name does not appear in the list of those condemned. For a discussion of when Evagrius was condemned see: Luke Dysinger O.S.B., ‘The Condemnation of Evagrius Reconsidered’ (unpublished paper read at the Oxford Patristics Conference, 2003). Evagrius’ thought has been subject to recent rehabilitation, partly resulting from editorial work that his taken place since the turn of the twentieth century, which has attempted to reconstruct his writings, see: Augustine M. Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus: Beyond Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), intro. 5 See, for example, Augustine M. Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, in Lorenzo Perrone (ed.), Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp. 995–1001. 6 Edwards, Origen against Plato; Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’; Fairbairn, Grace and Christology.

Defining deification: ethical models

71

7 Russell relies on authors such as Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, trans. by John Bowden (London and Oxford: Mowbrays, 1975), vol. 1. 8 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p.  216. Cf. Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. by A.  S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989); Edwards, Origen against Plato; Ilaria L.  E. Ramelli, ‘Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism and Its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line’, Vigiliae Christianae, 65 (2011), 21–49; Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis. Ramelli does refer to Origen as a Christian Platonist, however by this she intends that Origen appreciates the works of Plato. She does not mean to suggest that he was a Platonist as opposed to a Christian. 9 Russell, Deification, p. 144. 10 Anon., The Philokalia, the Complete Text, ed. and trans. by Gerald Eustace Howell Palmer et al. (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), vol. 1, 13.4, when writing to a former pupil Gregory Thaumaturgus on the importance of prayer: cited in Russell, Deification, p. 141. 11 Russell, Deification, p. 144. 12 My discussion of Origen’s eschatology and the link between apokatastasis and deification is indebted to Ramelli, Apokatastasis, whose argument I follow. For further discussion of Origen’s eschatology see: Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, Supplements to Virgilae Christianae, vol. 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 13 Although Origen has traditionally been credited with bringing this belief into Christianity, and whilst not denying Origen’s influence on subsequent writers, Ramelli illustrates that its roots are wider. 14 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p. 1. 15 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p. 139. 16 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, pp. 138–140. 17 The passage is discussed by Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p.  139; Origen, Homilae in Leviticum, ed. by W. A. Baehrens (Leipzig: Akademie-Verlag, 1920), in Origenes Werke, ed. by Paul Koetschau et al., 12 vols. (Leipzig and Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1899–1993). 18 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p. 18. 19 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p. 140. 20 Cf. Ramelli, Apokatastasis, p.  129 for a succinct account of this idea as it relates to Clement of Alexandria, whose view is close Origen’s. 21 Ramelli, Apokatastasis, pp. 140–141. 22 Russell, Deification, p. 154. 23 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 1–10 trans. by Ronald E. Heinem FOTC 80 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), I: 52–53, p. 45; Origen, ‘Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte’ in Origenes Werke, 10:14. For a discussion see: Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, pp. 196–197. 24 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 197. 25 In discussing Origen’s understanding of deification, Russell follows Grillmeier, who argues that Origen’s Christology is economic rather than ontological: Russell, Deification, p. 152 with reference to Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition, vol. 1, p. 141. 26 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 200 quoting Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. by Walter Mitchell (New York: Stead and Ward, 1955), p. 258. 27 Russell, Deification, p. 150. 28 I draw closely on Kuhner’s study, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’. 29 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 213. 30 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 208.

72

Defining deification: ethical models

31 Origen, Commentary on Romans, 6.13.9, p. 57. Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes, 6.14.114–124. For a discussion: Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 208. 32 Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 211. Kuhner notes that this point has also been made by Maurice Wiles, who states, Christ did not merely possess the various virtues accidentally or contingently; Christ is his attributes. . . . Therefore our relationship to Christ is automatically our relationship to wisdom, righteousness, truth and all the other virtues. To be ‘in Christ’ is to be ‘in’ all the virtues; to have Christ in us is to have them in us. . . . Clearly therefore according to this analysis there can be for Origen no faith without works. Faith in Christ does not need to be supplemented by the virtuous life; it is the adoption of the virtues. Thus the connection between faith and works is a logically necessary one. Maurice Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 114–115, quoted in Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 213. 33 Russell argues something similar quoting Grillmeier on the lack of ‘ontic unity’ in Origen’s discussion of Christ. However, Kuhner reads this as a positive dynamic rather than a failure, in which the human and divine within Christ are held in dialectic tension rather than splitting Christ apart. 34 As Kuhner comments, Origen did not believe that it was possible to be without sin in this life: Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 203, n. 34. He quotes the following extended passage in support of his reading (212): To serve Christ means to serve wisdom, i.e., to serve righteousness, to serve truth, and to serve all the virtues at the same time. This is why it must not be imagined that all at once, when a person expresses the will, he immediately becomes transferred into Christ Jesus. .  .  . For in each person righteousness searches for its own portions. . . . There is absolutely no doubt that these things should be sought after by means of constant practice and training and by vigilant effort. And for this reason it is certain that this does not come to pass in those who are lazy or inactive but rather in those who are gradually making progress, and who at first sin only a little, then later even less, and ultimately, if they are able to attain it, who no longer sin at all.

35 36

37 38

39

Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books; 6–10, 6.11.2, pp. 45–46. Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes, 6.11.15–22, 26–33. Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, p. 213. He notes too that in a Greek fragment of the Commentary on Romans, Origen even appears to imply the title ‘auto’ to the Logos, a title that otherwise appears to have been reserved for the Father (a fact which has long been used in the scholarship to argue for Origen’s subordinationism). Kuhner, ‘The “Aspects of Christ”’, pp. 205–206. Edwards, Origen against Plato, p. 72. Edwards, ‘Origen against Plato, p. 73 (slightly amended to correct typo). This is not to deny that there is some level of subordination in Origen’s discussion of Christ. Edwards’ point is that it is much less marked in Origen’s thought that in those of his contemporaries. Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriologies: Three Trajectories’, p. 300. Whilst this may be true, Origen also writes of participating in the divine nature through the love of the Holy Spirit: Commentary on the Epistle Romans 4.9.12.

Defining deification: ethical models

73

40 This point is emphasised by Ramelli, Apopkatastasis, p. 475 who stresses that for Origen theosis did not entail pantheism but was rather a union of wills – a point she emphasises is also true for Evagrius. 41 Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 343. 42 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, p. 343. 43 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, p. 344. 44 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, pp. 343, 346–351. 45 Joseph H. Nguyen, Apatheia in the Christian Tradition: An Ancient Spirituality and Its Contemporary Relevance (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018), chapter 4. 46 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, p. 348. 47 For a discussion of Gregory: Ramelli, Apokatastasis, pp. 375ff. 48 Augustine M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p. 3. St Athanasius retired to the desert in the late third century and St Pachomus founded cenobitical communities there in a similar period. For a discussion of early desert monasticism and eremiticism and its legacy: Mary Clayton, ‘Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Paul Szarmach (ed.), Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 147–175. 49 On Evagrius’ life: Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus, pp. 5–22. Other contemporaries include Jerome, Augustine and John Chysostom. 50 Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus, p.  4. On Evagrius’ influence: John Eudes Bamberger (introduction) in Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. by John Eudes Bamberger (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1972). 51 Cf. Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus. 52 Russell, Deification, p. 240. 53 The importance of this new work is discussed by Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus. For an up-to-date biography of Evagrius’ works, editions and translations. http://evagriusponticus.net/corpus.htm, which is maintained by Joel Kalvesmaki. 54 For example: Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus; Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Darling Young (eds.), Evagrius and His Legacy (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016); Luke Dysinger O.S.B., Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 55 Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 1000. 56 Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 1000. 57 Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 1000. 58 The importance of scripture for Evagrius’ understanding of deification is also reinforced by Luke Dysinger, O.S.B., ‘Evagrius Ponticus, Exegete of the Soul’, in Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Darling Young (eds.), Evagrius and His Legacy, pp. 73–95. 59 Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus, esp. chapter 5, although Casiday admits that Evagrius viewed his spiritual achievements to be such that he was endowed with the capacity to rework the scriptures – an idea that he notes was also taken up by Cassian. 60 Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 1000. 61 Bamberger, The Praktikos, intro, p. lxxxii. 62 The idea is found before this in Stoic thought and in Plato. For a discussion of the roots of this idea and its development within Christian thought: Nguyen, Apatheia in the Christian Tradition. This book was published too late for it to be considered in detail in this study. It contains discussions of apatheia in both Evagrius and Cassian. Although Nguyen does not discuss the idea of

74

63 64 65 66

67 68

69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86

Defining deification: ethical models deification in Evagrius and Cassian, he notes that for Maximus the Confessor, who stands in this tradition, apatheia is not a union of God and the intellect but a transformation of human desires into divine love. Bamberger, The Praktikos, p. lxxxiii. Robert L. Wilkens, Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 149. Bamberger, The Praktikos, p. lxxxiii; Also Nguyen, Apatheia in the Christian Tradition, chapter 4. Evagrius, Praktikos, 48, p. 29. Cf. Praktikos, 36, pp. 25–26. Praktikos is the first in a spiritual trilogy, which also includes Gnostikos and Kephalaia Gnostika, the latter being condemned as heretical. Although intended to be read together, the works circulated separately. More extant manuscripts contain Praktikos than of the other two. Kephalaia Gnostika survives only in a single manuscript. Evagrius work, On Thoughts (Peri Logismon) has a complex manuscript history, surviving in long and short versions (far from all identical) and also in various fragments. I have used the translation by Casiday in Evagrius Ponticus. For a discussion of the manuscript tradition see the critical edition: Paul Géhin, Clair Guillaumont and Antoine Guillaumont (eds. and trans.), Évagre le Pontique, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 438 (Paris: Cerf, 1998). For a discussion of Evagrius writings and recently scholarly discussion of them: Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus. Cf. http://evagriusponticus.net/corpus.htm. Evagrius, Praktikos, 9, pp. 17–18. Evagrius, On Thoughts, 29, p.  109. For the Greek text: Évagre le Pontique: Sur Les Pensés, ed. by Paul Géhin and Clair Guillaumont, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 438 (Paris: Cerf, 1998). Casiday’s volume contains a translation of the entire Peri Logismon, which Casiday entitles On Thoughts. Evagrius, Praktikos, 64, pp. 33–34; Greek critical edition is found in Évagre le Pontique, Traité Pratique ou Le Moine, ed. by Antoine Guillaumont and Clair Guillaumont, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 171 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), p. 648. Cf. Evagrius Praktikos, p. 77. Evagrius, Praktikos, 69, p. 35, Cf. Chapters On Prayer, trans. by Bamberger, p. 36. Bamberger, The Praktikos, p. lxxxv. Fasting and acts of mercy are recommended against night passions: Evagrius, Praktikos, 91, p. 39. Evagrius, Praktikos, 15, p. 20. Traité Pratique, pp. 5–6. Cf. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, pp. 126, n. 100. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, pp. 124–128. Evagrius, Praktikos, 71, p. 35. Traité Pratique, p. 658. Evagrius, Praktikos, 50, p. 30. Traité Pratique, pp. 615, 617. Evagrius Praktikos, 83, p. 37. Evagrius Praktikos, 81, p. 36. On deification in Evagrius: Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’. Evagrius, On Thoughts, 40 (my emphasis). Cf. Douglas Burton-Christie, ‘Early monasticism’, in A. Hollywood and P. Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 37–58 at 49–51, who in the context of Athanasius’s Life of St. Antony discusses the ideas of ‘anachoresis’, which he understands as seeking the place of God, and ‘proseuche’, that is, dwelling in the place of God. Burton-Christie, ‘Early Monasticism’, p. 48. Burton-Christie, ‘Early Monasticism’, p. 51. Burton-Christie, ‘Early Monasticism’, p. 55. Burton-Christie, ‘Early Monasticism’, p. 56. Burton-Christie, ‘Early Monasticism’, p. 56, quoting Evagrius, On Thoughts, 39. Casiday likewise affirms that Evagrius and Cassian held that deification was possible, although he notes that neither discusses the concept in much detail.

Defining deification: ethical models

87 88 89 90 91 92 93

94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

108

75

Augustine M. Casiday, The Tradition and Theology of John Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 62, esp. n. 158. Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer’, p. 126. Fairbairn, Grace and Christology; Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’. This is an image which Casiday notes that Cassian gets from Evagrius: ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’. John Cassian, ‘On the Incarnation’, V.4.2–3, trans. by Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 996. For the Latin: John Cassian, ‘Libri de Incarnatione’ Patrologia Latina, vol. 50, cols., 9–367 at 103–104. Fairbairn, Grace and Christology in the Early Church, especially chapter 6, where he outlines Cassian’s understanding of the Incarnation in On the Incarnation. We will discuss this idea more fully in Chapter 5. John Cassian, The Conferences, trans. by Boniface Ramsey O.P., Ancient Christian Writers 57 (New York: Newman Press, 1997), Conference 9, 3.III.1–3, pp.  330–331. For the Latin: the critical edition is Jean Cassien, Conférences I–VII trans. by E. Pichery, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 42 (Paris: Cerf, 1955); Jean Cassien, Conférences VIII–XVII trans. by E. Pichery, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 54 (Paris: Cerf, 1958). I have cited the page numbers from Ramsey’s translation. John Cassian, Conferences 10.7.2, p.  376. For a discussion: Christine Beu, Deification in Cassian’s Conferences: Analysis of John Cassian’s Writings on Unceasing Prayer in Conferences Nine and Ten as a Description of Deification (unpublished MA dissertation: Providence College, 2015), Theology Graduate Theses. Paper 8. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/theology_graduate_ theses/8, p. 69. This and the following text are those that she identifies as particularly pertinent to deification in Cassian’s thought. Cassian, Conferences, 10.7.3, p. 376. For further discussion, see Beu, Deification in Cassian’s Conferences, p. 71. Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 1000. Rachel Fulton Brown, From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary: 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 156. Richard Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 218–219. For a discussion of their importance in Anglo-Saxon England: Stephen Lake, ‘Knowledge of the Writings of John Cassian in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England, 32 (2003), 27–41. Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer’. Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer’, p. 123. Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer’, p. 138. Leneghan, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer’, p. 139. The relationship between Old English literature and Middle English literature is disputed. I am not suggesting any direct relationship between these ideas and those of Rolle discussed in Chapter 3. Cassian, Conferences, 10.11.6, p. 385. Daniel Lemeni, ‘Shining Face and White Body: Holy Flesh and Holiness in the Spirituality of the Desert’, International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 7/4 (2016), 38–53 at 53. For a recent discussion of Athanasius’s rendering of the Life of St. Antony: Jonathan L. Zecher, ‘Antony’s Vision of Death, Athanasius of Alexandria, Palladius of Helenopolis, and Egyptian Mortuary Religion’, Journal of Late Antiquity, 7/1 (2014), 159–177. Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of St. Antony, trans. by Robert T. Meyer (New York: Newman Press, 1950), vol. 14, p.  32. For the Greek: Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 400, ed. by Gerhardus J.  M. Bartelink (Paris: Cerf, 1994). Russell argues that Athanasius does not

76

109

110 111 112 113

114 115

Defining deification: ethical models describe Antony as deified, only discussing his ethical achievements, Deification, p. 184. This reading is supported by the Greek in the sense that the term θεοποιέω (deification) is however only used in a perjorative sense. However the Latin translation frequently interprets Antony as deified, introducing the terminology. Dysinger, ‘The Condemnation of Evagrius Reconsidered’, p. 4. n.15, who references the following studies: Ludovicus Lorié, Spiritual Terminology in the Latin Translations of the Vita Antonii: With Reference to Fourth and Fifth Century Monastic Literature (Nijmegen and Utrecht: Dekker & Van De Vegt N.V., 1961), pp. 73–74, 84; Lois Gandt, ‘A Philological and Theological Analysis of the Ancient Latin Translations of the “Vita Antonii”’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Fordham University: New York, 2008), pp.  122–124, 249, 253, 254. Abba Poemen, 184, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetic Collection, trans. by B. Ward (London: Mowbrays, 1975), p. 193. For a discussion: Lemeni, ‘“You Can Become All Flame’: Theology of the Deification as Foundation of Desert Monasticism’, Studia Monastica, 58/2 (2016), 243–252 at 245. For the Greek Text: Anon., Apophthegmata Patrum, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 65, cols., 71–440, ed. by J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1864). Georgia Frank, Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 161. For a discussion: Daniel Lemeni, ‘Shining Face and White Body’, p. 51. Gavin Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 152. Anon., Sayings of the Desert Fathers, pp. 1–2. Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. by George A. Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) Homily 10: 4, pp. 89–90. For the Greek: ‘Homiliae’, Patrologia Graeca vol. 34, cols., 449–822 at 544 (Paris, 1860). For a discussion: Lemeni, ‘Shining Face and White Body’, p. 53. The Jesus prayer (which Rolle propagates in late Medieval England) appears to have its roots in the writings of Pseudo-Macarius. William of St. Thierry too stresses that in this life we only know in part, The Mirror of Faith, trans. by G. Webb and A. Walker (Oxford: Mowbray, 1959), p. 69 (cf. chapter 6, n. 64). The same is true of Ortiz, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’.

3

Stilling the wandering mind: Richard Rolle’s implicit deification1

Christ did not have whirling thoughts [. . .] because from the very start of His conception He saw God most clearly.2

Introduction The above citation is taken from Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, where he describes a process in which the mind in stilled to the point of becoming Christ-like – a state that I believe we are justified in describing as ‘deifying’ and at its most perfect as ‘deification’. The calmed mind, as I hope to show, is an important concept for Rolle. It is one that he ultimately inherits from the Desert tradition. In this tradition, as we discussed in Chapter 2, stilling the mind culminates in what Norman Russell has termed an ethical understanding of deification. Such ethical deification is understood as sharing in Christ’s virtues; a process begun in this life but only completed in the next.3 Although in the works considered in this chapter Rolle does not necessarily lay claim to deification, except perhaps implicitly as an outworking of stilling the mind, I nonetheless hope to show that the pivotal place that stilling the mind holds in two of Rolle’s early works, Incendium Amoris and Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, as well as his final treatise, The Form of Living justifies a reading of Rolle’s spirituality as underpinned by a deifying trajectory. In suggesting this, I am situating Rolle’s mysticism in the Desert tradition that we explored in the previous chapter. I am not alone in drawing comparisons between Rolle and the Desert Tradition. Andrew Albin has noted that a reader of Melos Amoris in Lincoln MS Latin 89 compares Rolle to St. Guthlac (an Old English ascetic whose spirituality is clearly grounded in this tradition), doing so particularly in terms of Guthlac’s ability to overcome demonic attack.4 Even more significant are the images of Rolle baring his heart with the name of Jesus written across it, which appear in all three manuscripts that contain the ascetic Middle English tract, The Desert of Religion.5 This latter work provides evidence that the Desert tradition was known in late medieval England.

78

Stilling the wandering mind

Anne Mouron has suggested in a recent essay that the lives of Paul the first hermit and St. Antony were probably sufficiently well-known for a reader to recognise illustrations of both of them in The Desert of Religion.6 Further evidence of the influence of this tradition on late medieval English spirituality is found in The Seven Poyntes of Trewe Loue and Everlastynge Wisdame, a Middle English translation of Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae. The text, as Roger Lovatt has shown, is a heavily modified account of the original. Dirk Schultze has illustrated that the impetus behind its reworking lies in the promotion of Desert spirituality. Not only is this work often found alongside works by Rolle, readers often attributed it to Rolle, thus making connections between the spirituality they find within it and Rolle’s own.7 This is not to suggest that Rolle is directly influenced by authors like Evagrius. As we noted in the previous chapter, the central tenets of Evagrius’ thinking on calming the wandering mind were mediated to the Latin West via the highly influential writings of John Cassian. Stilling the mind is a facet of Rolle’s theology that has gone largely unnoticed in both his Latin and vernacular works and so has received no systematic attention to date.8 Yet it is an aspect of Rolle’s mysticism which, I believe, shows him to be much less obscure than he is generally held to be. Indeed, whilst it is easy to find something positive said about Julian of Norwich, of whom we know almost nothing, very few complementary things have ever been written by contemporary scholars about Richard Rolle, which I have always found odd given how widely his writings circulated in the centuries after his death. A cult even developed in fifteenth-century England around Rolle’s devotion to the name of Jesus.9 As Ralph Hanna confirms, no late medieval English writer was more widely read: Rolle was, hands down, the most widely-read late medieval English writer, as witnessed by surviving copies and references. The great inspiration for insular manuscript bibliography, Hope Emily Allen, collected about 270 manuscripts testifying to the various works, Latin and English. Her listing can be extended to something like 430 books that could be described as giving direct access to the hermit’s texts in some form (excerpts are rife). Of these volumes, about 70% present Latin materials only, but this disproportion is balanced by nearly 200 manuscripts additional to the 430; these transmit English texts that integrate often extensive citational materials, usually from the English writings, into ‘original’ compositions.10 Born in Yorkshire around the turn of the fourteenth century and dying, probably of the plague, in 1349, Rolle’s produced an extensive corpus of mystical writing, composed mostly in Latin – although, as Hanna notes, Rolle’s English writings also saw a wide circulation through citation. Study of Rolle has, however, been obstructed by a number of factors.

Stilling the wandering mind

79

1. Textual and theoretical difficulties presented by Rolle’s corpus As scholars noted early, Rolle is not a systematic thinker – his exposition of mysticism varies across his corpus. It is not my intention to suggest otherwise, although I hope to show that stilling the mind, an idea relating to deification, is found in all the texts considered here. Rolle also writes in an elaborate and exaggerated Latin, which has not met with a warm reception,11 additional to which his thought can, at times, appear ‘rambling’.12 His behaviour too, as reported in his own writings and a semi-biographical liturgical office, presents us with an author who seems, on first reading, to have struggled with lust, to have been misogynistic even by medieval standards, and whose spiritual path appears unconventional and somewhat uncontrolled.13 Responding to an eremitic calling, Rolle dropped out of Oxford University and hid in the woods near his home. The Office recalls how his sister came to meet him: He said to his sister one day [. . .] ‘you have two tunics which I greatly covet, one white and one grey [. . .] bring them to me tomorrow to the wood nearby, together with father’s rainhood’. She willingly agreed [. . .] ignorant of what was in her brother’s mind [. . .] he straight away cut off the sleeves from the grey tunic and the buttons from the white [. . .] then he took off his own clothes [. . .] and put on his sister’s white tunic [. . .] the grey [. . .] he put over it [. . .] he covered his head with the rainhood [. . .] when his sister saw this she was astounded and cried ‘My brother is mad! My brother is mad!’ [. . .] Whereupon he [. . .] fled [. . .] lest he should be seized by his friends and acquaintances.14 There is much about Rolle that is undoubtedly idiosyncratic. Arguably none of these factors, however, account for Rolle’s neglect in the scholarship. It is the integration of body and spirit, particularly at an experiential level, that is in large part to blame; it led David Knowles to condemn him as less than a mystic – an characterisation from which in modern academic circles he has never recovered.15 From 1961 onwards Rolle’s mysticism was tainted with suspicion. Nicholas Watson’s seminal study, in which he styles Rolle as an inventor of his own authority and ‘audacious’ for asserting an almost continuous experience of God, has only added to this negative picture.16 A great deal of ink has been spilt since the 1960s on whether mystical experience needs to be ineffable and indeed whether experience is the focus of Medieval Christian mysticism, and this is not the place to enter into a full discussion of this issue. Suffice it to say that scholars such as Denys Turner and Michael Sells conclude that experience is not the focus of medieval mysticism.17 Although Bernard McGinn includes an experiential dimension in his definition he does not understand it in terms of a crude ineffability.18 Rather he suggests that mysticism is ‘a special consciousness of the presence

80

Stilling the wandering mind

of God that by definition exceeds description and results in a transformation of the subject who receives it’.19 As I will discuss, it is not clear that Rolle would disagree, his experiences of heat, sweetness and song notwithstanding. Only recently have more positive readings begun to surface, such as Denis Renevey’s Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs, Katherine Zieman’s ‘“The Perils of Canor”: Mystical Authority, Alliteration, and Extragrammatical Meaning in Rolle, the Cloud-Author, and Hilton’, Annie Sutherland’s ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’, John Alford’s ‘Rolle’s “English Psalter” and “Lectio Divina”’, and Andrew Albin’s ‘Canorous Soundstuff: Hearing the Officium of Richard Rolle at Hampole’.20 None explores the idea of deification. Rob Faesen and Paul Verdeyen have recently claimed that deification is the key to the late medieval mysticism of the Low Countries. In this chapter I will consider whether the same may also, at least to some extent, be said of two of Rolle’s early writings, as well as his final vernacular treatise.21 A further obstacle to the study of Rolle’s thought, however, is the current state of scholarly editions of his Latin writings. Whilst most of his English writings, except his English Psalter, appeared in a modern critical edition in 1988,22 Hanna notes that we lack critical editions for almost all of Rolle’s Latin writings – including his important and widely circulated treatise, Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love), which was even translated into Middle English by Richard Misyn in the fifteenth century.23 Of sixteen Latin works ascribed to him with some certainty, we have critical editions for only three – his biblical commentary, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, and his treatises, Judica Me Deus and Emendatio Vitae (only the latter of which circulated very widely).24 Most of Rolle’s other Latin works exist in editions of varying quality, often edited from a single manuscript.25 Some of the most severe problems arise in the case of Incendium Amoris, the original text of which remains extremely unclear. Margaret Deanesly produced the Latin edition of Incendium Amoris in 1915, and it has been used as the basis for several modern translations.26 However, Hanna has shown that the edition is in a rather deplorable state.27 Hanna commends Deanesly for noticing, even as an undergraduate, that Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, appears in two main variant forms – a short and long version. He also confirms her suggestion that the short version is an abbreviation of the long. He likewise agrees that the short text did not originate with Rolle. Yet, his close reading of around 10 percent of her edition, based on half of the extant insular manuscripts, indicates that Deanesly’s choice of base manuscript, Emmanuel 35, was an unhappy one, that she made substantial errors of transcription,28 and that her editorial decisions were erratic. In addition, he notes that she gave little thought to textual transmission.29 All this has compounded some of the strange readings that we find in Deanesly’s edition that, at times, render Rolle’s Latin into nonsense. Furthermore, he shows that although she aimed to print the

Stilling the wandering mind

81

long version, Emmanuel 35 is not, as she supposed, a short version carefully restored as a long text, but is rather ‘an ahistorical amalgam of what would appear four separate textual states’.30 Hanna comments of Deanesly’s end product: ‘This is clearly what is known colloquially as “a dog’s breakfast”’.31 Stressing our desperate need for a critical edition, Hanna urges that any such venture must be based on all of the extant manuscripts.32 He stresses that it would also need to take seriously the issue of textual transmission: ‘The underlying analysis should also clearly demonstrate how this seminal text passed from an anonymous hermitage (or an obscure Yorkshire nunnery) to become a text read so far afield as Prague and Seville’.33 He concludes, ‘more searching analysis than I have been able to conduct will reveal a text as yet unread’.34 When attempting to discuss Rolle’s thinking on stilling the mind and the sense in which it is underpinned by an implicit belief in deification, we are faced with a huge dilemma. Ignore Rolle’s important mystical treatise Incendium Amoris and focus only on works in critical editions but run the risk of missing key early ideas within Rolle’s thinking on this topic, or include Incendium Amoris and run the risk of distorting Rolle’s thinking on this topic because of the state of the only edition. Although there are significant problems with Incendium Amoris as we have it, they are not such I think that Hanna would have us ignore this treatise altogether. We must rather use it with care. Since we are neither in a position to produce a critical edition nor to know which manuscripts are most reliable, the best we can do for now is to return to Emmanuel 35 to correct Deanesly’s transcription and compare it with other manuscripts so that new variants come to light, treating any conclusions with caution.35 My decision to discuss Incendium Amoris is based on my belief that Rolle outlines key aspects of his early thinking on calming the mind in this treatise. Although the dating of individual works within Rolle’s corpus is unclear, it is generally agreed that Incendium Amoris is an early work, written close in time to Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum. As we have a critical edition of the latter, I have used this to support my reading of Incendium Amoris whilst also recognising that this is potentially flawed because of Rolle’s unsystematic approach. All I can hope to do is show that similar ideas are at least present in Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum such that they are not un-Rollean. The latter work is a short exposition on Psalm 20. It appears in six extant manuscripts, as well as a printed edition of an otherwise unidentified manuscript. The editor of the critical edition, James C. Dolan, provides close variant readings and does not base his edition on a ‘best manuscript’, except in terms of style where he has a slight preference for Bodley 861 due to the internal consistency of the style and its being an early manuscript (c. 1409–1411).36 In this chapter, I examine both Incendium Amoris and Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, arguing that the approach towards calming the mind that I find in our rather imperfect edition of the former seems to be played out and slightly extended in the latter. This suggests that similar thinking on

82

Stilling the wandering mind

stilling the mind to that found in Incendium Amoris, as we have it, was at least held by Rolle at this stage in his mystical career.37 Interestingly, similar ideas also appear in The Form of Living (as well as Contra Amatores Mundi, a text discussed in Chapter 5). The Form of Living is a Middle English treatise and probably Rolle’s last work. Indeed, it is the only one of Rolle’s works for which we have a definitive date. It was written in 1348, the year before Rolle’s death, for a certain Margaret Kirkeby, a nun at Richmond.38 This likewise appears in a modern critical edition,39 one of the few possible criticisms of which is that it promotes a non-Northern recension of Rolle’s Middle English prose and poetry. Both Allen and Watson suggest that The Form of Living contains a fairly advanced account of Rolle’s mysticism. Rolle was a self-referential writer, such that ideas pertaining to stilling the mind that appear to have been first expressed in Incendium Amoris are reiterated and possibly extended in The Form of Living. Two works that I do not consider in any detail in this study, but that would be vital in assessing Rolle’s overall commitment to deification, are Melos Amoris and Rolle’s Commentary on the Song of Songs. Their exclusion may seem odd – they contain some of the few references to deification within Rolle’s corpus. Whilst Melos Amoris did not circulate widely, Rolle’s Song of Songs Commentary survives in over 130 copies.40 However, Rolle does not outline what he means by deification in either text. There is clearly more work to be done before we arrive at a fuller sense of how ideas pertaining to deification permeate Rolle’s corpus. Yet I think we have to start somewhere, and I hope to show that the approach to stilling the mind that I find in Incendium Amoris, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and The Form of Living offers insight into a strong strain within Rolle’s thinking that pertains to deification – even though he never speaks of deification by name in any of them. Although Rolle’s key experiences of heat, sweetness and song appear in different orders in his various writings, in these three works he holds song (canor) to be the culmination of his mysticism and that into which his thoughts are transformed.41 This, at least gives them some sense of coherence. It seems important at this juncture to stress that I am in no way suggesting that Rolle offers a uniform account of either stilling the mind or deification across his entire corpus, nor in the three works discussed here. As emphasised above, Rolle is far from a systematic writer; ideas repeated from an earlier work take on new meaning in a later context. Much more work remains to be done, based on critical editions not yet in existence, before we can begin to assess the broader continuance of themes and ideas across his corpus. In what follows I will therefore first explore the importance that Rolle places on stilling the mind in each of these three works, examining in the course of the analysis the effects of this practice on Rolle’s soul and body and the status that it endows. I will then return to the issue of deification, offering some reflections on the extent to which my reading problematises that of Wolfgang Riehle, who holds that Rolle, along with the other English Mystics, does not advance deification.

Stilling the wandering mind

83

2. Stilling the mind in Incendium Amoris If, as is generally held, Incendium Amoris is an early work, it is one of the first works in which Rolle describes his famous experiences of heat, sweetness and song. Here he writes of his amazement at experiencing a burning in his soul that radiated into this body: I was more amazed than I can put into words when, for the first time, I felt my heart glow hot and burn. I experienced the burning not in my imagination but in reality, as if it were being done by a physical fire. But I was really amazed by the way the burning heat boiled up in my soul and (because I had never before experienced this abundance), by the unprecedented comfort it brought. In fact, I frequently felt my chest to see if this burning might have some external cause!42 He claims that the experience is spiritual, yet it clearly has a physical dimension. The same is true of singing and sweetness, as we will further discuss. These experiences sit uncomfortably with notions of ineffability and so cause problems for those who wish to claim that Rolle is a mystic, as we noted. In this chapter I hope to show that the same problems do not necessarily occur when we approach Rolle’s thought through the lens of stilling the mind. In this context Rolle’s experiences become part of a unitive process that seems deeply mystical, and which in Incendium Amoris he discussed in relation to rapture. Rolle offers an extended discussion of rapture in chapter 37 of the Long Text,43 and it is in this chapter and those around it that he particularly links a mystical form of rapture to the idea of calming the mind. Beginning with chapter 37, we find Rolle claiming that there are two kinds of rapture – that of St. Paul and that of the Incarnate Christ – and he compares to two.44 Rolle notes firstly that Paul asserts that when he was rapt to the third heaven he did not know whether he was in or out of his body (2 Corinthians 12.2–4). Although Rolle does not quote the passage in this work – as he does in his discussions of rapture elsewhere – it seems helpful to do so.45 St. Paul writes: I know a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth). That he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter. This text was treated as the classic account of mystical union or rapture from St. Augustine onwards.46 Yet Rolle does not appear to view it in this way.47 Based on the biblical account, Rolle concludes that Paul’s body lay inert during his visionary encounter while still being animated by his soul.48

84

Stilling the wandering mind

This in itself is not peculiar except that as a consequence Rolle treats it as a kind of afterlife vision. Although such visions were perhaps sometimes equated with contemplation, this does not appear to have been the norm.49 This genre is usually used to classify visions such as those of Fursey or Tondal, where an individual has some kind of out-of-body experience of the next life. Such material has allowed scholars to trace the emergence of purgatory in medieval thinking.50 Rolle appears to read Paul’s vision of the third heaven in relation to this class of visionary exposition since he concludes that there is nothing especially holy about it as similar things even happen to sinners. The Vision of Tondal is a good example of the latter. Tondal is shown the afterlife in order that he might reform his present life and so in future be saved.51 Along similar lines, Rolle states: In one sense, indeed, it [the vision] indicates that one is so carried off outside the senses of the flesh that during the time he is ‘rapt’ he does not experience anything in the flesh, nor can anything be done by the flesh. Nevertheless, he is not dead but living, for the body is still animated by the soul. And wherever holy men and the chosen are ‘rapt’ in this way, it is for their use and their instruction, like Paul who had been ‘rapt’ to the third heaven. And it is in this manner that even sinners are ‘rapt’ when they are carried away in vision at any time, that they may see either the joy of good men or the punishments of the reprobate, for their own correction and that of others, as we read in many sources.52 Medieval afterlife visions like Tondals’ often led to a transformation somewhat akin to that of Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Although Rolle is not claiming that Paul was a sinner in need of reformation, there is no indication that he views Paul’s vision as equivalent to contemplative union – the standard Augustinian reading. Rolle contrasts such afterlife visions with a ‘rapture’ that is experienced by certain people who, in common with the Incarnate Christ, have direct communion with the things of heaven while still retaining control of their bodies: In another way a man is said to be ‘rapt’ by the elevation of his spirit to God through contemplation, and this is the manner in all perfected lovers of God and in none apart from those who love God. [. . .] This kind of ‘raptness’ is greatly desirable and worthy of love. For Christ has always had divine contemplation, but also never the absence of control of the body.53 According to Rolle, the difference between the two kinds of rapture is that whilst Paul lost control of his body – not knowing whether he was in or out of it – Christ did not. Christ did not need to be taken from his body or lose control of it to have an encounter with God. He did not, like Tondal, collapse on the floor whenever he had a vision of heavenly things, rather

Stilling the wandering mind

85

he continued to function bodily. In short, Christ did both at the same time and the rapture that Christ experienced, when experienced in a human soul, is the one that Rolle associates with contemplative union and paints as the goal of the contemplative life. In what follows and the surrounding chapters Rolle appears to unpack what he means by such contemplation. In chapter 21 Rolle claims that engagement in worldly affairs did not affect Christ’s spiritual communion with God: ‘For Christ did not have whirling thoughts [. . .] because from the very start of His conception He saw God most clearly’.54 By this Rolle appears to mean that Christ’s mind was always centred on and in harmony with God; bodily activity did not impinge on it negatively.55 Although most apparent in Christ, in chapter 37 Rolle argues that humans can also experience this second form of rapture and he proceeds to outline the effect of this form of rapture on the soul and body. When Rolle speaks of this second kind of rapture, it is clear that he associates it with a very elevated spiritual state – for he describes it as an event that makes a sinner into a ‘son of God’, such that the soul is ‘carried into God’, perfectly accords with the will of Christ, experiences a supernal illumination and feels ‘as if there were no one beyond the two of them – that is, Christ and [the] loving soul itself’. Indeed he states that all the soul’s affection, that is, all its love, is drawn up into Christ: it is truly supernatural that from a vile sinner is made a son of God who, filled with spiritual joy, is carried into God. [. . .] And thus they are called ‘rapt’ who are wholly and perfectly bound to the desires of their Savior and who bravely ascend to the summit of contemplation. They are also illuminated by Uncreated Wisdom, and have deserved to experience the uninhibited fervor of Light by Whose beauty they have been merited to experience being ‘rapt’. [. . .] when all its [the soul’s] thoughts are ordered by divine love and all its wanderings of mind pass over into stability. Now it does not fluctuate nor hesitate, but with all its affection drawn down into the One and settled there, it desires Christ with intense ardor, extended and directed toward Him, as if there were no one beyond the two of them – that is Christ and [the] loving soul itself.56 It is certainly a state of elevated union, for from this point on the soul is said to be ‘glued to Him [Christ] with an indissoluble chain of love’ such that it finds itself ‘flying through excess of love, outside the enclosure of its body’ whilst nonetheless being fully in control of it. It also experiences ‘a certain taste of eternal delight’. If that were not enough, Rolle has already declared this to be the very state manifest in the Incarnate Christ through which Christ had direct communication with God. Christ is also described here as the soul’s saviour. Indeed, although Rolle does not unpack this, the passage intimates a connection between Christ’s access to God and that which the soul comes to achieve. This would seem to hint that Rolle is speaking of an effect that is to some extent deifying. This is reinforced when earlier

86

Stilling the wandering mind

in Incendium Amoris he states that this experience transforms the lover into the beloved.57 Writing a few chapters later, he also claims that the soul is ‘ingrafted inseparably into the love of eternity’.58 Indeed, in chapter 38 Rolle claims that stilling the mind is central to the highest gift that anyone could receive whilst on this earthly pilgrimage: Whence the soul is glued to Him with an indissoluble chain of love, and flying through excess of spirit, outside the enclosure of the body, it drinks of the cup pressed out of the cells [the honeycomb] [. . .] so that it both really receives into itself the fervour of delight, and also feels it. And it exceeds, [. . .] all other gifts that are conferred by God on the saints in this pilgrimage for their merit. For in this they merit a higher place in the fatherland, since through this they have loved God on their journey more ardently and more quietly.59 For Rolle, evidence of the deep nature of the union of love is the reception of a calm Christ-like mind. As Rolle states, ‘when its thoughts are ordered into divine love and all its wanderings of spirit pass over into stability. Now it does not fluctuate nor hesitate, but with all its affection drawn down into One and settled there it desires Christ’.60 Those who experience this second form of rapture, like Christ, have minds that are no longer distracted by worldly delights – instead their focus is heaven. Although Rolle does not offer a detailed exposition on his thinking here, it is notable that Rolle is careful not to claim that such souls actually become Christ; a difference is maintained as he stresses that there is not so much a shift in nature within the soul as one contrary to it. Indeed Rolle argues that he is justified in describing this experience as ‘rapture’ because, when experienced by a human soul, it is accompanied by a certain level of ‘violence’. This idea is unpinned by the etymological link between rapture and rape in Latin, both of which derive from ‘rapio’ – to snatch.61 According to Rolle, only Christ experiences stillness of mind by nature, others grow towards such perfection, the implication being that they arrive at it through grace. Thus there is still the impression that in this life it remains a state that awaits perfection. Building on the idea that rapture is violent and thus in a sense ‘contrary to nature’, Rolle seems to suggest here that rapture changes the way in which sensation is generated within the body. The way that this effect is worked out in Rolle’s thought resonates with the idea in the Desert tradition that as a person progresses spiritually so their bodies takes on deified or resurrection qualities. Although Rolle does not claim that it is possible to see God in this life, it does appear that as he enters into an advanced spiritual state he begins to sense God with his physical senses. It is as though his body is being renewed and his resurrection body is breaking in, taking over his mortal frame. We saw a parallel idea in the Life of St. Antony in the previous chapter. As a consequence of true spiritual rapture, Rolle seems to go so far as to suggest that as the body becomes receptive to spiritual stimuli, it becomes

Stilling the wandering mind

87

less sensible to the ordinary activities of the physical senses and other material agencies.62 Instead, spiritual sensations fill the body’s sensorium.63 In chapter 37, for example, Rolle speaks of song as ‘subtle in sensation’,64 in that it takes over or possesses the body’s sense of hearing, thereby displacing the ordinary activities that normally stimulate hearing. Such displacement seems to be the quality that, for Rolle, marks a sensation or mental activity as ‘spiritual’ since it indicates that only God is experienced and nothing else. He expresses something similar concerning sweetness (dulcor) in chapter 32 of Incendium Amoris: he will also be made drunk with divine and most delicate sweetness [. . .] so that he may experience in himself nothing except the comfort of the savor poured into him from heaven, and the highest sign of sanctity.65 Here and in the surroundings chapters Rolle stresses time and again that the spiritual state that he encounters involves experiencing and feeling nothing other than God: ‘Again, the man who truly loves God experiences in his heart nothing besides God, and if he feels nothing else, he has nothing else’.66 The same quality is central to burning heat, Rolle’s other spiritual feeling or sensation. As noted, Rolle stresses that its spiritual veracity is contingent precisely on its supernatural capacity to possess the body. In Incendium Amoris, true rapture appears to mean being in the world but not of it, in the body, affecting it, but not affected or governed by it, a state with strong resonances of the Desert ideal of apatheia or the calmed mind, which we carefully considered in Chapter 2. In Incendium Amoris, his experience of song designates the pinnacle of this process, being that into which thoughts are transformed. This ties in well with Rolle’s earlier description of the Christ-like soul whose mind never wanders from God but instead always engages in divine communication. Indeed, the outworking of Rolle’s mystical theology here would appear to be a rather strangely oxymoronic embodied disembodiment, such that I think he has perhaps been rather wrongly characterised as exhibiting a more feminine, because embodied, form of mysticism.67 Although such thinking on the relation between mind and body might seem rather unusual, Rolle does not appear to be alone in making these kinds of claims. They resonate with a passage from the writings of Rolle’s contemporary, the Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381), in which he describes the effects on the body of different levels of union. In the Little Book of Enlightenment Ruusbroec states, See, this eternal love which lives in the spirit and to which it is united without intermediary gives its light and its grace in all the powers of the soul, and this is the source of all virtue. . . . For you must know that the grace of God flows down to the lower powers, and touches the heart of man, and from that comes heartfelt affection and sensitive desire for

88

Stilling the wandering mind God. And the affection and desire penetrate the heart and the senses, flesh and blood, and all the corporeal nature and cause in him strain and restlessness in his body so that often he does not know what to do with himself. He is in the state of a man who is so drunk that he is no longer in possession of himself.68

The Cloud-Author (and David Knowles) would certainly not have approved since Ruusbroec argues that these sensations are accompanied by some fairly ‘eccentric’ behaviour. The passage continues thus: And from this comes much eccentric behaviour, which these soft-hearted men cannot well control, that is they often lift their heads to heaven with eyes wide-open because of restless desire; sometimes joy, sometimes weeping, now singing now shouting, now weal and now woe, and often both together at once, leaping, running, clapping their hands together, kneeling, bowing down and making similar fuss in many ways. As long as man remains in this state and stands with open heart raised up to the richness of God who lives in his spirit, he experiences new touching from God and new impatience in love.69 Indeed, a passage in The Cloud of Unknowing which criticises those who speak in piping voices and turn their heads to the side like silly sheep and look up to heaven, and which Knowles reads as a criticism of Rolle, could just as easily be a criticism of Ruusbroec – it bears more similarity to Ruusbroec’s description of the effects of love than anything recommended by Rolle.70 Although this account is not found in Ruusbroec’s discussion of the highest form of union (i.e. ‘union without difference’ or unity), and he stresses that as a consequence of this extreme behaviour ‘man must at times pass through this bodily feeling to a spiritual feeling, which is rational, and through this spiritual feeling pass to a divine feeling, which is above reason, and through this divine feeling sink away from himself into an experience of motionless beatitude’,71 other contemplative texts indicate that one of the signs of contemplation is its impact on the body. We see this in the Life of Christina the Astonishing, for example, whose body becomes impervious to physical sensation, such that Barbara Newman argues that she experiences her resurrection body in this life.72 It is interesting in this respect that Marleen Cré has shown that the Middle English translation of another work by Ruusbroec, his Vanden blinckenden steen (The Sparking Stone), obscures Ruusbroec’s subtle distinction between stages of union and unity.73 Writing in the fifteenth century, the English Monk of Farne also speaks in very similar terms to Rolle about Paul’s vision of the third heaven and how the rapture that results alters the sensual orientation of the soul. In his Meditation of Christ Crucified, the Monk of Farne describes how the soul that is caught up to the third heaven is enveloped in embraces and ineffable

Stilling the wandering mind

89

kisses.74 These ultimately cause it to lose all awareness of its external sensations, such that the person could be said to ‘forget himself’. As he writes: [the person is . . .] so much absorbed by the love of God and inebriated with it that he forgets himself, and does not know what he does apart from loving. He does not notice what he sees, nor understand what he hears; he does not realize what he is tasting, nor distinguish smell; he is unaware of what he is touching, because the surpassing delight of divine love within his heart makes him forget to use his five senses and reason. . . . Love of this sort so dilates the heart that he cannot bear it any longer, and dies as the result.75 Here the Monk of Farne’s body literally breaks apart from the effects of the inflowing of the Holy Spirit, possibly reflecting the biblical idea that in this life humans have bodies that are ‘jars of clay’ (2 Corinthians 4.7), quite different from the bodies that they will receive at the resurrection.76 According to the Monk of Farne, such a relationship between soul and body mirrors the fate of Christ’s soul, which also ultimately leaves his body through an act of love. The Monk of Farne even suggests, in a christologically odd passage that sounds somewhat Apollinarian, that Christ’s body could have been animated by the divinity without the need for a human soul: ‘[W]ho would declare that when the soul departed [Christ’s body], the head . . . must of necessity sink down, as though God . . . were not present with it?’77 Laying aside for a moment this somewhat dubious Christology, what truly appears to concern the Monk of Farne is how imitatio Christi can lead the soul to arrive at some form of deification, such that it becomes deiform (deiformis) – a term he uses earlier in the same meditation: The Holy Spirit . . . transforms us into the self-same image after which we were made . . . and thus the soul becomes deiform [deiformis] and like unto God amongst the sons of God . . . he enables it to gaze with face unveiled upon the glory of God [2 Corinthians 3.18].78 It seems to me that something rather similar is occurring within Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, in which the calm, transformed mind is brought together with an intense love for Christ, but which in Rolle’s case also results in a transformation of his body in this life more akin to that which we find discussed by Ruusbroec and in the Life of Christina the Astonishing, even if it is far from complete in this life.79 2 Corinthians 3.13 is also a pivotal passage in Rolle’s mysticism, one which he associates with the opening of the soul’s spiritual eye, which he often refers to as the eye of the heart, as it comes to gaze into heaven.80 The sensual dynamic discussed above is further reinforced in Incendium Amoris through a juxtaposition that Rolle makes between his experience of song and sung liturgy. Katherine Zieman has pointed out that despite

90

Stilling the wandering mind

Rolle’s first experience of song occurring whilst in a chapel singing the psalms (Incendium Amoris chapter 15), in chapter 33 he sets up a deliberate opposition between these two forms of song. As Rolle states: But in this – let the man who has been lifted up in sanctity know that he is experiencing the song of which I am speaking, if he does not have the strength to sustain the clamor of Psalm-singing, unless his interior song is turned back to meditation and he has fallen to the recitation of exterior things. Moreover, that certain among the singers or psalmodizers are distracted in their devotion is not from perfection but from instability of mind, because the words of others interrupt and confuse their prayers, a thing that certainly does not befall the perfect.81 We see here how Rolle draws a distinction between those who are perfect and those who are lesser practitioners. He does so in terms of stability of spirit (heart/mind). As in his discussion of rapture that follows, being perfect is tied to stability of mind, but even the perfect can lose canor when confronted by external music because it undermines this capacity for sensual stability. As Rolle puts it: Indeed stabilized men are such that they cannot be distracted by any clamor or tumult, or by any other thing whatsoever, from prayer or meditation, but through such things they are separated only from their song.82 External songs, even holy ones, appear to distract from the love of God because one gets caught up in the beauty of the music thereby forgetting that the purpose of singing is to worship God and think of nothing else. One is reminded of Augustine’s injunctions against music and the interdictions against nuns singing polyphony, even though we have evidence that some did.83 As a consequence, and to prevent his spiritual song being destabilised by the distraction of the beauty of external singing, Rolle writes that he avoids liturgical music: For I have pointed out to you, for the honor of Almighty God and your convenience, why I fled the singers in churches and by what reason I have not loved to mix myself with them, and why I have taken to not listening to people playing the organ. For these things produced an impediment by the pleasantness of their sound, and forced those most brilliant of songs to fail. Therefore it is no wonder if I have fled from what might confound me; I would have been blameworthy in this if I had not desisted from that which I knew drove me from my most delightful song.84 We find a similar concern that even psalms and seemingly holy activities can distract the mind from God in Evagrius Ponticus, as we noted in Chapter 2.

Stilling the wandering mind

91

In this section of Incendium Amoris we find Rolle stressing that the disjunction between the two form of music arises from the fact that they seem to be musically in competition for the body’s sensorium and on these grounds he claims that they cannot be harmonised. Indeed, he suggests that ears stimulated by exterior sounds cannot appreciated canor because they are already preoccupied with something else. Canor arises internally and likewise fills the soul’s sensation of hearing; liturgical singing moves from outside via the ears into the sensorium – there is no room for two competing sources of stimulation.85 According to Rolle, the internal is to be preferred in an absolute sense over the external as a source of sensation. As Rolle states, For that sweet spiritual song is indeed exceedingly special, because it has been given to very special people. It does not harmonize with external songs, which are repeated in churches or in other places. For, it is greatly in discord with all things that are formed by the human and the external voice to be heard by bodily ears, but among the angelic choirs it has acceptable harmony and is commended with admiration by those who have recognized it.86 This would seem to be a form of spirituality that resonates with the connection between body and soul that we find within Desert spirituality. Indeed, the ascetic emphasis on the body and its transformation, an idea also found in The Life of Christina the Astonishing, as well as the concern that even holy activities can distract from God, an idea also stressed by Evagrius, are reminiscent of the way in which the stilling the mind is understood in this tradition. Zieman argues that Rolle’s juxtaposition of canor and liturgical singing in this section of Incendium Amoris serves to emphasise the inexpressible, transcendent quality of canor, which she refers to as its ‘extra-grammatical’ nature.87 It is a feature of canor that she argues Rolle elsewhere draws attention to through an extensive use of alliteration.88 In Incendium Amoris Rolle certainly maintains that song cannot be understood by human means or encapsulated in ordinary language.89 Yet in this chapter, language or singing per se do not seem to be the focus on his attention. His chief concern seems to be ‘instability of spirit’ and that both earthly words and music contribute to such instability which diminishes rapture proper. Such ideas are further elaborated in chapter 37 where he states that as a consequence of human frailty, rapture, that is, the becalmed Christ-like mind, can be lost as a consequence of either too much noise or movement; song quickly falls back into thinking when subject to distractions like human song and physical excursion. As he states: ‘So the most intense quiet is implored for seeking and retaining this “rapture”, for in too much motion of the body, or in [a state of] inconstancy and wandering of mind, it will never be received or kept’.90 Although Rolle does not suggest that there is anything inherently wrong with psalm singing or meditation, and recommends them elsewhere,91 in

92

Stilling the wandering mind

Incendium Amoris he states that once the soul has arrived at a certain stage in the spiritual journey such ecclesial activity becomes more a hindrance than a help. Whilst this might seem quite radical and even antinomian, it seems that in Incendium Amoris this is not the end of this spiritual trajectory. The tension between external actions and spiritual advancement is further discussed in chapter 40. Here Rolle states that some spiritually advanced people can engage in worldly, or possibly ecclesiastic affairs, and even retain song. They exhibit a bestilled Christ-like mind despite acting in the world/ being active in the church – the eucharistic overtones in the passage below may be deliberately ambiguous.92 In so doing they become even more Christlike since, as noted above, Christ was both in the world and had his mind on God at the same time. Yet Rolle is also clear that achieving this involves a constant mental investment in distancing oneself from the task in question. In short, it involves a form of mental detachment, which he in many ways equates to a letting go of self.93 As he writes: We are able, certainly, if we are true lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ, both to meditate on Him while we go on, and to hold on to the song of His love while we go on, and to hold on to the song of His love while we sit in the assembly, and we shall be able to keep the memory of Him at his table, even in the very tastes of food and drink. But we ought to praise God for every little morsel of food or every small cup of drink, and among the intervals of the acceptance of nourishment and of small morsels, we ought to resound these praises with honeyed sweetness and spiritual cry and desire. We ought to pant toward Him in the midst of feasts. And if we should be engaged in manual labor, what prevents us from raising our heart to heavenly things and from retaining the thought of eternal love without ceasing? And thus at every time of our life we should be burning with fervor, not torpid; nor will anything remove our heart from this love, except for sleep. [. . .] But in the meantime, you shall valiantly overcome all attacks of demons.94 Rolle suggests here that even the most perfect person who engages in world affairs (possibly those of the priesthood) needs to be constantly attentive if he is to retain song. He must praise Christ with every mouthful of food (possibly the Eucharist). He must keep his mind fixed on Christ; it must not whirl or wander. Given the need to constantly control the mind and keep it on track that Rolle describes, it is perhaps unsurprising that here and elsewhere in his corpus Rolle signals sleep as potentially problematic – for in sleep one cannot exert any technique to prevent one’s mind from wandering. As we saw in Chapter 2, Evagrius Ponticus makes similar claims concerning the dangers of sleep. Indeed, he claims that in sleep one will discover the extent to which one has really overcome the wandering mind. Only when ‘uncontrolled’

Stilling the wandering mind

93

does it truly become apparent whether the passions of the body have been overcome such that one’s mind is continually focused on God. As such, this may indicate that in Incendium Amoris the level of detachment that Rolle describes falls short of the perfection possible in this life, even if what is received is nothing less than ‘a great part of his [the contemplative’s] future reward’.95 The key features of Rolle’s discussion of contemplation that we find in chapter 37 and the surrounding chapters appear indicative of a spiritual trajectory that has much in common with the ethical approach to deification that we outlined in Chapter 2, which centres on imitating God and attaining God’s likeness, often through ascetic practices. To requote Russell: The ethical approach takes deification to be the attainment of likeness to God through ascetic and philosophical endeavour, believers reproducing some of the divine attributes in their own lives by imitation. Behind this use of the metaphor [of deification] lies the model of homoiosis, or attaining likeness to God.96 It was an approach that, as we saw, flourished in the Desert tradition, which also emphasised the effect of deification on the body, one such experience being that of fire, another being the assumption of angelic qualities. Given the editorial problems that afflict Incendium Amoris, it seems significant that similar ideas on stilling the mind also appear within Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and The Form of Living, both of which seem to somewhat extend Rolle’s thinking on this topic.

3. Stilling the mind in Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum As we noted earlier, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum is a treatise that appears to have been produced close in time to Incendium Amoris. Nicholas Watson considers it to be the text that immediately followed Incendium Amoris, arguing that it offers an advance on the spiritual claims that we find in the former.97 The work is a short commentary on Psalm 20. Despite the reservations about liturgical singing that we find expressed in Incendium Amoris, the Psalms were clearly central to Rolle’s mystical spirituality. Not only did he produced two complete and independent Psalters, one in Latin and the other in Middle English98 as well as this short commentary on Psalm 20, he tells us in Incendium Amoris that it was whilst he was repeating the night-psalms that he first experienced canor: While I was sitting in that same chapel, and I was singing the psalms in the evening before supper as well as I was able, I jumped as if at the ringing, or rather, the playing of stringed instruments above me. And further when I strained towards these heavenly sounds by praying with all my desire, I do not know how soon I experienced the blending of melodies within myself and drew forth the most delightful harmony

94

Stilling the wandering mind from heaven, which remained with me in my spirit. For my meditation was continually transformed into the song of harmony, and it is as if I have odes in meditating. And further I have enjoyed the same sounds in psalmody and in the prayers themselves. Then I have hastened before that inwards, hidden sweetness, to that singing I have previously described, because I have been hastened into the presence of my Creator alone.99

Psalm 20 was the first psalm sung in the night office on Sundays and it is tempting to imagine that this may well have been the very psalm that Rolle was singing that evening in the chapel when he first experienced song.100 Regardless of whether this is the case, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum indicates that Rolle viewed this particular psalm as instructive in terms of what it means to delight in God. He states in his commentary that the psalm demonstrates that no one rejoices in Christ unless guided by God and unless they are in some sense governed or controlled. As he writes: Though all the psalms are sweet and delightful, this psalm especially speaks about the glory of the king, therefore suggesting that no one will joy in the Lord without government, nor anyone be properly guided unless God is his guide.101 The idea of rejoicing in God is one that in this passage he connects to ‘the glory of the king’. Indeed, Psalm 20 discusses the nature of kingship and was traditionally interpreted with reference to Christ,102 although some commentators also connected both this psalm and Psalm 10 to the theme of the just man.103 Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum follows this practice but focuses only on this latter theme, that of the just man. From this standpoint Rolle rather enigmatically defines the king mentioned in Psalm 20 as one who serves by ruling. As he states: Who then is the king who will joy? Let us open up the meaning of the word, and we will see that we will speak more fittingly of the just king. O wonderful dignity that a servant of Christ is made king! For him to serve is to rule.104 Rolle goes on to explain that ruling as a just king equates to serving Christ. This, it seems, is achieved when one has learnt how to control all the desires of one’s heart and all the wandering thoughts that besiege the mind. One is only the just king when nothing is left that distracts from praise of God, at which point one has truly become a king and Christ’s bondsman. As Rolle goes on to state, This is the king who rightly rules himself, who constantly directs his body and soul to the service of Christ, who governs all the inclinations

Stilling the wandering mind

95

of the heart, all the wanderings of the mind, all the desires of the imagination with such control that of the whole being of the inner and outer man nothing remains that is not disposed to the praise of the creator.105 To be a king is to be one whose mind no longer wanders; an idea that is described in terms that would seem to correlate closely with those Rolle uses in his earlier discussion of Christ-like rapture in Incendium Amoris. In the latter treatise Rolle associates the calm mind with an elevated spiritual state. Here he connects it with hearing angel’s song, being enveloped in the light of God (a theme also found in Incendium Amoris),106 and entering into the full knowledge of the Creator and the joy of the Trinity. As he states: To the king, that is to this saint, God [. . .] fixed his heart in the enjoyment of spiritual delights. [. . .] He granted him to hear angel’s song, to see the enveloping light of eternal love, to sing the honeyed song of delight. [. . .] He gave him the full knowledge of the creator, joy in the Trinity.107 This later claim, of entering into the full knowledge of the Creator and the joy of the Trinity, may well indicate a more advanced state than that which Rolle records in Incendium Amoris, where he does not lay claim this. In the earlier work Rolle only speaks of how the soul feels as if nothing separates it from Christ.108 In Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum Rolle also claims that Christ comes to dwell within the soul of one who is king (i.e. one who has a calmed mind): ‘May the poor man who loves Christ rejoice, having one so great and of such a nature dwelling within him’.109 Given that Rolle makes such claims in relation to calming the mind, it is perhaps worth mentioning that taking on an angelic appearance was considered indicative of an advance spiritual state in the Desert tradition, part of a deifying spiritual trajectory – a point commented on in Chapter 2. The driving force behind the reception of such song for Rolle is ascetic – separation from worldly activity and quiet sitting. As Rolle states: Sitting alone apart from the tumult but glorifying Christ, he burns and loves, rejoices and sings; wounded by charity, melted by love, filled with the most delightful sweetness, he sings to his beloved the canticle of love. Now he does not say his prayers but, placed in the sublimity of the mind, caught up by the love of the supernal, he is taken beyond himself by a wondrous sweetness and in a wondrous way is lifted up by God to play upon a spiritual organ.110 In this commentary Rolle only writes of hearing angels song, yet this is not to say that Rolle is not making bold claims. His tropological reading of this psalm, as would have been evident to anyone familiar with the Glossa Ordinaria, indicates a close correlation between Christ’s kingship and the kingship that is ascribed to the just man.111 We find in Rolle’s commentary

96

Stilling the wandering mind

a close connection between who Christ is and what the soul is to become if raised to the highest spiritual plane. Rolle does not unpack these ideas, however, in his analysis of this treatise, Nicholas Watson argues that Rolle lays claim to a divinely inspired spiritual status, one in which his words are at the very least prophetic. As Watson states, ‘In quoting Psalm 84.9 (“May I hear what God the Lord speaks in me”, see 1.10) after stating that “we await grace confidently from our Creator” (see 1.9–10), Rolle is actually saying that his words will be divinely inspired because of his spiritual status’.112 Indeed in Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, it would seem that Rolle not only merges his voice with that of the psalmist but with that of Christ, for example, he paints himself as a prophet called to ‘preach the ineffable mercy of the divine majesty’: Since Christ who is truth says: Without me you can do nothing, it is certainly evident that whatever good we either think or will or speak or produce we surely have from God. Let us praise therefore and preach the ineffable mercy of the divine majesty. [. . .] Touched by her love and surrounded as if by indissoluble chains, we do not strive for the things of others, but quietly await the grace of our creator, saying with the Psalmist: I will hear what the Lord God will speak to me. [. . .] marked by a good character and having been made master of our inclinations, we may rejoice in the Lord according to the words of the Prophet: In thy strength, O Lord, the king shall joy.113 Here Rolle intimates a deep identity between his voice and Christ’s. Merging his voice with that of the psalmist, he is Christ’s messenger and mouthpiece, much as was King David, the presumed author of the psalms.114 Denis Renevey notes that this is a trait that we find across Rolle’s corpus. Rolle almost completely merges with the prophetic voices of those whose work he articulates – inhabiting the persona not only of David but also those of Job and Solomon. Renevey comments that William of St. Thierry similarly takes on the persona of the bride in his Expositio Super Canticum Canticorum, claiming that we can ‘become in some measure participants in the holy conversation of Bridegroom and Bride, that what we read may take effect within us’.115 It was not unusual for medieval exegetes to add their own voices to David’s already polyphonic one (in which he spoke simultaneously for himself and Israel). As Kevin Gustafson comments: Many medieval commentators treated the psalms as a performative text: just as David spoke for himself as well as for Israel, the reader who identified with that singular voice made David’s confession his own and became part of his community.116 Indeed, as Alistair Minnis notes, exegesis of the Psalms often witnesses to a certain amount of authorial slippage, being ‘one of the Scriptural texts

Stilling the wandering mind

97

which [. . .] medieval theologians found particularly difficult to describe in terms of authorial role and literary form’.117 However, in Rolle’s case, he almost appears to place his voice on a par with that of Scripture, authorised by it and his experiences; his seems to becomes in some sense the voice of Christ to which the reader is invited to respond as though it were Scripture.118 This is an idea that we will further explore in Chapter 5 in relation to Contra Amatores Mundi. Given the emphasis on stilling the mind that we find in this treatise and the presence of motifs that elsewhere within the Christian tradition are closely associated with deification, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that Rolle’s understanding of contemplation needs to be read in the light of ethical thinking on deification. In this tradition, calming the mind is often considered central to a spiritual growth which culminates in deification. In Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, the effects of calming the mind are seen both in Rolle’s body and in his voice. Whatever Rolle is laying claim to, it is an very advanced spiritual status, as Watson stresses. Another text in which we find similar ideas at play is Rolle’s late vernacular work, The Form of Living.

4. The calmed mind in The Form of Living The Form of Living is a Middle English text that Rolle composed in 1348 for the same Margaret Kirkeby for whom he also produced his English Psalter. It differs from the two works already considered both by being written in the vernacular and in being composed for a female audience. The text, at least on first reading, falls into two fairly distinct parts. The first consists of a lengthy discussion of virtue and vice. In it Rolle provides several lists of vices and virtues, largely drawn from the Compendium Theologicae Veritatis.119 The second part is an exposition of Rolle’s thinking on contemplative/ mystical prayer. It seems fair to say that the first half of the text has drawn less scholarly discussion, perhaps in part because of its composite nature. Nicholas Watson describes it as ‘frankly laborious’ and even claims that it was of ‘only a temporary interest’ to Rolle.120 However, I would like to suggest a slightly different reading of the treatise which may allow us to see greater connection between its two parts. The connective motif is found in the relationship between the heart and right thinking that appears within both sections of this text. We can perhaps somewhat illustrate this by very briefly considering a discussion of vice and virtue that appears about half way through the first section of the text. Here Rolle discusses what he calls ‘the sins of the heart’, the first of which is ‘ill-thoughts’. He offers a fairly extensive list of sins that begins as follows: The synnes of oure herte ben þese: il thoghtis. Ille delites, assent to syn, desire of il, wikked wille, il suspeccioun, vndeuocioun (if þou let þi hert any tyme be ydel without occupacioun of þe loue and þe praysynge of God).121

98

Stilling the wandering mind

The list can seem quite dry, yet what is clear from the passage is that sins of the heart are closely related to thinking and desiring (the two ideas do not appear separable). The vice of not sufficiently occupying one’s heart with spiritual activities is also stressed. Rolle explains that in order to be well-disposed spiritually, it is necessary to understand four things: what makes one unclean, what makes one clean, what keeps one clean and finally what conforms one’s will to God’s: Wherfore, þat þou be right disposed, both for þi soule and þi body, þou shalt vndrestond foure þynges. The first is what thynge fileth a man. That other, what maketh hym clene. The þrid, what holdeth hym in clennesse. The fourth, what þynge draweth hym for ordeyne his wille al to Goddis wille. For þe first, witte þou þat we synneth in þre thynges þat maken vs foule: þat is with herte, mouth, and dede. In terms of the first issue, uncleanness, Rolle stresses the need to understand the sins of the heart, the mouth and actions. If one is to be pure in heart, one must ascend spiritually by setting all one’s thoughts on how best to love God, who for Rolle is approached as Jesus: ‘þat al joy and solace bot of God and in God be put out of they herte’.122 Sins of the heart are overcome, Rolle goes on to explain, when one loves nothing except God. He recommends that his female reader put everything out of her heart except God. In this section of the text Rolle creates a strong connection between the actions of the heart and holy thoughts. This is a relationship that is reinforced by the advice given in the opening lines of this mini-section on vices and virtues, in which he tells the reader that they will find stability if they set all their thoughts on Jesus.123 I wil þat þou be [euer] clymynge to Ihesuward. . . . I hold þe neuer of þe lasse merite if þou be nat in so mych abstinence as þou hast be, ne of þe more merite þogh þou take þe to moor abstinence, bot if þou set al þi þoght how þou maist loue þi spouse Ihesu Criste mor þan þou hast don; þan dar I sey þat þy meed is wyxynge and nat wanynge. For Rolle, what is important is not asceticism-as-physical-abstinence but a spiritual abstinence in which the heart and mind are completely occupied with increasing their love for Jesus. Rather similar ideas are echoed in the opening section of the second part of the text in which Rolle embarks on a discussion of contemplation. Here Rolle again draws a strong connection between the heart’s focus and thoughts, telling Margaret that the focus of the eye of her heart must be always upwards: For when þou praiest, loke nat how mych þou saist, bot how welle; þat þe eigh of þy hert be euer vpward, and þi thoght on þat þat þou seist, as

Stilling the wandering mind

99

mych as þou may. If þou be in praier and meditaciouns al þe day, I wot wel þat þou mow wax gretly in þe loue of Ihesu Criste and myche fele of delite, and within short tyme.124 Indeed Rolle tells Margaret that if she wishes to experience song, the fire of love, the highest degree of love and be Christ’s true lover she must practice the art of controlling her thoughts, for which he recommends prayer, praise and meditation: ‘And þerto shalt þou come with grete trauaille in praynge and in þynkynge, hauyng suche meditaciouns þat ben al in þe loue and in þe praysynge of God’.125 There is a clear overlap between the heart and thinking here – indeed, Rolle appears to paint the heart as both a desireous and cognitive organ.126 In this vein he suggests that Margaret should be conscious of what she says, and he emphasises the importance of governing thoughts, so that thoughts ultimately turn into song, an idea that he also mentions in Incendium Amoris. In the latter part of The Form of Living, Rolle describes how the soul moves through three degrees of love – insuperable, inseparable and singular. We find him continually stressing that at each stage thoughts must be fixed on God; right thought, purity of heart and contemplation appear to be inseparable. When discussing the first degree, insuperable love, Rolle describes this love as both ‘stalworth’ and ‘stable’.127 Once love moves into being inseparable, the heart and thought are said to be entirely fixed on Jesus, so that he is never out of mind except in sleep. As Rolle states, Inseperabil is þi loue when al þi hert and þi þoght and þi myght is so hooly, so entierly and so perfitly fasted, set and stablet in Ihesu Criste þat þi þoght cometh neuer of hym, neuer departeth from him, outtaken slepyng; and als son as þou wakest, þi hert is on hym.128 In the highest degree of love, singular love, thought is turned into song and psalms are sung slowly without causing any distraction. This, the height of contemplative prayer, is signalled by a complete possession of the heart and mind by love for Jesus, so that its finds comfort in nothing else such that the heart/mind is transformed into that which is Jesus-loving and Jesusthinking. As he comments: Synguler loue is when al confort and solace is closet out of þe herte, bot of Ihesu Christ only . . . þan the sowl is Ihesu louynge, Ihesu thynkynge, Ihesu desyrynge . . . þan þi þoght turneth in to songe and in to melody. Þan þe behoueth synge þe psalmes þat þou before said; than þou mow be longe about fewe psalmes.129 In The Form of Living, unlike in Incendium Amoris, it would seem that even sleep does not present a problem, for Rolle states that one who has attained

100

Stilling the wandering mind

to the highest degree of love can say, echoing the lover in Song of Songs 5.2, ‘þan þou may say “I sleep and my hert waketh”’.130 Yet even if he writes of a more advanced level of mental stability that is not led astray during sleep, it is also apparent from the advice contained in this section of part two, that Rolle is recommending a practice very similar to that discussed in Incendium Amoris. Here he repeats to Margaret advice given in chapter 40 of Incendium Amoris on the need for detachment in everyday activities. He tells her that the one who wishes to guard song must have their thoughts on God at every moment, meditating on God before, during and after eating and with every morsel consumed: And whan þou art at þi mete, preise euer God in þi thoght at euery morsel, and say þus in þi herte: “Praised be þou, Kynge, and þanked be þou, Kynge, and blessed be þou, Kynge. Ihesu, al my ioyinge, of al þi yiftis good, þat for me spilet þi blood, and dyed on þe rood, thou gif me grace to synge þe songe of þi praisynge”. And thynk hit nat only whils þou etest, bot bothe bifore and aftre, euer bot when [þou] praiest or spekest. Or if þou haue oþer þoghtes þat þou hast more swetnesse in and deuocioun þan in þo þat I lere þe, þou may thynk ham, for I hope þat God wil do suche þoghtes in þyn hert als he es paied of, and as þou art ordeyned fore.131 As we see from this passage, he offers Margaret a meditation to help her focus her thoughts on God, but encourages her to use whichever techniques she finds most productive. Yet despite the elevated discussion of love and thoughts, Rolle does not give the impression that Margaret is fully adept in the practice of stilling the mind, and certainly does not suggest that Margaret has attained a level of perfection in which she can keep her mind on God no matter what she does. Indeed, it is not clear that Rolle envisages an end of the process of growing in love, at least in this life. Nonetheless Rolle clearly intends that she should aspire to progress in that direction and holds out the possibility that she (like him) will have her thoughts turned into song. In the second part of the text, Rolle does not detach these ideas from the acquisition of virtues, the issue that is the focus on part 1. Rather the discussion of love in part 2 appears to reinforce the importance of virtuous living and right thinking, paralleling this with the needed to focus the heart on God. We see this, for example, when, in responding to his own rhetorical question ‘Where is love to be found?’ Rolle draws on a number of biblical passages, most notably, Matthew 6 (the Sermon on the Mount), as well as the Great Commandment (Matthew 22.7 ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind’), and Paul’s discussion of love in 1 Corinthians 13 (‘If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal’), which he uses to reinforce the idea that the key to

Stilling the wandering mind

101

virtuous living is tied to correct thoughts. He charges Margaret not to be hypocritical by acting simply to please those who may judge her spirituality on externals. She should not be led astray by such thoughts. There is, he states, no merit in this: loue es in þe hert and in þe wil of man, nat in his hand ne in his mouth; þat is to say nat in his werke bot in his soule. For many speketh good and doth good, and loueth nat God, as ypocrites, þe whiche suffreth gret penaunce and semeth holy to mennys sigth, bot for þay secheeth praysynge and honour of men and fauour, þay hath lost hare me[de], and in þe sigth of God ben þe deuels sonnes and rauysshynge wolfes.132 Instead, all her attention should be on loving God, from which good acts will follow. As we see from the passage below, Rolle also distinguishes between good actions per se, and those that proceed from love (which, as noted, grow out of thought-filled prayer). Good actions for Rolle do not constitute virtue proper since they can be performed even by evil people. Instead he argues, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Origen, that only those acts that are performed by one who truly loves God can be counted as virtuous acts. As we noted in Chapter 2, Origen held that it was only through connection to Christ’s aspects or virtues (epinoiai) that one can be said to be truly virtuous. As with Origen, only those acts performed by one who shares a Christ-like mind are counted by Rolle as virtues. All those who are truly virtuous will nonetheless perform virtuous acts, as Rolle says in the passage below, ‘Love will not be idle’. However Rolle in particular is adamant that one should not confuse seemingly good deeds for virtuous living.133 It seems worth quoting the passage in full: Bot if a man gif almusdede and take hym til pouert and do penaunce, hit is a signe þat he loueth God; bot þerfor loueth he hym nat but when he forsaketh þe world only for Goddis loue, and maketh his hert clene of syn, and setteth al his thoght on God, and loueth al men as hym self, and al þe good dedes þat he may do, he doth ham in entent for to pay Ihesu Criste and to cum to þe reste of heuyn. Þan he loueth God, and þat loue is in his soule, and so his dedes schewth withouten. If þou do þe good and speke þe good, men supposeth þat þou loueth God: Forþi loke wel þat þi þoght be in God, or els þou dampnest þi self and deceyest þo men. No thynge þat I do withouten proueth þat I loue God, for a wikked man mygth do as myche penaunce in body, als myche wake and fast as I do. Howe may I þan wene þat I loue, or hold me bettre þan anoþer, for þat þat euery man may do? Certes, my hert, whether hit loue my God or nat, wot na man bot God. Than can non tel me if I loue God, for noght þat þay may se me do. Wherfor loue is in þe wil verraili, nat in werke bot as signe of loue. For he þat saith he loueth God, and wil nat do in dede þat in hym is to shewe loue, say hym þat he lieth. Loue wil nat be

102

Stilling the wandering mind ydel: hit is wirchynge sum good euermoor. If hit ceese of worchynge, wit þou þat hit keleth and vansheth away.134

The idea that right thinking is essential to this process is reinforced by Rolle’s use of biblical quotations. For example, we find him stressing (in a clear echo of the Great Commandment) that the virtuous man ‘setteth al his thoght on God, and loueth al men as hym self’. Whilst this might suggest that the tenor of Rolle’s advice echoes a mystical theme found in fourteenthcentury Rhineland mysticism, which openly rejects the pursuit of virtue, Rolle does not in fact reject virtue, even though he does in a sense, like his continental counterparts, recommend that the pursuit of virtue for its own sake be abandoned.135 Given the emphasis on controlling the wandering mind that we find here, it seems reasonable to read Rolle discussion of virtues in relation to Desert spirituality, which recommends the acquisition of virtues in similar regard. Indeed we might say that stilling the mind is recommended here by Rolle as the height of virtue. The importance of this connection for Rolle can be further illustrated in The Form of Living from a passage in which he recommends meditation on the name of Jesus. This is a practice which he discusses in some of his later Latin writings. In The Form of Living Rolle appears to link it closely to stilling the mind. This is apparent since he recommends that the female recluse make use of the name of Jesus to fix her heart so firmly on Christ that he never leaves her thoughts. As we discussed in Chapter 2, the practice of using short phrases to calm the mind is one that Luke Dysinger notes was recommended by Evagrius, who suggests the use of short phrases from the Psalms are helpful in overcoming demonic attack. The same appears to be true here, where Rolle states that this practice chases the devil away: If þou wil be wel with God, and haue grace to reul þi lif right, and cum til þe ioy of loue, þis name of Iesus, fest it so faste in þi herte þat hit cum neuer out of þi þogth. And whan þou spekest to hym, and seist ‘Ihesu’ þrogth custume, hit shal be in þyn ere ioy, in þi mouth hony, and in þyn hert melody, for þe shal þynk ioy to hyre þat name be nempned, swetenesse to spek hit, myrth and songe to thynke hit. If þou thynk Ihesu continuely, and hold hit stably, hit purgeth þi syn and kyndels thyn hert, hit claryfieth þi soule, hit remoueth anger, hit doth away slownesse, it woundeth in loue, fulfilleth in charite, hit chaseth þe deuyl and putteth out drede, hit openeth heuyn and maketh a contemplatif man. Haue in memorie Ihesu: for al vices and fantasies hit putteth fro þe louer.136 As we can see from this passage, according to Rolle, having one’s mind fastened on Jesus causes it ultimately to be grounded in and filled with virtues.137 This reading of The Form of Living is perhaps strengthened by John

Stilling the wandering mind

103

Alford’s recent discussion of Rolle’s English Psalter, also composed for Margaret, as an aid to a calm mind through lectio divina. Lectio Divina, as we will further discuss in Chapter 5, owed a great deal to John Cassian and his belief in the importance of calming the wandering mind. It is the slow reading of Scripture in which one chews over of text in an attempt to draw out its spiritual sense.138 Given that we are reviewing Rolle thinking on stilling the mind with the larger question of deification in the background, it seems significant that Rolle also discusses whether or not such union results in absorption. Here, echoing Bernard of Clairvaux, Rolle explains that although union occurs at the highest point of love, such that the soul takes on the nature of God and becomes ‘substantially’ united to God, it is still only almost identical, not completely so. As he writes: We shal afforce vs to cloth vs in loue, as þe iren or þe cole doth þe fyre, as þe aire doth þe son, and þe wol doth þe hewe. Þe cool so cloth hit in fyre þat al is fyre; þe aire so cloth hit in þe son þat al is light; and þe wole so substanciali taketh þe hewe þat hit is al like hit. In þis maner shal a trewe louer of Ihesu Crist do: his hert shal so bren in loue þat hit shal be turned in to fire of loue, and be as hit ware al fyre, and he shal so shynynge in vertuƷ þat in no partie of hym [he] be durke in vices.139 In this passage, Rolle uses the qualifiers ‘as it were’ and ‘like’ to indicate that there is a distinction between God and the soul even in substantial union.140 It closely echoes another in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, on which it is perhaps modelled.141 Ruusbroec in his Little Book of Enlightenment uses the exact same imagery to speak of union.142 It could be that in The Form of Living Rolle writes of a lesser form of union to that which he discusses elsewhere in Latin texts like Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, where he speaks of sharing in the joy of the Trinity, an idea not found in this work. It might be the case that he does so because of writing with a female readership in mind. Against such a reading is the fact that Rolle discusses a very similar spiritual practice to that recounted in the Latin works we have discussed. All three texts hold the stilling of the mind to be the heart of contemplative prayer. Indeed, in The Form of Living Rolle even claims that sleep does not overcome this stillness in the one who arrives at the highest state of union – suggesting possibly a more advanced form of spirituality than that discussed in Incendium Amoris.143 Before leaving our discussion of this facet of Rolle’s spirituality, it seems worth mentioning that calming the mind appears to hold a pivotal place in some of Rolle’s other works and it seems to have been recognised as a central facet of his spirituality, one seen to evidence his authority as a mystic. We can perhaps briefly illustrate this by considering one final passage, this

104

Stilling the wandering mind

time taken from Rolle’s Commentary on the Song of Songs. It is a story in which Rolle’s recounts how he overcame a demonic temptation by chanting the name of Jesus – a practice which I have argued acts as a means of calming the wandering mind in The Form of Living. The story appears to have proven extremely popular. It also appears in the Office and circulated independently in the Encomimum Nominis Jesus, which was even translated into Middle English. A version likewise appears in Melos Amoris.144 In the story Rolle describes how he was awoken one evening by the presence of what appeared to be a beautiful woman, who climbed into bed with him and started ‘loving him quite a bit with good love’. Rolle found himself paralysed and only with great effort managed to move a finger, with which he made the sign of the cross whilst repeating the name of Jesus. When he did so the apparition disappeared – revealing that Rolle had in fact been tempted by a demon. He writes: I thought that not a woman but a devil in the form of a woman was there tempting me. Therefore I turned to God and with him in my mind, I said ‘O Jesus, how precious is your blood’, pressing the cross onto my breast with my finger, which now could move a little, and, behold, suddenly all disappeared and I gave thanks to God, who freed me. Afterwards I sought to love Jesus, and the more I advanced in his love, the more the name Jesus was tasting sweetly and pleasantly to me, and indeed it has not receded from me up to this day. Therefore blessed be the name Jesus forever and ever.145 The story can appear a bit comic to a modern audience who imagine some poor woman being signed with the cross and having the name of Jesus chanted over her, at which point, rather unsurprisingly, she gets up and leaves. However, despite the fact that Rolle is far from a systematic writer, the strong emphasis on stilling the mind that we have noted in a number of Rolle’s earlier and later writings suggests that a better explanation might be found in the Desert tradition. As we noted in Chapter 2, in this tradition, particularly the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, we find a strong link between stilling the mind, the acquisition of virtues and overcoming demons, as well as the ability to control one’s mind when touched by a woman or asleep. The story is most likely an account of how Rolle overcame lustful thoughts through calming his mind by focusing all his attention and desire on Jesus. As in The Form of Living, chanting the name of Jesus is linked here to calming the mind. Although Evagrius was largely unknown in the later Medieval West,146 as we discussed in the previous chapter, his teaching on calming the wandering mind was mediated through the writings of John Cassian (c. 360–453), which informed monastic reading in the Benedictine tradition. This, along with other aspects of Desert spirituality, would have been accessible to Rolle.147 Indeed, Cassian’s thought was so ubiquitous that these ideas would have been widely known.

Stilling the wandering mind

105

5. Stilling the mind and deification Even though it is not always clear how advanced in calming the mind Rolle claims to be in each of the texts that we have considered, a rather similar spiritual trajectory appears to be being advocated, one that potentially ends in a perfection that is a Christ-like unperturbability, which in its highest form is constant. Nicholas Watson has noted quite rightly that this seems to be at odds with claims of mystical experience and beatific vision elsewhere in the Latin West, particularly as suggested by Bernard of Clairvaux on whom Rolle to some extent draws.148 Watson views Rolle’s mysticism as highly audacious in this regard. He suggests that it is one of the features that necessitates a reading of Rolle as ‘inventing’ his spiritual authority. Watson argues that this was required since Rolle lacked an authoritative precedent. Bernard McGinn has however questioned this aspect of Watson’s otherwise excellent study of Rolle. McGinn draws attention to the considerable debates about experience of God in this period. He argues that taking these into account, at least to some extent, militates against the level of inventiveness that we find at play within Rolle’s corpus. As McGinn states: From the perspective of Rolle’s authorial identity and theological development, Watson might have given more attention to the debates over the authority of mystical experience that had been going on since the twelfth century. . . . More explicit attention to this context might have qualified some of Watson’s claims about the novelty of Rolle’s attempt to ‘invent’ his authority.149 McGinn’s suggestion seems further reinforced when Rolle’s approach is read in the light of the Desert tradition. As noted in Chapter 2, Bamberger points out that Desert spirituality promotes an idea of continuous stability over and against a Latin tradition rooted in Jerome, in which only fleeting moments of ecstatic encounter are found. Indeed, Rolle does not seem to be claiming anything more than Evagrius, who in turn is drawing on earlier ascetic views of what apatheia (the calmed mind) causes within the soul. Yet, despite claiming a constant connection to God, at no point does Evagrius suggest that one can cease to strive after virtue. The constancy that is here commended is not that which the Latin tradition rejects. It seems plausible that Rolle means something similar to the constancy spoken of by the Desert Fathers. Given this, to what extent are we justified in speaking of the trajectory that we find in these texts of Rolle’s as deifying? Is it reasonable to argue that for Rolle, a calmed Christ-like mind can be, at least to some extent equated, with deification? The only real discussion of Rolle’s thinking as it pertains to deification to date is that of Wolfgang Riehle, who, in his 1981 study of the language and metaphors employed by the five English mystics, notes that Rolle is the only one actively to employ the term ‘deification’.150 In Rolle’s Middle

106

Stilling the wandering mind

English writings there is just one reference to it, in his English Psalter in his gloss on Psalm 82.1 [81.1 in the Vulgate and so in Rolle’s Psalter], where Rolle interprets the psalm as speaking about God passing judgment in the middle of gods – implying, Rolle states, that the holy men had been ‘deifide’ through grace: Deus stetis in synagoga deorum: in medio autem deos dijudcat. God stode in the synagoge of goddis: and in myddis goddis he demys. That is god ihu crist stode in the gadirgyne of halymen. deifide thorgh grace, and in myddis shewand his fauoure til ilkan: he demys goddis. gifand grace and vertu til ilkan. eftere the measure of his gift. gifand sum on a manere. sum on other. sum less. sum mare. and in thaim he spekis til wickid men. & says.151 The phrases ‘deifide thorgh grace’ (deified through grace), ‘he demys goddis’ (he judges gods) and ‘in myddis goddis’ (in the middle of gods) must relate to the holy men since they makes no sense if applied to Christ, unless we wish to claim that Rolle is a kind of Arian.152 This verse, as we saw in Chapter 1, was fundamental to Ireneaus’ exposition of deification. He likewise interprets the gods as the people, that is, the body of Christians who belong to the Church. ‘Deifien’ is an anglicised form of the Latin verb ‘deificare’,153 a verb that Rolle employs within some of what are generally accepted to be his later Latin writings.154 The verb appears once in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, where Rolle writes, ‘Doubtless the heart that is completely ignited more splendidly by the fire of eternal love is now determined to be what it once was, but it appears rather to be deified in some way (quodammodo deificatum)’.155 The passage occurs in the second half of the text, which has been steadily building towards a crescendo in terms of what love effects within the soul. He also uses the verb in Melos Amoris, for example, in chapter 14, where he states, ‘Denique Divinitas dignum delectat ut demum dicatur deificatus quodammodo quemadmodum comprobatur capax increati caloris et vere sicut vir valeat videre quia venenum evomuit iam iustificatus in iubiloque generosus’.156 This latter passage forms part of an extended discussion on love and the way in which it purifies the soul. What exactly Rolle means by deification in each of these instances is unclear – he offers no extended discussion of the idea in either work. Melos Amoris is, in any case, a very difficult work to interpret – the alliterative style often stretches the sense to breaking point.157 Riehle notes that what can be show is that on the few occasions that Rolle uses the terminology of deification, he is somewhat cautious, often prefacing it, as he does on these two occasions, with ‘quodammodo’ (in a certain way).158 This would appear to soften or qualify the idea and leads Riehle to distinguish Rolle from his continental counterparts such as Meister Eckhart or Marguerite Porete who argue in quite radical terms that they become God, although we noted in Chapter 1 that the extent to which they advocate

Stilling the wandering mind

107

absorption has been challenged by Rob Faesen and John Arblaster.159 On the basis of a reading that sees in the continental mystics deification as absorption or something dangerously close to this, Riehle argues that Rolle (along with the other so-called English mystics – Walter Hilton, The Cloud-Author, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe), is not much interested in the idea. Yet, as we noted in Chapters 1 and 2, Patristic thinking on deification insists on a distinction between God and the deified soul. This does not therefore indicate that deification is not being advanced by Rolle; nor does the lack of specific terminology pertaining to deification. As we have seen in the previous chapters, some of those authors most credited with developing Christian thinking on deification in the Early Church, like Irenaeus of Lyons and Cyril of Alexandria, rarely or never used the terminology, others did so cautiously. Likewise William of St. Thierry, writing in the High Middle Ages, offers a radical account of deification without any recourse to a technical vocabulary.160 Lack of terminology does not necessary equate with a conceptual lack. Even though Rolle uses the terminology of deification quite rarely, and in many of his Latin writings, such as the two I discuss here, not at all – as is true of The Form of Living – deification, or at least the possibility thereof, is, I believe, far more pronounced in Rolle’s thought than Riehle’s study credits.161 Although Rolle is far from a systematic writer, stilling the mind appears to lie at the heart of his understanding of contemplation in all three works considered here. Although any conclusions must remain provisional where Incendium Amoris is concerned, there are many similarities between Rolle three accounts of stilling the mind. All three equate the stilling of the mind with a very elevated spiritual state – one that Watson considers to be quite audacious. Rolle stresses, particularly in Incendium Amoris and Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum that the mind becomes Christ-like. In this relation in Incendium Amoris he writes of being ‘ingrafted inseparably into the love of eternity’, becoming a ‘son of God’, experiencing an inability to perceive the difference between the soul and Christ ‘as if there were no one beyond the two of them’,162 and of being ‘glued to Him [Christ] with an indissoluble chain of love’. In Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum he even talks of sharing in the joy of the Trinity. So similar to Christ and God does the soul become that Rolle feels the need to distinguish the two – stressing both that the soul attains this state by grace not nature and that there is still a difference between the soul and God even though the soul becomes like God on a substantial level. Although Rolle does not explore these claims, it is difficult not to see them as deifying motifs. This is particularly so given that Rolle posits that they are attained as the soul engages in stilling the mind, the route to ethical deification plotted in the Desert tradition. All this suggests that the idea at least had some traction for Rolle over and above his cautious and limited use of any specific terminology. That said, it seems important to stress that Rolle does not appear to be speaking of an endpoint which, once arrived at, negates the need for all

108

Stilling the wandering mind

further spiritual progress. Such a state is not, in any case, a prerequisite of deification in the Early Church, in which it was held that although deification was possible to some extent in this life, the fullness of sharing in God was reserved for the eschaton. In this life, for the Fathers, deification was economic rather than fully realised. The same seems true of Rolle. This sense of progress is particularly marked since the route towards deification that Rolle appears to plot is underpinned by the stilling of the mind. The development of virtues, culminating in a Christ-like mind in which one shares in Christ’s own qualities, was in the Desert tradition held to be a gradual process. At the same time, it was possible to attain a level of continuous stability – even though such stability was not equivalent to beatific vision. The one who had attained stability in this tradition was still subject to temptations. It was one’s capacity to resist these that denoted the continuous status of the calmed mind. Although the effects of the calmed mind differ in all three works considered, the similarities between this practice and that found within early Desert spirituality are such that I believe we are justified in reading these works of Rolle’s through the deifying lens that underpins the calming of the wandering mind. Deification, or least a trajectory that implicitly leads towards it, helps us make sense of features in Rolle’s writing that are otherwise rather bizarre, and while it could be that Rolle’s mysticism is simply inexplicable, his popularity in a period in which invention was not privileged would seem to rather militate against this.

Conclusion In this chapter I have been exploring whether there are grounds to attribute the idea of deification to Rolle. The three works that have been the focus on my study have important differences between them. Yet in each work Rolle links stilling the mind to an elevated state of contemplation. It is unclear how advanced Rolle is in this practice in each of these works. In his final work, the Middle English, The Form of Living, Rolle suggests the possibility of a calmness that verges on being a continuous state, an idea also found in his Commentary on the Song of Songs – a slightly later Latin work to those considered here. This latter text links the stilling of the mind with devotion to the name of Jesus, a practice that was to become very popular in England after Rolle’s death. Rolle’s approach to the calming of the mind is not therefore identical in each of his texts. Yet in each of the texts studied here, he evinces an understanding of the calmed mind with strong affinities to apatheia, the calming of the wandering mind so central to Desert thinking on deification in the Early Church. Whilst we could argue that Rolle advocates Christ-likeness rather than deification, Russell’s research suggests that this would be to create a false dichotomy. In this tradition of Early Church thinking, deification is Christ-likeness. It is not pantheism, as von Harnack had claimed. Whilst deification in the writings of Rolle discussed here is perhaps somewhat implicit, this does not negate

Stilling the wandering mind

109

its spiritual trajectory being that which Russell identifies with the ethical approach to deification. The effects that suggest that Rolle is writing about a spirituality that is, at least to some extent, deifying are those which have caused contemporary scholars most consternation, namely Rolle’s claim that as a consequence of calming his mind, spiritual experiences take over Rolle’s body. Not only does this indicate that Rolle held the body to have a single sensorium that commanded both physical and spiritual sensations, such that the two were in direct competition, as we will discuss in Chapter 5, it also suggests that Rolle maintained that practices such as calming the mind resulted in one’s resurrection body breaking in, at least partially, in this life. As we saw in Chapter 2, in the Desert tradition this appears to imply deification, at least of an economic rather than fully realised kind. That Rolle also links this practice with the acquisition of virtues would seem to reinforce my reading of Rolle’s spiritual trajectory as deifying. Reflecting on these aspect of Rolle’s thought, it seems important to stress that the Early Church Fathers held that deification was breaking in but still anticipated. Rolle’s sense that spiritual progress is still required does not therefore disqualify this as an implicit account of deification, even though the ideas pertaining to deification that we find in these three texts of Rolle’s differs in many ways from those that we find in the Rhineland and the Low Countries in this period (concerns that we will pick up briefly in the conclusion of the book). Indeed, there is much about Rolle’s spirituality that resonates with that of Evagrius, Cassian and Origen. Little research has been conducted into ethical approaches to deification, almost none on the Middle Ages. Given Rolle’s wide circulation on the continent, his approach to deification warrants further consideration. We noted in Chapters 1 and 2 that Early Church accounts of deification were both varied and rich, to borrow a phrase from Jules Gross. I hope that this chapter will open up further reflection on whether this was also true of the later Middle Ages. With this in mind, I will now turn to what I consider to be another, rather different, account of deification from late medieval England, that found in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. Rather than an ethical approach I aim to show that Julian advocates a form of realistic deification, one with certain similarities to the approach of Cyril of Alexandria that we discussed in Chapter 1. Like Cyril’s, hers would seem to be a much more deliberate account of deification, explored in relation to Christology and soteriology.

Notes 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Leeds International Congress (2015) and the TRS Research Seminar, Glasgow University (2015). 2 Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love and the Mending of Life by Richard Rolle, trans. by M. L. Del Mastro (New York: Image Books, 1981), p. 170. I use this translation unless otherwise stated [henceforth Fire of Love]. As indicated, I have amended it and/or supplemented it with that of Richard Rolle, The Fire of

110

3 4

5

6 7

8

9 10

11

Stilling the wandering mind Love, trans. by Clifton Wolters (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972) where this translation seems closer to the Latin. ‘Christus enim non habuit uolubiles cogitaciones [. . .] quia a principio concepcionis sue uidebat Deum [clarissime]B’: Richard Rolle, The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by M. Deanesly (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1917), pp. 206–207 [henceforth Incendium]. I have used Deanesly’s edition of the Incendium Amoris, however, I have amended it, checking it against Emmanuel College, Cambridge MS 25, henceforth E, the manuscript used for the transcription, and give variants from Brussels, KBR, Ms 4987, henceforth B in square brackets. I have only commented on variants that seem significant. I have noted but not commented on variant spellings. (Michael Sargent, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27/3 (1976), 225–240, refers to this manuscript as Brussels Bib. Royale MS. 2103, however this is the catalogue number rather than the number of the manuscript). Russell, Deification, p. 2. I am grateful to Andrew Albin for personal correspondence on this prior to the publication of his edition of Melos Amoris. This reference to Guthlac was previously unknown. For a full list of citations in manuscripts pertaining to Guthlac prior to this see: Jane Roberts, ‘An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials’, Mediaeval Studies, 32 (1970), 193–233. British Library MS Additional 37049; British Library MS Cotton Faustina B VI, pars ii; and British Library MS Stowe 39. As in Rolle’s writings, The Desert of Religion places emphasis on controlling one’s heart. Anne Mouron notes that, like a number of late-medieval texts, including Ancrene Wisse, the Desert of Religion refers to the heart as a sense of the soul as well as the seat of contemplation. More research is needed before we can say whether a stronger correlation can be made between the spirituality that I have mooted of Rolle and that which we find in The Desert of Religion. Mouron, ‘The Desert of Religion’, p. 172. Mouron, ‘The Desert of Religion’, p. 175. Roger Lovatt, ‘Henry Suso and the Medieval Mystical Tradition in England’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 2 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1982), pp. 47–52; Dirk Schultz, ‘Wisdom in the Margins: Text and Paratext in The Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom’, Études Anglaises, 3 (2013), 341–356 at 342. William Pollard mentions Rolle’s use of deification: ‘Richard Rolle and the “Eye of the Heart”’, in W. Pollard and R. Boenig (eds.), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 85–105, but does not comment on it at length. Rob Lutton, ‘The Name of Jesus’; Ibid, ‘“Love This Name That Is IHC”’. Ralph Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris: A Prospectus for a Future Editor’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 26 (2016), 227–261 at 228. I would like to thank Andrew Kraebel for drawing my attention to this important article. Beyond the references in Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle (New York: D.  C. Heath and Co.; London: Oxford University Press, 1927), Hanna notes that he and Ian A. Doyle identified a number of additional copies of Rolle’s writing in terms of extracts that give access to the hermits thought, most of which were known to Allen but which Hanna notes were not clearly presented: Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 228 n. 2. Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 172 especially the discussion of Melos Amoris. However, Paul Thenier, Contra Amatores Mundi, ‘Introduction’ in Richard Rolle, The Contra Amatores Mundi of Richard Rolle of Hampole,

Stilling the wandering mind

12

13

14

15

111

ed. trans. and intro. by Paul Thenier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Also M. Gabrielle Liegy, The Rhetorical Aspects of Richard Rolle’s “Melos Contempativorum”, University Microfilms, n. 8716 (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Columbia University, 1954); Rosamund Allen, ‘“Singular Lufe”: Richard Rolle and the Grammar of Spiritual Ascent’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 28–53; Rita Copeland, ‘Richard Rolle and the Rhetorical Theory of the Levels of Style’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 55–80. Carl Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, and English Father of the Church and His Followers, 2 vols. (London and New York: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895–1896), vol. 2, p. xxxv. On style: Thenier, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 29–38. On the importance of treating any ‘biographical’ information with extreme caution: Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 31ff; Thenier, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 17ff. On the temptation that women’s bodies initially posed to Rolle see: Fire of Love, ch. 12 (pp. 134–135). Richard Rolle, ‘A Translation of the Legenda in the Office Prepared for the Blessed Hermit Richard’, trans. by Frances Comper, in Frances Comper, The Life and Lyrics of Richard Rolle: Together with an Edition of His English Lyric (London: Dent & Sons Ltd, 1928 rept. 1933), Appendix 1, pp.  301– 314 at 301–302, slightly amended. Full text reads: ‘Una dierum allocutus est sororem suam que ipsum tenera affectione dilexit. Soror inquit michi dilecta duas habes tunicas unam albam alteram griseam quas avide concupisco: rogo e quantinus velis eos michi grate conferre: et crastina die ad illud nemus vicinum defferre michi una cum pluuiali cuucio patris mei. Annuit illa gratanter et iuxta promissa ad dictum nemus ea in crastina deportavit: ignoras omnino quid intenderet frater eius. Ut autem ipse ea accepisset illico manicas grisee tunice detruncauit et albe tunice bontones abscidit. Et modo quo poterat albe tunice manicas consuit: ut sue poroposito aliqualiter apraretur. Deposuit igitur uetes propias quibus erat indutus et albam sororis tunicam ad carnem induit. Griseam autem truncatis manicis superuestituit et per trunccacionis aparturam exposuit brachia: capuciauitque se pluuiali capucio supradicto et sic aliquantum iuxta modum sibi pro illa hora possibilem effigiaret confusam similitidem hermite. Cum hec igitur soror eius fuisset intuita stuperfacta clamauit: frater meus insanit frater meus insanit. Quo audito acominatorie fugauit eam a se et ipse protinus sine mora ne comprenderetur ab amicis et notis affugit’. Richard Rolle, The Officium and Miracula of Richard Rolle, ed. by R.  C. Woolley (London: Dent & Co, 1919), p. 24. David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition (London: Burns and Oates, 1961). Knowles determination that Rolle was not a mystic arguably tells us far more about Knowles views on mysticism than the contemplative veracity of Rolle’s writing. Indeed, it has obscured the popularity of Rolle’s writings in the later Middle Ages and resulted in their neglect. Knowles understanding of ‘mysticism’ is based on the Christian Mystical Theology which he differentiates from ‘mystical’ ideas within other traditions and from Christian contemplation. He defines it as ‘an incommunicable and inexpressible knowledge and love of God or of religious truth received in the spirit without precedent effort or reasoning’. David Knowles, What Is Mysticism? (London: Burns and Oates, 1967), p.  13. He differentiates it from any physical experiences and visions, which for him constitute an initial entry into the mystical path. He considers Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross to represent the highpoint of the Christian tradition, with Walter Hilton offering a very solid account. He rejects

112

16

17 18

19

20

Stilling the wandering mind Eckhart’s approach as unorthodox, considering it to be that of a philosopher rather than theologian. His approach differs from the understanding of mysticism suggested by his near contemporary R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism, Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Preternatural Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), who does not limit ‘mysticism’ to any one tradition, although does differentiate between types across religious traditions. Given that there was and continues to be huge debate as to the nature of mysticism, Knowles condemnation of Rolle should be treated with caution. Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority. However, Denis Reveney, Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001); Annie Sutherland, ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’, The Review of English Studies, 56/227 (2005), 695–671; Andrew Albin’s important English translation of Melos Amoris and discussion of the manuscripts was recently published but too late for consideration in this study: Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle’s Melody of Love: A Study and Translation with Manuscript and Musical Contexts, trans. by Andrew Albin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018). Albin offers a far more positive assessment of Rolle and his use of style, tying it closely to music. Although it has not been possible to incorporate the thinking from the Introduction into this book as it was published while this book was in press, it is interesting to note that Albin also connects chapter 37 of Incendium Amoris with a belief in deification and describes a process of language use that comes close to what I mean by sacred eloquence in Chapter 5. Also see a recently published essay by Tamás Karáth, ‘Mediating the Immediate: Richard Rolle’s Mystical Experience in the Translations of his Self Revelations’, in Miklós Vassányi, Enikő Sepsi and Anikó Daróczi (eds.), The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition (Cham: Springer, 2017), pp. 85–104, which explores the impact of translation on Rolle’s musical language. This is the key argument of Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Cf. Michael Sells, Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994). On different forms of ineffability see: Thomas Knepper, ‘Ineffability Investigations: What the Later Wittgenstein Has to Offer to the Study of Ineffability’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 65/2 (2009), 65–76. It is not clear that James is arguing for the kind of high order ineffability that seems to be understood by his use of this term as a marker of mysticism. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 3 (New York: Crossroads, 1998), p. 26. Cf. Bernard McGinn, ‘Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal’, Spiritus, 8/1 (2008), 44–63 at 46: ‘The investigator of mystical consciousness attempts to analyze the writings and witnesses of mystical teachers for what they reveal about all the forms of thinking and loving in which the human subject achieves self-transcendence and transformation through an encounter with God, the ultimate Source and final Goal’. Renevey, Language, Self and Love; Katherine Zieman, ‘“The Perils of Canor”: Mystical Authority, Alliteration, and Extragrammatical Meaning in Rolle, the Cloud-Author, and Hilton’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 22 (2008), 131–163; Andrew Albin, ‘Canorous Soundstuff: Hearing the Officium of Richard Rolle at Hampole’, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 91/4 (October 2016), 1026–1039; Andrew Albin, ‘Listening for Canor in Richard Rolle’s Melos Amoris’, in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.), Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), pp. 177–197; Rolle, Richard

Stilling the wandering mind

21 22 23

24

25

113

Rolle’s Melody of Love; Sutherland, ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’; John A. Alford, ‘Rolle’s “English Psalter” and “Lectio Divina”’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 77/3 (1995), 47–60; J. P. H. Clark, ‘Richard Rolle: A Theological Re-Assessment’, The Downside Review, 101 (1983), 108–139. More positive assessments are also found in recent editions of Rolle’s writing: Thenier, Contra Amatores Mundi; Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle’s Expositio super novem lectiones mortuorum: An Introduction and Contribution towards a Critical Edition, ed. by Malcolm Robert Moyes (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1988), and Richard Rolle, The Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by James C. Dolan (Lewiston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). Also on Rolle in recent scholarship see: Davis Carmel Bendon, Mysticism & Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, the Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008); Frank Shon, ‘The Teleological Element in Richard Rolle’s “Contra amatores mundi”’, The Modern Language Review, 101/1 (2006), 1–15; Christopher M. Roman, Queering Richard Rolle: Mystical Theology and the Hermit in Fourteenth-Century England (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017): the latter appeared in late 2017; it has not been possible to incorporate its perceptions into this study. See, for example, Paul Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and his Mysticism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994) and John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), A Companion to John of Ruusbroec (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Ralph Hanna has identified some further lyrics which he believes are genuine: Rolle, Richard Rolle. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 238, n. 25 argues that Richard Misyns’ ‘painfully literal’ rendering helps with the identification of a good Latin base text: Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, and the Mending of Life, or the Rule of Living, trans. by Richard Misyn, ed. by Ralph Harvey, vol. 106 (London: Early English Text Society, 1896). In addition to: Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, there are also critical editions of Emendatio Vitae and Judica Mei Deus: Richard Rolle, De emendatione vitae: eine kritische Ausgabe des lateinischen Textes von Richard Rolle: mit einer Übersetzung ins Deutsche und Untersuchungen zu den lateinischen und englischen Handschriften, ed. by Rüdiger Spahl (Göttingen: V&R Unipress; Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2009); Richard Rolle, An Edition of the Judica me Deus of Richard Rolle, ed. by John Philip Daly (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984). Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, notes that Spahl critical edition of Emendatio Vitae gives detailed accounts of 110 MSS, although he comments that another 12 or so exist that he did not find. However, Hanna (‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p.  249, n. 42) also questions Spahl’s reliance on Cambridge University Manuscript MS Dd.5.64, which Hanna argues is never fully interrogated. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, is critical of Paul Thenier and Malcolm Moyes for producing editions that rely on a ‘best manuscript’, although Thenier offers variants from all the manuscripts which Allen lists bar two, plus a further manuscript which he believes may be one of the two that vanished after they were sold privately. He suggests that his edition offers us a reliable reading of the text of Contra Amatores Mundi. This is the case with the edition of Melos Amoris, which reproduces TCD MS c 3.13 (although ten manuscripts were consulted): Richard Rolle, Le Chant d’Amour (Melos Amoris), ed. by E.J.F. Arnould, trans. by les Moniales de Wisques, Source Chrétiennes, vols. 168–169, 2 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), vol. 1. The same is true of Rolle’s Commentary on the Song of Songs: Richard Rolle, Biblical Commentaries: Short Exposition of Psalm 20, Treatise on the Twentieth

114

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42

43

Stilling the wandering mind Psalm, Comment on the First verses of the Canticle of Canticles, Commentary on the Apocalypse, trans. by Robert Boenig (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984). The Latin edition for Rolle’s Song of Songs commentary has never been published. It is edited from a single manuscript in an unpublished thesis: Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle’s Comment on the Canticles, Edited from MS Trinity College, Dublin 153, ed. by E. M. Murray (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Fordham University, 1958). Wolters, The Fire of Love and Del Mastro, op cit. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’. Hanna notes, for examples, that she often confuses ‘c’ and ‘t’. On textual transmission: Ralph Hanna, ‘The Transmission of Richard Rolle’s Latin Works’, The Library, 7th ser. 14 (2013), 313–333. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 235. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 240. Hanna notes a number of possible contributing factors and that Deanesly herself was unhappy with the edition. He stresses her otherwise excellent scholarship. For a list of manuscripts of Incendium Amoris : Allen, Writings Ascribed , pp. 213–218, 219 (no. 30), 220–221 (no. 35), supplemented by Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 238, n. 22), who notes the evidence of a further manuscript, a single leaf, now British Library, MS Harley 5977, fragment 102. On insular copies of Incendium Amoris: Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 247, who notes that one of the short texts is a continental manuscript that was owned by Mainz Charterhouse in the Middle Ages. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 252. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 252. As noted, I consulted Emmanuel MS 35(E) and Brussels, KBR, MS 4987(B). I am very grateful to Sr Tamin Geach for assistance with the Latin and for discussion of the Latin variants. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’ has also tentatively confirmed the relative reliability of the copy of Incendium Amoris in Bodley 861, the closest manuscript we have to an opera omnia, with reference to Rolle’s Incendium Amoris. Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, maintains that Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum contains a more developed understanding of contemplation than Incendium Amoris, and views it as a transitional text to a phase of interest in sweetness exemplied in Rolle’s, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Contra Amatores Mundi. Allen, English Writings, pp. 82–83; Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 245 notes that Rolle’s English works began to circulate quite quickly, possibly as early as 1357. Rolle, Richard Rolle. Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 228. Del Mastro often translate ‘cognitiones’ as ‘meditation’ to emphasise the connection with Rolle’s experience of canor. I have preferred the more literal translation of ‘thoughts’ as this seems to better indicate the Desert nature of Rolle’s spirituality. Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 93. ‘Admirabar magis quam enuncio quando siquidem sentiui cor meum primitus incalescere, et uere non imaginarie, quasi [sensibili]B igne estuare. Eram equidem attonitus quemadmodum eruperat ardor in animo, et de insolito solacio propter inexperienciam huius abundancie: sepius pectus meum si forte esset feruor ex aliqua exteriori causa palpitaui’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 145. The better reading is ‘sensibili’B. Cf. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 32 (p. 211) on how song or sweetness fill the senses and neither are imaginary. The chapter also appears in the Short Text without any apparent omissions or abbreviations according to Deanesly’s reading.

Stilling the wandering mind

115

44 St. Paul uses the same verb ‘harpazo’ meaning to be caught or snatched up in 1 Thessalonians 4.17. 45 Rolle quotes and discusses this passage in Contra Amatores Mundi, ch. 4.147– 149, 5.222–226, 279, 319–329 (All references refer to this translation – unhelpfully Thenier references the Latin and English translation differently). These passages are further discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 178–179. 46 St Augustine treats this as the highest form of vision possible in this life – one that is imageless because not tied to the body: The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. by John Hammond Taylor, 2 vols. (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), vol. 2, 12.8; Also Augustine of Hippo, ‘On Seeing God’, in Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, trans. by M. T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 365–402, ch. 31 (see Chapter 6, n. 33). 47 Watson (Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority) notes that Rolle diverges from Bernard of Clairvaux. Similar ideas are found in John Scotus Eriugena, Homily on the Prologue to John’s Gospel, which asserts that John’s vision in the Gospel was more elevated than Paul’s because it did not merely result in a sight of heaven but entry into the heart of the Trinity, and as such equated to deification: John Scotus Eriugena, The Voice of the Eagle: The Heart of Celtic Spirituality, John Scotus Eriugena’s Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, trans. by Christopher Bamford (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 1990, repr. 2000). We have no evidence that Rolle knew this work, although it was popular and survives in over 66 extant manuscripts. See John J. O’Meara, Eriugena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 159. 48 Clark argues that Thomas Aquinas holds a similar view in terms of his distinction between gratia gratis data and gratia gratum faciens: ‘Richard Rolle: A Theological Re-Assessment’, p. 115. 49 Although the Middle English translation of the Life of Christina the Astonishing likewise conflates these two genres when reporting the first time Christina dies and is brought back to life: Jennifer N. Brown (ed.), Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2008). 50 Eileen Gardiner (ed.), Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante (New York: Italica Press, 1989); Eileen Gardiner (ed.), Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1993); Thomas Kren and Roger S. Wieck, The Visions of Tondal from the Library of Margaret of York (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990). 51 However, on these visions as accounts of the landscape of heaven and so, in a sense contemplative see: Roberta Bassi, ‘Visions of the Otherworld: The Accounts of Fursey and Dryhthelm in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and the Homilies of Ælfric’, in Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop (eds.), Art and Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Periods (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 241–245. 52 Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 236 (slightly altered). ‘Uno quidem modo quo quis extra sensum carnis ita rapitur, ut penitus tempore raptus non senciat quicquid in carne uel de carne agatur. Ipse tamen non est mortuus sed uiuus quia adhuc anime uiuificat corpus. Et hoc modo aliquando rapiuntur [rapiuntur aliqui]B sancti et electi ad suam utilitatem et aliorum instruccionem, sicut Paulus qui erat raptus [raptus fuit]B ad tercium celum. Et hoc modo raptus, eciam peccatores in uisione aliquando rapiuntur, ut uideant uel gaudium bonorum1 uel penas reproborum pro sua et aliorum correccione [correctione]B, sicut de multis legimus’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 254 [Better reading is ‘erat raptus’E.] 53 Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 236 (slightly altered). ‘Alio modo dicitur raptus eleuacione [eleuatio]B mentis ad [in]B Deum per contemplacionem, et hic modus

116

54 55

56

57 58 59

60 61

62 63

64 65

Stilling the wandering mind est in omnibus perfectis amatoribus Dei, et in nullis nisi qui arrant [amant]B Deum [. . .] Iste modus [raptus]B multum desiderabilis est et amandus. Nam et Christus semper habuit diuinam contemplacionem, [et]B sed nunquam corporalis regiminis subtraccionem’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 255 [Better readings are: ‘eleuacione’E; ‘amant’B]. Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 170. ‘Christus enim non habuit uolubiles cogitaciones [. . .] quia a principio concepcionis sue uidebat Deum [clarissime]B’. pp. 206–207 [I have preferred the variant reading] . ‘I judge it better to be “rapt” of the love in which a man may most greatly merit. For seeing [him] giving heavenly bodies pertains to reward not to merit’, Rolle, Fire of Love (see note below), p. 236 (amended). ‘Ego meliorem estimo raptum amoris, in quo homo maxime meretur. Uidere enim dare celescia ad premium pertinet non ad meritum’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 255. Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 236 (slightly amended). ‘Immo [Ymmo]B uere supernaturale est, ut de uili peccatore fiat filius Dei, qui spirituali gaudio repletus, feratur in Deum [. . .] Dicuntur itaque [amore]B rapti qui Saluatoris sui desideriis integre et perfecte sunt mancipati, et ad cacumen contemplacionis ualenter ascendunt. Illuminantur quoque sapiencia increata, et feruorem inconscripte [incircumscripte]B lucis cuius pulchritudine rapiuntur sentire meruerunt [. . .] quando omnes eius cogitaciones diuino amori [amore]B ordinantur, omnesque mentis ipsius euagaciones transeunt in stabilitatem, et ipsa iam non fluctuat aut hesitat, sed toto affectu in unum deducta, atque sita, magno ardore Christum anhelat, illi extenta et [atque]B intenta, quasi [alia]B non essent preter hos duos, scilicet, [ihesu]B Christum et ipsam animam amantem’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 255. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 18, p. 157. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 24, p. 181. ‘eternitatis amori inseparabiliter immittitur’, Rolle, Incendium, p. 214. Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 237 (amended). ‘Unde conglutinata est ei amoris uinculo indissolubili, et per excessum mentis extra claustra corporis euolans [corporis euolans claustra],B haurit poculum premirificum a celis [probably should read ‘cellis’ [. . .] ut et feruorem dileccionis in se realiter suscipiat et senciat; [. . .] Exceditque [. . .] omnia alia dona, que sanctis in hac peregrinacione ad meritum a Deo conferuntur. In hoc enim merentur superiorem locum in patria, quia per hoc [hec]B Deum in uia ardencius et quiecius amauerunt’, Rolle, Incendium, pp. 255–256. Rolle, Incendium, p. 236. I am grateful to Sr Tamsin Geach for this observation. Rolle is not alone in making a connection between rapture and violence, both Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) do likewise. See: Dyan Elliot, ‘The Physiology of Rapture and Female Spirituality’, in Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (eds.), Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, York Studies in Medieval Theology I (York: York Medieval Press, 1997), pp. 141–173 at 142. Rolle’s idea of physical sensations as subtle seems unique. An explanation may lie in the connection between the body and philosophical belief noted within Desert asceticism see: Flood, The Ascetic Self. This implies that Rolle holds the body to have only one single sensorium. By this I mean that spiritual and physical sensations have one controlling locus, such that both are known as they stimulate the same senses (rather than there being separate physical and spiritual sensorium within the soul). This idea is further discussed in Chapter 5 pp. 180ff. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 37, p. 235 (amended); ‘in sensuque subtilis [in sensu et subtilis]B’, Rolle, Incendium, p. 245 [B appears to be the better reading]. Rolle, Fire of Love, p.  211 (slightly amended). ‘diuina dulcedine [dileccio]B quoque delicatissima inebriabitur [. . .] ut in seipso non senciat nisi solacium

Stilling the wandering mind

66 67

68

69 70 71 72

73

74 75

76

77

78

117

saporis infusi [infusi saporis]B celicus [celitus]B, et signum summe sanctitatis’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 236. Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 163. ‘Porro qui uere Deum diligit, nihil [nichil]B in corde suo preter Deum sentit, et si nihil [nichil]B aliud sentit, nihil [nichil]B aliud habet’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 201. This aspect of Rolle’s thought is further explored in Chapter 5. On female spirituality in this period see: Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast. On the physical effects of mysticism: Louise Nelstrop, ‘The Monk of Farne: A Forgotten Medieval English Mystic’, in John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition, pp. 135–151. Jan van Ruusbroec, ‘Little Book of Explanation/Boecksen der verclarighe’, trans. by Phayre Crowley and Helen Rolfson in Guido de Baere and Thom Mertons (eds.), The Complete Ruusbroec: English Translation with the Original Middle Dutch Text, trans. by Helen Rolfson, Andre Lefevere and Phayre Crowley, Corpus Christianorum, Scholars Version, vol. 101 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014), pp. 625–637 at 631–632. Ruusbroec, ‘Little Book of Explanation’, p. 632. Anon., The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. by Patrick J. Gallacher (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), ch. 53, pp. 1826–1839. Ruusbroec, ‘Little Book of Explanation’, p. 632. Thomas of Cantimpré, ‘The Life of Christina the Astonishing’, in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saint’s Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, trans. by Margot H. King and Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2008), pp. 123–157 at 133, n. 14. Marleen Cré, ‘“We are United with God and God with Us”: Adapting Ruusbroec in The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God and The Chastising of God’s Children’, in E.  A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 21–36. Monk of Farne, Meditation to Christ Crucified in Dame Frideswide Sandeman, Christ Crucified and Other Meditations of a Durham Hermit (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), [henceforth MCC], 79.96. MCC, 82.98. ‘Summus quando ita absorptus fuerit quis siue debriatus dileccione Dei, ut sui in tantum obliuiscatur, quod quid faciat preter diligere nesciat, quid uidet non aduertat, quid audit non inteligat, quid gustat non sapiat, quid odorat non discernat, quid tangit ipse ignoret propter ipsam nimiam diuini amoris in eius corde fruicionem, que faciat eum obliuisci usus quinque sensum atque racionis . . . in tantum amore ipse cor diligentis dilatet ut hoc sustinere ultra non sufficiat et ob id moriatur homo’, Monk of Farne, ‘The Meditations of the Monk of Farne’, ed. by Hugh Farmer, Studia Anselmiana, 41 (1957), 141–245 at 207. I am grateful to Judith Wolfe for pointing out this comparison. On medieval ideas of the resurrection body see: Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). MCC, 41.65 ‘Quis unquam dicat manus Omnipotentis ad crucem ita posse configi ut solum racione clauorum pendens cruci sic hereret, quasi inuitus moreretur; quod falsum est, cum fuerit oblatus quia uoluit. . . . Vel quis michi tribuat capud angelicis tremendum potestatibus, anima recedente, necessario debere ima petere, quasi non esset Deus cum eo, qui omnia sustentat et a nullo sustentatur’, Monk of Farne, ‘The Meditations of the Monk of Farne’, p. 183. MCC, 47.71 ‘Spiritus Sanctus .  .  . transferet in eandem ymaginem ad quam facti sumus . . . quibus fit anima deiformis et similis Deo inter filio Dei inter filios Dei, causante hoc ipsum quod reuelata facie speculatur gloriam Dei’, Monk

118

79 80 81

82

83

84

85 86

87

88

Stilling the wandering mind of Farne, ‘The Meditations of the Monk of Farne’, p. 187. Although Watson (‘Melting into God the English Way’) suggests that the Meditations of The Monk of Farne only contains the ‘rhetoric of deification’, a case can be made for reading them as advocating deification in a more substantial sense. Rolle’s ideas might of course have influenced the Monk of Farne, although ultimately the Monk of Farne’s thinking on deification seems to owe a debt to Bonaventure. See Louise Nelstrop, ‘The Monk of Farne’. We will further discuss Ruusbroec, see n. 142. On Christina’s ‘subtle body’ as a resurrection body: Newman, ‘Introduction’, Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives. On Rolle’s use of 2 Corinthians 3.18 see: Louise Nelstrop, ‘The Merging of Eremitic and Late Medieval Spirituality in Richard Rolle’s Reshaping of Contemplation’, Viator, 35 (2004), 387–434. Rolle, Fire of Love, pp. 214–215 (slightly amended). ‘Sed in hoc sciat [scat]B sublimatus in sanctitate quod canticum experitur, de quo sermocinor, si non ualeat [valet]B sustinere clamorem psallencium nisi canor eius interior ad cogitatum redigatur, et exteriora [exterior]B ad dicendum sit dilapsus. Quod quidam autem [aut]B inter cantantes uel psalmodizantes distrahuntur in sua deuocione, non est ex perfeccione, sed instabilitate mentis, quia aliorum uerba interrumpunt suas preces et confundunt, quod quidem perfectis non contingit [contigit]B’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 238. Also: Zieman, ‘The Perils of Canor’. Rolle, Fire of Love, p.  214 (slightly amended). ‘Ita enim stabiliti sunt, quod nullo clamore uel tumultu [tumltu]B aut [ac]B quacumque alia re distrahi poterunt ab oracione uel cogitacione; sed tantum a canore per talia diuelli’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 239. Anne Bagnall Yardley, ‘“Ful Wel She Sonng the Service Dyvyn”: The Cloistered Musician in the Middle Ages’, in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 15–38, esp. pp. 24–25. Rolle, Fire of Love, pp.  214–215 (slightly amended). ‘quia ostendi uobis ad honorem omnipotentis Dei et ad commodum nostrum [vostrum]B cur fugiebam cantantes in ecclesiis et qua racione meipsum eis immiscere non amaui, ac ludentes in organis non audire adoptari [adoptaui]B. Impedimentum enim exhibebant sonoris amenitate et preclara carmina [preclaram camenam]B deficere cogebant. Non est ergo mirum si fugissem quod me confunderet [confundit]B, et in quo culpandus fueram, si [non]B destiti ab hoc quod me a dilectissimo [dulcissimo]B cantico meo depellere sciebam’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 239. I have preferred [vostrum]B. On mystical sensation in Hadewijch and Bernard of Clairvaux: Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages. Rolle, Fire of Love, p.  214, slightly amended. ‘Istud namque dulce canticum spirituale quidem [est]B et speciale ualde, quia specialissimis datum est [datur]B; cum exterioribus canticis non concordat, que in ecclesiis uel alibi frequentatur [frequentantur]B. Dissonat autem [namque]B multum ab omnibus que humana et exteriori uoce formantur, corporalibus auribus audienda; sed inter angelicos concentus armoniam habet acceptabilem admiracioneque commendatum est ab hiis qui cognouerunt’. Rolle, Incendium, p. 239. Katherine Zieman defines ‘extra-grammaticality’ as ‘aspects of language, such as alliteration, that are not simply reducible to semantic meaning or theological conceptualization – as a way to gain access to the divine’, Singing a New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), p. 1. The idea comes close to Steven T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978). Zieman, ‘The Perils of Canor’.

Stilling the wandering mind

119

89 Rolle describes song as inarticulable – ch. 34, esp. p. 219. Zieman suggests that this causes Rolle to abandon scripture: ‘The Perils of Canor’, p. 140. For an alternative reading see: Sutherland ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’, Her position is further discussed p. 199. 90 Rolle, Fire of Love, p.  237. ‘quemadmodum summa quies ad hoc [hec]B exquirendum [ex quirenda]B et retinendum [retinenda]B exposcitur, quia in nimia mocione corporis uel in constancia [inconstancia]B et uagacione mentis nequaquam uel accipitur uel tenetur’, Rolle, Incendium, p.  256. [‘exquirendum’ seems the better reading. E has ‘exquiren dum’, which I have amended] This belief may possibly underpin Rolle choice of sitting as the best posture in which to contemplate – an image that he conflates with that of the elect/ apostles who will sits on seats with Christ in heaven. 91 Rolle, Ego Dormio, p. 55. Rolle produces two commentaries on the Psalter: John P. H. Clark, ‘Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator’, Downside Review, 104 (1986), 165–213, esp. 168–169; Alford, ‘Rolle’s “English Psalter”. 92 I am grateful to Sister Tamsin Geach for pointing out the possible eucharistic overtones in this passage. These also appear to be present in the text when Rolle echoes it in The Form of Living, see n. 138. 93 Thus he states that ‘never or rarely do they [contemplatives/lovers or eternity] go forth into external ministries, nor do they accept the dignity of the prelacy and of honor’, Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 103. ‘ita ut nunquam aut rarissime exeunt in externis ministeriis, neque dignitatem prelacionis et honoris accipiunt’. Rolle, Incendium, p.  153. Those who are ‘less filled with the fervor of love’ are chosen for this role: Rolle, Fire of Love, p.  171. ‘minus feruore amoris sunt imbuti’, Rolle, Incendium, p. 207. On Rolle’s preaching vocation: Louise Nelstrop, ‘What Happened to the Fourth Degree of Love? Richard Rolle, Hermit Preacher’, Journal of Medieval Mystical Theology, 23/1 (2014), 65–87. On letting go of self and its mystical manifestation as ‘apophatic anthropology’: Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity; John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 94 Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 40, pp.  250–251. ‘Possumus, nempe si ueri amatores sumus Domini nostri Ihesu Christi, et ipsum cogitare dum pergimus et cantum amoris eius tenere dum in consorcio sedemus, et ad mensam eius memoriam habere poterimus eciam in ipsis gustibus cibi et potus. Ad omnem autem morsellum esce uel haustum poculi, deberemus laudare Deum, et inter ipsa cibariorum suscepcionum [suscepcionem]B et morsellorum interualla, illi[word not in  B] laudes personare cum suauitate mellita et mentali clamore ac desiderio, ad ipsum inter epulas anhelare. Et si in labore manuum fuerimus, quid prohibet nos cor celestibus erigere, et eterni amoris cogitacionem incessabiliter retinere? Sicque omni tempore uite nostre feruentes erimus non torpentes, nec aliquid preter sompnum cor nostrum ab eo remouebit. [. . .] Omnes autem interim impugnaciones demonum’, Rolle, Incendium, pp. 267–268. [N.B. B has ‘domimum’ instead of Domini with dei added in the margin – this seems to be an error with a correction to make grammatical sense]. 95 Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 40, p. 251. ‘magnum partem futuri premii’, Rolle, Incendium, p. 268. 96 Russell, Deification, p. 2. 97 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 142–147. 98 Clark, ‘Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator’. 99 Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 15, p. 148. ‘Dum enim in eadem capella sederem, et in nocte ante cenam psalmos prout [pro ut]B potui decantarem, quasi tinnitum [tynhitum]B psallencium uel pocius pocia]B canencium supra me ascultaui [auscultaui]B. Cumque celestibus eciam orando toto desiderio intenderem, nescio

120

100 101 102 103 104

105

106 107

108 109

110

111 112

Stilling the wandering mind quomodo mox in me concentum canorum sensi, et delectabilissimam armoniam celicus [celitus]B excepi, mecum manentem in mente. Nam cogitacio mea continuo in carmen canorum commutabatur [mutabatur]B, et quasi odas habui meditando, et eciam oracionibus ipsis et psalmodia eundem sonum edidi Deinceps usque ad canendum que prius dixeram, pre affluencia suauitatis interne [eterne suauitatis]B prorupi, occulte quidem, quia tantummodo coram Conditore meo’. Rolle, Incendium, pp. 189–190. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 15. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 49. ‘Cum omnes psalmi dulces sint et delectabiles, iste psalmus de gloria regis precipue loquitur, consequenter insinuans quod nullus in Domino letabitur sine regimine, nec aliquis recte regitur nisi Deo rectore’. p. 1. Clark, ‘Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator’. Alistair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), p. 89. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 84. ‘Quis est igitur ille rex qui letabitur? Aperiamus verbi intentionem et videbimus, quia congruentius iustum appellabimus regem. O dignatio miranda, servum Christi regem fieri! Illi enim servire regnare est’, Tractatus p. 2. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 52. ‘Hic est rex qui seipsum recte regit, qui corpus et animam ad servitium Christi constanter dirigit, qui omnes cordis affectiones, omnes mentis evagationes, cuncta animi desideria tali regimine gubernat, ut de tota interioris et exterioris hominis habitudine quod non sit ad laudem conditoris dispositum, nichil remaneat’, Tractatus p. 4. Echoes Evagrius and Cassian (see Chapter 2, pp. 58-–66). Rolle, Fire of Love, pp. 214–215. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 54. ‘Regi, id est, sancto [. . .] Deus [. . .] in spiritualibus delitiis perfruendis figebat cor suum [. . .] audire melos angelicum, videre incircumscriptum lumen eterni amoris, delitiarum canticum canere mellifluum [. . .] Dedit ei plenam conditoris cognitionem, in tota Trinitate letitiam’. p. 5. Watson, (Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 144) likewise considers that Rolle is laying claim to a high level of union in this text. Rolle stresses in Incendium that the song that the soul hears is the song of angels – although he does not hear it in all its fullness. He does however, state in Incendium, chapter 37 that ‘enjoying the glory of the Creator without end’ is the goal, Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 234. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 57. Cf. Ibid., p. 64. He also argues [Ibid., p. 59] that lovers do not hide behind the words of others – they inhabit them, thereby seeing both Christ’s humanity and deity. Also note the claims for inspiration (Ibid., pp. 54–55). Cf. ‘For the will is on the lips in the same sense as the desire is of the heart. He desires with his heart, cries out with his lips, but it is from the devotion of his heart that the work of prayer ascends to the ears of God’. Ibid., p. 54 Additionally he stresses that it is the Holy Spirit who ‘sweetly inflames their minds with the warmth of eternal light’, Ibid., p. 55. Rolle, Tractatus, p.  60. ‘Hic a tumultu solus sedens, sed in Christo glorians, ardet et amat, gaudet et iubilat; charitate vulneratus, amore liquefactus, canticum amoris canit dilecto, repletus dulcore suavissimo. Iam non dicit orationes suas sed, in sublimitate mentis positus at amore supernorum raptus, mira suavitate supra se capitur et Deo decantare spirituali organo in mirum modum sublevatur’. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 10. On the link between tropological or moral readings and monastic mystical texts: Duncan Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2011). Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 144 (italics in original).

Stilling the wandering mind

121

113 Rolle, Tractatus, p. 49. ‘Cum Christus, qui est veritas, dicat: Sine me nichil potestis facere, constat sine dubio, quia quicquid boni aut cogitamus, aut volumus, aut loquimur, aut operamur, illlud nimirum a Deo habemus. Laudamus ergo et predicamus ineffabilem divine maiestatis clementiam et misericordie magnitudinem. [. . .] Huius amore tacti et circumligati quasi vinculis insolubilibus, aliena non diripimus, sed conditoris nostri gratiam secure expectamus, dicentes cum Psalmista: Audiam quid loquatur in me Dominus Deus [.  .  .] bonis moribus insigniti, et nostrarum affectionum dominatores effecti, secundum Prophete sententiam in Domino gaudeamus: Domine in virtute tua letabitur rex’. Rolle, Tractatus, p. 1. 114 On the importance of the psalms in medieval England: Francis Leneghan and Tamara Atkins (eds.), The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017). Cf. Rolle, Fire of Love, ch. 29, ‘Again such are the saints .  .  . from fervor and from spiritual joy, they sing by making melody, who previously spoke’ (p. 199). ‘Porro tales sancti sunt . . . .ex feruore et leticia spirituali modulando canunt, qui [que]B prius dixerunt [simpliciter leger[e] ussueuerunt instead of ‘dixerunt’]B’, Rolle, Incendium, p. 226. In chapter 33 Rolle sharply contrasts this new song with ordinary exegesis learnt through study: ‘But taught by acquired, not infused, wisdom, and inflated by involved argumentations, they have scorn against this man, saying ‘Where did he learn this? From what teacher has he heard this?’ They do not consider that the lovers of eternity are instructed by the interior Teacher, so that they may speak more eloquently that those taught by men, who have studied for the sake of vain honors all the time’: Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 216 (slightly amended). ‘Sed docti per adquisitam [acquisitam]B sapienciam, non infusam, et inflati argumentacionibus implicitis, in ipso dedignantur dicentes: “Ubi didicit? a quo doctore audiuit?” Non arbitrantur ab interiori doctore amatores eternitatis edoceri, ut eloquencius loquerent usquam [loquentur]B ipsi ab hominibus docti, qui omni tempore pro uanis honoribus studuerunt’ Rolle, Incendium, p. 240. [I have amended E which read ‘loquerentus quam’.] 115 William of St. Thierry, The Works of William of St. Thierry, 2, Exposition on the Song of Songs, trans. by Columbia Hart, Cistercian Fathers Series 6 (Shannon, 1970), p. 6, quoted in Renevey, Language, Self and Love, p. 48. ‘nos colloquii sancti Sponsi et Sponsae, aliquatenus efficiamur participes; ut agatur in nobis quod legitur a nobis’. William of St. Thierry, Exposé sur le cantique des cantiques, SC, 82, ed. by Jean-Marie Déchanet (Paris: Cerf, 1962), p. 74. Martin Laird argues that Gregory of Nyssa also advocates something similar: Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge and Divine Presence, p. 163. 116 Kevin Gustafson, ‘Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and The Making of a Lollard Text’, Viator, 33 (2002), 294–309 at 304. Also: Michael Kuczynski, ‘Rolle among the Reformers: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Wycliffite Copies of Richard Rolle’s English Psalter’, in William Pollard and R. Boenig (eds.), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, pp. 177–202; Michael Kuczynski, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp.  165–188; Regine Slavin, Thirsting for God’ through the Lens of Psalms 42 and 63 (unpublished MA dissertation: Sarum College and University of Winchester, 2016); Leneghan and Atkins, The Psalms and Medieval English Literature. 117 Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 75. 118 Rather similar ideas are suggested by Cassian, Conference, 10.11. 119 See: Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 251. 120 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 252.

122

Stilling the wandering mind

121 Rolle, Form of Living, 11.318–332: ‘The sins of our heart are these: immoral thoughts, sinful delights, assent to sin, desire of wrong, wicked will, misplaced suspicion and undevotion: If you allow your heart any time to be idle without occupation in the love and praising of God’. (my translation). 122 Rolle, Form of Living, 13.402–403. ‘that all joy and solace, except of God and in God, be put out of your heart’. Richard Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises by Richard Rolle of Hampole, A.D. 1300–1349, trans. by Gerlaldine E. Hodgson (London: Thomas Baker, 1910), p. 37. I have used this translation unless otherwise stated but amended and modernised it. 123 In an essay on The Desert of Religion, a text which in all three extant manuscripts are accompanied by a now famous image of Rolle with the name of Jesus written on his heart, Anne Mouron notes that the heart is treated as a sixth sense. The Desert of Religion stresses that it is necessary for all the senses, including the heart, to fight against vice. She notes that this idea is also echoed in the English guide for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse. See: Anne Mouron, ‘The Desert of Religion: A Voice and Images in the Wilderness’, in Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop (eds.), Art and Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Period (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 165–185. 124 Rolle, Form of Living, 16.520–524. ‘When you pray, look not how much you say, but how well: that the eye of your heart is always upward, and your thought on what you say, as much as you can. If you be in prayers and meditations all the day, I know full-well that you will grow greatly in the love of Jesus Christ, and feel much of delight, and within a short time’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, pp. 49–51. 125 Rolle, Form of Living, 15.508–510. ‘thereto shall you come with great travail in prayer and in thinking, having such meditations as are all in the love and the praising of God’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, p. 44. 126 On this idea in Anglo-Saxon thought: Lesley Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). Lockett also traces the cognitive ideas of the heart in cultures other than Anglo-Saxon England. We might add Thai culture where the heart is clearly the seat of emotions and rationality – an idea embedded in the Thai language. See Christopher G. Moore, Heart-Talk: Say What You Feel in Thai (Bangkok: Heaven Lake Press, 2006). 127 Rolle, Form of Living, 16.528–529. 128 Rolle, Form of Living, 16.53–541. ‘Inseparable love is when all your heart and all your thoughts and your might are so wholly, so entirely and so perfectly fixed, set and stablised in Jesus Christ and your thought never comes from him, never departs from him, except in sleep; and as soon as you wake, your heart is on him’ (my translation). 129 Rolle, Form of Living, pp.  16–17, 550–551, 557, 559–561. ‘Singular love is when all comfort and solace is excluded from your heart, except in Jesus Christ alone . . . then the soul is Jesus loving, Jesus thinking, Jesus desiring . . . then your thought turns into song and into melody. Then you need to sing the psalms that you said before; then you can take your time over a few psalms’ (my translation). 130 Rolle, Form of Living, pp. 17, 564. 131 Rolle, Form of Living, 15.510–16.519 ‘And when your are at your meal, ever love God in your thought, at each morsel, and say thus in your heart: ‘Praised be you, King: and thanked be you, King, and blessed be you, King, Jesu all my joy, all your gifts [are] good: Who for me spilt your blood, and died on the rood. You give me grace to sing the song of your praise’. And think this not only while you eat, but both before and after, and whenever you pray or speak. Or if you have other thoughts, that you find more sweetness and devotion in

Stilling the wandering mind

132

133 134

135 136

137

138

123

than in these that I teach you, you may think on them. For I hope that God will put such thoughts in your heart as He is pleased with, and as you are ordained for’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, pp. 44–48. Rolle, Form of Living, 20.678–684. ‘[L]ove is in the heart, and the will of man; not in his hand, nor in his mouth: that is to say, not in his work, but in his soul, For many speak good and do good, and love not God: like hypocrites, who suffer great penance, and seem holy in man’s sight. But because they seek the praise and honour of men and their favour, they have lost their reward: and in the sight of God they are devil’s sons and ravishing wolves’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, p. 59. This is further reinforced in Rolle, Form of Living, p.  25.873 where Rolle describes love rising up from the heart and being manifest in the mouth. Rolle, Form of Living, 20.685–704. ‘But if a man give alms, and takes up poverty and does penance, it is a sign that he loves God, but not on account of this does he loves Him, except when he forsakes the world only for God’s love, and makes his heart clean from sin, and sets all his thought on God, and loves all men as himself: and all the good deeds that he may do, he does them with the intention of pleasing Jesus Christ, and coming to heavenly rest. Then he loves God: and that love is in his soul, and thus his deeds show outwardly. If you speak good and do good, men suppose that you love God: therefore look well that your thought is in God, or else thou deceive yourself, and others. [Yet] nothing that I do outwardly proves that I love God. For a wicked man might do as much penance in body, as much waking and fasting as I do. How may I then know that I love, or hold myself better, on account of that which any man may do? Certainly, my heart, whether it loves my God or not, no one but God knows. Then none can tell that I love God from anything that they may see me do. Consequently, love is truly in the will, not in work, which is but a sign of love. For he who says he loves God, and will not do what is in him to show love, tell him that he lies. Love will not be idle, it is always working some good. If it ceases working, understand that it cools and vanishes’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, pp. 59–61. We find this idea voiced for example even in the Middle English translation of Porete’s, Mirror of Simple Souls. Rolle, Form of Living, 18.610–621. ‘If you will be well with God, and have grace to rule your life right, and come to the joy of love: this name Jesus, fasten it so firmly in your heart that it never comes out of your thought. And when you speak to Him, and through custom say, Jesus, it shall be in your ear, joy; in your mouth, honey; and in your heart, melody: for you shall think it joy to hear that name named, sweetness to speak it, mirth and song to think it. If you think of Jesus[’s name] continually, and hold to it firmly, it purges your sin, and kindles your heart; it cleans your soul, it removes anger and does away with lethargy. It wounds in love and fulfils charity. It chases out the devil, and puts out fear. It opens heaven, and makes [you] a contemplative. Keep Jesus in [your] memory, for it drives from the lover all vices and fantasies’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, pp. 53–54. See Chapter 1 on Evagrius and Deification. Cf. Andrew Kraebel, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Richard Ullerston’s Expositio Canticorum Scripturae’, The Mediæval Journal, 3/1 (2013), 49–82. In The Form of Living, Rolle also stresses the value of both the private recitation of psalms and biblical songs – a point which Rolle reiterates in the closing section of this epistle. He includes a discussion of the later at the end of his English Psalter also composed for Margaret Kirkeby. Clark, ‘Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator’; Alford, ‘Rolle’s “English Psalter”’. For further discussion of lectio divina, see Chapter 5.

124

Stilling the wandering mind

139 Rolle, Form of Living, pp. 19–20, 670–677 (my emphasis). ‘We shall endeavour to clothe ourselves in love, as iron or coal does in the fire, as the air does in the sun, as the wool does in the dye. The coal so clothes itself in fire that all is fire. The air so clothes itself in the sun that it is light. And the wool so substantially takes the dye that it is all like it. In this manner shall a true lover of Jesus Christ do: his heart shall so burn in love, that it shall be turned into the fire of love, and be as it were all fire; and he shall so shine in virtues that no part of him shall be murky in vices’. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, p. 59. 140 Bernard of Clairvaux makes similar claims, see Chapter 1 n. 100. 141 We see something similar in his Song of Songs Commentary when Rolle writes: ‘Sicut ergo ignis carbonem vivum in suam formam redigit et a foma carbonis mortui penitus deficere facit, ut iam ignis totus carbo videatur et tamen manet substancia carbonis; ita eterni amoris ignis animam tangens et penetrans paulatim in ea proficit, donec illam manetem tamen substancia in suam formam suamque gloriam plene mutaverit. Carbo vivus similis est igni; qui non vivus terre erat similis; et anima amore repleta dei representat similitudinem que non amans ymapinem portabat terrenam’: Rolle, ‘Comment on the Canticles’, 80: 10–18, p. 225. The idea of being taken into the Trinitarian relationship is not mentioned in The Form of Living, but is in Emendatio Vitae, chapter 11. 142 Ruusbroec, ‘Little Book of Explanation’, pp. 630–631. 143 As we saw in Chapter 2, similar claims are made by Evagrius. 144 On this see: Allen, English Works, pp. xxi–xxiv. 145 Rolle, Comment on the First Verses of the Canticle of Canticles, pp. 106–107. ‘Quod videns, perpendi ibi non mulierem, set diabolum in forma mulieris me temptasse. Verti, ergo, me ad deum et cum in mente mea dixissem, “O Ihesu, quam preciosus est sanguis tuus”, cruce imprimens in pectore cum digito qui quodammodo iam mobilis esse inciperet, et, ecce, subito totum disparuit et ego gracias deo egi, qui me liberavit. Deinceps vere Ihesum amare quesivi, et quanto in amore eius profeci, tanto nomen Ihesu michi dulcius et suavius sapiebat et eciam usque hodie non recedit a me. Ergo benedictum sit nomen Ihesu in secula seculorum’. ‘Comment on the Canticles’, 48.11–20. 146 Unlike Rolle, however, Evagrius was accused of paying too little attention to Jesus. See: Casiday, Reconstructing The Theology of Evagrius Ponticus, chapter 7. 147 The fact that Rolle’s story circulated independently of Rolle’s, Commentary on the Song of Songs – and was therefore either extracted from it or inserted into it – implies that it was seen as pertinent to Rolle’s contemplative status and viewed positively. Although Rolle has been accused of being excessively misogynistic, even by medieval standards, the form of the story seems to have precedents in the Desert Tradition. For example: Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of St. Antony, ch. 5, for a story of St. Antony overcoming the attacks of demons. Also notable is that in his Commentary on the Song of Songs Rolle associates his contemplative status with an ability to be in the presence of women and feel no arousal, signaling a level of apatheia that Rolle does not appear to lay claim to in Incendium Amoris, where he speaks of his previous difficulties in resisting women 148 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 315, n. 14. 149 Bernard McGinn, ‘‘Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority” (Review)’, Catholic Historical Review, 80/1 (1994), 141–142 at 142. 150 Riehle notes that the Monk of Farne also uses the term ‘deiformis’ adjectivally, The Middle English Mystics, p. 152, n. 100. 151 Psalm 81.1 in Richard Rolle, The Psalter of David and Certain Canticles with a Translation and Exposition in English, ed. by H. R. Bramley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884), p. 301. The psalm is about kingship, poverty and riches and how those who currently rule will be brought low and those who are poor

Stilling the wandering mind

152

153 154 155

156

157 158 159 160 161 162

125

will be raised up, themes also central to Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum. Rolle’s commentary does not seem to follow either Augustine or Peter Lombard closely. ‘demys’ from the Middle English verb ‘demen’ to judge: Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 29/01/17). On Arianism see: Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002). Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 29/01/17). Riehle, Middle English Mystics, p. 152, notes Rolle uses it in his Comment on the Canticles and Melos Amoris. Richard Rolle, Commentary on the First Verse of the Canticle, trans. by Robert Boenig, in Richard Rolle Biblical Commentaries: Short Exposition on Psalm 20, Treatise on the Twentieth Psalm, Comment on the First Verses of the Canticle of Canticles, Commentary on the Apocalypse (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984), pp.  56–141 at 129. Hanna appears to be mistaken when he states that a translation of this work has never been published: ‘Richard Rolle’s, Incendium Amoris’. As with a number of Rolle’s Latin texts, this translation is likewise based on just one manuscript, in this case MS Trinity College, Dublin, 153 ed. by Elizabeth M. Murray, ‘Richard Rolle’s Commentary on the Canticles’. ‘Nimirum illud cor est quasi ignis splendidus eterno amore funditus ignitur, ut iam non hoc quod fuit cernitur, set pocius, quodammodo deificatum videatur’, Rolle, ‘Richard Rolle’s Comment on the Canticles’, 69: 18–20, p. 205. Rolle, Le Chant d’Amour (Melos Amoris), vol. 1, 14, p. 206 (Richard Rolle, The Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by E.J.F. Arnould (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), 43.22–25). The parallel French translation reads: ‘La Divinité comble l’initie de ses délices. Pour un peu, on le dirait déifié. Il est rempli du Feu incréé. Il prend vraiment conscience, en homme fait, qu’il a vomi le poison, qu’il est justifié et ennobli par la jubilition’, p. 207. Albin translates the passage as follows: ‘All told, Divinity delights His deserving disciple – we can duly declare him deified to a degree, so far as he’s found proficient in unfabricated fever; now justified and majestic in jubilation, let the virtuoso victoriously verify that he’s vomited out venom like a valiant victor’ (The Melody of Love, p. 176). For a discussion of the difficulty of the style of Melos Amoris see: Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 171–191. Also see n. 142 above. See, for example, Faesen, ‘Relationality as the Hidden Side of the Apophatic’; Arblaster and Verdeyen, ‘The Reciprocity of Spiritual Love’. Arblaster, ‘“Becoming not God But What God Is”. For the argument that in The Form of Living union only occurs at the level of the will: Louise Nelstrop, ‘What Happened to the Fourth Degree of Love? Richard Rolle Hermit Preacher’, (see n. 119). Rolle, Fire of Love, p. 236. Rolle, Incendium, p. 255 (see n. 56).

4

Participation and deification in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love1

For faylyng of love on our party; therefore is al our travel.2

Introduction The above quotation, taken from chapter 37 of the Long Text of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, in many ways takes us to the heart of Julian’s soteriological schema: although we do not love God as we ought, God still loves us, and caught up in his love, we work, through God’s grace, that God might be all in all – in us; a process which for the Christian is begun in this life but will only be completed at the end of time. Julian’s writings explore how these seemingly incompatible ways of loving are brought into harmony. It is in the midst of such considerations that I find her laying claim to the concept of deification. Over the last 40 or so years scholarship on Julian has undergone what can only be described as a sea change. Writing in 1980, Morton W. Bloomfield suggested that Julian is not as sophisticated as her continental contemporaries where the heights of mystical union are concerned. It is the personal feel of her writings that he finds particularly difficult, which for him signify her inability to deal fully with God’s ineffability or transcendence: when one compares her with St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross or some of her roughly defined contemporaries in the Rhineland, I think that it is clear that she is not on their level of intensity and spirituality. One of the reasons for this inferiority is her rather personal attitude towards God. Intimacy, humaneness, and common sense are gained at the cost of majesty, ineffability, and transcendence.3 Such a description of Julian would be almost unrecognisable to today’s scholarship. Unlike Richard Rolle, who has been largely ignored, Julian of Norwich has come to be heralded as England’s first female theologian and a radical one at that.4 Julian was traditionally read as carefully operating within the bounds of the Church’s teaching. Nicholas Watson’s work has however opened the door to a less restricted reading of Julian, with many

Participation and deification

127

scholars now questioning whether Julian’s Mystical Theology is strictly speaking orthodox.5 Indeed, Bernard McGinn claims that Julian’s book challenges many of the norms of medieval theology concerning sin, suffering and soteriology, and perhaps for this reason received no official recognition in its day: She minimized, even broke with, many of the common teachings of late medieval theology and mysticism. Theologically, Julian insists that there is no wrath in God, that there is no disobedience in Adam and there is no need for satisfaction to God for sin. . . . Julian’s mystical theology was, and probably is, too original, even too radical, to receive any official status.6 Given this, it seems rather surprising that no recent study has revisited Wolfgang Riehle’s 1980s thesis that none of the Middle English Mystics advanced deification. What I hope to do in this chapter is to argue that Julian accepted the idea of deification but for her this did not entail either the possibility of a this-worldly perfection or absorption into the Trinity. Indeed, in arguing that Julian advocated deification, it is not my intention to make her seem more heterodox. As we noted in the first two chapters, deification is a belief that the Early Church Fathers employed as a means of clarifying Christology and soteriology and thus orthodox belief. Like the Patristic Fathers that we considered in Chapters 1 and 2, I find Julian touching on this idea of deification only to clarify the larger questions of how we understand the Incarnation and how and why Christ brings about our salvation. Using the idea in a similar way, Julian, to my mind, safeguards herself against the kind of allegations that were levelled against both Meister Eckhart – who was accused of having a disregard for the created order, and Peter Lombard – who for Bonaventure and Aquinas promoted an absorption of the soul into God.7 I will argue that deification, for Julian, is inseparable from Christ’s Incarnation yet, in this life at least, it is not automatic. This seeming paradox – another to be added to the many that we find central to Julian’s Revelations – is bound up for her with the complex ideas of substance and sensation and how both are now ‘in’ Christ. Indeed some of the ways in which Julian develops her thinking on how we are ‘in’ Christ brings her close to Aquinas’ and Bonaventure’s positions on deification. Although Julian does not make use of any special terminology to refer to deification, I hope to illustrate that she intertwines this idea into her sophisticated thinking on soteriology in ways that perhaps justify us referring to hers as a realistic approach. Indeed, I find certain similarities between how this idea operates within Julian’s thought and in the writings of Irenaeus and Cyril of Alexandria. To repeat the quotation from Russell referred to earlier in the book: ‘The realistic approach assumes that human beings are in some sense transformed by deification. Behind the latter use lies the model of methexis, or participation, in God’.8 It is this dual sense of transformation and participation that will particularly concern me in this chapter.

128

Participation and deification

We know very little about the author who composed the Revelations of Divine Love. The scribe of the Short Text tells us that the author was ‘A deuoute woman and her Name is Iulyan that is a recluse atte Norwyche and 3itt ys on lyfe. Anno domini millesimoccccxiii (1413)’. One of the manuscripts of the Long Text (Paris) ends with the following statement in Latin: ‘A book of revelations by Juliane an anchorite of Norwich, on whose soul God have mercy’. Paul Molinari notes that there are also a number of wills from this period that mention an anchorite named Julian attached to St. Julian’s church in Norwich. However, he comments that this makes it more than likely that the name attributed to her is a pseudonym of sorts, indicating that she took the name of the church to which she was attached – her own name dying away with her anchoritic enclosure.9 This raises the possibility that later anchorites who inhabited the same cell likewise took the name Julian; donations in some later wills may not therefore pertain to our Julian. The text of her Revelations of Divine Love gives us few further clues as to who she was, despite its personal feel. The Long Text simply tells us that the author was a woman, who had a series of sixteen visions when extremely unwell over four days in May 1373 at the age of thirty and a half, and that she spent the next twenty years at least meditating on them.10 The actual date in May differs between the manuscripts: Paris gives the thirteenth as the start of the visions and Sloane the eighth. From this we know that she must have been born in or around 1342 and if the scribe of the Short Text is to be believed, she was still alive in 1413.11 Scholars somewhat disagree over whether she had already become an anchorite at the time of her visions. The general consensus is that since her mother is recorded as present and she appears to have been visited by the parish priest, it is most likely that she was still a lay woman, becoming enclosed sometime after.12 Her relative anonymity has not, however, prevented intense speculation concerning Julian, especially in popular devotional books and websites, which abound with information about her – suggesting that she was a nun at Carrow, a teacher and spiritual advisor, and even mentioning tiny details, like how she owned a cat; an idea immortalised in the 1930s stained-glass window of the St. Saviour’s chapel in Norwich Cathedral.13 There is a quality to Julian’s writing with which modern readers identify, many expressing an intimate connection to her.14 Yet as Sarah Salih and Denise Baker have pointed out, these ‘legacies’ are mostly based on guesswork and are largely fictitious.15 Far from leaving us a detailed biographical footprint, we know almost nothing about Julian, probably not even her real name. What these stories reveal more than anything is that it is in the twenty-first century that Julian has finally gained fame amongst her ‘even Cristen’.16 We do not know exactly for whom Julian wrote nor whether she had a specific readership in mind. Based on extant manuscripts it would seem that in the centuries that followed their composition, her Revelations did not reach a large audience, yet that is not to say that Julian herself was unknown.17 One of the other Middle English Mystics, Margery Kempe, travelled from King’s Lynn to ask

Participation and deification

129

Julian’s advice about her own spiritual revelations.18 Whilst this could be evidence that Julian’s writing circulated, at least locally, Margery makes no mention of a book or text, and since the Winchester Anchorite was taken from her cell to advise royalty, it could simply be that both had a reputation for spiritual discernment.19 Julian’s work does not appear to have circulated widely. Only four manuscripts contain complete versions of Julian’s Revelations, while a fifth contains some extracts, two further manuscripts contain fragments. All the manuscripts are relatively late. The work survives in two versions. The Short Text is found in just one manuscript from the mid-fifteenth century: British Library Additional 37790 (normally referred to as ‘Amherst’). The Long Text exists in four manuscripts, written between the late sixteenth and the midto late seventeenth centuries; it is complete in three: Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds anglais 40 (commonly referred to as ‘Paris’), British Library Sloane 2499 and British Library Sloane 3750 (commonly referred to as ‘Sloane 1 and 2’ – the latter being a modernised version of the former). A long extract is also found in Westminster Archdiocesan Archives Manuscript.20 Additionally we have two fragments in St. Joseph’s College, Upholland21 and the Gasicoigne/More manuscript. Finally, there is an eighteenth-century manuscript that contains the Long Text: British Library MS Stowe 42.22 The Long Text exists in two variant forms of Middle English, reflecting the still nonstandardised use of English in the late medieval and early modern periods.23 There is scholarly disagreement as to whether Sloane 1 or Paris more closely resembles the English likely to have been Julian’s, with most holding the language in Paris to have been modernised.24 In this chapter and Chapter 6, I will quote from Sloane 1 but also refer to the notes in Colledge and Walsh’s critical edition which also makes use of Paris.25 It is also generally agreed that the Long Text post-dates the Short Text by some years; most scholars have, until recently, held that the latter was likely written down close to the receipt of the visions that underlie the Revelations.26 Vincent Gillespie however suggests that the Short Text may been a probatio text written just prior to enclosure.27 However, the Long Text arguably contains Julian’s fullest thinking on her visions, and will be the focus of this study. Virginia Woolf wrote that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’ and that in previous ages ‘In the first place, to have a room of her own . . . was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble’.28 It is certainly true that it was not easy for a woman to write in this period, she firstly needed to be sufficiently educated and secondly she needed the appropriate circumstances. It has traditionally been held that wealthier women could have become nuns, although there is some debate as to the status of nuns in England in the Later Middle Ages and more research is needed.29 On the continent women from the rising middle classes could become beguines. These were self-sufficient lay women who supported themselves through business ventures in order to live communally and pursue a life of prayer and chastity and who adopted a distinctive

130

Participation and deification

religious dress.30 Unlike nuns they were not enclosed and were free to exit their religious vocation and marry. Although this vocation ceased to exist in France in the fourteenth century, it continued, with some restrictions, in the Low Countries.31 Yet there is no evidence that there were beguines in England.32 Late medieval England saw instead a renewed interest in the more traditional vocations of anchoritism and eremitism. Whilst on the whole only men could become hermits, both men and women became anchorites.33 Anchorites took a vow of enclosure – they were not free to move around like hermits nor give up their enclosed life and marry as beguines were.34 Yet, as Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker suggests, at least on the continent, it was the closest a woman could come to being a priest.35 Although Mary Clay notes that there does not appear to have been a typical anchorhold – some were quite spacious and had more than one floor and possibly a garden, others appear to have been extremely small – the room of their own that such women received was often a tiny one attached to the wall of a church.36 Most appear to have had two windows, one that looked into the church so that if the anchoress knelt down in the dust she could see the elevation of the host at Mass. The other window looked out into the world and, as we noted above, there is some indication that anchorites were sought for advice on spiritual matters.37 Yet even though the anchoress could communicate verbally through the window with those outside her cells, there would probably have been a curtain covering the exterior window so that the anchoress could neither see out nor be seen; at least this is the advice given in the thirteenth-century Middle English guide for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse.38 That said, this text does not encourage anchoresses to act as spiritual advisers, a role which several clearly assumed.39 The anchoress was perhaps not entirely alone: there is some evidence that a maid visited daily to bring food, entering through a door; some maids possibly lived with the anchoress. Some anchoresses may have even lived in groups or at least within shared literary circles. Michelle M. Sauer points out that anchoresses were at the very least part of ‘imaginary communities’ through the collective prayers that structured their lives.40 A fifteenth-century anchoritic enclosure ceremony survives from Exeter. It states that a would-be anchorite stood before an opening in the wall that led to the cell into which she or he wished to be enclosed. The bishop then uttered the words, ‘if you want to go in, go in’, and, once she had entered, she would be bricked in, never to leave again. Indeed, from the point of entering the anchorhold, she was in effect dead, and a section from The Office of the Dead (the Commmendatio Anime) was said over her.41 Ancrene Wisse instructs anchoresses to dig their grave with their hands a little each day.42 However, having deliberately entered her grave she assumed a liminal position between the living and the dead, and thus one of spiritual authority. This still might not sound very appealing to a modern audience, but many women must have felt called to a religious vocation. There were also limited options for single women in this period; an alternative would be (re-)marriage, which might have appealed less. We are

Participation and deification

131

not sure of the exact dimensions of Julian’s cell. The one currently attached to St. Julian’s church in Norwich is a reconstruction.43 Yet it was in this setting, possibly in a very small cell, that Julian wrote the Long Text of her Revelations. Denys Turner, Joan Nuth and Bernard McGinn amongst others hold Julian’s Revelations to be an incredible work of theology.44 Turner goes so far as to call her a ‘systematic theologian’, albeit doing so with careful qualification.45 The extent to which we can apply the term ‘theologian’ to Julian will depend of course on what we take theology to have been in this period, since a woman in fourteenth-century England could not have been schooled or have taught in the universities like Meister Eckhart.46 In the thirteenth century, theology moved from a monastic to a scholastic setting, with which came a change in nature, such that Jean Leclercq has argued that we find two separate forms of theology in the later Middle Ages, monastic theology and scholastic theology.47 According to Leclercq, monastic theology was underpinned by lectio divina, whilst scholastic theology was driven by rationality and logic. It would seem to be the latter that John Gower has in mind when he defines theology as the highest branch of philosophy, writing in his Confessio Amantis in 1392: Theologie is that science/Which unto man yifth evidence/Of thing which is noght bodely/Whereof men knowe redely/The hihe almyhti Trinite/ who is o god in unite/Without ende and beginnynge/And creatour of alle thinge/ Of heven, of erthe and ek of helle/Whereof, as olde bokes telle.48 In contrast Leclercq writes of monastic theology, ‘Rather than speculative insights, it gives them [monks] a certain appreciation, of savoring and clinging to the truth and . . . to the love of God’.49 After some initial competition, by the latter half of the thirteenth century, it appears that scholastic theology had become the dominant form.50 Supportive of this would seem to be Ivan Illych’s suggestion that the practice of lectio divina falls into decline around the same time.51 Yet Leslie Smith has challenged the absolute nature of Leclercq’s taxonomy, pointing to the centrality of biblical exegesis within much scholastic theology.52 John Alford has likewise illustrated that the practice of lectio divina did not disappear in the later Middle Ages; it became a central tenet in vernacular texts.53 Indeed, far from scholastic theology becoming the only form of theology in this period, not only might it be argued that by the later Middle Ages scholasticism itself was in decline, Nicholas Watson has posited that the period signalled the development of another form of theology which has come to be termed ‘vernacular theology’.54 In England, new indigenous religious compositions emerged, and continental devotional and mystical texts were translated into Middle English. Although the majority of the latter appear to have been transmitted through Carthusian circles, there is some evidence to suggest that lay readers may have commissioned a few of these works, thereby making key

132

Participation and deification

continental accounts of mystical theology (albeit in modified form) available to a literate lay audience.55 Given the changes that are made to many Latin and vernacular texts in Middle English translation, the term ‘vernacular theology’ in this context is, however, often slightly derogatory, the connotation being of something less scholarly than its counterparts. Yet far from all ‘vernacular theology’ was unsophisticated. Indeed, where vernacular mystical theology is concerned much of it is deeply inventive, stretching the vernacular to its limits in its attempts to express complex theological ideas for which there were no vernacular terms. The sermons of Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls are cases in point, and although Nicholas Watson and Marlene Cré have argued that the Middle English Mirror is not as radical as its Latin and French counterparts, there would seem to be nothing simplistic about Julian’s Revelations.56 As a woman, Julian probably could not read Latin or have written in it. Yet it seems likely that she was literate in the vernacular. Although we do not know for certain that Julian did not have an amanuensis, the general scholarly consensus is that she wrote her Revelations in the vernacular herself; her claim to be ‘unlettered’ referring only to an inability to read and write in Latin.57 In her Revelations Julian explores doctrinal questions and concerns, such as the nature of the Trinity, the problem of sin and the role of Incarnation in human salvation, as well as humanity’s relationship to God. If we treat vernacular theology as a form of theology in this period, there seems little doubt that Julian is a theologian par excellence.58 I hope to show that Julian’s theological prowess is similarly confirmed when we look at her Revelations through the lens of deification. We find a spiritual trajectory that in the course of her discussions of Christology and soteriology embraces deification, offering a radical yet measured awareness of both the values and dangers inherent therein. Obviously, not having been educated in the academic schools, we should not expect Julian to write like a male scholastic. Yet seeming allusions to scholarly sources, coupled with the sophisticated nature of her mystical theology, has led critics to postulated that she knew something of this kind of theological writing.59 If so, we do not know how she became familiar with it. Perhaps through those charged with her spiritual care; perhaps her confessor thought it appropriate to expose Julian to the kinds of ideas that were being discussed in the universities; perhaps they were read to her and translated for her; perhaps because she was enclosed in this room of her own it seemed safe to do so? What is clear is that, even though she writes in the vernacular without the structure of scholasticism or the exegetical resources of monastic theology (the latter was simply not possible for a woman in this period and would have been deemed heretical),60 Julian deals with complex and topical theological concerns, doing so deftly. She may have gleaned some of these ideas from sermons, although her knowledge of key aspects of mystical theology seems rather detailed for this, especially since we have no evidence of sermons like those which Eckhart preached being delivered in England. Yet however she got hold of these ideas, it appears that in fourteenth-century

Participation and deification

133

England a woman did not need to go to university to have access to many of the finer points of the theology of her day, at least as these pertained to ‘mystical theology’. Indeed, Julian’s Revelations ought to give us pause for thought as to the extent to which theology proper was considered only the preserve of the universities in this period. Where mystical theology is concerned, both in England and on the continent, unschooled vernacular authors were respected, even women, and although Julian’s writing was not widely read, from a theological standpoint she must be considered one of the best examples of these vernacular traditions.61 Julian’s Long Text belongs, as Elizabeth Salter has demonstrated, to what Salter terms ‘the Life of Christ’ genre; a form of literature which promoted knowledge of and experiential engagement with Christ’s passion and was particularly prevalent in the later Middle Ages.62 Julian’s sixteen visions centre on witnessing the Passion. Julian explores the repercussions of such witnessing, ‘seeing’ what this means in terms of Christology and soteriology over the course of eighty-six chapters. In the midst of this seeing, she engages in such dense theological discussions that it is easy to forget that Julian insists that no matter what else she ‘sees’, the image of Christ’s bleeding head never leaves her. As she writes in chapter 7: ‘In all the tyme that he shewed this that I have said now in ghostly sight, I saw the bodyly sight lesting of the plentious bledeing of the hede’.63 Indeed, seeing for Julian is physically grounded, even as it is imaginatively and intellectually provocative. As will become clear, Julian uses the medium of imagistic devotion as a means of exploring what it means to say that we are redeemed in Christ; a form of theologising which Barbara Newman has referred to as ‘imaginative theology’.64 We will further explore the theological parameters of Julian’s thinking on imagination in Chapter 6, when we consider whether the Long Text might be deemed a form of sacred eloquence. In this chapter we will focus particularly on her approach to Christology and soteriology and how deification permeates her discussion of these ideas. Central to this are her complex accounts of indwelling, enclosure, and substance and sensuality. Close to the beginning of the Long Text, Julian tells us her book concerns ‘the Trinitie with the Incarnation and unite betwix God and man soule’.65 This statement encapsulates both the ideas of enclosure and indwelling which are so central in Julian’s Revelations. Indeed, Laura Saetveit Miles considers Julian’s visions an exposition on mutual indwelling: God in God, God in us, us in God. As Miles states, ‘mutual indwelling becomes the central means of comprehending the Trinity and its relationship to mankind’.66 Yet as Grace Jantzen comments, this does not mean that for Julian mutual indwelling is simply an attestation of mystical union. Julian also describes God ‘dwelling’ and ‘wonyng’ in the soul in order to clarify the fundamental nature of creation. As Jantzen puts it, [Mutual Indwelling] is not an identity achieved only in intense mystical experience of union or merging with the divine, but is a fact of our

134

Participation and deification personhood at all times [. . .] this identity is a fact of our creation, the fact of our nature, like all created natures, flowing forth from God and thus being his substance whether we experience this to be so or not.67

Indeed, the words that fill Julian’s Revelations are polysemous, meanings shifting in ways that Colledge and Walsh found exasperating, and the relationship between God’s created inhabitation of the soul, Christ’s transformation of humanity, mystical union and deification are equally difficult to prise apart. Although I will consider these elements somewhat separately, the constant enveloping of one element in another – Christ’s bleeding head, ‘gostly sight’, ‘bodily seeing’, ‘word formyd in [her] understonding’,68 underpinned by the image of enclosure which so informs her thinking on mutual indwelling – must remain foregrounded if we are to do even the smallest justice to one of them.69 As Frederick Bauerschmidt reminds us, ‘images of enclosure and envelopment run throughout Julian’s writing, and indeed the very substance of her writing seems to fold back upon itself’.70

1. Creation and indwelling Returning to Jantzen’s exposition of dwelling and indwelling quoted above, it seems clear that Julian holds God to be the ground of all that is. Julian writes that without God everything would fall into nothing. She famously makes this point in Chapter 5 where she discusses an image of a ‘hazelnut like ball’, which she sees lying in the palm of her hand. Julian finds herself amazed by its smallness and wonders why it does not simply disintegrate, concluding that it exists and continues to do so because God loves it: I lokid thereupon [a littil thing, the quality of an hesil nut . . . as round as a balle] with eye of my understondyng and thowte: ‘What may this be?’ And it was generally answered thus: ‘It is all that is made’. I mervellid how it might lesten, for methowte it might suddenly have fallen to nowte for littil. And I was answered in my understondyng: ‘It lesteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so allthing hath the being be the love of God’.71 This is an insight into created being that leads her to view God as Creator, guardian and sustainer of all that exists, without which everything would fall into nothing. It is one of several ideas that have led to comparisons between Julian’s thinking and that of St. Augustine.72 David N. Bell notes that Augustine held that things only exist because of their participation in God. As Bell puts it, ‘the centrality of the doctrine [of participation] lies in the simple fact that if a thing is, then it is not by virtue of its own being, but simply because it participates in True Being, which is God’.73 This idea is rooted in Platonism, where it is tied to emanation.74 However, Bell shows that Augustine transforms it in light of the doctrine of creation, postulating

Participation and deification

135

an intimate connection between the soul and God via participation. Augustine’s solution, as Bell points out, leads Augustine to hold that without God we would not be, and that what we are is contingent on our participation in God, through which we have access to God, even if we are unaware of this. As Bell states, ‘We are, and we are what we are, by participation in God, and by our participation in God we are (though we may not realise it) in direct and immediate contact with him’.75 Whilst all of creation to some extent participates in God, for Augustine such participation is hierarchical. Inanimate objects participate only in God’s being, sentient beings participate in both being and life, whilst only humanity participates in being, life and understanding (esse, vivere and intelligere).76 Humanity thus ‘participates in God more comprehensively than any other created thing’ and through such participation comes as close to identity with God as any creature can.77 It is this capacity that intelligere gives to humanity. However, for Augustine, as with other Church Fathers, the Fall led to a disruption of this participation. The Greek Father Athanasius of Alexandria, for example, argues that without God’s intervention, as a result of the Fall, ‘what had once been created rational and had partaken of his Word, should perish and return again to non-existence through corruption’.78 Participation in God is therefore fundamental to Augustine’s sense of what it means for humanity to be made in the image of God – it underpins both creation and redemption. Although Julian does not use the language of being made in the image of God,79 participation in God likewise appears to underpin her sense of what humanity is both in terms of creation and redemption.80 So, for example, in chapter 45, Julian tells us that our natural substance is in God and always has been, by which she seems to intend a deep dependence on God for humanity’s existence both now and always. As Julian states, ‘our kindly substance is now blisful in God, and hath be sithen it was made, and shall, without end’.81 Again she writes in chapter 54 that she could see no difference between God and our substance: ‘And I saw no different atwix God and our substance, but as it were al God’.82 She also writes in Chapter 5, in a manner reminiscent of Augustine, of how we have no rest because we fail to realise that everything we need resides in the ground of being that is God.83 Julian’s use of the words ‘substance’ and ‘kynd’ mentioned in the preceding passages is in no sense straightforward. She uses them both separately and in conjunction with one another. The same is true of another term ‘sensualitie’, which Julian claims to be a part of the human soul. Indeed, in chapter 54, offering what for Christopher Abbott comes close to the modern idea of person but is more complicated than this, Julian portrays the human soul as made up of substance and sensuality: ‘And anempts our substan[c]e and sensualite, it may rytely be clepid our soule’.84 Yet sensuality is also found in God, through Christ, who assumes human flesh. As she states in chapter 56, ‘The worshipfull cyte that our lord Iesus sittith in, it is our sensualite in which he is inclosid; and our kindly substance is beclosed in Iesus with the blissid soule of Criste sitting in rest in the Godhede’.85 Thus it would seems that for

136

Participation and deification

Julian, humanity differs from God neither in terms of kind, nor substance nor sensuality. The only difference that Julian seems to posit between God and the human soul is in terms of creation. As she states in Chapter 5: ‘And thus is the kynd made rytefully onyd to the maker, which is substantial kynd onmade’.86 Yet as we have seen, for Julian, as for Augustine, God infuses all of creation without which it would fall into nothing. Julian’s terminology is slippery and there is no absolute scholarly agreement as to what Julian means by the terminology of substance, sensuality and kind. Yet if we are to understand how deification fits within Julian’s thought we cannot bypass it. In what follows, I will try to tease out some of the different ways in which these terms can and have been understood and the implications of these readings.87 According to the Middle English Dictionary, the words ‘substance’ and ‘sensuality’ were in common usage by the fourteenth century. Neither are Old English terms, but first appear in Middle English via Old French. In Middle English ‘sensualite’ was a noun that was used to designate both capacities of the body and the body itself. The Middle English Dictionary defines it in three ways: ‘The natural capacity for receiving physical sensation understood as an inferior power of the soul concerned with the body’, ‘physical desire or appetite, lust; a sinful, passionate emotion; also, lustful, sinful nature’, and as a synonym for the body.88 In Julian’s usage it would seem to move between the first and third of these meanings but also extend beyond them. For example, in chapter 46 Julian writes that in this life our sensuality does not know what we truly are: ‘But our passand lif that we have here in our sensualite knowith not what ourself is’.89 From this it would seem that sensuality engenders a bodily form of knowing, or at least a form of knowledge that is dependent on our fallen human bodies. She also describes our sensuality to be in some sense mutable, for she contrasts it to our substance which is always in God, writing in chapter 45: God demyth us upon our kynde substance which is ever kept on in hym hoole and save without end; and this dome is of His rythfulhede. And man iugith upon our changeabil sensualyte which semyth now on, now other, after that it takyth of the parties and shewyth outward.90 Likewise, she also speaks in chapter 54 of how the Holy Spirit brings our ‘kynd substance’, that is, perhaps our natural substance, into our sensual soul, instilling virtues there: ‘our feith is a vertue that comith of our kynd substance into our sensual soule be the Holy Gost, in which all our vertuys comith to us – for without that no man may receive vertue’.91 Yet even though it is closely connected to the body, it is an inseparable part of our nature, having its ground in that nature through which we have access to the gifts of eternal life and so is inseparably wed to our substance which is in God. As she writes in chapter 55:

Participation and deification

137

And what tyme that our soule is inspirid into our body, in which we arn made sensual. . . . I vnderstond that the sensualite is groundid in kind, in mercy, and in grace; which ground abylith us to receive gefts that leden us to endles life; for I saw full sekirly that our substance is in God, and also I saw that in our sensualite God is; for the selfe poynte that our soule is mad sensual, in the selfe poynt is the cite of God, ordeynid to him from withouten begynnyng; in which se he commith and never shall remove it, for God is never out of the soule in which He wonen blisfully without end.92 What is more, Julian applies the term ‘kynd’ not only to the soul but also to God’s being, albeit doing so in ways that reinforce the soul’s dependence on God.93 Thus even though Julian somewhat distinguishes between our sensuality in which God is and our substance which is in God, it is not possible to prise kind, sensuality and substance apart in her thought. In Middle English ‘substance’ likewise held a variety of meanings. The Middle English Dictionary offers seven different senses with a number of variants within these. It could refer to ‘a type or kind of a thing’, including material things. It was also used to refer to the body and to parts of the body, as well as the soul. Additionally it was used of that which nourished or sustained something, of wealth and property and in reference to a large quality.94 In a philosophical context ‘substance’ had also come to be used as a technical term for the essence of a given entity, its life, and the ‘unchanging substratum in which accidents inhere’.95 The term could thus carry latent nominalist overtones.96 Nominalism was not a cohesive movement, but one common aspect was the belief that the essence of a given entity resides in itself.97 Such an understanding of substance would mean that union between two entities would necessarily result in either fusion or obliteration; from a Nominalist perspective two entities cannot co-exist within one essence.98 When we examine Julian’s use of the term ‘substance’ Denise Baker argues that Julian follows Augustine in employing ‘the term substance as a synonym for essence’,99 and that in this relation, Julian is one of the first to use the English term ‘substance’.100 However, this does not clarify exactly what Julian means by the term. Rob Faesen argues that Augustine uses the term ‘substance’ in a manner closer to the older idea of life force, that is, that which sustains and nourishes, rather than any Nominalist idea of essence. This is evidenced, he argues, by Augustine’s insistence on the dependency of all things on God without which everything would tend to nothing.101 We have already noted that Julian seems to hold to something similar. This would seem to be reinforced by her dual application of the term ‘substance’ to be both God and the soul. Around the same time that Julian is writing we begin to find other instances of the Middle English ‘substance’ being applied to both God and the soul.102 A number of Middle English writers differentiate human and divine substance on a linguistic level by adding the prefix ‘vp’ to substance when referring

138

Participation and deification

to God.103 Faesen has shown that we find a similar linguistic distinction in the writings of Jan van Ruusbroec, who differentiates between ‘wesen’ and ‘overwesen’ in Middle Dutch when speaking of the being of the soul and God respectively. However, Faesen notes that the Middle Dutch ‘wesen’ – unlike the Middle English ‘substance’ – does not carry a Nominalist sense of essence, it rather reflects the earlier Augustinian idea of existence or life force. As such, Faesen suggests that Ruusbroec is able to uses the difference in terminology to emphasise that the ‘wesen’ of the soul is dependent on the ‘overwesen’ of God for its continued existence.104 Julian, perhaps conscious of the Nominalist overtones in some uses of the Middle English term ‘substance’, instead uses the exact same terminology of both God and the soul, in this way clearly reinforcing the soul’s dependence on God. Guarding against any sense that this implies the absorption of the soul into God, at the same time Julian places emphasis on the soul’s creation. Thus while stressing that there is nothing between the soul and God, she draws attention to the fact that the soul is created and God is not, a point which to her mind seems to set them apart whilst also reinforcing their relationship. In terms of the former, we find Julian writing in chapter 46: God is the goodnes that may not be wroth for he is not but goodness; our soule [is] vnyd to hym, onchangable goodnes, and betwix God and our soule is neyther wroth nor forgifenes in his syte, for our soule is fulsomly onyd to God of his owen goodness, that atwix God and the soule may be ruth nowte.105 Although it is not clear whether the expression ‘in his syte’ is intended to qualify the idea that there is truly nothing between the soul and God, the discussion of goodness here seems to imply some level of substantial union. At the same time, writing a little earlier in chapter 44, we find Julian carefully emphasising that the soul is different from God in that it is created: ‘[God] is endles soverain treuth, endles severeyn wisdam, endles sovereyn love, onmade; and man soule is a creature in God, which hath the same propertyes made’.106 We saw the same in the passage from chapter 54 quoted earlier. This led Denys Turner to assert that ‘for Julian, the only way in which God and I can be said to be distinct is as the uncreated and the created are distinct’.107 Yet as Nuth reiterates on a number of occasions, Julian’s account of our spiritual anthropology ‘is not without ambiguity’.108 What is more, such enfolding notions of God and the soul do not appear to be recounted by Julian simply for their own sake. They are part of a consideration of soteriology, embedded in which is a complex Christology.

2. Restoration and indwelling There is no one place to begin a soteriological consideration of Julian’s Revelations. Although Denise Baker has shown that her Revelations operate

Participation and deification

139

as a book, it is a book in which one idea is enclosed within another. Kerrie Hide builds her discussion of Julian’s soteriology out of her vision of the hazelnut, Joan Nuth approaches it through the lens of Julian’s portrayal of Christ as Mother, Denys Turner’s starting point is Julian’s claim, in chapter 27, that ‘sin is behovely’ or as the Sloane texts put its ‘behovabil’, an adjective that means ‘appropriate’, ‘necessary’, or ‘helpful’.109 Turner interprets this to mean that Julian held sin to be ‘fitting’ in the Anselmian tradition of conveniens – albeit without any of the retributive attributes normally associated with Anselm’s thinking on salvation.110 Anselm uses this term when arguing that the Incarnation was necessary not because God could not have redeemed humanity in another way, but because this was the most fitting way to do so – an idea also echoed by Aquinas.111 In viewing Julian’s understanding of sin in this vein, Turner remarks on ‘the distinct absence, as medieval soteriologies go, of any trace of “retributionism”’,112 in Julian’s famous Exemplar of the Lord and the Servant, a parable which she received when she prayed for greater insight into her visions. This parable, which occurs in the latter half of the text from chapter 51 seems particularly helpful in thinking through how deification fits within Julian’s thought. Yet to echo Nuth, it would be an understatement to say that this section of the Revelations is not without its ambiguities. In the exemplar, Julian sees a servant and a Lord. The servant runs to do his Lord’s bidding and in his haste falls into a ditch from which he cannot extrapolate himself. We learn that the servant represents Adam and all of humanity but also Christ; Adam’s Fall parallels that of Christ, who falls into the virgin’s womb. The Lord represents God. The parallelisms certainly reinforce a closeness between humanity and God – one that we noted is central to Julian’s understanding of creation. The same would seem to be true of her understanding of redemption through her close pairing of Christ and Adam. Yet if the servant’s fall is also taken to be Adam’s, the parable poses a challenge for those who wish to attribute to Julian an orthodox account of sin. Colledge and Walsh suggest that Julian moves almost immediately from the idea of the Fall to Redemption, with the former playing little role in her thinking. However, in arguing that this little phrase, ‘sin is behovely’ means ‘fitting’, Turner proposes yet another pairing – that of the necessity of sin and the necessity of Christ. By this he means that since sin was required in order for Christ to come into the world, in this sense, sin is the most fitting reason for the Incarnation. If sin is of this ilk for Julian, then sin is such that it offers the most appropriate unfolding of humanity’s story. In what follows, I would like to pursue this a little further, as I believe that in suggesting this Turner offers us a possible window onto how to approach deification in Julian’s thought, one which somewhat accounts for the lack of blame that we find in this section of her Revelations and which gives the whole work an Irenaean feel, as we will further explore. One of images that Julian employs in the Exemplar that seems particularly helpful for this discussion is the image of the soul as a city. Speaking

140

Participation and deification

first of creation, Julian states that the soul was originally intended to be God’s dwelling place, a city fit for a king, the noblest part of creation. As a consequence of the Fall she paints this city descend into ruins and become a wilderness. However, to Julian’s mind God has not abandoned it. She sees God, Job-like, still sitting within fallen humanity, awaiting its redemption through Christ. Rather than fallen humanity sitting on the ground waiting for God, it is God who sits in the ruined city of fallen humanity waiting for us, refusing to abandon us despite our desert-like state: he made mans soule to ben his owen cyte and his dwellyng place, which is most plesyng to hym of al his werks; and what tyme that man was fallen into sorow and peyne he was not al semly to servyn of that noble office; and therfore our kind Fader wold adyten him no other place, but sitten upon the erth abeydand mankynd which is medlid with erth, till what time be his grace his derworthy Son had bowte ageyn his cyte into the noble fayrhede with is herd travel.113 Julian’s imagistic response to the idea of God’s continued presence within the soul brings to life the sense of love in which her Revelations is enclosed. Although human love fails, God’s remains constant, and it is this that sustains the soul and all of creation with it. Again there are parallels with Augustine. As a consequence of sin, although God is not absent, Augustine holds that God is unable to dwell in the soul unless it embraces its redemption in Christ. Bell posits indwelling as a sign of redemption for Augustine, of having actualised the ‘latent/potential participation’ in which we already share.114 Indeed, Bell notes that Augustine draws a distinction between God’s presence in the soul resulting from creation and a deeper engagement through indwelling.115 For Julian too, it appears that God, as a consequence of the Incarnation, dwells anew within soul. As the vision continues, in chapter 56 Julian sees Jesus takes his place within the soul, an idea that Julian likewise explores using the image of the soul as city: The worshipfull cyte that our lord Iesus sittith in, it is our sensualite in which he is inclosid; and our kindly substance is beclosed in Iesus with the blissid soule of Criste sitting in rest in the Godhede.116 Yet the lack of emphasis on sinfulness in this section of the Revelations gives the impression that Christ simply puts things back on track. To echo Mark Edward’s reading of Irenaeus that we explored in Chapter 1, Plan A having failed, Plan B is now unfolding.117 Rather than the sinfulness that underpins Augustine’s account of the Fall, Irenaeus seems to have viewed Adam and Eve as in some sense children in the garden of Eden, easily tricked and so not completely to blame. More important was that the Incarnation restored the possibility of sharing in the fullness of God – a state into which they were intended to grow. In this vein, Irenaeus views the soul as the ‘dwelling-place

Participation and deification

141

of God (AH 3.19.1; 3.20.2)’.118 Irenaeus stresses that through this process both the body and soul are redeemed. This is also true in Julian’s account. Notice, for example, the interplay between sensuality and substance in the passage above and how Jesus redeems then both. It is a point that she reiterates in chapter 55, where she describes Christ having saved us from a ‘duble deth’ – of both substance and sensuality.119 Nuth thus comments, on the incredible emphasis on both the goodness of creation and its restoration that we find in Julian’s Revelations. For Irenaeus, this process opens up the possibility of sharing in Christ’s qualities, particularly his incorruptibility, a ‘formula of exchange’ that stands at the heart of Irenaeus’ soteriology and amounts to deification. Not that it is complete in this life, but the relationship can begin to be entered into by the Christian in anticipation of the eschaton. Taken on its own the above passage from Julian’s Revelations could simply be read as a description of the Incarnation – Christ assuming human flesh. Yet set in the context of Julian’s earlier discussion of the ruined soul, the passage also illustrates the dependent and intimate relationship between the reformed soul and Christ, in which Christ transforms the soul, which here seem to be synonymous with the human person in all its parts. Christopher Abbott argues that this point is further reinforced when Julian returns to the image of soul as city in her final vision in chapter 67, again stressing how Jesus sits within the soul as within a kingdom.120 Given that Julian has stressed that without this restoration the soul would fall into nothingness, Julian too appears to tie the Incarnation to the possibility of sharing in God’s incorruptibility. In her Exemplar, this sense of sharing in Christ’s qualities is further reinforced by another image, that of clothing. As a consequence of the Incarnation, Julian writes of how Adam’s ‘foule dedly flesh’ is transformed through the Incarnation to a thing of beauty, possibly even divinity. No more does she see Christ dressed in Adam’s tattered tunic (as she did at the beginning of the Exemplar), instead she sees that, because of the Incarnation, Christ now wears white clothes, describing these as better than anything that adorns the Father. Indeed, she states that as a consequence of the Incarnation our humanity becomes Christ’s crown – the mark of his kingship:121 and our foule dedly flesh that Gods son toke on hym, which was Adams old kirtle, steyte, bare and short, than be our saviour was made fair now, white and bryte and of endles cleness, wyde and syde, fairer and richer than was than the clothyng which I saw on the Fadir; for that clothyng was blew, and Christs clothyng is now of a fair, semely medlur which is so mervelous that I can it not discrien . . . for it was shewid that we be his corone, which corone is the Fadirs ioye, tho Sonys worshippe, the Holy Gost lekeyng, and endless mervelous bliss to all that be in hevyn.122 Although clothing imagery could imply a separation between Christ and our flesh, which he puts on rather than inhabiting (and thus does not transform),

142

Participation and deification

the doubling of the servant in her exemplar as Christ, Adam and all humanity militates against this – Christ’s humanity cannot be extrapolated in Julian’s account from Adam’s. Indeed, Julian’s thinking on the redemptive effects of the Incarnation resonates not only with Irenaeus and Augustine but also with that of Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril has on occasion been accused of propagating a ‘space-suit Christology’ for the way in which his account leaves itself open to a reading of the Incarnation as Christ simply putting on humanity like an alien skin or item of clothing that does not properly belong to him, that is, with which he does not transformatively interact.123 However, as we discussed in Chapter 1, Edwards makes a convincing case for viewing Cyril’s Christology as far more transformative than this. For Edwards, Cyril holds Christ to be divine by nature, and therefore believes that when Christ assumes flesh that flesh is deified as a consequence of his divine nature. If this did not happen Christ would not be one whole person, having instead two incompatible natures – one human and the other divine, an idea that Cyril accuses Nestorius of holding. Edwards moots that it follows that just as Christ did not require a new nature to become human, but put on flesh, humans too do not need a new nature to become divine, they put on Christ. It seems worth repeating Edwards explanation in relation to Cyril: The simple and eternal nature of God admits no change or addition: in becoming flesh he makes his own a human body and soul – otherwise what would it mean to become? – but he does not acquire a new nature. Our flesh becomes his flesh, but it remains our nature, not his. Because our flesh is his flesh, it is deified – and therefore we are deified – in him.124 Although as we will further discuss, the inter-relationship between our nature and God’s is perhaps more complicated in Julian’s account, Julian nonetheless appears to hold to something similar. By assuming our ‘foul dead flesh’ Christ not only revivifies it, he makes it ‘fairer and richer than was the clothing which I saw on the Fadir’. The implication is that Christ in some sense divinises our flesh.125 Such a reading would seem to be reinforced by Julian’s claim that God now comes to dwell in us as his heavenly throne: ‘Now sittith not the lord on erth in wilderness, but he sittith in his noblest sete which he made in hevyn most to his lekyng’.126 This sense that we are raised to heaven rather than simply remaining on earth is suggestive of a deeper level of engagement with God than that which is wrought through creation. None of this is to imply that Julian was directly influenced by either Irenaeus or Cyril. There is no evidence that Irenaeus circulated and Daniel Anlezark has argued that Cyril was only directly known in England in the Early Middle Ages, evidence for which is found in the writings of Bede and Alcuin of York.127 Yet the subtle movement in her treatise concerning how Christ restores our substance through his interaction with our

Participation and deification

143

sensuality, is I think nonetheless elucidated by comparison with the Christology that Edwards finds at work in Cyril’s account, as well as that which we find within the writings of Irenaeus – both of whom offer what Russell describes as realistic accounts of deification; Cyril’s clarifying the embryonic ideas that we find in the writings of Irenaeus. Notable in this regard is the emphasis that Julian places on Christ being fully human.128 Whilst this might seem obvious, the sense in which God can also be human was a pivotal concern within the Early Church, one which the Fathers used deification to explicate – in which relation they stressed that only Christ was divine by nature. Like Cyril and Irenaeus, Julian seems to stress that our salvation depends on Christ being fully human in a similar regard. She makes this point with reference to the body that he receives from Mary in chapter 57, in which she also stresses that Christ had a sensual soul: For in that ilk tyme that God knitted Him to our body in the Maydens womb, He toke our sensual soule; in which takyng, He us al haveyng beclosid in Him, He onyd it to our substance, in which onyng He was perfect man. For Criste, havyng knitt in Him ilk man that shall be savid, is perfit man.129 This complex passage affirms not only Christ’s full humanity but describes how he encloses us in his humanity, in so doing becoming the perfection of all humanity. This is clearly more than simply a description of the nature of the Incarnation. A soteriological motif underpins it, one which combines an image of redemption with the potential deification of humanity in Christ, since Christ gives to humanity his perfection. It is perhaps notable that, several chapters earlier, Julian stresses the perfection of Christ’s humanity, writing that Christ’s soul is the most noble thing created: Wherefore he will we wettyn that the noblest thing that eve[r] he made is ma[n]kyng, and the fullest substance and heyest vertue is the blissid soule of Criste.130 So it is that when discussing in this chapter the ‘subtle’ knot which knits Christ’s humanity and divinity together, through which Christ’s soul is made ‘endlesly holy’, Julian is also speaking of a union into which we are brought.131 This parallelism is further affirmed when Julian writes that just as Mary is Christ’s mother, so Christ is our mother, since he brings about our rebirth.132 Indeed, for Nuth, such mothering imagery brings us to the heart of Julian’s soteriology.133 This sense that not only has Christ come to inhabit us but that we have come to dwell in Christ is also explored a little earlier in this section of the text, in chapter 55, where Julian writes of how, post-Incarnation, those who will be saved never leave Christ’s divinised flesh. They are taken up into heaven in Christ’s resurrected body there to commune with the Trinity:

144

Participation and deification And thus Criste is our wey, us sekirly ledand in his lawes, and Criste in his body mytyly berith up into hevyn; for I saw that Crist, us all havand in him that shal be savid be him, worshipfully presentith his Fader in hevyn with us; which present ful thankfully his Fader receivith and curtesly gevith to his Son, Iesus Criste; which geft and werkyng is ioye to the Fader and bliss to the Son and likyng to the Holy Gost. And of althyng that to us longith, it is most likyng to our lord that we enioyen in this ioy which is in the blisfull Trinitie of our salvation.134

Such imagery could be read on a purely physical level. As Caroline Walker Bynum reminds us, the belief that Christ ascended bodily into the Godhead was commonly held in the Middle Ages, and Julian places great emphasis on Christ’s physicality as we have seen, stressing that we are physically connected to Christ through his resurrection body in which form he ascended into the Trinity.135 As she also states in chapter 52, ‘he is with us in hevyn, very man in his owne person us updrawand’.136 Such is Christ’s intimate connection to humanity that she continues, ‘he is with us in erth us ledand . . . he is with us in our soule endlesly wonand, us reuland and yemand’.137 However, it would surely be a mistake to limit Julian’s sense that we are in Christ to a physicalist reading. In the next chapter Julian contrasts the soul and the body. The soul, she states, is immaterial unlike the body that is made of matter. As such there is nothing (no-thingness) that separates the soul from God, even though she has just stressed Christ’s redemption of our bodies. As she puts it, And thus I vnderstond that mannys soule is made of nought, that is to sey, it is made, but of nought that is made, as thus; whan God shuld make mans body he tooke the slyppe of erth, which is a matter medlid and gaderid of all bodly things, and thereof he made mannys bodye; but to the makying of manys soule he wold take ryte nought, but made it. And thus is the kynd made rytefully onyd to the maker, which is substantial kynd onmade; that is, God. And therefore it is that ther may, ne shall, be ryte nowte atwix God and mannys soul.138 As we noted above, for Julian, physical and spiritual vision are inseparably intertwined. Thus it is that when she comes to write in chapter 55 that being in Christ the soul comes to share in the joy of the Trinity, she is also speaking of an indistinction between God and the soul that operates at a deeper level, one which is made possible by Christ’s act of redemption. This passage follows close after Julian’s discussion of Christ’s enclosure in Mary and ours in Christ. In chapter 54, Julian writes of our enclosure in God and the lack of difference that this entails, even though she claims that we are not one and the same. It seems worth quoting it in its larger context of enclosure: And I saw no difference atwix God and our substance, but as it were al God, and yet myn vnderstondyng toke that our substance is in God:

Participation and deification

145

that is to sey, that God is God, and our substance is a creture in God; for the almyty truth of the Trinite is our fader, for he made us and kepith us in him; and the depe wisdam of the Trinite is our moder in whom we arn al beclosid; the hey goodnes of the Trinite is our lord and in him we arn beclosid, and he in us. We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us: almytyhede, al wisdam, al goodnes: on God, on lord.139 Just as in the earlier passage where Julian states that the soul is inseparable from Christ, but stresses that it is nonetheless distinct in that the soul is in Christ, here Julian states that there is nothing between the soul and God except that the soul is in God, emphasising its creatureliness. Enclosure is key. Yet the danger of enclosure is, as Cary Howie points out, the possible collapse of one into another. Although Julian militates against this to some extent with her clothing metaphor that only enwraps the skin, since she like Cyril seems to hold that Christ divinises our flesh, the danger of blurring the distinction between the soul and God nonetheless remains. Yet, as Howie points out, Julian safeguards the soul against absorption into God with this little word ‘in’. Howie reminds us that, according to Julian, all things would fall back into nothingness without God who sustains all that is. In a sense therefore everything is God, God permeates all that is, nothingness is the alternative. And yet there is a huge difference between the nothingness that God is and the nothingness into which creation would fall without God, otherwise what would it mean to suggest that God sustains things preventing them from falling back into nothingness. Howie point out that there is no tautology – God being no thing and nothingness are not the same. Creatures need sustaining, but God’s no thingness does not. As Howie puts it, there is a difference within nothingness: thus an uncreated difference. That by which creatures are sustained is God, no thing; that into which they would fall again, but for God, is nothing. To ‘fall to nowte’ begins to sound suspiciously – or perhaps, beautifully – like falling into God, but God as self-differing, as excessive and at least proto-relational.140 God is self-sustaining. Although the preceding passage from Julian appears to suggest ‘reciprocal enclosure’,141 as Howie comments, it is God our Father who makes and keeps us, we do not do so in return. Howie asks, ‘How is it possible for Julian to set up this relationship of enclosive reciprocity, as though “in” God and “in” the soul were the same thing, and yet to preserve the creature’s unique status, outside of God, as created?’142 He responds by suggesting that what Julian is alluding to here and defending against is not univocity of being – in which God and the soul share in the same essence – but univocity of space. Created space is different from divine space and as such sets the creature apart from God. Our createdness operates on a spatial

146

Participation and deification

level, God does not; God and humans thus inhabit space differently – whilst two creatures cannot occupy the same space, God and creatures can. As Howie helpfully puts it: Space [is .  .  .] the sign – but not just the sign; more like the material inscription or practice – of createdness, in which the local difference between creatures (where it is impossible for two creatures to be in the same place at once) participates in and elaborates a more fundamental difference: that between creatures and their creator, who in this way is not a transcendental, not the greatest extremity or intensification of being-inspace, but precisely transcendent. So when Julian goes on to show . . . the mutual enclosure of Trinity and soul, it is nonetheless with the explicit purpose of inscribing an ontological difference into seamless chiasmus.143 What separates the soul from Christ is ironically its inseparable dependence on Christ; for the soul depends on Christ for the indistinction that recreation gives it. The important word is ‘in’; the soul is a creature in God.144 As Howie clarifies, ‘“In” names not a quality of the soul – as though the soul could be thought apart from its being in God – but that mark of its ontological distinctness from its divine source’.145 It is being ‘in’ Christ that we become acceptable to God the Father and share in the joy of the Trinity – indistinguishable from God but still a creature in God. This is perhaps what Turner has in mind when he states that the only difference that Julian sees between God and the soul is that which there can be between the created and the uncreated. This is not to say that Julian’s soteriology does not afford our sensual nature an incredibly elevated status. We see this dimension at work not only in the passage from chapter 52, and the emphasis that Julian places on space as that which safeguards the ontological difference between us and God but also in Julian’s discussion of her vision of the three heavens. In contrast to St. Paul’s vision in which Paul did not know whether he was in or out of his body when taken to the third heaven, Julian sees all three heavens in the humanity of Christ. Indeed, it is as such that she sees the property and work of the Father: In this felyng my vnderstondyng was lifte up into hevyn, and there I saw thre hevyns, of which syght I was gretly mervelyd. And thow I se thre hevyns, and all in the blissid manhode of Criste, non is more, non is less, non is heyer, non is lower, but evyn lyke in blis. . . . I saw in Criste that the Fader is.146 Although we find passages in Julian’s account that suggest that our sensuality limits our capacity to realise our true nature in God, at the same time Julian stresses the goodness of our created state, and its return to that

Participation and deification

147

goodness in Christ through which our humanity comes to share in Christ’s divinity. This is a feature of her thought that somewhat sets her apart from Augustine, who emphasises the sinfulness of human corporeality.147 It is this that, in part, gives Julian’s writings an Irenaean feel, for she emphasises the goodness of creation over and above simply safeguarding the soul against the idea that it is absorbed into God. Whilst Julian’s stress on the goodness of creation may be solely derived from her careful ruminations over the Incarnation, this and the emphasis that she places on space as that which distinguishes the soul from God, are also possibly developed in response to accusations of heresy that were circulating on the continent in relation to ideas of mystical union and deification. Bernard McGinn has noted that a number of continental mystics, including Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch and Marguerite Porete, promote what he calls ‘union without distinction’ in this life.148 Although John Arblaster argues that in a love union there is always distinction, he has shown that Hadewijch and Porete, who were both influenced by William of St. Thierry, and William himself, all advance a belief in deification that is radical in nature.149 As we noted in Chapter 1, for Arblaster, the crux of William’s understanding of deification appears to be that the Holy Spirit, which is the love of God, dwells within the soul. As human and divine love unite, God comes to loves Godself in the soul. As William writes, For the love of God, or the love that is God, the Holy Spirit, infusing itself into the person’s love and spirit, attracts the person to itself; then God loves himself in the person and makes it, its spirit and its love, one with himself.150 The effect is deifying union. Arblaster shows that both Hadewich and Porete likewise claim to love God with the love through which God loves Godself. They, like William, do not draw a distinction between the soul’s love for God and God’s love for the soul, an idea which, as we discussed in Chapter 1, is pantheistic-sounding.151 According to McGinn, the thirteenth-century Middle Dutch mystic, Hadewijch even professes the ability to speak ‘out of her precreational status in God’ where she has ‘an exemplary or virtual existence’.152 Describing such a level of union in her twelfth vision, we find Hadewijch laying claim to the motherhood of God and, as McGinn notes, elevating herself above the Virgin Mary.153 It is for this reason that McGinn argues that Hadewijch enters into union with God without distinction.154 William’s thinking on how the soul comes to participate in the Trinitarian relationship, along with that of Hadewijch and Porete, is close to that of Peter Lombard, who William likewise possibly influenced.155 As we also noted in Chapter 1, both Bonaventure and Aquinas responded to Peter Lombard/William’s position in the thirteenth century. Both do so by placing an emphasis on the creatured nature of the soul, stressing, as Geetjan

148

Participation and deification

Zuijdwegt puts it in relation to Aquinas, that ‘charity is a created habitual form in the soul of the believer, which enables the free and full participation of human beings in the divine love’. For Bonaventure and Aquinas, sharing in the love of the Trinity does not entail some kind of ‘(quasi)hypostatic union’, a position which Zuijdwegt notes Richard Fishacre had postulated in relation to Lombard’s thinking. Bonaventure instead maintains a distinction between uncreated grace (the Holy Spirit) and created grace (a disposition or habitus within the soul).156 According to Bonaventure, the Holy Spirit creates this habitus within the soul through which the soul is made receptive to the Holy Spirit, who then comes to dwell within the soul as in a temple.157 As Bonaventure writes in his Breviloquium: If then, the rational spirit is to become worthy of eternal happiness, it must partake of this God-conforming influence. This influence that renders the soul dei-form [deiformis] comes from God, conforms us to God, and leads to God as our end.158 As we see from this quotation, Bonaventure claims that this process in some sense deifies the soul – it makes it Godlike (dei-form). However, there is no confusion between the soul and God because the soul receives an influence or energy that emanates from God, not God in all God’s essence. The soul is nonetheless conformed to God in terms of its God-created disposition or habitus. As Bonaventure clarifies, Not that God comes down in the terms of the immutable divine essence, but rather through an influence that emanates from God. Neither is the soul lifted up in a physical sense, but by virtue of a habit that renders it conformed to God.159 In this passage Bonaventure makes a distinction between created grace (habitus) and uncreated grace (the Holy Spirit), which allows him to argue both for deification and that the deiform soul never possesses the essence of God – it only possesses God’s effects. There is no obliteration of the soul and pantheism is avoided. Julian, like William and Bonaventure, draws attention to the working of the Holy Spirit within the soul. She makes this point, for example, in chapter 48, where she writes that the Holy Spirit dwells within the soul and that by grace it brings it peace and makes us obedient: ‘But our good lord the Holy Gost, which is endless lif wonnying in our soule, ful sekirly kepyth us, and werkyth therein a peas and bryngith it to ese be grace and accordith to God and makyth it buxom’.160 However, although on one level it could be claimed that for Julian the soul loves God with the love that is the Holy Spirit, Julian also differentiates between the love of the soul and the love of God in terms of the soul’s creation. We saw this in a number of the quoted

Participation and deification

149

passages. It is a point that she likewise stresses near the end of her book, writing in chapter 84: Thus charite kepith us in feith and in hope; and hope ledith us in charitie. And at the end al shall be charite. I had iii manner of vnderstonding in this light, charite: the first is charite onmade; the second is charite made; the iii is charite goven. Charitie onmade is God; charite made is our soule in God; charite goven is vertue; and that is a gracious geft of werking in which we loven God for himselfe and ourselves in God and that God loveth for God.161 In this passage, although Julian speaks of sharing in the love of the Trinity in ways that resonates with William’s position, she also distinguishes between ‘love unmade’ and ‘love made’ and crucially refers to charity as that which is given, and as a virtue, an idea close to Bonaventure’s notion of habitus in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Thus, when Julian holds that we share in the fellowship of the members of the Trinity, it seems fair to say that she suggests that we remain distinct. Faesen and Arblaster equally defend William (and Lombard) on the grounds that love acts as a means of distinguishing the soul from God. Likewise examining Ruusbroec’s account of mutual indwelling, Faesen points out that love cannot exist without an object. He concludes that mystics like Ruusbroec and William of St. Thierry who maintain a union of love cannot therefore, at the same time, be accused of holding that the soul completely disappears into God.162 If this were to happen love would be extinguished. For Julian too both the union that the soul experiences from creation and that which occurs as a consequence of the Incarnation are driven by love – a point which Nuth stresses.163 However, since to love God with the love through which God loves Godself could imply that one becomes as another member of the Trinity (even if one were still a distinct person), Julian appears to add the additional caution that we are ‘in’ God. Like Bonaventure and Aquinas, she does not therefore advocate an identity of substance in the sense of holding that the soul is able to share in the substance of the eternal logos – a position which Athanasius opposed and which Cyril also appears to have rejected.164 Rather, it is in Christ that our humanity is divinised, without losing its true nature. Thus although there is no visible or qualitative distinction between God and the soul, for Julian the difference that there is between God and soul is fundamental. For as Julian specifies, to be in God is to be a creature. As such, it does not seem that Julian can be accused, as Eckhart was, of promoting union as fusion, in which a lack of respect is given to the reality of creation;165 this despite Julian holding that what we are is contingent on God rather than being an entity in our own right. When this is coupled with the womb-like imagery of enclosure that she employs throughout her Revelations, to which I have drawn attention, there would seem to be good grounds to argue that Julian’s

150

Participation and deification

Revelations conveys the idea that God operates within us as in a created habitude. The sense that we are within Christ as in a womb is clearly suggested by the following passage in chapter 55, for example: And all the gefts that God may geve to cretures, he hath geven to His Son Iesus for us; which gefts he, wonand in us, hath beclosid in him into the time that we be waxen and growne, our soule with our body, and our body with our soule, neyther of hem takeing help of other, till we be browte up into stature as kynd werkyth; and than, in the ground of kind with werkyng of mercy, the Holy Gost graciously inspirith into us gifts ledand to endless life.166 Here Julian expresses the idea of spiritual growth through the image of us being enclosed in Christ as in a mother’s womb; he will nourish us so that we may lay claim to our true nature. Through this image she explores what it is that Christ transfer to the Christian as well as how the Holy Spirit is also at work within us leading us into everlasting life. This sense of a womblike enclosing in God is even more intensely expressed in the previous chapter, where Julian writes: and the depe wisdam of the Trinite is our moder in whom we arn al beclosid; the hey goodnes of the Trinite is our lord and in him we arn beclosid, and he in us. We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us: almytyhede, al wisdam, al goodnes: on God, on lord.167 Although this passage and other similar ones could indicate a radical pantheistic sense of being taken up to share in the joy of the Trinity, read together with the emphasis that she places on our redeemed humanity, Julian’s understanding of the soul’s relationship to God bears similarities to the discussions of deification that we find in the writings of Aquinas and Bonaventure.168 There is, however, a potential problem that could undermine this nonpantheistic interpretation of Julian’s soteriology. This arises in relation of what Julian calls ‘the godly will’.

3. Potential problems: the godly will As Denise Baker amongst others has commented, Julian states that there is a godly will in every soul that will be saved that has never consented to sin nor ever will. She writes, for example, in chapter 37, For in every soule that shal be savid is a godly wil that never assentid to synne ne never shal; ryth as there is a bestly will in the lower party that may [w]illen no good, ryth so ther is a godly will in the

Participation and deification

151

heyer party, which will is so good that it may never willen yll, but ever good.169 Baker suggests that Julian’s statements about the godly will are simply a restatement of the assertion that God is the ground of the soul in the tradition of synderesis.170 However, if there is that which is in the soul that does not consent to sin, it is unclear how our humanity differs from Christ, why we therefore need him, and so in what sense we truly differ from him in our relationship to the Trinity – the very problems that, as we noted in Chapter 1, led Early Church Fathers to resort to deification.171 A number of contemporary scholars have condemned Julian’s assertions about the godly will as heretical. On the one hand, it has been suggested that Julian attests to the level of fusion between God and humanity that seems implied in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror, and for which Porete was burnt at the stake in 1310.172 On the other hand, David Aers has argued that this statement evinces an unconscious Manichaeism, implying a duality within humanity between sinful and sinless aspects.173 In terms of the idea of fusion, it should be noted that Julian does not state, as Eckhart does, that there is something uncreated in the soul, such that if the whole soul were so configured it would be equal to God.174 As we have noted, Julian flatly denies that any element of the soul is uncreated. It is its very createdness which distinguishes it from God. Julian is clear that the soul is a creature ‘in’ God rather than being God as God is, this even though the soul is not essentially distinct from God in the way that one thing is from another. It is precisely this point that Julian appears to be making when she writes about the godly will in chapter 53. Here she specifically stresses that we have this godly will in Christ. As we noted, being in Christ signals that our nature is created. It is indicative of our dependence on Christ for all that we have and are and yet at the same time evokes a spatial metaphor to emphasise difference: in which shewing I saw and understode ful sekirly that in every soule that shal be save is a godly wille that never assent to synne, ne never shall; which wille is so good that it may never willen ylle, but eve[r]more continuly it will good and werkyth good in the syte of God. Therefore our lord will we knowen it in the feith and the beleve, and namly and truly that we have all this blissid will hole and safe in our lord Iesus Christe; for that ilke kind that hevyn shall be fulfilled with behoveth nedes, of God’s rythfulhede, so to be knitt and onyd to him that therin were kept a substance, which myte never, ne shuld be, partid from him; and that throw his owne good will in his endless forseing purpose.175 This passage seems to offer Julian’s readers important insight into how the will can will perfectly – a problematic idea, which Aquinas held to be impossible. For Julian, it can be so in Christ. This enables some level of perfection, even as the soul remains distinct.

152

Participation and deification

This distinction is arguably reinforced by a statement that follows directly after the discussion of the godly will in chapter 37, where Julian writes about how our love fails. We noted that elsewhere in her Revelations Julian differentiates between created and uncreated love. In chapter 37 we find a suggestion of something comparable. Along similar lines to Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian writes that in this life our love will never be perfect because of a failure of love on our part. She states: Which wil is so good that it may never willen yll but ever good; and therefore we arn that he lovith, and endlesly we do that that hym lykyt. And this shewid our lord in the holehed of love that we stonded in in his syght: ya, that he lovith us now a[s] wele whil we arn here as he shal don what we arn there afore his blissid face. But for faylyng of love on our party, therefore is al our travel.176 Although Julian holds that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit, ‘we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost . . . and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us’,177 and so, in a sense, the love through which we love God is not our own – nonetheless our love is made, whilst the love of the Holy Spirit is unmade, an idea which would seem rather to echo Bonaventure’s distinction between created and uncreated grace. It is exactly in an attempt to speak of such non-reciprocal relationality that Turner argues many medieval mystical writers turned to the language of the Song of Songs, which gave them the capacity to write of a unequal marriage that allowed union with God without fusion.178 At the same time, the importance that she places on mutual indwelling also indicates that she is not unconsciously advancing a form of Manichean dualism. Her use of mutual indwelling emphasises both the relationality of her spiritual anthropology and the integration of our humanity into Christ’s, thereby reinforcing a picture in which substance and sensuality are united both in our nature and in Christ. Returning to Baker’s suggestion, we might concede that Julian’s argument concerning the Godly will is dependent on the idea of synderesis in that our union with God stems, in the broadest sense, from our creation. But in attaching it to our redemption Julian extends the concept. Julian distinguishes between God and the soul by stressing that the soul is in Christ, that is, created. One nagging issue nonetheless remains, that is, whether Julian advocates some kind of automatic mystical union, which in her case would perhaps seem to imply automatic deification?

4. Fundamental ontology and mystical union As we have seen, Julian holds that God has dwelt in the soul from creation and that the Holy Spirit infuses it post-Incarnation. Several scholars have argued that in Julian’s writing this amounts to universalism.179 A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of this chapter, but whether or not this is

Participation and deification

153

Julian’s position, it is perhaps worth pausing to recall our brief discussion of deification and universalism in Chapter 2. As we noted, Illaria Ramelli argues that most Early Church Fathers held to some form of universal salvation. In our discussion of Origen, we noted that he held the idea of universal salvation to be biblical and he looked forward to a time in which all evil would be wiped away and God would be ‘all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15.28). He reasoned that since sin will be destroyed at the eschaton, sinners will stop being sinners, and all will be saved. Yet at the same time, he maintains that an anticipation of the natural effects of salvation break into the present life of those who pursue virtues. For Origen, this is brought about by participation in the Trinity, in and through Christ. Ramelli notes that apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις), which she takes to means universal salvation in the thought of many Church Fathers, is strongly correlated by these writers with deification. In Origen’s case she argues that the two ideas are basically identical – both ἀποκατάστασις and θέωσις (theosis) are anticipated in the lives of Christians but await their full realisation.180 Ramelli’s reading of Origen’s account is helpful in that it indicates that it may be a mistake to differentiate between the latent effects of salvation and mystical experience in an absolute sense. Salvation, wrought through the Incarnation, far from precluding deification is that which underpins it. Both can be anticipated in this life, and are in the lives of Christians, even though they find their fulfilment in the next, when universal salvation may be possible. It is in this regard that John Scotus Eriugena argues that hell is state of mind through which some people will perpetually exclude themselves from heavenly bliss despite God being all in all. A similar idea also underpins C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.181 Although Julian has a more positive view of the body that Origen, a sense of progression towards a point of no sin, when all will be well, is also central to her soteriology. At certain moments, the overcoming of sin appears as if realised, and indeed since God is timeless and as such the work of the Incarnation complete, in a sense this is true.182 As Julian states: And than shall it verily be made knowen to us his menying in these swete words wher he seith: ‘Al shall be wele; and thou shal sen thyselfe that al maner thyng shal ben wele’.183 Yet there is also a tentativeness and a grasping towards God in this life for Julian.184 For example, at the beginning of chapter 46 she says that the nearer we come to eternal life, the more we will long for God ‘both be kynd and be grace’.185 While emphasising that there is a natural propensity in the soul that tends towards God, Julian also constantly stresses the role played by grace (i.e. the Holy Spirit). That the soul continues to long in both a natural sense and in terms of grace suggests growth and so militates against the idea that she advocates automatic mystical experience – at least in this life. This would seem to be reinforced by the emphasis that she places on prayer.

154

Participation and deification

In chapter 43 Julian writes that despite being like God in both nature and substance, prayer is still essential: Prayer onyth the soule to God; for thow the soule be ever lyke to God in kynde and substance, restorid be grace, it is often onlyke in condition of synne on manys partye. Than is prayor a wittnes that the soule wil as God will.186 In this passage we see the importance that she places on prayer as a means of overcoming the effects of sin. Despite all the work that God has done and despite all being done by God’s grace (i.e. the Holy Spirit), there is still work to be done – at least in this life. The Christian must work to conform their will to God’s, even though the disposition and the capacity are both given as a gift from God. From this it would seem – despite mutual indwelling and the very real connection between God and humanity both from creation and wrought through the Incarnation – in this life mystical union is not automatic. Even whilst advocating a very positive view of the body post-Incarnation, she holds that our sensuality often prevents us from realising who we truly are. This leads Julian to place an emphasis on engagement with a forgotten but now restored fundamental ontology, suggesting that mystical union is not entirely equivalent to the latent ontological transformation wrought through the Incarnation.187 Augustine likewise holds that although the fullness of union is reserved from the next life, it is intended that the soul will grow in its realisation that God is in everything and everything is in God. Indeed, Bell states of Augustine’s position: [Humanity] has it within his power (by grace) to experience a full and actual participation in God. . . . It is the eternal contemplation of God himself, full participation in Wisdom and the Supreme Good, contemplation of the joy of the Lord forever, final contemplation of Christ in liberty, and the eternal contemplation of the immutable Truth. At the end, the soul realizes that God is truly all in all. But such an exalted and beatific state is possible only after we have done with this life and this body.188 For Augustine, mystical union, which entails an intimate union with God’s wisdom, goodness and truth, is the actualisation of a status already granted as a consequence of the Incarnation. This even though the closeness between participating in God and being God is such that by the time Augustine wrote De Trinitate he was also careful to distinguish between the true image of God, Christ, the Imago dei, and being in the image of God (ad imaginem dei), to which humans could and naturally did aspire.189 Faesen’s analysis of Ruusbroec is again helpful. He points out that in adopting a relational ontology, Ruusbroec does not mean to suggest that everyone automatically experiences mystical union. For Ruusbroec, the latter entails a consciousness of

Participation and deification

155

fundamental relationality – a status which Ruusbroec holds that few attain, and which he associates with deification.190 For Julian likewise, rather than an automatic process, union takes place suddenly: But we arn not blisfully safe in havyng of our endless ioy till we ben al in peace and in love . . . Sodenly is the soule onyd to God whan it is trewly pesid in the self, for in him [God] is fonden no wreth’.191 It is in encountering God both suddenly and by slowly growing in likeness that we become conscious of the ‘littleness of creatures’ of which Julian writes in her discussion of the hazelnut-like ball. In both we lose our current sense of self to discover another. As Julian states: ‘onethys the creature semyth owte to the selfe’.192 Yet whilst there is a loss, it is not a total loss of our natural substance, that is, our humanity, which has been redeemed in Christ. For Julian, we remain, fundamentally grounded in love, existing as a consequence of love, and will continue to exist since the love of God protects our very existence in Christ: ‘the clertye and the clenes of treuth and wisdam makyth hym to sen and to beknowen that he is made for love, in which God endlesly kepyth him’.193 Nicholas Watson stresses, with reference to this passage, that being made out of love, love sustains the soul, in which relation he reminds us that she states near the end of her visions, that their meaning can be boiled down to the idea of love.194 As she writes in chapter 86: And fro that time that it was shewid I desired oftentimes to witten what was our lords mening. And xv yer after and more I was answerid in gostly vnderstonding, seyand thus: ‘Woldst thou wetten thi lords mening in this thing? Wete it wele: love was his mening. Who shewid it the? Love. What shewid He the? Love. Wherfore shewid it he? For love. Hold the therin, and thou shalt witten and knowen more in the same. But thou shalt never knowen ne witten therein other thing without end’. Thus was I lerid that love was our lords mening.195 In summary then, Julian holds that there is an intimate connection between God and the soul, one that is never entirely lost in the Fall. God, for Julian, as for Athanasius and for Augustine, is the ground of all that is, without which everything would fall into nothing. The soul shares with God a fundamental connection in terms of its substance. As a consequence of the Incarnation, it also shares a fundamental connection at the level of sensuality. The restoration that is wrought through Christ is universally offered to humankind, who are saved because they are in Christ. As such, humanity is taken up to share in the love and joy of the Trinity itself. The emphasis that Julian places on mutual indwelling and our enclosure in Christ makes clear that there is no fundamental distinction between our flesh and Christ’s. Christ’s flesh is divine and therefore so is ours. We are deified as a result of the Incarnation.

156

Participation and deification

Yet being in Christ, which for Julian implies creation, the soul remains distinct from God. What is more, at least in this life, the implications of Christ’s action are still those that the soul needs to realise. Through prayer the soul comes to align its will with the will of God, the Godly will which is in Christ. As such, the deified flesh that Christ offers humanity comes to be encountered in this life. It does so, just as in Cyril’s account, without our needing to relinquish its human nature. In the same way that Christ puts on flesh without losing his fundamental divine nature, so we put on Christ without losing ours. Such ideas cannot be understood apart from soteriology – just as they cannot in the writings of the Early Church Fathers who first coined the idea of deification. What deification offers is a way of explaining how we can be all that we were intended to be – totally inseparable from God – and yet different from Christ. Julian’s account offers us exactly this – in this life anticipated, in the next fully realised. There is, I think, every reason therefore to view hers as a discussion of deification even though she never uses the term. For Julian, the union that underpins what I think we are justified in calling deification leads not to self-aggrandisement but an increased sense of humility. Our awareness of ‘indistinction’ makes us more, not less, conscious that all is done by God’s grace to us helpless as a child. We find her arguing (echoing Jesus in the Gospels) that we need to become like little children since there is no higher status than that of a child. A child knows its level of dependence on its parent and so can fully accept parental words of reassurance. This, she states, is what it means to understand the words ‘all shall be well’ which God utters to her: And I vnderstode non heyer stature in this life than childhode, in febilness and fayleing of myte and of witte, into the time that our gracious mother [Christ] hath browte us up in our faders bliss. And than shall it verily be made knowen to us his menying in these swete words wher he seith: ‘Al shall be wele; and thou shal sen thyselfe that al maner thyng shal ben wele’. And than shall the bliss of our moder in Criste be new to begynnen in the ioyes of our God; which new begynning shal lesten without end, new begynnand.196 It is as we gain this awareness that Julian speaks of us becoming co-workers with God in our own salvation.197 It is a process towards which Julian grasps, not one that she lays full claim to. Yet I do not for this reason think that we should shy away from referring to it as deification. Most of the Early Church Fathers that we considered in Chapters 1 and 2 held that deification was anticipated in this life but only fully realised at the end of the world. Deification is breaking into the Christian life well-lived. That Julian also couches her thinking in notions of dependence and humility should reassure a reader fearful that Julian’s idea of union could be heretical that she is not laying claim to equality with God. This may suggest that Julian was aware

Participation and deification

157

of criticisms of deification in texts circulating on the continent and could be one reason why Julian (and other English mystics) avoid the terminology of deification. It could of course simply be that the spiritual texts of which she was aware rarely used it. As we noted in Chapter 1, William of St. Thierry never employs the term and Bonaventure writes instead of deiformity, albeit doing so rarely. Yet this does not mean that neither Bonaventure nor Julian are writing about deification. Bonaventure certainly is and Julian appears to be doing so in ways that are both daring (as her discussion of being in Christ and the godly will testify) and measured (through the emphasis that she places on habitus/enclosure). Hers, I suggest, in some of the ways she expresses it, such as the godly will, is a radical account of deification. Yet it is not one that lays itself open to a charge of heresy on the grounds that it claims equality with God or fails to respect the integrity of creation. Indeed, the central place that Julian gives to the Incarnation in her discussion of union, reminiscent of Early Church accounts of deification, is something of a theological tour de force.

Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to demonstrate that Julian of Norwich’s Revelations contain the key features that Russell attributes to a realistic account of deification. In a similar manner to Greek Patristic Fathers within the Alexandrian tradition, particularly Cyril of Alexandria, Julian explores the nature of humanity through the lens of the Incarnation and the nature of the Incarnation through the lens of redeemed humanity. The Incarnation is key to all Julian’s theology even though there is what Nicholas Watson has termed a ‘Trinitarian hermeneutic’ running through her writing.198 Athanasius’ famous rendition of the exchange formula could I think be applied to Julian’s account of salvation: ‘God became man in order that humans might become God’.199 Athanasius used the formula to stress Christ’s divinity against Arian opponents. Cyril focuses on Christ’s divinity in response to Nestorius. Julian, however, focuses on Christ’s humanity. Indeed the stress that Julian places on restoration involving our sensuality is one on which Denise Baker and Wolfgang Riehle have both commented.200 It is perhaps this that gives Julian’s account at times an Irenaean feel. Irenaeus places an emphasis on Christ’s humanity in response to Gnostic opponents who denied the goodness of creation. They failed to sufficiently separate their souls from God. In the late fourteenth century Julian is arguably faced with a similar situation, in which the uniqueness of Christ is potentially eroded in some continental accounts of mystical union. As Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas had both pointed out, the claim made by William that the soul loves God with the love that God loves Godself could imply pantheism, even though Faesen argues that a union of love would seem to militate against this. Julian, like Bonaventure and Aquinas, stresses the created nature of the human soul, emphasising that it is only able to share in the joy of the Trinity

158

Participation and deification

because it is in Christ, and being in Christ indicates that as created the soul is distinct from God. There is much in her account of union that resonates with the realistic approaches to deification that we explored in Chapter 1. In the chapters that follow we will consider whether the deifying trajectories that we find in both Julian and Rolle’s thought, even though they await their fulfilment, nonetheless have implication for the mystic’s own voice. We will explore whether deification leads Rolle or Julian to give special status to their own words. Evidence of any such a privileging adds weight to the arguments for deification put forwards here and in Chapter 3. For as we noted in Chapter 1, Augustine suggests that being deified not only allows one to see as God sees but also to speak as God speaks, albeit in the manner befitting a creature. As Meconi states, ‘Human divinization thus allows the creature to see and speak like God but in a way commensurate with still and always being a creature’.201 As in the previous two chapters we will begin with Rolle before turning again to Julian.

Notes 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at Theosis and Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinisation East and West, Mystical Theology Network Conference, KU Leuven, Belgium and the 28th Annual Conference of the Eckhart Society. 2 Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, ed. by Marion Glasscoe, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986 rep. 1993), ch. 37, p.  52. All quotations are from this edition unless otherwise stated, which uses Sloane 1 as its base manuscript [henceforth, Revelations]. I am following Marion Glasscoe in assuming that Sloane 1 is closer to the language that Julian is likely to have spoken than Paris (p. ix). Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins have produced an edition based on Paris: The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park, PA: University Press of Pennsylvania State, 2006). Any major discrepancies between the two manuscripts in passages discussed will be commented on in the footnotes in relation to the critical edition: Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. by Edmund Colledge O.S.A. and James Walshe S.J., Studies and Texts 35, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978). The translations are taken from Julian of Norwich, Showings, trans. by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (London: SPCK, 1978) [henceforth Showings]. Although they follow the Paris MSS they seems to render many of Julian’s discussions, such as those relating to the godly will and the ideas of substance and sensuality more precisely than Spearing’s translation of Sloane (based on Glasscoe’s edition). I have referred to Spearing’s translation where Paris diverges from Sloane. [Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. by Elizabeth Spearing (London: Penguin Books, 1998).] All emendations to Colledge and Walsh are indicated in the notes. 3 Morton W. Bloomfield, ‘Edmund Colledge, O.S.A, and James Walsh S.J. (eds.) A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. (Studies and Texts, 35). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978. 2 vols. (review)’, Speculum, 55/3 (1980), 548–549 at 548. 4 For example, Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s ‘Showings’: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 3

Participation and deification

5

6

7

8 9 10

159

and 135ff and Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich. Other notable theological readings of Julian include: Brant Pelphrey, Love Was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysticism of Julian of Norwich (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1982); Joan Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (New York: Crossroads, 1991); Christopher Abbott, Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999); Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystic Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame, IN and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Kevin Magill, Julian of Norwich: Mystics or Visionary? (London: Routledge, 2006); Carmel Bendon Davis, Mysticism and Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, the Cloud of Unknowing Author and Julian of Norwich; David Aers, Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), and Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: In God’s Sight, Her Theology in Context (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. and WileyBlackwell, 2018). For a more literary approach, the important essay collection: Liz Herbert McEvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008). In particular: Nicholas Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, in Sandra J. McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 61–90 (this is a reprint of the essay which first appears in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1992), pp. 79–100 (all references are to the reprinted edition); Nicholas Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum, 68/3 (1993), 637–683. Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550 (New York: Crossroads, 2012), p. 470. For another radical, albeit more negative, reading of Julian’s theology: David Aers, Salvation and Sin. Julian has even been compared to Jürgen Moltmann, who also stresses that the key to understand of God is the Incarnation and that joy is the counterweight of suffering: The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1973). For Peter Lombard, see Chapter 2. For Eckhart, see Robert Lerner, ‘The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought’, Church History, 40 (1971), 397–411. Although writing after Julian, Richard Methley expresses concern that ideas that we find in The Cloud of Unknowing should not be confused with heretical ideas of assimilation that he believed were being promoted by continental beguines: Anon. (The Cloud-Author), Divina caligo ignorancie: A Latin Glossed Version of the Cloud of Unknowing, trans. by Richard Methley, ed. by John Clark (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2009), preface. Russell, Deification, p. 2. Molinari, Julian of Norwich. For an interesting discussion of mystical pseudonymity: Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity. As discussed below, Julian aims to lose her sense of self in God, although she does not advocate annihilation. The Long Text purports to be the result of some twenty-years rumination on a series of sixteen visions that the author received over four days beginning in May 1373 (Paris gives 13th May, Sloane 8th May). It states that the author received the visions when she was thirty and a half years old, in response to an earlier request to share in the sufferings of Christ through the onset of illness. It is generally agreed that the Long Text post-dates the Short Text by some time, with the Short Text written down closer to the receipt of the visions. About the author herself we know next to nothing, not even her real name. Her position as an anchorite and respected spiritual advisor is confirmed by The Book of Margery Kempe, which (n. 18) records a visit by Margery to Julian to seek

160

11 12

13

14

15 16 17

18 19 20

21 22

23

Participation and deification spiritual advice. For further discussion of Julian scholarship, see Baker, From Vision to Book, pp. 3–14. Several wills contain bequests to a ‘“Julian” anchorite’, the last dating from 1416, which possibly confirms this. Colledge and Walshe, A Book of Showings, Introduction, vol. 1, pp. 33–38. Most scholars tend to think that she was not enclosed at the time of the visions because of the presence of her mother and a priest. For a summary of these debates: Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), introduction, esp. pp. 3–5. McAvoy points out that the reference to her mother could be a mother superior, again reinforcing how little we know about Julian. The idea that Julian was a nun at Carrow was suggested by Paul Molinari, who notes that the anchorhold at St. Julian’s church, Conisford belonged to Carrow: Paul Molinari, Julian of Norwich: The Teaching of a Fourteenth Century English Mystic (London: Longmans, repr. 1958). However, Benedicta Ward argues that there is no evidence to support the idea that Julian was ever a nun at Carrow: ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Kenneth Leech and Benedicta Ward (eds.), Julian Reconsidered (Oxford: SLG Press, 1988), pp. 11–35. References to her writing appear in numerous blogs and it is possible to become a friend or a companion of Julian through the Julian Centre, in which people commit themselves to spiritual practices inspired by her Revelations. http:// juliancentre.org/community/about-friends-of-julian.html. For an interesting account of the modern myths that have evolved around Julian: Sarah Salih and Denise Baker (eds.), Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Mysticism and Postmodern Reception (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Most scholars simply take the term ‘even Cristen’ to mean her fellow Christians. We do not know if anyone at the time read what she wrote. The earliest extant manuscript, the Short Text, was owned by Carthusian monks. For an important discussion of the manuscript: Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse. For insight into the role of the Carthusians in copying, preserving and disseminating mystical texts in this period: Gillespie and Doyle (eds.), Syon Abbey with the Libraries of the Carthusians and Edward A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham, Syon Abbey and Its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion, c.1400–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010). Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Lynn Staley (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996) (online edition), book 1, line 955–988. On the Winchester anchorite: Liz Herbert McAvoy, Medieval Anchoriticism: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011), ch. 5, pp. 134ff. For a discussion of the manuscripts and the difference between them, see Edmund Colledge O.S.A. and James Walshe S.J., in Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. by Edmund Colledge O.S.A. and James Walshe S.J., Studies and Texts 35, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978), vol. 1, introduction, pp. 1–25. Now lost – only a photocopy remains. For a complete list of manuscripts as well as editions of Sloane 1 and 2, Paris, Westminster and Amherst: Julian of Norwich, The Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, ed. by Sister Anna Maria Reynolds and Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence: Sismel, 2001). For a discussion of the standardisaton of English in this period: Jeremy J. Smith’s discussion of Love’s Mirror: ‘Dialect and Standardisation in the Waseda Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle and Michael G. Sargent (eds.), Nicholas Love: Waseda, 1995 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 129–142.

Participation and deification

161

24 Arguing for the superiority of Paris: Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, introduction. 25 Colledge and Walshe in Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. 26 Only Julia Bolton Holloway seriously disputes this, arguing that the Short Text and the Long Text represent two separate visionary experiences: Julian of Norwich: A Showing of Love, ed. and trans. by Julia Bolton Holloway (London: DTL, 2003), preface. 27 Vincent Gillespie, ‘[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices’: Pastiche, Ventriloquism and Parody in Julian of Norwich’, in A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: Brewer, 2008), pp.  192–207 (p. 196). I am grateful to Hannah Lucas for drawing my attention to this. 28 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), pp. 6 and 63. 29 Erin L. Jordan, ‘Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Speculum, 87/1 (2012), 62–94, who notes that our knowledge of the patronage of women’s houses is currently undergoing serious revision and that Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994) has shown that much previous understanding of the status of nunneries in medieval Europe relied too heavily on Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), which is often anecdotal in nature. 30 Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines in Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 31 Tanya Stabler Miller draws attention to an exemplar in a sermon in which a Beguine is said to have distributed a book to scholars quire by quire: ‘What’s in a Name? Clerical Representations of Parisian Beguines (1200–1328)’, Journal of Medieval History, 33/1 (2007), 60–86. Whilst it has been muted in the scholarship that beguines were poor, based on the fact that they made a living by spinning, Miller has shown that many were extremely rich. In Paris they supplied silk to the King and were taxed individually rather than per household: The Beguines in Medieval Paris, ch. 3, pp. 65ff. 32 Katherine Kerby-Fulton suggests that there may have been beguines in England: Books Under Suspicion. However, Michael Sargent notes that she does not offer evidence to substantiate this: Michael Sargent, ‘Medieval and Modern Readership of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties: The Manuscripts of the Continental Latin and Italian Tradition’, in Alessandra Petrina (ed.) with the assistance of Monica Santini, The Medieval Translatior. Traduire au Moyen Age: In principio fuit interpres (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013), pp. 85–96. 33 There seems to be some evidence of celibate married couples acting as hermits: Rotha Mary Clay, Hermits and Anchorites of England (London: Methuen, 1914) and also Edward A. Jones, ‘Hermits and Anchorites in Historical Context’, in Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden and Roger Ellis (eds.), Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp.  3–18. Jones notes that it is often not possible to determine whether the anchorite was male or female from the records. The term ‘anchoress’ comes to be used of women, and ‘anchorite’ of men in the later Middle Ages, but a reference to an ‘anchorite’ could be to either gender. Also on the rise of anchoriticism in England: Tom Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society 950–1200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). There is some evidence of eremitic couples, who together took vows of chastity, an idea criticised by William

162

34

35

36

37 38 39 40

Participation and deification Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-text Edition of the A, B, C and Z versions, ed. by Aubrey V. C. Schmidt (London: Longman, 1995–2008), The C text, Passus 9. There is some criticism of hermits who moved cell by this period: Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 42–44. Rolle complains that he is called the equivalent of a girovagus – an idea enshrined in the Benedictine Rule as a criticism of religious who lacked physical stability – a core tenet of Benedictine Monasticism: Benedict of Nursia, RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. and trans. by Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), Chapter 1. For these criticisms: Rolle, Judica Mei, and Richard Misyn’s translation of chapter 15 of Incendium Amoris. Cf. William Langland, Piers Plowman, B Text, prologue, lines 1–4; C text Passus 9. That said, we have evidence that hermits performed an important role in medieval society caring for bridges and repairing roads. They were even given money to employ teams of men: Rotha Clay, Hermits and Anchorites in England. A new study of hermits that updates Rotha Clay: Edward A. Jones, Hermits and Anchorites in England, 1200–1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019). Mulder-Baker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. 18–19; although this relates to continental anchorites and may not have been as applicable in England. Surviving archaeological evidence is scant: Jones notes that one anchorhold in Compton Surrey was no bigger than ‘a moderately-sized lift’ (2.04 m by 1.31 m), whilst others seem to have two floors. Jones, ‘Hermits and Anchorites’, p. 12. (Christiana of Margate’s hagiography reports that her cell was so small that she couldn’t even wear enough clothes to keep warm, although this may be an exaggeration. Still some of the cells in London do not appear to have been much bigger: The Life Christina of Maryate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. by C. H. Talbot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 104–105; Fanous and Leyser, Christina of Maryate, p. 66. For a discussion of Medieval anchorite cells: G. Cavero Domingues, ‘Anchorites in the Spanish Tradition’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), Anchoritic Traditions in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), pp. 91–111; McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms. Ancrene Wisse also gives permission for a garden but forbids an anchoress to keep cattle, although a cat is allowed (an idea which feeds the belief that Julian owned a cat): ‘Ye, mine leove sustren, bute yef neod ow drive ant ower meistre hit reade, ne schulen habbe na beast bute cat ane’, Anon., Ancrene Wisse, ed. by Robert Hasenfratz (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000) (online edition), part VIII, lines 76–77. For a translation: Anon., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, trans. by Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). Cf. Liz Herbert McAvoy on the Winchester anchorite, Medieval Anchoritisms, pp. 1134ff and Marie Hughes Edwards, Reading Medieval Anchoritism: Ideology and Spiritual Practices (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012). For a discussion of these details and the important ways in which an anchoress’ life was governed by the physicality of her enclosed space: Yoko Wada (ed.), A Companion to Ancrene Wisse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003). In addition to the evidence of Julian and the Winchester anchorite, cf. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker on the role of continental anchorites: Lives of the Anchoresses. On imaginary communities: Michelle M. Sauer, ‘“Prei for me mi leue suster”: The Paradox of the Anchoritic “Community” in Late Medieval England’, Prose Studies, 26/1–2 (2003), 153–175.

Participation and deification

163

41 Jones, ‘Hermits and Anchorites’, p.  11, who notes that although the service was not originally written with hermits in mind, it was used in this way in the fifteenth century. 42 ‘Ha schulden schrapien euche dei the eorthe up of hare put thet ha schulen rotien in’. Anon., Ancrene Wisse, lines 815–816. 43 Salih and Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Legacy, p. 104. 44 Turner, Julian of Norwich; Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter; Baker, Julian of Norwich’s ‘Showings’; Pelphrey, Love Was His Meaning; Abbott, Julian of Norwich; Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich. 45 Turner, Julian of Norwich, esp. pp. 3–21. 46 Turner, Julian of Norwich. 47 Although Jean Leclercq was not the first to coin the term ‘monastic theology’, it was he who gave it weight in his now classic work: The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. by Catharine Misrahi (London: SPCK, 1974, repr 1978). Cf. Ulrich Köpf, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie im 13 Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, 49 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1974), pp. 198–210 and Ulrich Köpf, ‘Monastische Theologie im 15 Jahrhundert’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 11 (1992), 117–135. 48 John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. by Russell A. Peck, trans. by Andrew Galloway (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006), lines 70–82. 49 Leclercq, The Love of Learning, p. 6. 50 Ian P. Wei discusses the development of scholastic theology and Hugh of St. Victor as a transitional figure: Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c.1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). By the fourteenth century the scholastic method had evolved and arguably gone into decline. On the changing face of scholastic method: Rik van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 51 Ivan Illych, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 95. 52 Leslie Smith, ‘The Use of Scripture in Teaching at the Medieval University’, in John H. Van Engen (ed.), Learning Institutionalized: Teaching in the Medieval University (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), pp. 229–243. 53 Alford, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter’. 54 On ‘vernacular theology’ in late-medieval England: Nicholas Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70 (1995), 822–864. For responses to Watson’s position: the special issue of English Language Notes, Bruce Holsinger and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.), ‘“Vernacular Theology” and Medieval Studies: Literary History and the Religious Turn’, English Language Notes, 44/1 (2006), 77–137. 55 There is disagreement in the scholarship as to whether these works were made available to the laity by the Carthusians. On this: Gillespie and Doyle (eds.), Syon Abbey with the Libraries of the Carthusians. For an alternative perspective: Suzan Folkerts, ‘The Transmission and Appropriation of the Vita of Christina Mirabilis in Carthusian Communities’, Church History and Religious Culture, 96 (2016), 80–105. Cf. Caroll Hilles, ‘Gender and Politics in Osborne Bockenham’s Legendary’, in Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland and David Lawton (eds.), New Medieval Literatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), vol. 4, pp. 189–212 at 194, who notes female patronage of Bokenham’s, Legendary.

164

Participation and deification

56 Watson, ‘Melting into God the English Way’; Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse. 57 Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, esp. pp. 43–59, 775–778, who comment on Julian’s erudition. Cf. Lynn Staley Johnson, ‘The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe’, Speculum, 66 (1991), 820–838. 58 For example: Turner, Julian of Norwich; Christopher Abbott, Julian of Norwich and Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (London: SPCK, 1987). 59 Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, pp. 9ff and Joan M. Nuth, ‘Two Medieval Soteriologies: Julian of Norwich and Anselm of Canterbury’, Journal of Theological Studies, 53 (1992), 611–645, and Turner, Julian of Norwich. 60 For a discussion of women’s access to the Bible in the Middle Ages: Kari Elisabeth Børresen and Adriana Valerio, ‘The Middle Ages’, in The Bible and Women: An Encyclopaedia of Exegesis and Cultural History [The Bible Society/Feminist Studies in the 20th Century: Scholarship and Movement] (Atlanta and Brill: Leiden, 2015 [English version]), vol. 9.1. The Encyclopaedia is being published simultaneously in English, German, Spanish and Italian by different publishing houses. Also Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf, Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Thomas Fulton, ‘English Bibles and Their Readers 1400–1700)’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 47/3 (2017), 415–435; Andrew B. Kraebel, ‘Chaucer’s Bible: Late Medieval Biblicalism and Compilation Form’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 47/3 (2017), 437–460. 61 Miller, The Beguines, on the way in which beguines were viewed by theologians in Paris in a slightly earlier period. Cf. Claire M. Waters on women as teaching exemplars: Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance and Gender in the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Waters notes the overlap between teaching and prophecy for women. 62 Salter, Nicholas Love’s Myrror, p. 53l. On the relationship between the genre and Julian’s visions, cf. Baker, Vision to Book, esp. pp. 40–62; David Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ: Reflections of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Love’, in David Aers and Lynn Staley (eds.), The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1996), pp. 77–104 at 77–78. 63 Julian, Revelations, ch. 7, p. 19. ‘And during all the time that our Lord showed me this spiritual vision which I have now described, I saw the bodily vision of the copious bleeding of the head persist’. Julian, Showings, p. 187. 64 Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 305. 65 Julian, Revelations, ch. 1, p. 1; ‘the Trinity with the Incarnation and union between God and man’s soul’, Julian, Showings, p. 175. Reynold and Bolton Holloway argue that this is most likely an editorial interpolation since the Middle English Vita of Birgetta of Sweden contains a statement concerning mutual indwelling that uses similar terms: Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, pp. 130–131. Although as discussed in Chapter 1, the relationship between the Incarnation and deification means that mutual indwelling is likely to be an important theme in many mystical texts, it seems particular apposite in Julian’s case. 66 Laura Saetveit Miles, ‘Space and Enclosure in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Love’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), pp. 154–165 at 160. 67 Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, p. 140. 68 Julian, Revelations, ch. 9, p. 15.

Participation and deification

165

69 That for Julian everything happens ‘at the same time’ (Chapter 5) is stressed by Kerrie Hide, ‘Only in God Do I have All’: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich’, Downside Review, 112/426 (2004), 43–60 (47–48). Cf. Kerrie Hide, Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfilment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001), pp. 26ff. 70 Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich, p. 107. 71 Julian, Revelations, ch. 5, p. 7. ‘I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought, What can this be? And it was generally answered thus, It is all that is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it might suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding, It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God’. Julian, Showings, p. 183 (amended where Paris diverges from Sloane). 72 For example: Erin T. Chandler, ‘The Present Time of Things Past: Julian of Norwich’s Appropriation of St. Augustine’s Generative Theory of Memory’, Rhetoric Review, 31/4 (2012), 389–404; Baker, From Vision to Book, esp. chapter 5. David Aers, however, argues that ultimately Julian fails to offer an Augustinian account of soteriology: Salvation and Sin. 73 David N. Bell, The Image and Likeness: The Augustinian Spirituality of William of St. Thierry (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), p. 23. Cf. Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans. by L.E.M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960), Introduction, pp. 142–147, 261–264; James F. Anderson, St Augustine and Being: A Metaphysical Essay (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), chs. 5 and 7. 74 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 23. 75 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 24. 76 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 29. 77 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 29. 78 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 6, p. 149. 79 It has been suggested that her references to ‘kynd’ should be viewed in this relation: Ryan Kade Wiens, ‘The Doctrine of the Imago Dei in the Soteriology of Julian of Norwich’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Waterloo and Conrad Grebel University College, 2008). 80 In this respect, Nuth argues that Augustine’s idea of the image of God underpins her understanding of substance and sensuality, Wisdom’s Daughter, esp. pp. 104–116. 81 Julian, Revelations, ch. 45, p.  64. ‘And our natural substance is now full of blessedness in God, and has been since it was made and will be without end’, Julian, Showings, p. 258. 82 Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p. 87. ‘And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God’, Julian, Showings, p. 285. 83 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, bk 1, ch. 1 and Julian, Revelations, ch. 26. 84 Julian, Revelations, ch. 56, p. 90. ‘as regards our substance and sensuality, it can rightly be called our soul’, Julian, Showings, p. 289 (slightly amended to bring it closer to Sloane). Abbott, Julian of Norwich, pp. 158–159. 85 Julian, Revelations, ch. 56, p.  90. ‘That honourable city in which our Lord Jesus sits is our sensuality, in which he is enclosed; and our natural substance is enclosed in Jesus, with the blessed soul of Christ sitting in rest in the divinity’. Julian, Showings, p. 289. 86 Julian, Revelations, ch. 53, pp. 85–86. ‘And so is created nature rightfully united to the maker, who is substantial uncreated nature’, Julian, Showings, p. 284. 87 Recent scholarly discussions of substance in Julian include: Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, pp. 109ff; Turner, Julian of Norwich, esp. ch. 6; Hide, Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfillment, pp. 83–88; Abbott, Julian of Norwich, esp. pp. 99–160;

166

88 89 90

91

92

93 94 95

96

97 98

Participation and deification Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich, esp. pp. 145–153 and Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich, esp. pp. 114–119. Middle English Dictionary, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 10/18). Julian, Revelations, ch. 46, p. 64. ‘But our passing life which we have here does not know in our senses what our self is’, Julian, Showings, p. 258. Julian, Revelations, ch. 45, p.  63. ‘God judges us in our natural substance, which is always kept one in him, whole and safe, without end; and this judgement is out of his justice. And man judges us in our changeable sensuality, which now seems one thing and now another, as it derives from parts and presents an external appearance’. Julian, Showings, p. 256. Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p.  87. ‘And our faith is a virtue which comes of our natural substance into our sensual soul by the Holy Spirit, in which virtue all virtues come to us, for without that no man can receive virtue, Shewings, pp. 285–286 (slightly amended). College and Walsh have ‘power’ instead of ‘virtue’, however, as discussed (n. 156 ff), for Bonaventure the Holy Spirit infused the soul with a virtuous habitus in which relation the soul is both deified but separate. It would seem that Julian is arguing something similar here. Julian, Revelations, ch. 55, p. 88. ‘And when our soul is breathed into our body, at which time we are made sensual . . . so I understood that our sensuality is formed in nature, in mercy and in grace, and this foundation enables us to receive gifts which lead to endless life. For I saw very surely that our substance is in God, and I also saw that God is in our sensuality, for in the same instance and place in which our soul is made sensual, in that same instant and place exists the city of God, ordained for him without beginning. He comes into this city and will never depart from it, for God is never out of the soul, in which he will dwell blessedly without end’. Julian, Shewings, pp. 286–287. For example, in chapter 53 she describes God as ‘‘substantial kynd onmade’’ (Julian, Revelations, p. 86). See n.86. Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/ (accessed 11/18). Middle English Dictionary, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 01/15). Since all the references in the MED are fourteenth century, it seems that the terms entered the English language in this period. It is not an Old English term and Nuth argues that Julian appears to be unique in pairing substance and sensuality in this way, Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, p. 109. On these terms: Turner, Julian of Norwich, esp. ch. 6, pp.  167–204. Turner offers a different understanding of the substance of the soul and the godly will to that proposed here, which for Turner signals Julian’s belief in ‘our eternal preexistence in the divine mind’ (p.  173), a reading of her which would bring her closer to McGinn’s reading of Porete and Hadewijch (‘The Four Female Evangelists’). Although Turner likewise stresses the difference between creator and creature which I underline here. For an interesting discussion of Julian’s possible awareness and response to forms of Nominalism: Jay Rudd, ‘Julian of Norwich and the Nominalist Questions’, in Richard J. Utz (ed.), Literary Nominalisms and the Rereading of Late Medieval Texts (Lewiston: Mellon Press, 1995), pp. 31–49, although Rudd does not consider the issue of union discussed here. Heiko Oberman, ‘Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism, with Attention to its Relation to the Renaissance’, Harvard Theological Review, 53 (1960), 47–76. For a discussion of this John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, ‘Mysticism with or without the Church? John Ruusbroec’s Conflict with the Clergy’, Bijdragen. International Journal for Philosophy and Theology, 74 (2013), 18–32, esp. p. 25.

Participation and deification

167

99 Baker, From Vision to Book, p. 119. 100 Baker, From Vision to Book, p. 189 n. 27. 101 Indeed, there is no doubt for Bell and Faesen that Augustine’s is a relational ontology, not a nominalist one. On different uses of substance in the fourteenth century in the writing of Jan van Ruusbroec: Paul Mommaers’s, ‘Introduction’, in Jan van Ruusbroec (ed.), Opera omnia 1: Boecksken der verclaringhe, ed. by Guido de Baere, trans. by Phayre Crowley and Helen Rolfson (Leiden: Brill; Tielt: Lannoo, 1981), pp. 29–31. 102 Middle English Dictionary, which notes that a similar usage is also found in Chaucer, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=19 9284119&egdisplay=compact&egs=199289385&egs=199305179 (accessed 25/07/18). 103 Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, pp. 109–110. 104 Faesen, ‘“Poor in Ourselves”’, esp. pp. 148–156. 105 Julian, Revelations, ch. 46, p. 65. ‘God is the goodness which cannot be angry, for God is nothing but goodness. Our soul is united to him who is unchangeable goodness. And between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness in his sight. For our soul is so wholly united to God, through his own goodness, that between God and our soul nothing can interpose’. Julian, Showings, p. 259. 106 Julian, Revelations, ch. 44, p. 62. ‘For God is endless supreme truth, endless supreme wisdom, endless supreme love uncreated; and a man’s soul is a creature in God which has the same properties created’. Julian, Showings, p. 256. 107 Turner, The Darkness of God, p. 162. Baker reads Turner to be arguing that Julian does not advocate union without distinction. Her reading is based on McGinn’s understanding of union, which John Arblaster has argues does not fully embrace the subtleties that underpin this idea within its Cistercian heritage: Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’. 108 Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, pp. 104, 111; Turner, Julian of Norwich, pp. 35–41. 109 Julian, Revelations, ch. 27, p. 38. See Middle English Dictionary, https://quod. lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary?utf8=%E2%9C%93&s earch_field=hnf&q=behovely (accessed 24/12/18). Colledge and Walsh translate it as ‘necessary’, Shewings, p. 255. 110 Turner, Julian of Norwich, pp. 38–41. 111 For a discussion of fittingness verses necessity in Anselm: Brian Leftow, ‘Anselm on the Necessity of the Incarnation’, Religious Studies, 31 (1995), 167–185. 112 Turner, Julian of Norwich, p. 117. 113 Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 76. ‘He made man’s soul to be his own city and his dwelling-place, which is the most pleasing to him of all his works. And when man had fallen into sorrow and pain, he was not wholly proper to serve in that noble office, and therefore our kind Father did not wish to prepare any other place, but sat upon the earth, waiting for mankind, who is mixed with earth, until the time when by his grace his beloved Son had brought back his city into noble beauty by his hard labour’. Julian, Showings, p. 272 [slightly amended to restore the word-play on earth which the translation loses by translating it as ground and earth]. 114 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 33. 115 Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 33. 116 Julian, Revelations, ch. 56, p.  90. ‘That honourable city in which our Lord Jesus sits is our sensuality, in which he is enclosed; and our natural substance is enclosed in Jesus, with the blessed soul of Christ sitting in rest in the divinity’. Julian, Showings, p. 289. 117 Edwards, ‘Growing Like God’, p. 44. 118 Russell, Deification, p. 109. (cf. ch. 1, p. 23).

168

Participation and deification

119 Julian, Revelations, ch. 55, p. 89. ‘double death’. The adjective ‘duble’ would in this context refer to something that repeated or occurred twice: Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED 12430 (accessed 28/07/18). 120 For Abbott, Julian’s return to this image ‘marks a culmination of the showings . . . a mystical foretaste of the eternal sabbath’, indicating that for Julian this image is more than simply a description of the Incarnation. Julian of Norwich, p. 33. 121 For further discussion of this idea: Nuth, ‘Two Medieval Soteriologies’. 122 Julian, Revelations, 51, pp.  80–81; ‘and our foul mortal flesh which God’s son took upon him, which was Adam’s old tunic, tight-fitting, threadbare and short, was then made lovely by our saviour, white and bright and forever clean, wide and ample, fairer and richer than the clothing which I saw on the Father. For that clothing was blue, and Christ’s clothing is now of a fair and seemly mixture, which is so marvellous that I cannot describe it; . . . For it was revealed that we are his crown, which crown is the Father’s joy, the Son’s honour, the Holy Spirit’s delight, and unending marvellous bliss to all who are in heaven’. Julian, Showings, p. 278. 123 For further discussion of this see Chapter 1. 124 Edwards, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, p. 86. 125 Meconi notes a similar trajectory in Augustine. See ch. 1, pp. 33–34. 126 Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, pp. 81–82. ‘Now the lord does not sit on the earth in the wilderness, but in his rich and noblest seat, which he made in heaven most to his own liking’. Julian, Showings, p. 278. 127 Daniel Anlezark, ‘Cyril of Alexandria’s Reputation in the Early Medieval West: From Bede to Alcuin’, Phronema, 29/2 (2014), 65–86. 128 For example: Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’; Mary Lou Shea, Medieval Women on Sin and Savlation: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Margaret Ebner and Julian of Norwich (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 187ff. 129 Julian, Revelations, ch. 57, pp. 98–99. ‘For the same time that God joined himself to our body in the maiden’s womb, he took our soul, which is sensual, and in taking it, having enclosed all of us in himself, he united it to our substance. In this union he was perfect man, for Christ, having joined in himself every man who will be saved is perfect man’. Julian, Showings, p. 292. 130 Julian, Revelations, 53, p. 86. ‘Therefore he wants us to know that the noblest thing which he ever made is mankind, and the fullest substance and the highest power is the blessed soul of Christ’. Julian, Showings, ch. 53, p. 284. 131 Julian, Revelations, 53, p. 86. ‘endlessly holy’, Julian, Showings, ch. 53, p. 284. 132 As she writes, ‘Thus our Lady is our Moder in whome we are all beclosid and of hir borne in Christe, for she that is moder of our Savior, is moder of all that shall be savid in our Savior. And our Savior is our very moder in whom we be endlesly borne and never shall come out of Him. [. . .] For it is His likeyng to reygne in our understonding blisfully, and sitten in our soule restfully, and to wonen in our soule endlesly, us al werkeng into Hym, in which werkyng He will we ben His helpers, gevyng to Him al our entendyng, lerand His loris, kepyng His lawes, desirand that al be done that He doith, truely trosting in Hym. For sothly I saw that our substance is in God’ (Julian, Revelations, ch. 57, pp. 92–93). 133 Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter, pp. 65ff. 134 Julian, Revelations, ch. 55, pp. 87–88 (my emphasis). ‘And so Christ is our way, safely leading us in his laws, and Christ in his body mightily bears us up into heaven; for I saw that Christ, having us all in him who shall be saved by him, honourably presents his Father in heaven with us, which present his Father

Participation and deification

135 136 137 138

139

140 141 142 143 144

145 146

147 148 149

169

most thankfully receives, and courteously gives to his Son Jesus Christ. This gift and operation is joy to the Father, bliss to the Son and delight to the Holy Spirit, and out of everything which is our duty, it is the greatest delight to our Lord that we rejoice in this joy which the blessed Trinity has over our salvation’. Julian, Showings, p. 286. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body. Julian, Revelations, ch. 52, p. 82. ‘He is with us in heaven, true man in his own person, drawing us up’. Julian, Showings, p. 280 This is also discussed in chapter 55. Julian, Revelations, ch. 52, p. 82; ‘he is with us on earth, leading us . . . he is with us in our soul, endlessly dwelling, ruling and guarding’. Julian, Showings, p. 280. Julian, Revelations, ch. 53, pp.  85–86. ‘And so I understood that man’s soul is made of nothing, that is to say that it is made of nothing that is made, in this way: When God was going to make man’s body, he took the slime of the earth, which is matter mixed and gathered from all bodily things, and of that he made man’s body. But to the making of man’s soul he would accept nothing at all, but made it. And so created nature is rightfully united to the maker, who is substantially uncreated nature, that is God’. Julian, Showings, p. 284. Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p. 87. ‘And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God; and still my understanding accepted that our substance is in God, that is to say that God is God, and our substance is a creature in God. For the almighty truth of the Trinity is our Father, for he made us and keeps us in him. And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed. And the high goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he is us. We are enclosed in the Father, and we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. And the Father is enclosed in us, the Son is enclosed in us, and the Holy Spirit is enclosed in us, almighty, all wisdom and all goodness, one God, one Lord’. Julian, Showings, p. 285. Cary Howie, Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 130. The idea of being ‘in Christ’ is also a deeply Pauline idea. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 132. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 132. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 132. Rob Faesen, ‘The Abyss of the Soul: A Response to Saskia Wendel’, in Lieven Boeve, Terrance Merrigan and Colby Dickenson (eds.), Tradition and That Normativity of History (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 199–209, points out that Ruusbroec makes a similar point – stressing that we are in God. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 132. Julian, Revelations, ch. 22, p. 32. ‘In response to this my understanding was lifted up into heaven, and there I saw three heavens; and at this sight I was greatly astonished, and I thought: I see three heavens, and all are of the blessed humanity of Christ. And none is greater, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but all are equal in their joy . . . I saw in Christ that the Father is’. Julian, Showings, p. 216. For a recent discussion of Augustine on sin: Ronnie J. Rombs, Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell and His Critics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006). For example: Bernard McGinn (ed.), Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York: Continuum, 1984), Introduction., p. 12. John Arblaster, On becoming ‘Not God, But What God Is’: Essays on the Doctrine of Deification in the Late Medieval Low Countries (unpublished doctoral dissertation: KU Leuven, 2016).

170

Participation and deification

150 William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle, p. 67 quoted in Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, p.  131. ‘Hunc fides concipit, spes parturit, caritas, quae est Spiritus sanctus, format et uiuificat. Amor enim Dei, uel amor Deus, Spiritus sanctus, amori hominis et spiritui se infundens, afficit eum sibi; et amans semetipsum de homine Deus, unum secum efficit et spiritum eius et amorem eius. Sicut enim non habit corpus unde uiuat nisi de spiritu suo, sic affectus hominis qui amor dicitur non uiuit, hoc est non amat Deum, nisi de Spiritu sancto’, William of Saint-Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, ed. by Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 88, (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003), pp. 263–264. 151 For a careful defence of these ideas as orthodox: Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’. 152 McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 178. In addition: Fraeter, ‘Mi smelten mine sinne in minnen oerewoede’ and Murk-Jansen, ‘Hadewijch’. 153 McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 180. 154 Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. by Columbia Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), vision 12. 206–210, p. 157, (slightly modified by McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 179). Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’ comments on how such ideas echo those of William of St. Thierry. 155 See Chapter 1. 156 Geetjan Zuijdwegt, ‘“Utrum caritas sit aliquid creatur in anima”: Aquinas on the Lombard’s Identification of Charity with the Holy Spirit’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 79/1 (2012), 39–74, at 39 and 56. 157 On different methodological approaches to habitus: Katharine Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson (eds.), A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). 158 Bonaventure, The Breviloquium, The Works of St. Bonaventure, ed. and trans. by Dominic V. Monti OMF (New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), vol. 9, V.1.3., p. 117. ‘Necesse est igitur spiritui rationali, ut dignus fiat aeternae beatitudinis, quod particeps fiat influentiae deiformis. Haec autem influentia deiformis, quia est a Deo et secundum Deum et propter Deum, ideo reddit imaginem nostrae mentis conformem beatissimae’, Bonaventure, ‘Breviloquium’ Opscula Varia, Theologica, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, pp. 199–292 at p. 252. 159 Bonaventure, The Breviloquium, V.1.3, p. 117. ‘Deus autem non condescendit per sui essentiam incommutabilem, sed per influentiam ab ipso manantem; nec spiritus elevator supra se per situm locale, sed per habitum deiformem’, Bonaventure, ‘Breviloquium’, p. 252. 160 Julian, Revelations, ch. 48, p. 67. ‘But our good Lord the Holy Spirit, who is endless life dwelling in our soul, protects us most faithfully and produces in the soul a peace, and brings it to ease through grace, and makes it obedient and reconciles it to God’. Julian, Showings, pp. 261–262. 161 Julian, Revelations, ch. 84, p. 133. ‘So charity keeps us in faith and in hope. And faith and hope lead us in charity, and in the end everything will be charity. I had three kinds of understanding in this light of charity. The first is uncreated charity, the second is created charity, the third is given charity. Uncreated charity is God, created charity is our soul in God, given charity is virtue, and that is a gift of grace in deeds, in which we love God for himself, and ourselves in God, and that God loves for God’. Julian, Showings, pp. 340–341 (slightly amended). 162 Faesen, ‘“Poor in ourselves”’. This, of course does not prevent them from becoming another person within the Trinity. However, this is a position that Faesen rejects in his analysis of Marguerite Porete and Beatrice of Nazareth: Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 318.

Participation and deification

171

163 Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter; Nuth, ‘Two Medieval Soteriologies’. 164 Russell, Deification, p. 184. 165 Her treatment of our humanity could just be a side effect of her struggle to position passion meditation in relation to contemplation – an issue which both Walter Hilton and The Cloud-Author discuss. For a discussion of their disagreement over the nature of contemplation: John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward in Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. by John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), Introduction. However, Julian’s treatment would seem to go beyond viewing Passion Meditation as a stepping stone to contemplation – a view also to some extent posited by Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, sermon 20.iv.6. As Marlene Cré notes, Julian takes physicality up with her into contemplation. Indeed it is this aspect of her thought that Cré argues perhaps led the compiler of the Amherst MS to position her Short Text between more mundane passion meditations and an English translation of Ruusbroec’s, A Sparkling Stone (Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse, p. 113). Perhaps he also saw her solution to union in terms of mutual indwelling – which is implied in this text – as in some way related to Ruusbroec’s own account of mutual indwelling. 166 Julian, Revelations, ch. 55, p. 88. ‘And all the gifts that God can give to the creature he has given to his Son Jesus for us, which gifts he, dwelling in us, has enclosed in him until the time that we are fully grown, our soul together with our body and our body together with our soul. Let either of them take help from the other, until we are grown to full stature as creative nature brings about; and then in the foundation of creative nature with the operation of mercy, the Holy Spirit by grace breathes into us gifts leading to endless life’. Julian, Showings, p. 287. 167 Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p. 87. See n. 139 this chapter. 168 Likewise although Laura Saetveit Miles has uncovered a close identification between Julian and Mary in the Revelations, Julian does not appear to elevate herself above Mary. Saetveit Miles recent research shows that Julian too models herself on Mary, viewing herself as in some sense receiving the Word to which she will give birth. This recapitulation of the ascension and its important place in mystical rebirth through engagement with mutual indwelling is discussed in Chapter 6 in relation to her understanding of sacred eloquence. I am grateful to Dr Svaetvit Miles for allowing me to mention this unpublished research which is part of a larger forthcoming book project. 169 Julian, Revelations, ch. 37, p. 51. ‘For in every soul which will be saved there is a godly will which never assents to sin and never will. Just as there is an animal will in the lower part which cannot will any good, so there is a godly will in the higher part, which will is so good that it cannot ever will any evil, but always good’, Julian, pp. 241–242. 170 Denise Nowakowski Baker, ‘The Structure of the Soul and the “Godly Wylle” in Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in E.  A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp.  37–50. For a discussion of synderesis: Douglas Langston, ‘Medieval Theories of the Conscience’ (2015) Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/conscience-medieval/ (accessed 11/18). Julian’s account of the godly wylle has been the subject of much discussion. Baker notes a number of key discussions in this article. David Aers Salvation and Sin and Turner, Julian of Norwich have recently offered different readings which are further discussed. 171 For a discussion of this problem in relation to the heresy accusations levelled against Eckhart in Avignon: Faesen, ‘The Abyss of the Soul’, pp. 202–203. 172 For a discussion of different interpretations defending Julian again heretical thinking: Judith Lang, ‘“The godly wylle” in Julian of Norwich’, Downside

172

173 174 175

176

177

178 179 180 181

182 183

184 185 186

Participation and deification Review, 102/348 (1984), 163–173. For a discussion that Porete claims that we are identical to God at the level of will: Arblaster and Faesen, ‘The Influence of Beatrice of Nazareth’. David Aers, Salvation and Sin, pp.  163ff. For a refutation of Aers’ position: Turner, Julian of Norwich, esp. ch. 6. For a discussion of the problems this idea caused Eckhart: Faesen, ‘The Abyss of the Soul’, esp. pp. 201–203. Julian, Revelations, ch. 53, p. 85 (my emphasis). ‘In this revelation I saw and understood very surely that in every soul that will be saved there is a godly will which will is so good that it can never will evil, but always constantly it wills good and does good in the sight of God. Therefore our Lord wants us to know it in our faith and belief, and particularly and truly that we have all this blessed will kept safe and whole in our Lord Jesus Christ; because every nature with which heaven will be filled had of necessity and of God’s rightfulness to be so joined and united in him that in it a substance was kept which could never and should never be parted from him, and that through his own good will in his endless prescient purpose’. Julian, Showings, p. 283. Julian, Revelations, ch. 37, pp. 51–52 (my emphasis); ‘which will is so good that it cannot ever will any evil, but always good. And therefore we are they whom he loves, and eternally we do what he delights in. And our Lord revealed this to me in the completeness of his love, that we are all standing in his sight, yes, that he loves us now whilst we are here as well as he will when we are there, before his blessed face; but all our travail is because love is lacking on our side’. Julian, Showings, p. 242. That we are ‘onyd to [God] in love’ is a point that Julian reiterates elsewhere in her LT for example, Julian, Revelations, ch. 49, p. 69. Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p. 87 ‘we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit . . . and the Holy Spirit is enclosed in us’, Julian, Showings, p. 285. She also stresses elsewhere that the Holy Spirit dwells within the soul. ‘the Holy Gost, which is endless lif wonnying in our soule’, Julian, Revelations, ch. 48, p. 67. For an extended discussion of this idea: Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995). Turner and Aers agree that this is not in fact the case: Turner, Julian of Norwich and Aers, Salvation and Sin. Cf. ch. 2, pp. 54–55. John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon/the Divisions of Nature, trans. by I. P. SheldonWilliams, revised by John J. O’Meara (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1987), book 5. For the Latin: John Scotus Eriugena, Iohannes Scottus Eriugena: Periphyseon, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, ed. by Édouard Jeauneau, 5 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1996–2003). Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Collins, 2012; copyright 1946). In this relation, Abbott describes Julian speaking from both personal and eternal perspectives. For examples, Julian of Norwich, pp. 8–9. Julian, Revelations, ch. 63, pp. 103–104 (my emphasis). ‘And there it will truly be made known to us what he means in the sweet words when he says: All will be well, and you will see it yourself, that every kind of things will be well’. Julian, Showings, p. 305, slightly amended to bring it into line with Sloane. I am extremely grateful to Vincent Gillespie for stressing this to me in correspondence. Julian, Revelations, ch. 46, p. 64. ‘both by nature and by grace’, Julian, Showings, p. 258. Julian, Revelations, ch. 43, p. 60. ‘Prayer unites the soul to God, for though the soul may be always like God in nature and in substance restored by grace,

Participation and deification

187

188 189 190

191

192

193

194

195

173

it is often unlike him in condition, through sin on man’s part. Then prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills’. Julian, Showings, p. 253. Following McGinn, Baker argues that the belief that mystical union depended on our ontology emerges in the early fourteenth century. However, recent research by Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, suggests that authors like Hadewijch and Porete are close to William of St. Thierry in this respect. What he suggests is new is that mystical authors were now critiqued on the basis of this belief. Bell, The Image and Likeness, p. 30. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, p. 142. That Julian would speak of such a mistake in this context is interesting since Faesen argues that Ruusbroec similarly confirms his position by talking of a mistake that some people make when they do not grasp our fundamental relationality. As Faesen explains, Ruusbroec argues that some people confuse God’s overwesen with their wesen in supposing that the outworkings of union derive from themselves alone: ‘“Poor in Ourselves”’, pp. 156–158. Although Julian’s example differs, both refer to a misunderstanding of our fundamental relationality which they seek to distance themselves from. It is possible that Julian may have known Ruusbroec. If she did, her discussion of mutual indwelling is not an exact reproduction of his. She places far more emphasis on sensuality. Even if there is no formal relationship, it is interesting that the medieval editor of the Amherst MSS places places Julian’s Short Text next to an English translation of Ruusbroec’s, The Sparkling Stone. On this juxtaposition: Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse chapter 3. Julian, Revelations, ch. 49, p. 50. ‘But we are not blessedly safe, possessing our endless joy, until we are all in peace and in love . . . Suddenly the soul is united to God, when she is truly pacified in the self, for in him is found no wrath’. Julian, Showings, p. 265. (Slightly amended ‘herself’ altered to ‘the self’.) Julian, Revelations, ch. 44, p. 62. ‘the creature scarcely seems anything to itself’, Julian, Showings, p. 256. Spearing translates this as ‘hardly seems of any value to himself’. Paris reads ‘that unnethes the creature seemth ought to the self’, which Watson glosses as ‘the creature scarcely seems of any value to itself’: Watson and Jenkins, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, pp. 258–259. The full passage reads: ‘And man soule is a creature in God, which hath the same propertyes made, and evermore it doith that it was made for: It seith God, it beholdyth God, and it lovyth God, wherof God enjoyith in the creature, and the creature in God, endlesly mervelyng, in which mervelyng he seith his God, his Lord, his Maker, so hey, so gret, and so good in reward of hym that is made, that onethys the creature semyth owte to the selfe. But the clertye and the clenes of treuth and wisdam makyth hym to sen and to beknowen that he is made for love, in which God endlesly kepyth him’, Julian, Revelations, ch. 44, p. 62; Julian, Showings, p. 256. Watson and Jenkins, Revelation of Love, p. 258. We might read Julian’s statement that it is easier for us to know God than our own souls in this relation, both in terms of its complexity due to its relationship with God and as a distraction from God. As she states ‘And thuss I saw full sekirly that it is ridier to us to cum to the knowyng of God than to knowen our owne soule; for our soule is so deepe groundid in God, and so endlesly tresorid, that we may not cum to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the maker to whom it is onyd’ Julian, Revelations, ch. 56, p. 89. Julian, Revelations, ch. 86, pp.  134–135. ‘And from the time that it was revealed, I desired many times to know in what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal

174

196

197

198 199 200

201

Participation and deification to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end. So I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning’. Julian, Showings, p. 342. Julian, Revelations, ch. 63, pp. 103–104 (my emphasis). ‘And I understood no greater stature in this life than childhood, with its feebleness and lack of power and intelligence, until the time that our gracious mother has brought us up into our Father’s bliss. And there it will truly be made known to us what he means in the sweet words when he says: All will be well, and you will see it yourself, that every kind of things will be well. And then will the bliss of our motherhood in Christ be to begin anew in the joys of our God, which new beginning will last, newly beginning without end’. Julian, Showings, p. 305 (slightly amended to bring it into line with Sloane). As she clearly states in chapter 57, this is what it means for us to participate in mutual indwelling: ‘for it is his likeyng to reyge in our vnderstondyng blisfully, and sitten in our soule restfully, and to wonen in our soule endlessly, us al werkeng into hym; in which werkyng he will we ben his helpers, gevyng to him al our entendyng, lerand his loris, kep[yng] his lawes, desirand that al be done that he doith, truely trosting in hym; for sothly I saw that our substan[c]e is in God’. Julian, Revelations, ch. 57, p. 93. Nuth stresses that mutual indwelling depends on the union at the level of humanity which Christ’s Incarnation enacts, ‘Two Medieval Soteriologies’. Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic’. For a discussion of this statement in relation to the idea of deification in the Early Church: Russell, Deification, and also Gross, Divinisation. The importance of a restoration of sensuality in Julian’s thought is also discussed by Baker, From Vision to Book, esp. chapter 5 and by Riehle who notes that for Julian the image of God is also restored at the material level – something which her sets her apart from the other English mystics, The Middle English Mystics, p. 148. He discusses this issue again in his most recent publication: Wolfgang Riehle, The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses, and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England, trans. by Charity Scott-Stokes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 220. Meconi, ‘No Longer a Christian’, p. 98.

5

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi: deification and sacred eloquence1

The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord. (Isaiah 40.3)

Introduction In Chapter 3 we explored whether a case could be made in several of Richard Rolle’s writings for reading his spiritual trajectory as deifying. I drew attention to the role that Rolle places on stilling the mind in two early Latin texts, Incendium Amoris and Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and one late Middle English work, The Form of Living, suggesting that at its most perfect stilling the mind equates to the kind of deification that Norman Russell identifies as ethical in the writings of several Early Church Fathers. Even though Nicholas Watson has not suggested that Rolle considers himself in some sense deified, he nonetheless notes that Rolle lays claim to a very elevated spiritual status in Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum, further commenting that this status underpins Rolle’s construction of this commentary and most importantly of his voice. It seems worth repeating Watson’s statement, ‘In quoting Psalm 84.9 (“May I hear what God the Lord speaks in me” . . . after stating that “we await grace confidently from our Creator”) . . . Rolle is actually saying that his words will be divinely inspired because of his spiritual status’.2 This chapter probes a little further into what it might mean for the Lord to speak in Rolle doing so with reference to one of Rolle’s late Latin works, Contra Amatores Mundi. Although I am in no way advocating that Rolle advances a consistent view of stilling the mind across his corpus, I hope to show that in Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle puts the stilling of the mind to literary effect, doing so in the context of the Desert spirituality which we saw influences Rolle’s thinking in Incendium Amoris and the other works considered in that chapter. The above quotation from Isaiah in many ways sums up the way in which Rolle’s calmed status plays itself out in Contra Amatores Mundi. It is my contention that in this text Rolle writes the deifying process of stilling of the mind into the fabric of the text, crafting within it a sweet ductus, drawn

176 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi from his own experience of sweetness, which invites the reader to still their own mind by focusing their sensual attention and desires on God in ways that mimic Rolle’s own experience. This, I believe, gives the text of Contra Amatores Mundi a quasi-scriptural feel and Rolle appears to expect the reader to chew it over and taste the sweetness embedded in his words by performing lectio divina on his text. Indeed, the interplay between Rolle’s voice and Christ’s voice is one that I hope to show justifies us in viewing this text as a kind of sacred eloquence – in which the word/Word of God is spoken forth with transformative intention. What I mean by sacred eloquence will become clear in the course of this chapter. I will carefully unpack what I intend by a ‘sweet ductus’ in relation to Mary Carruthers discussion of this idea. Whilst these are bold claims and there is not a great deal of research that has explored the effect of deification on an author’s voice, I am not alone in suggesting that in some mystical texts the writer assumes the voice of Christ to a very real extent. A similar idea has been mooted by Martin Laird of the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, such that he deems Gregory’s voice to be ‘logophatic’ – that is, one in which ‘the characteristics of the Word are taken on’, so that ‘the Word’, who is Christ, ‘says itself’. Laird holds it to be a prophetic and inspired form of speech, very different from ordinary ‘kataphatic’ talking about God, in which words are closely tied to their referents. As Laird clarifies, By this neulogism [logophasis] I intend the following: as a result of apophatic union, in which concepts, words and images have been abandoned, characteristics of the Word are taken on: the Word indwells the deeds and discourse of the one in apophatic union. Hence a new mode of discourse emerges: the Word says itself.3 Although Laird does not discuss this, there would seem to be a strong correlation between his reading of Gregory’s words and deification – Laird stresses that logophatic discourse is dependent on union and Gregory assuming Christ’s qualities, and according to Norman Russell, Gregory of Nyssa advocates an ethical approach to deification in the tradition of Origen.4 In this relation, it is interesting that Laird notes how Gregory appears to claim that his words are in some sense inspired and quasi-scriptural. Indeed Laird comments that Gregory draws parallels between his own speech and that of St. Paul and the Gospel writers, as well as comparing it to the bride’s conversation with her companions in the Song of Songs. We will explore Laird’s thesis a little further in the next chapter when we consider whether Julian too might be said to promote a form of sacred eloquence, unpacking there the difference between logophatic, apophatic and kataphatic modes of speech. It nevertheless seems helpful at this juncture to mention that Laird holds that in Gregory’s case logophatic discourse is a mode of speaking that is not so much informative as transformative, and that it is this that sets it apart from other modes of human discourse.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

177

The idea that a mystic’s words are quasi-scriptural is also a quality that Bernard McGinn has identified in the writings of four continental women – Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Angela of Folgnio and Marguerite Porete. McGinn even hails them ‘the four female evangelists of the thirteenth century’.5 In terms of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead, for example, McGinn notes that she boldly asserts that since the goodness of God cannot be restrained – God’s own nature overflowing into the Trinity and all creation – it also overflows in her. As McGinn states, ‘she sees herself as a direct instrument of God’s message and as having a public task to fulfill, especially in conveying God’s message to the clergy’.6 In this sense she sees the words of her book most properly to belong to Christ, whose mouthpiece she is. Although she acknowledges that this is problematic given that she is a woman, McGinn comments that she stresses that God has no regard for any misunderstandings that may result; God chooses her and in so doing dignifies her nature. This capacity would seem to rest on a very elevated form of prophetic calling since, as McGinn points out, Mechthild claims that all can become as Mary (the true bride of Christ), who she even describes as a ‘goddess’.7 McGinn notes that, Hadewijch, Angela and Porete, albeit in different ways, likewise voice such divinely inspired authority. That each of these women advocated deification is confirmed in the wider scholarship.8 It would be interesting to explore further the extent to which this underpins the status that each attaches to her words. It is this dynamic – the relationship between deification and the mystic’s voice – that informs my discussion of Rolle’s Contra Amatores Mundi in this chapter. The liber de amor dei contra amatores mundi, to give the work the full title that appears with slight modification in most extant manuscripts,9 was not a work that circulated widely like Incendium Amoris or Emendatio Vitae and it has not garnered much scholarly interest.10 Contra Amatores Mundi appears to be a relatively late Latin work, close in time to both the lyrically exuberant Melos Amoris and the more rhetorically didactic Emendatio Vitae.11 Nicholas Watson and Denis Reveney disagree as to whether it most likely precedes or follows Melos Amoris.12 The only scholarly modern edition is a transcription of John Rylands Library MS 18932.13 The editor, Paul Theiner, consulted seventeen of the nineteen manuscripts that Hope Emily Allen lists; the two Harmsworth manuscripts had been sold at auction in 1945, and although Theiner identifies a further manuscript containing Contra Amatores Mundi, University of Indiana MS Poole 311, there are insufficient records to determine whether it is one of the missing two.14 Most of these eighteen manuscripts fall into one of two groups – those with six chapters and those which split the first chapter in two, thus creating seven. Yet given that some extant manuscripts align neatly with neither trajectory, Theiner argues that this division occurs early, prior to any extant exemplar.15 Although on a few occasions he prefers an alternate reading, for the most part Theiner transcribes John Rylands Library MS 18932 with only a few minor amendments to correct the grammatical sense.16 Ralph Hanna is

178 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi critical of Theiner for following Deanesly’s lead in choosing a ‘best manuscript’, however, the edition is in a far better state than Deanesly’s Incendium Amoris.17 The base text does not appear to be problematic in ways that Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 35 is, nor are their major issues with the transcription. Theiner not only maintains that he has been able ‘to establish a solid text of the Contra Amatores Mundi’,18 he also believes a fair copy could have been constructed had considerably fewer manuscripts been examined.19 That said, it is important to recognise that we lack a critical edition, and that the discussion of Contra Amatores Mundi that follows must remain in this sense tentative. In Contra Amatores Mundi we find similar views concerning rapture and the calmed mind to those which Rolle expresses in Incendium Amoris. Rolle mentions Paul’s rapture to the third heaven on more than on occasion. He discusses it most explicitly in Chapter 5, where he even quotes 2 Corinthians 12.2: ‘whether in the body or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth’.20 Rolle writes of Paul’s rapture here and elsewhere in the text in more positive and classical terms than in Incendium Amoris, where we noted that he was quite dismissive of Paul’s vision. Here he states, It is true that he received God’s teaching, and in a miraculous way, and that in heaven the secret words of God were revealed to him . . . I think that if he had seen God in all His brilliance his nature would have been so greatly absorbed in that most abundant sweetness of God, that after that, when he was in the world, he could not have been proud, nor could he have been tempted to sin – when in fact after these revelations and visions he was tempted more severely than before lest he become proud.21 The more classical way in which Rolle describes Paul’s rapture in this text may indicate that he had perhaps been criticised for his alternative reading in Incendium Amoris. Here he stresses that he accepts that Paul’s vision was holy, yet at the same time he appears to defend a reading that would treat it as less than a perfect vision of God, limited in that Paul did not see God ‘in all His brilliance’. Indeed although Rolle agrees that Paul’s vision signals an elevated state,22 he nonetheless stresses that it did not result in Paul being so absorbed into God that he overcame all temptation. Contrasting such rapture with a transformation that changes a person’s nature, Rolle emphasises the superiority of the latter in that this leads to a state of detachment where, although living in the body, one cannot be enticed to sin: I know truly that if the inner nature of man were changed into that other glory, naturally by the grace of Christ, he would melt completely in eternal love, because such a man, even though he went about in the flesh, could not, would not know how to do anything else but glory in the Lord; nor could he wish for or desire anything but God or because

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

179

of God. I do not deny that he could be tempted, asleep or awake, according to the flesh; but he could not be enticed to dwell in his mind on any carnal pleasure. To be sure, although aroused by dreams – in which the devil heavily attacks such a man, whom he cannot harm while he is awake – were he to feel temptation in his members, if he directed his thought toward God, it would quickly disappear; and the man of God would remain perpetually pure.23 The state he describes in this passage appears very similar to that which underpins chapter 37 in Incendium Amoris which we discussed in Chapter 3. It likewise resonates with the stilling of the mind advocated by Evagrius and Cassian recounted in Chapter 2. It is a state that Rolle stresses is most desirable, and once achieved, no matter what happens, the transformed person desires nothing but God and what God wills; a state according to Rolle that is possible in this life. It is notable that in Contra Amatores Mundi, which is believed to be a later work, Rolle suggests some possibility of control over the temptations that arise in dreams, which he states can quickly be overcome by directing one’s thoughts towards God. As he goes on to stress, when temptations inflame the body, the one thus transformed can by turning his thoughts to God ensure that all venial sin is burnt up and ‘absorbed by the ardor of love’. It is such a lover who is said to be able to ‘get out of self and go to God’, and to be ‘carried above all earthly things’.24 Although more cautious in relation to St. Paul, Rolle still appears to be advancing a position similar to that found in Incendium Amoris concerning the calming of the mind. If I am correct in reading this as a deifying trajectory in Incendium Amoris and the other works discussed in Chapter 3, it seems that Rolle likewise advances this movement in Contra Amatores Mundi. It is an idea that I believe is of central importance to this text and which he appears to use rhetoric to draw the reader into. At the same time it seems important to stress that Rolle is not suggesting in Contra Amatores Mundi that he has arrived at a more elevated state than that ultimately achieved by St. Paul, who Rolle seems to hold achieves the deified state about which he writes. Indeed, Rolle’s discussion of transformation in Contra Amatores Mundi is clearly predicated on Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3.18–20, where Paul describes being changed ‘from glory to glory’ and gazing at God directly with ‘face unveiled’. Rolle returns to this Pauline passage again at the end of the section that contains his entire discussion of transformation, stressing in relation to it that although we now see in part (1 Corinthians 12.13), those who have been transformed and had their faces unveiled will be able to see the things of heaven in the next life. Rolle does not fully lay claim to this whilst alive, but nonetheless advocates the possibility of sensing God in this life – an idea that we discussed in Chapter 3 and which we will further discuss. Indeed, we see Rolle emphasising two things, that the calmed mind is better than a vision of the afterlife, even though Paul’s vision is holy, and that there is still a distinction between

180 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi the transformation that occurs when one is able to fix all one’s thoughts on God and beatific vision. Only the latter is properly a sight of God.25 Yet it also seems clear that Rolle associates his mystical encounters with transformation rather than rapture to the third heaven.26 For Rolle, such transformation is portrayed here as the end-goal of spiritual love, and it underpins his discussion of spiritual love. The main concern of Contra Amatores Mundi is, as Theiner puts it, to contrast ‘the incompatibility of the sordid love of this world with the incontestably superior love of God’.27 The work plots a spiritual trajectory from the love of this world to spiritual love, constantly contrasting the two, particularly in terms of their sweetness. Theiner comments that this juxtaposition is one that Rolle not only pursues didactically, it also operates at a stylistic level, the latter reinforcing the former in ways that suggest the importance of style for Rolle in this work. Theiner notes that the most obvious stylistic feature of Contra Amatores Mundi is Rolle’s practice of ‘balancing words or longer units in juxtaposition for the purpose of securing or emphasizing comparison and contrast’.28 Theiner illustrates how, just as in the full title of the work itself, liber de amor dei contra amatores mundi, Rolle uses words of the same root to create wordplay, evenly distributing syllables, accents and rhythm, such that phrases fall into two mirroring halves.29 Take, for instance, the following phrase to which Theiner draws attention: Nam veri amatores eterne divinitatis suavia senciunt solacia, dum mundi dilectores deliciis dampnosis depascuntur.30 As Theiner comments, ‘two alliterative strings – suavia senciunt solacia/ deliciis dampnosis depascuntur’31 – enable Rolle to evoke multiple oppositions. Opposition is reinforced by Rolle employing the exact same rhythm at the beginning of each clause, as well as word-play around ‘veri’ and ‘mundi’, while the parallelism is disturbed by veri and mundi being from different parts of speech. It is this latter feature that Theiner notes allows more than one oppositional sense to be communicated at the same time, such that the text can be read as contrasting worldly and spiritual lovers and/or worldly and spiritual delights.32 Theiner draws attention to a number of further stylistic features, including paranomasia, alliteration, parallelism, trajectio, adnominatio, homoioteleuton, epiphora, and anaphora, many of which Rolle also uses to reinforce an opposition between worldly and spiritual love.33 Indeed, Theiner posits that Contra Amatores Mundi is a work of great rhetorical craftsmanship. Rejecting the idea found in early scholarship that Rolle’s Latin is haphazard, he moots that ‘the balance and antithesis that characterize the rhetoric of Rolle’s sentences are not the work of an idle dreamer or frenzied celebrant, but of a painstaking craftsman’.34 The sense of competition to which Theiner draws attention is one that we also see at work in Rolle’s understanding of love and how this affects the soul’s sensorium. Theiner notes that the metaphors that Rolle employs to

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

181

describe the effects of spiritual love could equally be applied to their physical counterpart. As he comments, ‘each of the vehicles of Rolle’s predominantly sensuous images for the effects of heavenly love is in itself also an attribute which could easily be predicated of physical love or sensuality in general’.35 This dimension of Contra Amatores Mundi is particularly pronounced when Rolle uses terms to describe heat, sweetness and song (his key experiences), such as ‘dulcedo’, ‘dulcor’, ‘sapor’ and ‘suauitas’ for sweetness and taste, ‘calor’, ‘ardor’ and ‘fervor’ for heat, and ‘melos’ and ‘canor’ for song, and the same applies to his use of ‘iubilium’ (joy) and ‘inebrietas’ (drunkenness) – all these terms could be used of their physical counterparts.36 In Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle uses such language to emphasise the opposition between the spiritual and physical.37 As Theiner puts it, ‘in a sense everything is defined by its opposite; it is what its opposite is not’.38 This would seem to set Rolle apart from Bernard of Clairvaux, who likewise speaks of the soul’s becoming drunk on God’s love and uses sensual language to speak of the soul’s spiritual progress.39 As Gordon Rudy has shown, Bernard imbues his spiritual discourse with a physicality that somewhat blurs the absolute distinction between spiritual and physical love that we find in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs. Origen draws a stark division between carnal love and its spiritual counterpart, stressing that the monk who reads the Song of Songs must be spirituality advanced in order not to confuse the metaphors used in the text for their physical sensual equivalents. As he states, But if any man who lives only after the flesh should approach [the Song of Songs], to such a one the reading of this Scripture will be the occasion of no small hazard and danger. For he, not knowing how to hear love’s language in purity and with chaste ears, will twist the whole manner of his hearing of it away from the inner spiritual man and on to the outward and carnal; and he will be turned away from the spirit to the flesh, and will foster carnal desires in himself, and it will seem to be the Divine Scriptures that are thus urging and egging him on to fleshly lust! For this [. . .] I therefore advise and counsel everyone who is not yet rid of the vexations of flesh and blood [. . .] to refrain completely from reading this little book.40 In contrast, in his sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard draws the carnal into the spiritual, as Denys Turner has also commented.41 Bernard used the language of love to entice the reader, via carnal love, to spiritual love for God. Bernard’s language thus operates in the same manner as the Incarnation itself – to draw those lost in carnal desire, first to a sensual love for Christ and finally to pure spiritual love. As Bernard writes of the Incarnation in his Sermons on the Song of Songs: I think this is the principle reason why the invisible God willed to be seen in the flesh and to converse with men as a man. He wanted to

182 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi recapture the affections of carnal men who were unable to love in any other way, by first drawing them to the salutary love of his own humanity, and then gradually to raise them to a spiritual love.42 It is interesting that Rolle’s position in Contra Amatores Mundi appears to be closer to that of Origen than that of Bernard even though, as we will see, he entices his reader with his words. For Rolle, spiritual and physical stimuli are in a sense opposed – even if both are experienced physically. Where Rolle appears to differ from Origen and be closer to Bernard is in holding that the soul has only one sensorium. By this Gordon Rudy intends that physical and spiritual sensation compete for an aspect of the soul’s attention – one cannot indulge in one without losing the capacity to embrace the other (see n. 64). Rolle, however, appears to take this a step further, claiming that the spiritual repercussions of the soul’s love are also felt in the body and its senses, something which Bernard does not claim. Bernard still maintains a clear distinction between spiritual sensation and its physical counterpart even if they are the subject of the same sensorium, that is, command the attention of the same part of the soul’s amorous capacities. It is perhaps this difference, rather than any Bernardine connection between our sensuality and Christ’s, that leads Rolle to use the sensual to evoke the spiritual; a point we will carefully discuss.43 The sensation with which Rolle appears to be particularly concerned in Contra Amatores Mundi is that of taste and the sweetness which ought to occupy the soul’s palate. Indeed, Nicholas Watson has argued that Contra Amatores Mundi belongs to a phase in Rolle’s mystical career that revolves around his experience of sweetness.44 Particular pronounced in this respect is Rolle’s appetitive engagement with God’s love. Although he discusses food and the need for moderation in fasting in various of his writings,45 and elsewhere uses the image of sweetness to contrast worldly and spiritual love,46 no other text is so literally stuffed full of the imagery of sensual consumption. As we will see, much of Rolle’s discussion of sweetness appears to be predicated on traditional appreciations of it within medicine, cookery, epistemology and rhetoric. In the discussion that follows I will carefully outline this little-discussed feature since I believe it is central to the calming of the mind that Rolle wishes to communicate to the reader of this text. Yet despite containing such ideas, being a work composed with great rhetorical care, and one that also details a movement from purgation, via illumination to perfection, Contra Amatores Mundi cannot really be said to have a narrative flow. Instead Rolle moves backwards and forwards, from the heights of contemplative union to the need for purgation. Theiner argues that stylistic devices like those discussed above give the whole of Contra Amatores Mundi a ballad-like quality, in which, through swirling repetition, Rolle voices a message that the love of God stands in contradistinction to the love of the world.47 Indeed, Theiner argues that Contra Amatores Mundi is neither a treatise, like Incendium Amoris and the hugely popular Emendatio

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

183

Vitae, nor a series of postils, as is the case with Melos Amoris. Instead, he views it as a blueprint for the construction of such works and moots that we need to rely on Rolle’s other writings for a full sense of the key ideas that operate within Contra Amatores Mundi, such as Rolle’s famous experiences of heat, sweetness and song. The same might also be said of the calming of the mind which would seem to be far more explicitly discussed in Incendium Amoris. Notwithstanding the kernel of key ideas appearing in Contra Amatores Mundi, Theiner argues that rather than a stand-alone treatise, ‘It is rather like the living record – or vivid recollection – of the rhetorical inventio necessary for the writing of one of these works [Incendium Amoris and Emendatio Vitae]’.48 Denis Renevey likewise argues that ‘the readership theme is more a rhetorical exercise in this treatise’ than in Rolle’s English writings stressing, along with Theiner, that it is difficult to tell whether the audience is real or fictive, even though for Renevey there is some evidence that Rolle is beginning to take the idea of audience seriously.49 It is perhaps this seemingly nebulous state that is responsible for the work’s relative neglect in contemporary scholarship; this despite the fact that as, Theiner stresses, the text is expertly constructed and clearly recounts familiar features of Rolle’s mysticism, including his experiences of heat, sweetness and song, albeit in less biographical fashion than we find elsewhere in Rolle’s corpus.50 It is with this in mind that we will turn to consider how Rolle uses the idea of sweetness in this text.

1. Sweetness in Contra Amatores Mundi Mary Carruthers and Rachel Fulton have both independently illustrated that sweetness was a seminal term within the medieval West but one that has been somewhat overlooked in the scholarship.51 Carruthers argues that its sheer ubiquity has numbed us to the visceral way in which medieval people responded not only to art but also to spiritual and physical health, positive knowledge, and the power of rhetoric, viewing all as sweet.52 As Rachel Fulton comments, Psalm 33.9 in the Vulgate reads ‘Gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus’, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is Sweet’ and yet historians have continually translated ‘suavis’ as ‘good’.53 The physical residue of such language is not it seems to our taste, she suggests.54 Both point out that in this period sweetness was held to be key to health, an idea that we find underpinning its use within medieval cookery and connoisseurship, medicine, and effective rhetoric, all of which are drawn upon within discussions of spiritual health. To get a sense of the polyvalence and sensuality that accompanies the idea of sweetness in Contra Amatores Mundi I will briefly outline these different usages of sweetness, drawing on both Carruthers and Fulton, before turning to consider how sweetness operates within Rolle’s text. As both Fulton and Carruthers note, medieval cookery and culinary connoisseurship were built around Aristotle’s and Galen’s physiognomical

184 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi principles.55 Aristotle held that the one with a well-trained palette was able to discern what was healthy from what was not. As Fulton puts it: Given the purpose of eating is to supply our bodies with the elements that will enable them to live and grow, the function of taste [according to Aristotle] is to help us detect those foods that will nourish us best, while avoiding those that will make us ill. Foods that will nourish us taste sweet, while those that do not taste bitter.56 Being healthy required that one cultivate a tongue that could differentiate the edible from the poisonous, which for the most part meant the sweet from the bitter; such principles meant that good food was often sweet. As Carruthers points out, ‘To be sweet is to be wholesome, without excess of bitterness and salt: thus water and wine are both called “sweet” when they are pure, whether or not they are also sugared’.57 However, Carruthers stresses that sweetness did not have only one function within a medieval context. She notes that medicines were often sweet – full of sugar, honey, milk and treacle – not simply because these were considered nourishing but because of their capacity as medicine to rebalance the body’s humours. The effects of sweetness were not therefore necessarily pleasant – indeed they could be purgative. It was largely as such that sweetness was considered curative. As Carruthers states, Since the principle of growth and life was founded on nutrition, the first medical goal was to redress excess, typically through purgation – which is not a pleasant, agreeable experience. To this end were administered various sugars, including honey, milk, syrups, treacles and the potions called ‘lectuaries’ in English (from Latin electuaria) mixed from combinations of herbs and other medicaments. Not that all these potions contained sugars (garlic was also an important medicinal), but a great many of them did, so much so that sugar itself, like honey, ‘sweet’ wine, and licorice, is often spoken of as medicine.58 Sweetness was thus a term that could mean both a pleasant taste or effect, and/or imply cleansing, and both meanings of sweetness were employed in the discussion of spiritual matters. Particularly within monastic and vernacular contexts, we find the language of sweetness transferred from food and medicine to the spiritual realm.59 The curative properties described above were, for example, applied to Christ, who was often thought of as the soul’s medicine. Chaucer thus speaks of Jesus as healing treacle: ‘Crist which that is to euery harm triacle’.60 Lydgate likewise describes Christ as the ‘cheeff triacle’ (‘On the cros Crist Ihesu spent his blood, As medicyne, Bawme, & cheeff triacle’).61 Carruthers notes that Bernard of Clairvaux considered Christ’s nature itself to

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

185

be sweet.62 We should not assume that such references only imply a pleasant process, they may also suggest purgation. Yet no matter in which sense they are employed, both Fulton and Carruthers stress that the sensual nature of the language should not be overlooked.63 Fulton moots that we find such ideas at play within the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. For example, when he discusses the importance of pursing spiritual rather than carnal sweetness, Bernard speaks of how cultivating one’s spiritual palate helps one to diminish one’s carnal appetites: When wisdom enters, it makes the carnal sense flat; it purifies the understanding, cleanses and heals the palate of the heart. When the palate is healed, it then tastes the good; it tastes wisdom itself, and there is nothing better.64 The contrast that Bernard makes between carnal and spiritual desire and tasting wisdom here is clearly predicated upon both the pleasant and purgative properties of sweetness. Rather than stripping the language of its physical resonance, Fulton stresses that it depends on it.65 The point is also reiterated by Gordon Rudy, who stresses that, ‘Although at times he [Bernard] does insists on the spiritual meaning of somatically-charged sensory language, he also accepts and plays with its somatic implications, without fearing that they would drown out the spiritual meaning: the two coexist’.66 Carruthers notes that the term sweetness carried a further epistemic meaning; it was applied to affective, in contrast to intellective, knowledge. She argues that the roots of this idea are to be found in Islamic discussions of affectivity, where sweetness is considered visceral or heart knowledge, and was thus connected to taste.67 As Carruthers writes, ‘Unlike the cerebral senses – vision, hearing, and smell, all of which operate out of the brain – touch and taste both connect directly to the heart . . . Avicenna thought the flesh of the heart itself was sentient’.68 In this vein Carruthers argues that medieval discussions of sweetness, where they pertain to knowledge and art, can be thought of as ‘aesthetic’ when this is understood in the pre-Kantian, Aristotelian sense of aisthesis – knowledge known via the senses (Latin sensus).69 Wisdom, a name and property of God, was in this sense sweet too. Not that all sweet knowledge was necessarily good though. Some knowledge, like that of the apple in the garden of Eden, was deceptively sweet – the cultivation of good spiritual taste entailed learning to tell the difference; an idea again predicated on Aristotelian principles connected to the importance of cultivating good taste as a means of survival.70 Carruthers draws attention to a final arena is which sweetness was also often employed, that of effective rhetoric. She comments that the persuasive dimension of rhetoric was often said to be sweet – indeed, she notes that, like wisdom, persuasion in Latin is a cognate of sweetness.71 As an illustration of this she recounts Hugh of Fleury’s story of Theodulph who Hugh tells us

186 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi was rescued from imprisonment by his singing of the Gloria, laus et honor, which moved the king to compassion. As Carruthers states, What the story describes is an act of persuasion, which softens and dissolves the hard heart of the king as he is touched by the sweet song. Therein resides the communal energy of sweetness, not alone in the individual affects that we so strongly associate with later medieval affective piety. The quality of sweetness, which is at the linguistic root of persuasion, functions rhetorically to persuade another person to an action’.72 She stresses that sweetness was a term that indicated the capacity of one person to persuade another, an idea that was connected to one’s ability to speak eloquently, in a pleasing voice, with pleasant words. Carruthers notes in this relation that we find an overlap in vocabulary between speech and song. As she continues ‘Dulce eloquentia, verba dulcia, vox suavis are all medieval tropes commonly used as dulce carmen, and indeed the phrase “voces dulces/suaves” can refer to voices singing or speaking, to the words spoken or sung, and especially to the well-crafted words or oratory’.73 It was as such that poetry and song were both thought of as sweet, for they softened the heart and moved it to action.74 Like the knowledge that it generated, sweet rhetoric worked on the will rather than the intellect: ‘Sweet-talking is “sweet” because it persuades, by reason (one hopes), but essentially persuasion must invigorate the will, enabling it to act’.75 As the work of Carruthers and Fulton has shown, sweetness was a multivalent term, used of spiritual goods and knowledge as well as carnal ones; its meaning encompassed the capacity of medicines to heal, food to nourish, rhetoric to persuade and the saving work of Christ. In each case the language of sweetness carried visceral overtones. Indeed Carruthers stresses that understanding this is essential to comprehending medieval ideas of taste on many levels. We must resist the temptation to strip sweetness of its physicality when used of spiritual, artistic and linguistic goods. If we turn to the text of Contra Amatores Mundi, we find Rolle exploiting such properties of sweetness in his oppositional account of earthly and spiritual love. That Rolle wished his readers to understand the sweetness that fills its pages in close relation to the physical experiences of eating and drinking and the knowledge that is derived from taste is immediately clear from the way in which food imagery is laden into the passages that bookend this treatise. True to his central theme of spiritual verses carnal love, he opens with a critique of the lovers of the world. We can see from the passage below that the former are described in negative food-related terms, particularly those that relate to sweetness: And so I say that he who is intoxicated by the savor of fleshly impurity, esteeming little the honeyed drafts of sweetness, is a raving madman, surely in the clutches of the devil. I should rather have ‘sorrow’ than

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

187

the ‘savor’ of the visible life – a joy that . . . then strikes with the bitter blindness of inner death . . . seeking only the taste of its own death, it feeds the serpent that devours it . . . It is sickened by sweet things and yet thirsts ardently after poison’.76 As we can see, lovers of the world are said to be ‘intoxicated by the savor of fleshly impurity, esteeming little the honeyed draft of sweetness . . . seeking only the taste of their own death (which he describes as ‘bitter blindness’). Despite being ‘sickened by sweet things’ each nonetheless ‘thirsts ardently after poison’. In describing the carnal desires of the lovers of the world, he imagines them as those with insatiable appetites for sweet things. Yet their sense of taste is distorted; they crave the wrong kind of sweetness and even as it makes them sick and thirsty they still hanker after more. At the very close of the work, the lovers of God are likewise served with food imagery. Here, however, sweetness is used to very different effect: O love . . . you who give water to the dry, warm the cold . . . . in the eyes of the Creator every dish is tasteless and unpleasant without you. You are the savor that seasons, the odor that is fragrant, the sweetness that pleases . . . Flow down to me in all your sweetness.77 Divine love is said to give ‘water to the dry’ and ‘savor’, for ‘in the eyes of the Creator every dish is tasteless and unpleasant without it’. [Divine Love] is ‘the savour which seasons . . . the sweetness which pleases’ and so Rolle prays ‘Flow down on me in your sweetness’ – which, earlier in the text flows into his open mouth: as he writes: ‘I opened my mouth to God and such great sweetness was poured into me’.78 Those who love God are shown to have refined palates that know the true sweetness that is offered to them by love and which is such love. From just these short extracts we get a clear sense of just how obsessed with sweetness and its consumption Rolle is in this treatise: intoxication, savor, honeyed-drafts, sweetness, taste, bitterness, sickened from sweet things, thirst, poison, water, dryness, food as a dish, tastelessness, unpleasant savours, seasoning, open mouths, pouring and most of all sweetness – infuse the passages and the text. Indeed, sandwiched (excuse the pun) between them – one cannot help but read Rolle’s discussions of consumption, thirsting for God, pure [thus sweet] water and the sweet Wisdom of God in relation not only to the physical sweetness that he constantly mentions but also to the sensation of taste. By wrapping his text in these ideas Rolle creates a strong trajectory from sensual to spiritual sweetness, from purgation to spiritual illumination and finally to a taste of contemplation that is truly sweet. Indeed, in the opening of the first chapter Rolle develops a movement from sensual to spiritual love using various rhetorical devices. He first sets up an opposition in terms of sweetness and taste between ‘honeyed draughts’ (melliflui dulcoris hastum) and ‘the taste of fleshly impurity’ (carnalis immundicie

188 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi sapore), into which he builds a contrast between sweetness (dulcidenem) and sorrow (dolorem). ‘I should rather have said “sorrow” (dolorem) than “sweetness” (dulcedinem) of this visible life’.79 This serves to emphasise that Rolle is speaking of a sweetness other than that which governs ordinary taste. It also emphasies the importance of the reader moving from an understanding of one to an appreciation of the other. What needs to be redirected are the minds or memories of his readers, and thus he contrasts mortal minds (mens mortalium) with the hearts of the elect (cordibus electorum). The former minds are sinful (mente mala) and seduced (Mentus utique oblectamenti). The elect however, think with their innermost hearts (precordiorum) by keeping the memory of the Saviour constantly in mind (memoria [eterni] salvatoris mentali). It is thus that they experience celestial sweetness (celestis dulcor approbatur). These puns and contrasts are reinforced through a number of additional rhetorical devises. Using what Theiner refers to as ‘serial description’,80 where strings of ideas are brought together through repetition, Rolle emphasises the sickly sweet nature of worldly love: ‘Fastidit itaque duciflua, et immo ardore venenum sitit; respuit salutem, et amat occisorem; languet ad interitum, iramque suspirate provocare eterni conditoris’ (‘It [the worldly lover’s mind] is sickened by sweet things and yet thirsts ardently after poison; it spits out its own salvation, and loves its murderer; it is sick unto death, and longs to provoke the ire of the eternal creator’).81 Here Rolle creates three inter-related couplets to show how the soul that loves the world acts with a kind of madness, and as such fails to develop a palate for true sweetness. As such, he suggests that it eats its way to its own destruction. The opening section of Chapter 1 of Contra Amatores Mundi thus plots a clear trajectory, in this case from worldly thinking to spiritual memory using a series of related rhetorical devises, as well as punning, all built around the motifs of taste and sweetness. Much of Rolle’s use of this imagery, especially early in the text, relates to the purgative properties of sweetness; one might expect as much if Rolle is setting out to create the kind of movement through the text that I am suggesting. Initially, like the treacle and honey of which Carruthers writes, the honeyed love of God is said to cleanse the heart (and so the soul’s palate) preparing it to appreciate a taste of spiritual sweetness; indeed Rolle uses such language to describe a process of rebalancing the appetites of the soul. This is clear, for example, in Chapter 3, where Rolle writes of how eternal love purifies the soul from sin and guilt. He describes such love as an unpolluted stream which, as we noted above, implies that the water is sweet: ‘eternal love truly kindles the heart and cleanses away the rust of sin, carrying off guilt. The stream is unpolluted [i.e. sweet], purifying the reborn, making clear the conscience, drenching the soul with sweetness’.82 Having undergone the purgative stage of the journey, Rolle then states that the purified soul finds that it has been healed sensorially and thus sensually. Indeed it seems that Rolle’s goal is to show that through such purgation the soul’s entire sensorium is ultimately healed and restored. We see

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

189

this particularly clearly in Chapter 5. He describes how when redirected to spiritual love each sense is able to operate anew – the mouth (which speaks), taste, touch, smell, hearing and the heart83 – are all now given new sensual capacities. They arrive at a point where all feed on the things of God and in so doing are nourished and refreshed. As he states: Moreover when I am in this state of joy my senses feel refreshed, my heart enjoys that which loves, my mouth that which delights, my taste that which has good flavor, my touch that which caresses, my smell that which is rich in fragrance, and my hearing that which ravishes.84 Rolle claims that the effect of sweet divine love is that his ordinary senses become numb to stimulation: ‘divine consolation saps the powers of the flesh’.85 As in Incendium Amoris, it seems that in Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle not only proffers an opposition between physical and spiritual sensation, he also portrays them as in competition for the same sensorium and thus as the potential driving force of the sensual organs. This echoes sentiments that are expressed by Bernard of Clairvaux, who we noted claims that ‘wisdom makes the carnal sense flat . . . and heals the palate of the heart’.86 Rudy comments that although Bernard does at times differentiate between physical and spiritual sensation in ways that suggest that the soul has two sets of senses, the general tenor of Bernard’s writing, particularly his commentary on the Song of Songs, implies that Bernard advocates a single sensorium that can be directed either towards the spiritual or physical. As Rudy states, ‘Bernard uses sensual language extensively to discuss how we know and achieve union with God . . . Bernard’s usage suggests that the human person has a single sensorium that can be directed both to material and bodily things and to spiritual and divine things’.87 Bernard however does not claim that spiritual sensation takes over the body. He rather plots a movement from carnal, to sensual, to spiritual desire that runs along a continuum, such that human physicality does not obstruct movement towards God; it is an essential component that leads beyond itself. In this way the physical and the spiritual are connected. Rudy notes how Bernard suggests that we make use of our physical nature whilst in a sense denying it, never forgetting that without the body (and indeed Christ’s Incarnate body) we can never know God. As Rudy puts it, ‘corporeality is both the condition of fallen humanity and the condition for fallen humanity to know and love spiritual things. Humans cannot embrace the spirit unless they first embrace the body; we need a relation to the body because we understand nothing else’.88 Indeed, Rudy points out that Bernard stresses in sermon 56 of his Sermons on the Song of Songs that ‘it is not our bodies but our sins that stand in the way’.89 For Bernard, the fullest human encounter with God will be that experienced by the soul in its resurrection body.90 Rolle, however, portrays the two domains competing for the body’s senses, the spiritual winning out such that carnal taste is literally flat or perhaps

190 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi better flattened rather than drawn up to a sensual love. Indeed, somewhat ironically given the physicality of Rolle’s own spiritual sensations, Rolle has, in a sense, perhaps less interest in physical sensation than Bernard. Rather than being a stepping stone to a spirituality that moves beyond the physical whilst being firmly rooted in it (as it is for Bernard), for Rolle, any sensuality that results from the ordinary use of the senses is carnality and must be quashed if spiritual sensations are to arise. Although Rolle is nowhere as explicit as in Incendium Amoris, since in Contra Amatores Mundi he does not write in a narrative manner, as in his earlier work Rolle describes how contemplatives flee earthly music preferring spiritual music instead, such that even in the presence of such ‘noise’ they retain a tranquillity in which they are not distracted by it. As he states, For every worldly melody, every sensual music contrived with instruments – however, much they may please the active or worldly men who are tied up with business – truly they are not desirable to contemplatives. On the contrary they flee from hearing this physical sound, because within themselves contemplative men have already taken up heavenly song. Active men exult in exterior song; we, kindled with divine contemplation, pass over earthly things into the song of divine feasting. They do not know our joy, and we may not know theirs, because when we sing without ourselves, exulting with loud voices the delight of heaven, we try to set ourselves apart from other singers and talkers. Or else we stop singing out loud and become silent out of the abundance of our invisible joy; so that even though we do not flee bodily from those noise-makers, truly we are far away; because no one is ever able to rejoice in the love of God who has not first left behind the vain joys of this world.91 Although a long passage it seems worth quoting in full for the way in which it echoes the sentiment that Rolle conveys in Incendium Amoris that there is a physical opposition between earthly and spiritual song and that song takes over the mouth and the voice, even where it is not actually vocalised. One either needs to avoid those who make earthly music or enter into a state of detachment such that one is unaffected by these activities. Although Rolle refers to earthly music as ‘noise’ rather than suggesting that he avoids it because it is sweet – as he does Incendium Amoris – the sense of opposition between the two competing forms of music is nonetheless apparent. Indeed, Contra Amatores Mundi gives the impression that the physical sensorium has been pushed inwards, outwardly unresponsive, human senses now begin to taste God. In this sense, Rolle appears to have some interest in the reformed body and the way in which it is a dull echo of the resurrection body; it feels God even though it cannot yet see God face to face.92 We see this, for example, in Chapter 5, where Rolle states: I do not see the face of my God, nevertheless I look forward to such joy in heaven, because while still in the flesh I taste and feel it. I do not wish

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

191

that another glory be given me, but that this be given in a different way; namely, that I may see my God in all His beauty, brightly and clearly.93 The joy of heaven is something that Rolle claims to both taste and feel in this life. It is, in a sense, breaking through even though he hopes to see God and so know God in a fuller way in the life to come.94 This appears to be what he means when he reports that the spiritual lover enters a state of detachment in which worldly matters cease to perturb him, making the lovers of God seems mad to those who encounter them. As Rolle writes, ‘[A] man seized with such great love is frequently considered stupid [. . .] Continually singing the delights to be found within themselves, they are completely heedless of external tribulations’.95 Indeed in a manner similar to that which Alistair Minnis identifies in the writings of The Cloud-Author, who he argues uses imagination to negate it, describing his technique as an ‘imaginative denigration of imagination’, we might perhaps say of Rolle that his approach is the sensual denigration of sensation. It is in a similar vein that we should, I believe, understand statements like those in which Rolle speaks of his mind being absorbed by God: ‘when the eternal love of God has absorbed our minds it immediately makes those things which our bodily vision sees as desirable silly’.96 Rolle is not speaking of the mystical annihilation of the soul that we find discussed by continental mystics like Margerite Porete,97 but of the fact that external distractions no longer trouble the minds of those with a reformed heart since it is no longer a carnally driven, intellectually chattering, one.98 We noted in Chapter 3 that this feature was a central trait of the calmed mind as portrayed in Incendium Amoris, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and The Form of Living. Given the importance that Rolle clearly places on this idea in Contra Amatores Mundi, and the similar outworking of spiritual love in this text, although Rolle is less explicit here I believe that we are justified in viewing the stilling of the mind as an important theme that drives the competing accounts of sweetness that fill this text. Thus it is that at the end of Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle stresses the importance of tasting the sweet love of God. Here Rolle builds a metaphorical string to emphasise the value of such true spiritual knowledge. To do so, he uses images that revolves around eating and the idea of a refined spiritual palate: ‘Tu es sapor condiens, tu es odor redolens, tu es dulcor placens’ [‘You are the savor that seasons, the odor that is fragrant, the sweetness that pleases’].99 This passage would seem to reinforce the goodness of God that he ultimately intends the reader to taste via love. It is also an example of what Rosamund Allen has called ‘verbal patterning’.100 Indeed although it would be untrue to imply that no other images apart from those associated with sweetness fill the pages of Contra Amatores Mundi, Rolle, as is by now hopefully clear, overloads this text with images of food and sweetness. Indeed, one gets positively hungry reading it, and I think that we must also see this as part of the same rhetorical strategy. Not that one should race out and buy some chocolate – as I did when I first examined it. This suggests an associative response driven by a carnal appetite, that is, thinking driven by

192 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi a ‘mortal mind’. There is of course a danger that Rolle’s readers would have had a similar response and yet as Carruthers notes monastic memory training was contingent on the possibility of redirecting existing attachments, a technique which Contra Amatores Mundi appears to imitate. Within monastic reading forgetting one set of responses depended on there being a closeness between that which one wanted to remember and that which one hoped to forget. In order to forget an appetite for carnal sweetness one needed to attract the emotions and sensations to a new location. As Carruthers asserts of the process of lectio divina in general: Things that are completely different and separate do not block each other: they act instead as two distinct memory sites. Where two or more competing patterns exist in one site, however, only one will be seen: the others, though they may remain potentially visible, will be blocked or absorbed by the overlay.101 Although Rolle does not seem to encourage sensual love for God of an ordinary kind, this element of lectio divina would still seem to be one that Rolle has in mind as he guides the reader though Contra Amatores Mundi. The text demands that the reader appreciate what good taste is, even as it tries to teach this, especially through the initial emphasis on sweetness as purgative. Elsewhere in the text, even in passages which do not directly focus on sweetness, we find Rolle indebted to the monastic technique of lectio divina – in which passages of scripture come to be associated on a thematic and aural basis. Chapter 3 lines 95–200 serve as an illustration.102 Here Rolle contrasts the love of this world with love for God using images of kingship and riches. He writes of how worldly lovers ‘lack crowns’ and stresses that he will not let the devil ‘rob me of my piety’. He continues that the one who pursues ‘true love’ ‘abandon[s] his concern for riches and delights’, and he encourages him to ‘run the course’, a possible allusion to 1 Corinthians 9.24–25. Although he then reintroduces ideas of consuming God, writing that only spiritual love can quench the thirst and quoting various Psalms including Psalm 61.5, ‘I am in thirst’, he moves back to the image of kingship and speaks of how the one who fights valiantly will ‘receive the assistance of Him who also bestows the crown of glory’ (1 Corinthians 9.24–25).103 Indeed, Rolle incorporates many such allusions to scripture, drawn mostly from Proverbs and the Psalms, into Contra Amatores Mundi.104 Rolle also embeds numerous biblical verses into the text to act as mnemonic prompts (typical of monastic memory work), such as when he quotes Luke 22.29–30 on how the elect may sit and eat and drink in the kingdom of heaven.105 Whilst far from all such short extracts relate to food and feeding, they add to the general movement towards spiritual love that is being navigated through taste and its sweetness, emphasising the importance of lectio divina within this process. Reflecting on all these features it seems that Contra Amatores Mundi is designed to act in some sense as a training ground for the memory. Not only

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

193

does the text make use of features found in the monastic practice of lectio divina, it does so in ways that resonate strongly with the idea that Rolle has crafted a sweet ductus within the text to lead the reader from the love of this world to the love of God. Indeed, as Mary Carruthers has shown, the theory underpinning ideas of ductus and the practice of lectio divina were deeply intertwined (just as they appear to be in Contra Amatores Mundi).

2. The Ductus of text Mary Carruthers traces the origins of scholastic thinking around ductus and some of its related terms to the fourth-century Christian rhetorician, Consultus Fortunatianus, who incorporated the concept of ductus into his textbook on rhetoric, which in turn influenced Martianus Capella’s The Marriage of Philosophy and Mercury, from whence it shaped discussions of rhetoric throughout the Middle Ages.106 She notes that within classical, antique and medieval texts, ductus was one of several terms which were used to refer to the inherent capacity of a text to act as a guide for the reader; a capacity which was thought determined by the stylistic qualities given to it by its author, but which were held to be properties of the text rather than conveying any authorial intention. It was a facet that we find described through terms like ‘ductus’, ‘tenor’, ‘modus’ and ‘color’. As she states, Ductus is the way by which a work leads someone through itself: that quality in a work’s formal patterns which engages an audience and then sets a viewer or auditor or performer in motion within its structures, an experience more like travelling through stages along a route than like perceiving a whole object. [. . .] Several closely related Latin words are used in speaking of this dynamic, chiefly ductus, tenor, modus and color.107 This quality emphasised the dynamic, living nature of a work or a piece of art. As Carruthers stresses, medieval books and works of art were not viewed as complete, as they often are within modern critical thinking on art and literature: Ductus and its synonyms analyse the experience of artistic form as an ongoing, dynamic process rather than as the examination of a static or completed object. . . . The art of the Middle Ages does not hold up a perfect ‘globed fruit’ but leads one in a walk along converging and diverging paths.108 A text or a piece of art was an object that led one on a journey; it was dynamic and living and in this sense evoked a potentially polyvalent set of responses, which depended on both the stylistic features of the text and the reader’s background/memorial training.

194 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi Fortunatianus argued that there were five types of ductus: simple, subtle, figurative, oblique, and mixed – a notion which has its origin in the rhetorical ‘colours’ or ‘figurative discourse’ that it was held texts could contain.109 Carruthers notes that both in Capella and in the writings of Cicero, as well as in monastic discussions of scripture, such as those of Cassian, Ambrose and Augustine, we find the word ductus and its synonyms used to refer to the flow of a text. In this relation she sees Cicero arguing that a given style has a particular movement, driven by the ‘tones’ that shaped it. Indeed, Cicero’s belief that there were three styles – high, middle and low – proved pervasive and was influential in Augustine’s later development of thinking around Christian eloquence.110 In both Cicero’s writings and in Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine style was therefore not simply or indeed primarily visual decoration, it was rather a dimension of rhetoric. Indeed, Carruthers notes that Cicero’s idea of tones depends on the notion of vocalised speech. As Robert Stanton comments, according to Aristotle a voice was a sound produced by the windpipe through which an animal expresses the deep emotions of its soul.111 In the late antique and medieval periods, compositional and reading practices were thus viewed as inter-related, reading involving some form of sub- or actual verbalisation, through which the reader brought the composition sonorously to life, even if only mentally. As Carruthers writes: ‘It is likely that many ancient and medieval people trained in oratory and/or in chant and prayer “heard” and “saw” a piece performed in their minds even if they were reading it silently’.112 As such there was a complex interaction between a text’s ductus and the act of reading, which in classical learning Carruthers comments also involved investing words and sections of text with affective triggers. In classical learning, texts were learnt first by heart – in digestible chunks – and then the text was re-learnt, this time attaching meaning to each unit.113 Carruthers points out that such sections were not necessarily short, they were ‘brief’ in that they were memorable.114 As she states, ‘the first task of reading is to divide a text up into “brief”, memory-sized chunks’.115 The ultimate aim was to provide resources that would form the basis for patterns of thinking (that would underpin moral behavior) by embedding particular emotional dispositions, intentions and responses into one’s memory and so one’s thinking/remembering, associating particular ideas with each chunk of the text, which was the second step in the process.116 When these images were recalled they thus became the basis of future thinking. As Carruthers explains in relation the use of this practice in lectio divina: The metaphors buried in the English word rote (‘wheel’ and ‘route’) imply the orderly disposition of these “bits” of memory. The ‘things’ of any art, including that of memory, are learned in repeated sequences – that is what the ‘little forms’ are for. They provide the structured/structuring ‘backgrounds’ or ‘places’, the ‘habits’ (as in ‘habitation’) of one’s own thinking mind . . . They are not significant as ideas themselves, but

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

195

are the forms upon which, out of other memories, ideas are constructed . . . [they constitute] a ‘where’, a place to start off from.117 Classical ideas of reading thus taught one how to read a text’s ductus and the ductus within a given text reinforced one’s learning. In this respect reading was an affective rather than an intellective activity. Carruthers notes that such ideas were imported into early monastic theology and the lectio divina that underpins it by John Cassian, whose writings were instrumental to the development of lectio divina in the West. Cassian drew on this classical model when insisting that images, phrases, words, and even grammatical details acted as signposts on a kind of roadmap for a given text.118 As the reader engages with a text, Cassian argued that images from the memory flooded the mind and being memorial, they were far from valueneutral, since each came with embedded emotional associations. Carruthers notes that Cassian complained that his classical education continually interfered with his reading of scripture, bringing to mind classical illusions and morals that did not correlate well with his Christian ascetic lifestyle. Cassian argued that monks must therefore re-learn the process of reading, replacing the emotional associations for words and images that they had gained from a classical education with spiritual ones drawn from the Bible. Scripture became the reading aid par excellence, within which Cassian held that God had placed ductus to help reinforce true spiritual associations in the mind of the reader. Indeed, reading as lectio divina was the chief means for Cassian of calming the wandering mind. Carruthers comments that meditation or lectio divina (terms that Carruthers treats synonymously) offered the reader a way of learning to control their mind, particularly their memory.119 The aim, according to Cassian, was to calm the mind and so avoid the sin of mental fornication or curiosity to which the mind was otherwise prone.120 As he states, For when our mind has understood a passage from any psalm, imperceptibly it slips away, and thoughtlessly and stupidly it wanders off to another text of Scripture. And when it has begun to reflect on this passage within itself, the recollection of another text shuts out reflection on the previous material, although it had not yet been completely aired. From here, with the introduction of another reflection, it moves elsewhere, and thus the mind is constantly whirling from psalm to psalm, leaping from a gospel text to a reading from the Apostle, wandering from this to the prophesies and thence being carried away to certain spiritual histories, tossed about fickle and aimless through the whole body of Scripture. It is unable to reject or retain anything . . . having become a mere toucher and taster of spiritual meanings and not a begettor and possessor of them. And so the mind, always aimlessly on the move, is distracted by different things . . . There are three things that stabilize a wandering mind – namely, vigils, meditation and prayer.121

196 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi Without lectio divina the mind would run about, enjoying nothing but a surface acquaintance with the word of God. It would not own it. Meditation or lectio divina was therefore essential. The kind of mental associations and emotional attachments that one made when confronted with a given word, phrase, image or idea were, for Cassian, central to calming the wandering mind or making it worse.122 According to Augustine, the memory was the part of the soul with the capacity to make mental leaps; it was the ‘storehouse’ of all the learning that a person had accrued. Carruthers notes that it was thus considered more active than this Augustinian image initially seems to credit, being the part of the mind from which images were generated with all their emotional baggage. The aim of all forms of learning was to employ one’s memory to enter into the narrative of the text to such an extent that one not only saw it but also in a sense ‘tasted’ its action, not as a mere ‘toucher’ but as one who came to possess it. Lectio divina encouraged a response that led one to associate all the images one came across with spiritual rather than carnal goods. A similar idea, as we saw, also appears to inform Contra Amatores Mundi. Carruthers argues that we see the mechanics of this process at work when Cassian recalls questions posed to one Abbot Nesteros about how to control the mind and prevent one’s classical education from seeping into one’s spiritual reading. Rather than trying to empty the mind (which Cassian held impossible), Nesteros advises him to fill it with new associations painstakingly learnt for each word or phrase. The art of memory training gave the mind new pathways through which to ‘forget’. It was a slow process, one of learning to remembering anew. We can see it at play in a number of monastic compositions. We might view Aelred of Riveaulx’s twelfth-century On Spiritual Friendship in this manner, for example, which offers its readers what he terms a Christian Cicero through which to think about the love shared between friends (in place of the newly popular Cicero’s On Friendship).123 Scripture was considered to have inbuilt roadmaps or ductus that helped meditators towards the spiritual goal or skopos of knowing God. As Carruthers states, The way of meditation was initiated, orientated, and marked out by the schemes and tropes of Scripture. Like sites plotted on a map, these functioned as the stations on the way to be stopped at and stayed in before continuing; or they could serve as route indicators, ‘this way” or ‘slow down’ or ‘skim this quickly’ or ‘note well’.124 As Carruthers goes on to explain, although figurative language could act as a roadmap, within monastic compositions and biblical schema, difficult tropes were considered most useful since they caused ‘what Augustine called obscuritas utilis et salubris, “productive and health-giving difficulty”’125 (i.e. they slowed the reading down by making the reader try to carefully assess the true meaning of the text rather than moving quickly through it).

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

197

In short, they helped calm and stabilise wandering and ever-active human minds. Texts that were difficult to read were thus potentially the best meditation aids. Many medieval texts were designed with such reading practices in mind; the carefully chosen rhetorical colours and tones shepherded the reader so that they did not get lost – where the text took one would depend both on the text and the kind of mental training in reading in which one had invested, that is, the kind of emotional associations one attached to particular words, ideas or tropes. The ductus of the text was thus a work of craftsmanship; the author first produced a mental plan of the text, only then constructing it. Cicero and Fortunatianus argued that a text need not have only one ductus – indeed varying the map was not only beautiful stylistically but also made a text more persuasive. However, Carruthers stresses that ductus should not therefore be understood as authorial intention in anything like the modern sense of the word. It was the text that had ductus, and once set in motion medieval scholars applied the idea of authorial intention to the text; the human author receding into the background. As she states, Through its formal disposition the work in and of itself ‘directs’ movement. . . . The work does not transparently ‘express the author’s intentions’. Its formal arrangements themselves are agents, which cause movements, mental and sensory and – as in the case of architecture – . . . [I]ntentio auctoris .  .  . is rather an intention within the work itself, considered as an authoring agent and distinguished from the human, historical author.126 Invention was not a free-floating authorial activity, it too belonged to the text being a fundamental aspect of its composition. It was something that the reader/meditator needed to own and use to create backgrounds of memory through which to think. The reader who truly wanted to overcome the wandering mind needed to embed appropriate reading practices in his/her memory as part of an act of invention. Indeed, Carruthers argues that such an understanding of memory and reading is central to Bernard of Clairvaux’s iconoclasm. Rather than allowing his monks external images that could provoke curiosity, he offered internalisable images in texts that could be owned as part of meditation and so memory work. It is in this sense that she argues that we should understand this process as inventive.127 It is also in this sense that one might respond to a ductus or several ductus within a given text. By way of illustration Carruthers draws attention to one of Bernard’s sermon ad clericos, written for those entering the Cistercian Order. She notes that ad clericos, revolves around the idea of a ‘clean memory’ being connected to the ‘pure in heart’, and that in this relation ‘the ductus of Bernard’s sermon . . . is marked out through a set of puns’.128 Firstly Carruthers notes that Bernard sets up two chains of syllables around two beatitudes: ‘Beati

198 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi misericords’ and ‘Beati mundo corde’. Not only is the sentence structure the same, but they are linked by a pun on the root syllable cord- (heart), which is itself a synonym for memory. Through such punning or paronomasia Carruthers shows how Bernard sets off a series of inter-related connections that allow him both to link a pure heart to a pure memory and to create a connection between wretchedness (miseri), meekness (misericordes) and mercy (which also has a root in cord-). Carruthers notes that he even includes a homophonic detour into weeping by means of a ‘coincident visual pun’ through which he relates misery to weeping and so to hearts that are washed clean.129 She argues that this clearly constitutes the ductus of Bernard’s sermon, and that Bernard is far from alone in employing such an approach. As she writes, ‘such coincidences are among the most common of invention tools, deliberately cultivated to set the mind “in play” through its associative routes’.130 Rolle would seem to be doing something very similar in Contra Amatores Mundi. Rolle and Bernard, it would seem, draw on ideas central to lectio divina, making aural and visual/thematic connections between words and encouraging a slow and careful engagement in reading/listening, which one will only be able to hear fully if one is properly trained. The practice of lectio divina was governed by aural as well as visual shape – we find authors connecting wisdom (sapientia) with taste (sapor) based on the supposed etymological connection between the two terms. Bernard of Clairvaux writes, ‘Perhaps sapientia, that is wisdom, is derived from sapor, that is taste, because, when it is added to virtue, like some seasoning, it adds taste to something which by itself is tasteless and bitter’.131 As E. Rozanne Elder comments of such knowledge, ‘Adhering indissolubly to God, the seeker reaches the final stage, the enjoyment of wisdom, sapientia, in medieval etymology the savouring (sapor) or God’.132 Rather than the literal sense, and structure and grammar of a passage – features that come to dominate exegesis in the schools by the later Middle Ages133 – the oral, aural and thematic governed lectio divina and thus monastic biblical interpretation. That is of course not to suggest that style and grammar were not features important to lectio divina. They were not however analysed intellectually, as they are in Aquinas’ Commentary on the Gospel of John, for example.134 The purpose of lectio divina was to evoke an affective response. Theiner’s reading of Contra Amatores Mundi resonates closely here: ‘Rolle’, he states, ‘is indeed trying to convince an audience, even to move them to action, but his rhetoric is not so much logical persuasion as emotive power’.135 John Alford notes that the psalms were considered particularly appropriate for such slow reading or rumination (i.e. literally chewing over), so that the sweetness that they contained was released. As Robertson notes, lectio divina was intimately associated with taste.136 As Alford puts it, ‘cloistered readers saw themselves as walking through the sacra pagina, “tasting” or murmuring aloud its words, “chewing” or meditating upon their meaning, and then “swallowing” or committing them to memory’.137 Contra Amatores Mundi seems to invite a similar response from its (possibly fictive) audience.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

199

Indeed, lectio divina was the cultivation of the art of listening to and speaking with God facilitated through the text of scripture.138 At its heart stood a belief that the Bible was a living text through which God could speak and in this sense, scripture did not stay the same – it would adapt and transform as it came into contact with the reader. Robertson comments that we find as much implied by the early theorists John Cassian and Gregory the Great. Robertson notes that in Cassian’s fifth conference he writes, ‘as our mind is increasingly renewed by this study, the face of scripture will also begin to be renewed, and the beauty of a more sacred understanding will somehow grow with the person who is making progress’,139 in which relation Robertson comments that scripture was vivified in some way by its reader: ‘He [Cassian] seems mysteriously to suggest (and Gregory later confirms) that the scripture itself will be renewed, that it could indeed change as the person studying it changes’.140 As such, lectio divina was a form of communication closely overlapping with prayer. The purpose of such reading was not so much intellectual as affective; its primary aim was to excite love for God.141 Annie Sutherland has noted that Rolle displays a similar understanding of scripture. Disputing the idea mooted by Denis Renevey that love takes over from scripture as Rolle’s primary focus, Sutherland argues that at the heart of Rolle’s exegetical strategy lies a belief that he vivifies the text by inhabiting it – such that scriptural text and experience operate with mutuality, the one shaping the other, rather than being juxtaposed hierarchically. As she states: Frequently, Rolle explicates experience by the invocation of validatory biblical modes of expression and action. Yet since he also understands personal mystical experience to incarnate the still word of the biblical text, it is impossible to perceive in his writings a clear cut articulation of the relationship between experience and the (usually biblical) authority which validates that experience. For readers of Rolle, the mystical experience (the actual manifestation of the scriptural text) and the mystical text (the literal manifestation of the mystical experience) seem at points, to merge into one.142 To Sutherland’s mind, Rolle’s use of scripture must be seen both as a desire to affirm his authority as a spiritual writer by relying on it, whilst also believing that his experiences bring out the full meaning of the scriptural text itself. We see this at work within Contra Amatores Mundi. It is a method that – as in the earlier exegetical writings of Gregory the Great and the thought of Cassian – imbues exegesis with a dynamic authority of its own. It is perhaps in building on this dynamic that Rolle claims that Contra Amatores Mundi should be understood as an act of predicare (preaching): But if just now I thought to remain silent, all of sudden it comes to me that I must explain; and who would dare resist love when it urges him

200 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi on? And when God commands, who would refuse to rise? So those who love strive also to preach to others of this love, because the more freely we teach others about what we have been able to receive, the more ardently and sweetly we are carried away in love.143 Here Rolle states that he cannot remain silent because he is called by love to share his experience of love, an impulse that he stresses he cannot resist. This is an idea that he also expresses in Melos Amoris, written in a similar period.144 However, Watson disputes that any of Rolle’s Latin works could be construed as attempts at preaching, arguing that this certainly cannot be true of Melos Amoris – the text being far too complicated and convoluted to be didactic – ‘the idea that a sinner would repent of anything after reading Melos Amoris other than the sheer folly of doing so is simply not plausible’.145 Although she concedes that some of Rolle’s English writings are more didactic, Rita Copeland likewise argues that even these do not fit with standard medieval ideas of preaching, a point which she makes particularly with reference to Rolle’s Middle English epistle, Ego Dormio in which relation she argues that Rolle marries style and subject matter in a way that contradicts Augustinian ideas of preaching.146 Yet praedicare does not have to be translated as preaching. It can also be used to refer to an act that is closer to praise, that is, of an affective rather than intellectual response to God.147 I would like to suggest that Rolle’s literary goals in Contra Amatores Mundi are close to this sense of praedicare, since this is a work in which Rolle attempts to draw the reader to share his love for God. He does this by embedding spiritual sweetness into the text and asking the reader to draw it out through the slow process of lectio divina that Rolle himself employs to vivify scripture. It is an act of praise into which the reader is guided by the text’s sweet ductus – one that is underpinned by his own experiences of God even whilst it points beyond them to Christ. This way of reading Contra Amatores Mundi has some similarity to Nicholas Watson’s interpretation of Melos Amoris – a work written in the same period, but which is built around Rolle’s experience of song (canor). Watson likewise notes that Rolle embeds his experience – in this case canor – linguistically into the text. However, Watson sees this as a move away in some sense from the physical experience of it: we have apparently reach a position in which either canor [song] is no longer treated as the highest stage of the spiritual life at all, or else is thought of as consisting, in its highest form, in its own proclamation to the world – in which case Rolle must have thought of the actual text of Melos Amoris as not metaphorically but literally a form of mystical experience, a form superior to the ineffable ecstasy he once regarded as canor.148 Whilst this may be the case with Melos Amoris, I am not sure that I would agree with this as a reading of the role of sweetness in Contra Amatores

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

201

Mundi. Rolle’s experience of sweetness does not appear to be replaced by language. Theiner notes that there are ways in which Rolle diminishes himself in Contra Amatores Mundi – through the lack of narrative structure, as well as by keeping the first person to a minimum when describing biographical events. We see this for example when in Chapter 6 Rolle recounts how an apparition of a promoter appeared to him upon her death and terrified him. Here he refers to symbolic action – such as his hair standing on end – to impersonalise the story and, where possible, quotes from wellknown sources, thus further distancing the text from himself and in this way universalises it. As Theiner comments, ‘Whenever an allusion to an event in his own life is used, he makes every effort to impersonalize the narration of the event, to play down the part that his own personality takes in its causation’.149 Yet in terms of his experiences of heat, sweetness and song, Theiner notes that Rolle is pointedly present: ‘when the narrator is acting specifically as the transmitter of the mystical vision he is most persistent in the active and obtrusive use of first-person narration’.150 These experiences do not disappear into the language of the text, rather they are the end-goal that shapes it. We see this as Rolle invites the reader to share in his encounter by intermingling the first and third person singulars ‘I’ and ‘we’ when discussing love for God, a feature which Theiner comments seems designed to draws the reader into Rolle’s own experience,151 such that Theiner claims that Rolle ‘is not writing of himself, or for himself, but through himself’.152 Such an understanding of this text fits well with the idea that I have been proposing: that in some sense Christ speaks in Rolle because he is deified, out of which place he uses his voice (which is also the Word) to draw the reader into the same calmness of mind that he possesses. In this way, one is reminded of Carruthers’ discussion of sweetness as a capacity to persuade another, in which relation it was compared to sweet eloquence. As we noted above, she states: Dulce eloquentia, verba dulcia, vox suavis are all medieval tropes commonly used as dulce carmen, and indeed the phrase “voces dulces/suaves” can refer to voices singing or speaking, to the words spoken or sung, and especially to the well-crafted words or oratory’.153 Good rhetoric was designed to work on the heart, to move it to love; it is the kind of speaking that can thus be tied to poetic forms of speaking – a form of writing that cannot be read in a hurry and that often contains more than one sense when read carefully. These kinds of practices are evident in Contra Amatores Mundi and together they add up to a text that I suggest we describe as sacred eloquence. It is designed to persuade. It is also in a sense the word of God. This dynamic is one that we might perhaps further illustrate by turning to an image that Rolle introduces in Incendium Amoris and also returns to in two late works Melos Amoris and The Form of Living. In all three, Rolle speaks of singing as the nightingale. For example in The Form of Living he writes of being ‘as þe nyghtingalle, þat loueth songe and melody, and failleth for mykel (i.e. much) loue’.154 Although this image does not appear in

202 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi Contra Amatores Mundi, Rolle’s use of it elsewhere seems to shed light on his understanding of his voice in this text. The image of the nightingale was ubiquitous in Latin poetry across the Middle Ages, as well as in vernacular writings.155 It was associated with a spectrum of meanings, much like sweetness, being both a bird that was thought indicative of sexual arousal, as well as being identified within the early Latin Christian tradition as exemplifying pure love for God.156 As Jeni Williams has shown, by the later Middle Ages such ideas had come to overlap within both Latin and vernacular texts.157 Even before this within Old English vernacular poetry, the nightingale was not merely considered a mimic of song, like most animals – its voice was capable of the genuine manipulation of its hearers – it was believed that this bird, to a greater extent than others creatures, could take on human vocal capacities. Viewed as a bird that could modulate its voice through a clever use of tones and affect the emotions of its hearers, Riddle 8 in the tenthcentury Exeter Book, for example, portrays the nightingale as she who sings ‘in many voices’, one who claims to ‘often change in my headvoice’.158 Ic þurh muþ sprece mongum reordum, wrencum singe, wrixle geneahhe heafodwoþe, hlude cirme, healde mine wisan, hleoþre ne miþe. Eald æfensceop, eorlum bringe blisse in burgum; þonne ic bugendre stefne styrme, stille on wicum sittað nigende. Saga hwæt ic hatte, þe swa scirenige sceawendwisan hlude onhyrge, hæleþum bodige wilcumena fela woþe minre.

I speak through the mouth in many voices, sing with modulations, often change in my head-voice, loudly cry, maintain my manner, do not refrain from speech. Old evening-poet, I bring to the noblemen bliss in the cities; when I cry with modulated voice, the bowing ones sit quiet in the dwellings. Say what I am called, who like an actress loudly imitates a jester’s song, [and] announces to men many welcome things with my voice.159

As Robert Stanton has shown, this Anglo-Saxon riddler’s nightingale is a boastful little bird, one that commands technical rhetorical tools to measured effect. She engages in what he terms ‘manipulative aesthetics’,160 showing ‘a keen awareness of the power of a modulated voice to participate in human performances practices, to generate multiple possibilities for audience reception, and hence to keep the listeners’ experience a morally ambiguous one’.161 Focusing particularly on this word ‘heafodwoþe’ or ‘head-voice’, Stanton notes how the riddler ascribes to the nightingale the ability of internal and intentional cognition, through which she both reflects on and shapes her external performances. As he states, Its modulated voice cows its bowing, awestruck hearers as divine song might humble devout listeners, but it does so in a way that any scurrilous performer could do .  .  . the nightingale’s word heafodwoþe,

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

203

‘head-voice’, a potent combination of the anatomical place where the noise is made and the faculty of voice that produces its sound effect. Heafodwoþe and the ‘tricky’ word wrenc reveal the bird’s keen attention to the externalization of her own voice as she reflects consciously on both her own natural resources and her performative presentation of them.162 This nightingale then is no mere mimic, she does not simply parrot words learnt by repetition,163 she is a consummate performer, aware of the dangers inherent in her song. Indeed, by the twelfth century the enticing nature of her voice had become explicitly linked to sexual desire; an idea that underpins the English debate poem, The Owl and the Nightingale.164 As Stanton comments, ‘in later medieval debate poetry and music theory, her voice was often cast as beautiful on the surface but morally dangerous and given a strongly feminine valence’.165 At the same time Elizabeth Leach has pointed out that in Christian devotional literature she had become ‘cognate with the soul, praising God in song and ultimately dying of Divine love’.166 In Incendium Amoris, Rolle seems anxious that he may be accused of being a proud nightingale who practises ‘manipulative aesthetics’ or at least Rolle seems somewhat unsure of his voice. He closes Incendium Amoris with the concern that his readers will not understand the tones that fill the text even if they grasp the words: Certainly the lovers of the world are able to know the words or the songs of our singing, but not the canticle of our songs; for they read the words but they are not able to learn, in addition, the note and the tone and the sweetness of our odes.167 This nervousness seems less pronounced in Contra Amatores Mundi. In Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle’s voice seems less open to ‘multiple possibilities of audience reception’ to borrow Stanton’s phrase, even though it is possible for the untrained to misapprehend the metaphors of sweetness it contains, as my initial response to the text demonstrates. By the end of reading the text one feels almost overloaded with sweetness. It is sickening. It is hard to read this text on simply a carnal level. It pushes one to hear the tones in a non-carnal way. It does so, not only because lectio divina works within cultural limit-formulas, but because Rolle’s own experiences and his voice are ever present, foreclosing on the multiple possibilities of reception that lectio divina otherwise encourages, albeit under God’s inspiration. Yet even though it could be argued that this undermines the text’s ductus, in that Rolle retains some authorial control, this control is no greater (but no less) than that of God within scripture, who guides the reader of scripture to its skopos – love for God. Rolle does likewise and the authority that he invests in his voice adds to the sense that he views it as deified in some sense; that he speaks not simply on his own authority but in that of Christ.

204 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi I would like to suggest that in Contra Amatores Mundi such tones have now come to colour the text in ways that make Rolle feel less nervous. He produces a work which can guide the reader to the love of God, so long as they chew it over in the manner of lectio divina and realise the inspired nature of Rolle’s own voice that gives it life. Rolle imbues the text with an experience of sweetness that draws the reader towards God even whilst it depends on his own experiential authority. Yet Rolle’s words are words of the Word; they arise out of experiences generated by his Christ-like calmed mind. Christ speaks in him and in this sense it would seem that the text of Contra Amatores Mundi is quasi-scriptural; the fullness of God is contained within it for those who take the time to taste it. There is some tension between Rolle’s voice and the ductus of the text in that Rolle does not completely disappear; his experiences remain authoritative and the ground on which the text stands. Yet at the same time, they point beyond Rolle because Rolle is deified and therefore Christ speaks in him. Whilst this might seem a bold claim to make of Rolle’s voice, he makes a rather similar claim in his English Psalter where he claims that Christ and his lovers speak in one voice because they are made one through grace and conformity of will. As he states in Psalm 16: ‘Hafe na wondire that crist and his lufere spekis bath in a voice: for thai are ane thrugh grace and confourmynge of will’.168 Whilst Rolle was not a systematic writer, it is this that I think we see at play within Contra Amatores Mundi. As such I think we are justified in referring to this work as sacred eloquence.

Conclusion In this chapter we have considered how Rolle writes his experience of sweetness into the text of Contra Amatores Mundi. I have argued that the text exemplifies the stilling of the mind that was so central to the works that we examined in Chapter 3. Even more than in these texts, in Contra Amatores Mundi, we see Christ speaking forth in Rolle. I have argued that he does this by crafting a sweet ductus that draws on his own experience of sweetness, offering it to the (possibly fictive) reader to chew over and likewise taste God. A similar idea of calming the mind to that which we saw in Incendium Amoris thus appears in Contra Amatores Mundi. Here however, Rolle seems to have written the process of stilling the mind more firmly into his text by careful rhetorical crafting.169 Rolle appears to be demonstrating that his experience and his writing interact. The Christ-like mind that he cultivates means that Christ speaks in him such that Rolle produces a text that is a form of sacred eloquence. In light of this, we might perhaps tentatively argue that in this text Rolle lays claim to the implicit deification that I argued was present in Incendium Amoris. What I hope to show in the next chapter is how Julian’s Revelations might also be viewed as sacred eloquence, although my reasons for thinking this differ from those outlined in this chapter.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

205

Notes 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, (2016), Vijfde Interuniversitaire Masterclass Cultuur & Religie: Voices from below, University of Gent (2016), The TRS Research Seminar, Glasgow University (2016) and TRS Seminar, University of Roehampton (2017). 2 Watson, Invention of Authority, p. 144. 3 Martin Laird, ‘Whereof We Speak’: Gregory of Nyssa, Jean-Luc Marion and the Current Apophatic Rage’, Heythrop Journal, 42 (2001), 1–12 at 2. 4 Also: John A. McGuckin’s recent essay on deification in Gregory of Nyssa. Although Gregory largely avoids the terminology and speaks more of glorification, McGuckin convincing argues that Gregory has deification in mind: ‘The Strategic Adaptation of Deification in the Cappadocians’. 5 McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 181. 6 McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 184. 7 McGinn, ‘The Four Female Evangelists’, p. 184. 8 McGinn, ‘Regina quondam . . .’, pp. 836. Also: Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’; John Arblaster, ‘The Blessed and the Burned: 13th-Century Female Discourse on Deification’, in Kikuchi Satoshi and Patrick Cooper (eds.), Commitments to Medieval Mystical Texts within Contemporary Contexts (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), pp. 273–290. 9 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 3. For the titles given in the various manuscripts and a brief description of each: Ibid., pp. 42ff. 10 The only recent article on Contra Amatores Mundi is Frank Shon, ‘The Teleological Element in Richard Rolle’s “Contra amatores mundi”’. Nicholas Watson includes a discussion of Contra Amatores Mundi in his chapter on dulcor: Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, ch. 6, pp. 159–172. 11 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp.  159–172, argues that the work is late (as Theiner suggests, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 41), not early, as Allen supposes. Denis Renevey also discusses the work in Language, Self and Love (pp. 104–106) arguing that although the work is late it is probably even later than Watson suggests. Rolle employs different rhetorical strategies in his different works. See Theiner’s, Introduction on the rhetorical strategy employed in Contra Amatores Mundi. For Emendatio Vitae: the very insightful comments of Timothy L. Spence, ‘The Prioress’ Oratio ad Mariam and Medieval Prayer Composition’, in Scott D. Troyan (ed.), Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 63–90 at 68–72, in which he stresses that ‘Rolle’s, Emendatio has an implicitly rhetorical component to it, in that it is an attempt to articulate a method of prayer composition in such a way that his readers might practice its techniques in their own prayer composition’ (p.  69). The argument which Spence promotes seems to reinforce my earlier discussion of stilling the mind given in Chapter 2, particularly the references to ‘pure prayer’, which echoes Cassian. Spence also makes a link between stilling the mind and divine eloquence in ways that reinforce the argument that I put forward in this chapter. 12 Watson, Invention, pp. 273–294, in which he discusses his revised chronology of Rolle’s corpus. Also: Renevey, Language, Self and Love, pp. 104–106. 13 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi. A passage from the translation was omitted and is published in a later edition of English Studies. 14 Moyes assumes that it is one of the missing manuscripts since it contains the same texts, however, Theiner (Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 42) feels that the evidence is insufficient to offer a certain attribution. 15 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 57ff; Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 162, however argues that the material prior to chapter 3

206 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

16

17

18 19 20

21

22

23

is introductory and that the treatise really begins here. I have not followed Watson. As discussed, the opening of the treatise seems to provide the reader with a reading model that is reiterated in the closing words of the treatise. For the first two chapters, Theiner provides detailed notes that allow a reconstruction of his base manuscript also highlighting variants elsewhere in the tradition. Thereafter he gives only those variants that change the relationship between manuscripts or the meaning or style (Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 60). Hanna, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris’, p. 229, n. 6. Although Trawgott Lawler is likewise somewhat critical of Theiner for rigidly following his base manuscript where a better (i.e. more grammatically sound) reading is supported in the majority tradition (which Lawler suspects is therefore more likely to be Rolle’s), on the whole he views the edition as a useful platform for further scholarly research: ‘Paul F. Theiner (ed. and trans.), “The ‘Contra Amatores Mundi” of Richard Rolle of Hampole”’ (Book Review), Speculum, 44/2 (1969), 319–321. Émile Jules François Arnould, ‘On Rolle’s Patrons: A New Reading’, Medium Aevum (1937), 122–124, argues that at least one of the minor variants is significant – the addition of ‘ad scolas’ to Rolle’s story of a vision of his patron after her death in two manuscripts. The idea that Rolle studied in Paris is, however, now discredited rendering this detail less important that Arnould credits. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 43. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 43, n. 3. Here Theiner reiterates Deanesly’s belief in the importance of Emmanuel 35 but his edition is not particularly reliant on it. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 4.147–149, pp.  163; 5.222–226; 5.297ff, pp. 174ff. All line numbers are to the English translation unless otherwise indicated. This is done to assist non-Latinate readers. As noted earlier, the Latin in Theiner’s edition has different line numbers. Lawler, ‘The “Contra Amatores Mundi” of Richard Rolle of Hampole’, comments on this unhelpful feature in Theiner’s translation. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.319–329, pp. 174–175. ‘Verum est quod a deo accepit doctrinam, et mirabili modo, et in celo revelabantur ei archana dei. Sed quomodo aut quantum videbat affirmare nos nescimus. Puto si vidisset deum in suo splendore, quod in tantum absorberetur natura eius affluentissima illa dulcedine divinitatis, quod non solum in mundo postea morans non potuisset superbire, sed eciam nec de peccato temptari; cum ipse post has revelaciones et visiones ne superbiret, gravius quam prius temptatus fuit’, 265–273, p. 90. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.316–317, p. 174. Augustine’s account in De Genesis ad Litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), 12.8 became the classical account of this passage. Cf. Matthew Lootens, ‘Augustine’, in Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds.), The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 56–70. Julian too stresses that she is not holy simply because she has a vision: Julian, Revelations, ch. 9, p. 13. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.330–345, p.  175 (slightly amended). ‘Vere scio quod si natura hominis interior mutaretur in aliam gloriam, scilicet Christo dante, in amore eterno tota liquefiat, quod talis homo, quamvis in carne ambulans, nec posset nec sciret nisi in domino gloriari, nec aliquid velle aut cupere nisi deum et propter deum, ut seipsum omnino non amet nisi propter [deum]. Non contradico quin temptari posset, dormiendo et vigilando, secundum carnem, sed non delectari in mente in aliqua carnali voluptate. Quippe quamvis a sompnis excitatus, in quibus diabolus maxime talem inpugnat quem vigilantem nocere non potest, in membris temptacionem sentiret, se ad deum dirigens,

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

24

25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39

207

cito tota evanesceret, et vir dei iugiter immaculatus permaneret’. 274–285, pp. 90–91. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.346–347; 5.349–350, p. 175. ‘ita et illud peccatum ardore caritatis absorbetur. Potest itaque devotus amator in amore dei canere et iubilare, rapi super terrena, in se deficere et in deum pergere’. 287–290, p. 91. This seems important give his claim in lines 5.431–433 that ‘Therefore His glory, in which I delight in my love is not intermittent, but continuous; not fleeting, but permanent, not momentary, but eternal’ (Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 177). What is permanent is not the union of the beatific vision but the stable and calm mind that comes from a deep engagement with love and which in Rolle’s case has bodily repercussions. This is important given Watson’s assertion that Rolle audaciously lays claim to continuous union and here to continuous canor, even though Rolle draws on Paul and plays with the idea that Paul does not truly see God in his rapture to the third heaven. (Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 167–168). Watson argues that this section is a ‘digression’. However, this entire and quite difficult section appears to be a reworking of part of the discussion of rapture in chapter 37 of Incendium in which Rolle stresses that those who are carried to the third heaven are not necessarily meritorious; a passage which I have argued in Chapter 2 is crucial to our understanding of Rolle’s mysticism and the way in which he lays claim to deification. The passage from 2 Corinthians 3.18–20 is one which Rolle quotes with some regularity across his corpus, doing so with reference to the opening of the eye of the heart, a moment that he states enables the soul to see into heaven and receiving heat, sweetness and song. See: Louise Nelstrop, ‘The Merging of Eremitic and “Affectivist” Spirituality in Richard Rolle’s Reshaping of Contemplatio’, Viator, 35 (2004), 289–310. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 6. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 32. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 7. Cf. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, ch. 6, lines 198–200 (p. 98) [Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, lines 239–242 (p. 184)]. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 32. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 33. Theiner draws attention to a number of similar examples, pp. 33ff. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 31–41. Theiner comments that Rolle’s style in Contra Amatores Mundi contains features noted as typical of his writing by Schneider and Olmes: John Philip Schnieder, The Prose Style of Richard Rolle of Hampole, with Special Reference to Its Euphuistic Tendencies (Baltimore: J.  H. First, 1906); Antoine Olmes, Sprache und Stil der englishchen Mystik des Mittelalters, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Richard Rolle von Hampole (Halle: M. Niemayer, 1933). Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 30–31. For discussion of earlier accounts of Rolle’s Latin as random, as well as boring and even tortured: Malcolm Robert Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio Super Novem Lectiones Mortuorum: An Introduction and Contribution towards a Critical Edition (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistic und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzberg, 1988), 2 vols., vol. 1, pp. 15–17. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 25–26. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 25–26. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 26. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 26. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, XI.32–33.

208 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi 40 Origen, ‘Commentary on the Song of Songs’, trans. by R. P. Lawson, in Origen: The Song of Songs Commentary and Homilies, Ancient Christian Writers (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957), Prologue 1, pp. 22–23. 41 Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp. 79ff; John R. Sommerfeldt, The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux: An Intellectual History of the Early Cistercian Order (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991), pp. 95–151; Michael Casey, A Thirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988). 42 Bernard of Clairvaux, Song of Songs I, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, volume two, trans. by Killian J. Walsh OCSO (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), Sermon 20.IV.6, p. 152. 43 We return to Bernard’s position below. 44 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 142; 159–170. 45 For example: Form of Living, 510–519, pp. 15–16. 46 For example: Rolle, Incendium, ch. 41. 47 Indeed, Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 37 comments that were one to try to tabulate all the rhetorical strategies, including punctuation, that fall within such craftsmanship one would invariably end up tabulating every sentence in the text. 48 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 7. 49 Renevey, Language, Self and Love, p. 107. also see pp. 102–107. 50 Indeed, although Rolle was an unsystematic writer, such that each of his works requires individual attention before more general conclusions can be arrived at, in other ways, as Malcolm Moyes notes, we find a sense of continuity, particularly where his three experiences are concerned, even if the order and nature of them somewhat varies across his corpus. Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio, p. 66. 51 Mary Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, Speculum, 81/4 (2006), 999–1013; Rachel Fulton, ‘“Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet” (Ps. 33.9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West’, The Journal of Religion, 86/2 (April 2006), 169–204. The two papers were published concurrently and the authors do not appear to have been aware of one another’s work. 52 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 999. 53 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 202. 54 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 202. 55 On Arabic influence on European ideas of cookery: Toby Peterson, ‘The Arab Influence on Western European Cooking’, Journal of Medieval History Rolle, 6/3 (1980), 317–340. For further discussion of the relative importance of sugar vs. spice in French and English cookery: Bruno Laurioux, ‘Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach’, Food and Foodways, 1/1–2 (1985), 43–75. On food theory: Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 196, n. 74. 56 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 196. 57 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1011. 58 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1010. 59 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, esp. 177ff. 60 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Man of Laws Tale, ed. by Nevill Coghill and Christopher Tolkien (London: Harrap, 1969), B.479: Middle English Dictionary, https:// quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED47029&egs= all&egdisplay=compact (accessed 22/01/18). 61 John Lydate, Saint Albon and Saint Amphibalus, ed. by Geoffrey F. Reinecke (New York: Garland, 1985), line 1503: Middle English Dictionary, https:// quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED47029&egs=all&e gdisplay=compact (accessed 22/01/18). 62 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1001.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

209

63 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1000 and Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, pp. 191–193, both draws attention to this feature in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. 64 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of songs IV, trans. by Irene Edmonds (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980), Sermon 85.8, pp. 204–205, with slight changes by Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 193. ‘Intrans sapientia, dum sensum carnis infatuat, purificat intellectum, cordis palatum sanat et reparat. Sano palato sapit jam bonum, sapit ipsa sapientia, qua in bonis nullum melius’, Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum, ed. by J.-P., Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 183 (Paris, 1854), cols., 785A–1198A at 1192A. 65 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p. 193. Fulton turns the argument around suggesting that the implication is that taste itself carries truth. 66 Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, p. 51. 67 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1004. 68 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1004. Contemporary scientific research has begun to tentatively confirm this idea since a number of those who have had heart transplants find themselves with the memories of their donor. Benjamin Bunzel, et al., ‘Does Changing the Heart Mean Changing Personality? A Retrospective Inquiry on 47 Heart Transplant Patients’, Quality of Life Research, 1 (1992), 251–256. On the role of the heart within medieval writing: Lockett, AngloSaxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. 69 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 999. 70 Fulton, ‘The Flavor of God’, p.  192 (cf. n.66: Aristotle, De anima, trans. by C. David C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2017), p. 434b. 71 ‘Suavis is cognate with the verbs suadeo and persuadeo, “to persuade” literally “to sweeten”’, Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1008. 72 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1008. 73 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1009. 74 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1009. 75 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1009. Re-directing the will was also the target of meditation. As Carruthers argues in The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), remembering was basically an affective activity: ‘Though it is certainly a form of knowing, recollecting is also a matter of will, of being moved, pre-eminently a moral activity rather than what we think of as intellectual or rational’ (p. 68, emphasis in original). It was for this reason, Carruthers notes (Ibid., pp.  101–105) that Anselm set out to seriously disturb himself at the beginning of his meditational endeavours by reflecting on past sins and the gruesome details of Christ’s death (a principle that permeated later medieval meditation practices). 76 Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 1.9–19, p. 147. ‘Amens, igitur est, immo a demonio arripitur, qui melliflui dulcoris haustum parvipendens carnalis immundicie sapore debriatur. Dolorem quippe verius dixerim quam dulcedinem visibilis vite – gaudium quod momentanie morans interiorum tenebrarum amaram ingerit cecitatem .  .  . sed solum mortis sue gustum cupiens draconem placet quo voratur . . . Fastidit itaque dulciflua, et immo ardore venenum sitit’, Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 1.6–15, p. 67. 77 Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.337–354, p.  196. ‘O amor .  .  . qui rigas aridum, calefcis frigidum . . . in oculis conditoris sine te omne ferculum insipidum est, et implacabile. Tu es sapor condiens, tu es odor redolens, tu es dulcor placens . . . illabere michi in tua dulcedine’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.288–302. 78 Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.222–224, p. 172. ‘Aperui os meum ad deum meum, et infusa est in me tanta iocunditas, ut meipsum obliviscerer; nec sensi

210 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

79 80 81 82

83

84

85 86 87 88

89 90 91

92

ubi fui, [dei solius memorans: vel ad celum raptus fui] vel ad me melos celicum condescedit’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.186–189, p. 88. Translation altered. Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 36–37. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 1.18–21, p. 147 (Latin 1.14–17, p. 67). Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 3.183–186, p. 159. ‘nimirum eterna dileccio cor incendit, purgat peccati rubiginem, aufert crimen. Unda est incoinquinata, renatos abluens, conscienciam claram faciens, animam dulcore perfundens’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 3.154–157, p. 76. Anne Mouron, ‘Desert of Religion: A Voice and Images in the Wilderness’, pp. 171–172 likewise discusses how the reader of the Desert of Religion, is meant to engage all five of his/her senses when engaging with this text in MS Additional 37049. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5. 226–231, p.  172. ‘In hoc autem gaudio eciam sensus se senciunt refici: cor quidem habet quod desiderat, os quod delectat, gustus quod sapit, tactus quod mucet, odoratus quod redolet, auditus quod rapit’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.189–192, p. 88. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.204–205, p. 172. ‘divine consolacionis refrigerium carnem macerat, mentem sublevat’, Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.172– 173, p. 88. See n. 64. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, p. 45. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, p. 46. Rudy (Ibid., p. 47) draws attention to Bernard’s assertion that God became enfleshed in order that humans might know the Spirit and that for Bernard it is the Incarnate Christ who is the focus of his exegesis not the Eternal Logos, as it was for Origen. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 56.3 ‘Obstant, non corpora, sed peccata’, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 56.3. For a discussion: Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, p. 47. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, XI. 33,125. Cf. Louise Nelstrop, ‘What Happened to the Fourth Degree of Love? Richard Rolle Hermit Preacher’, and Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, esp. p. 47. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 4.120–147, pp. 162–163. ‘Nam omnis melodia mundialis, omnisque corporalis musica, instrumentis organicis machinata, quantumcumque activis sue secularibus viris negociis implicatis placuerint, contemplativis vero desiderabilia non erunt. Immo fugiunt corporalem audire sonitum, quia in se contemplativi viri iam sonum susceperunt celestem. Activi vero in exterioribus gaudent canticis, nos contemplacione divina succensi in sono epulantis terrena transvolamus; illi nostrum nesciunt, nos illorum nesciamus gaudium, quia dum intra nos [celestias] delicias sonora voce iubilantes canimus, nimirum ab omnibus psallentibus et loquenitbus segregari affectamus. Alioquin iam desinimus canere, atque ab illa invisibilis gaudii affluencia cessare, ut dum ab illis corporaliter perstrepentibus non fugimus, veraciter distamus, quia nemo unquam in amore dei gaudere potuit, qui prius vana istius mundi solacia non dereliquit’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 4.102–117, p. 80. For Zieman’s discussion of the significance of this contrast in Incendium, see chapter 3 n. 89. Although in this sense one might say that Rolle’s distinction between body and soul accords with Augustine’s influential reading of St Paul’s rapture in his The Literal Meaning of Genesis, in which he argues that true knowledge of God cannot be derived from the senses, Rolle differs from St Augustine, who treats Paul’s rapture to the third heaven as the highest form of vision possible in this life – one that is imageless because not tied to the body. However, recent

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

93

94

95

96 97

98

211

research on Augustine and music and Augustine and the psalms indicates that Augustine may have ascribed greater spiritual worth to the body than is commonly acknowledged in the scholarship: Carol Harrison, ‘Getting Carried Away: Why Did Augustine Sing?’ Augustinian Studies, 46/1 (2015), 1–22. Also see her recent re-evaluation of Augustine’s attitude to music: On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Also: Regine Slavin, ‘Thirsting for God’ through the Lens of Psalms 42 and 63. Already referenced earlier in book. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.435–440, p.  177; ‘quia non video faciem dei mei; verumptamen tale gaudium opto in celo, quale in carne sedens gusto et sencio. Nec volo ut alia gloria michi detur, sed ut aliter detur michi; videlicet, clare et perspicuie videndo deum meum in decore suo’. Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.376–380, p. 93. Rolle’s emphasis on this may reflect late-medieval debates in which it was argued that God could not be known in mystical union in the same way that God will be known in beatific vision. We see the same emphasised by Bernard of Clairvaux, for example: Sermons on the Song of Songs, 38.3. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.62–69, p. 168, ‘nam vir tanto amore raptus frequenter stultus iudicatur . . . Iugiter ergo intra se deliias canentes prorsus adversa nesciunt’, Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.52–57, p. 85. (Also Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.55ff, p. 168ff). Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 6.254–256, p. 185. ‘Cum enim caritas eterni dei mentem nostram absorbuerit, protinus ad ea que exterius videmus cupienda quasi stula facit’, Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 6.211–212, p. 99. For Rolle although we can melt into God’s love in this life (‘liquiscere in voluntate conditoris’ (Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.226, p. 107), as noted, the visio dei is reserved for the next life (Ibid., 5.53–54, p. 168). There is therefore still more to come despite the fact that Rolle also claims that God completely takes over the focus of those who love him, so that there is nothing but God as far as they are concerned. As he states in chapter 7: ‘Truly, therefore you love god for God’s sake . . . for you love yourself in the sole hope of loving God and being loved by Him. And from this it follows that in you nothing but God is loved. Therefore for the true lover of God there is nothing but God, whom he holds, whom he desires, in whom he burns, in whom he rejoices’ (7.325–329, p. 196 my emphasis). ‘Igitur vere amas deum propter ipsum deum et nichil aliud, nec eciam teipsum nisi propter deum, quia sola spe amare deum et amari a deo [amas] te. Et inde consequenter sequitur quia in te nichil nisi deus amatur. Ergo verus amator dei non habet aliquid nisi deum, quem tenet, quem desiderat, in quem estuat, in quo iubilat’ (Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.279–285, pp.  108–109). Whilst this might seem to bring Rolle closer to William of St. Thierry, whose writings Rolle knew (perhaps thinking them to be those of Bernard of Clairvaux), this statement alone does not seem sufficient grounds on which to claim that Rolle adopts William’s radical idea of deification in Contra Amatores Mundi in which relation William speaks of being taken up to share in the love between the members of the Trinity (see Chapter 1). Rolle’s thinking on the spiritual life discussed here instead appears close to that found in works like Incendium examined in Chapter 3. In both Incendium and Contra Amatores Mundi Rolle argues that God takes over the soul’s sensorium but he does not claim that the love through which the soul love’s God is the Holy Spirit. This is the only sense in which Rolle feels compelled to ‘chatter’ is about God. As he writes in his short Middle English poetic prose piece Gostly Gladness, ‘Loue maketh me to melle, and ioy maketh me jangle’, Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, Edited from MS Longleat 29 and Related Manuscripts, p. 41 lines 7–8. As in the ascetic tradition of the Desert Fathers in which Cassian’s thinking

212 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

99 100 101 102

103 104

105 106 107

108

was forged, Rolle believes that one must continually battle against one’s body, writing that in this life ‘our flesh stands between us and God’ (Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.273, p.  173). ‘caro nostra est inter nos et deum’ (Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 5.225–226, p. 89). Note that in suggesting this Rolle disagrees with Bernard of Clairvaux for whom it is sin, not the flesh, that stands between the soul and God. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.347–348, p. 196; 7.296–297, p. 109. The passage also appears with slight variants in Emendatio Vitae, ch 11, p. 224, lines 139–140 (Spahl’s edition). Rosamund Allen, ‘“Singular Lufe”: Richard Rolle and the Grammar of Spiritual Ascent’, pp. 37–40, notes that it is a feature common in both Rolle’s Latin and Middle English prose. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 57. These lines refer to the English translation (Latin text: Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 3.83–170). Daniel McCann has also mooted that Rolle is indebted to lectio divina elsewhere in his corpus and that it gives his words a healing, medicinal quality: ‘Medicine of Words: Purgative Reading of Richard Rolle’s Meditations on the Passions’, The Mediaeval Journal 5/2 (2015), 53–83. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 3.152–153, p. 158. ‘percepit adiutorium qui reddet et coronam’, Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 3.139, p. 76. In addition to the discussed example we can see this at work within the following short section in Contra Amatores Mundi, chapter 5. As well as the direct quotations and allusions to which Theiner draws attention, Rolle also clearly alludes 1 Corinthians 13, especially verse 12 (a verse which he also quotes within this chapter). ‘Therefore, as if fleeing to hidden places, I hide away from these things, “till the day break and the shadows retire” (Cant. iv 6), and “my feet were wholly moved” (cf Ps. lxxii.2), and “the right hand of Christ shall embrace me” (cf. Cant. ii.6; viii.3). Then truly will I see all things wholly and perfectly in my God, those things which I am now unable to see, and “my God will be my portion forever: (cf. Ps. lxxii.26) and “my portion in the land of the living” (Ps. cxli.6). And what I believe now, I shall know then; and what I hope for now, I shall see then; and what I desire now, I shall have then. But the one I love now, I shall love forever, for love does not fall away, but remains for all eternity’, 5.381–393, pp. 176. The idea of knowing now in part but knowing fully in the next life, references to believing and hoping in close proximity to love, and the idea that love never fails, all clearly resonate with St Paul’s words in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians. We see too a thematic gathering of ideas, of hands and feet, and of God being the soul’s ‘portion’. In the latter regard Rolle weaves together texts in a manner suggestive of the slow rumination that underpinned lectio divina. As he discusses spiritual love Rolle works thematically, identifying the same term across scripture regardless of context – in this case ‘portion’. Indeed, the passage is a gauze of biblical sound, as is the case with much of Contra Amatores Mundi. The way in which Rolle exegetes the text closely mirrors the described monastic practices. Lectio divina appears to shape how Rolle presents the ideas of spiritual love to the reader in this text. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.231–234, p.  193 (Latin, Contra Amatores Mundi, 7.196–199, p. 106). Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 78. Mary Carruthers, ‘The Concept of Ductus: Or Journeying through a Work of Art’, in Mary Carruthers (ed.), Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 190–213 at p. 190. Carruthers, ‘Ductus’, p. 190.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

213

109 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 78 and ‘Ductus’, p. 190 and also Lucia Calboli Montefusco, ‘Ductus and Color: The Right Way to Compose a Suitable Speech’, Rhetorica, 21 (2003), 113–131. 110 Carruthers, ‘Ductus’, p. 197. Cf. Rita Copeland, ‘Richard Rolle and the Rhetorical Theory of the Levels of Style’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: vol. 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 55–80 at 56–57. 111 Robert Stanton, ‘Mimicry, Subjectivity and the Embodied Voice in Anglo Saxon Bird Riddles’, in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.), Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 29–43 at pp. 30–31. 112 Carruthers, ‘Ductus’, p. 197. 113 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 63. 114 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 62. 115 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 63. 116 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 72ff. Also Robertson, Lectio Divina, pp. 97ff. 117 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 82. 118 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 86–87. 119 Robertson (p. xiv) also argues that these two ideas are basically synonyms in the Middle Ages until around the twelfth century, when the notions of meditation and contemplation come to take on the more advanced functions originally incorporated within the practice of lectio divina (Also see Lectio Divina, pp. xvii–xviii). 120 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 82. 121 Cassian, Conferences, tenth conference, 5.XIII.1–2; XIV.1, pp. 385–386. The passage is discussed by Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 83. 122 Carruthers, ‘Ductus’, pp. 192ff notes how this very much echoes the approach of Quintilian. 123 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 57–59 discusses the Christian Centi of Vergil in like manner. 124 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 116. 125 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 72. 126 Carruthers, ‘Ductus’, p. 201. 127 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 86–87. 128 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 98. 129 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 98. 130 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 98. 131 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs IV, sermon 85.8, p. 204. ‘Et forte sapientia a sapore denominatur, quod virtuti accedens, quoddam veluti condimentum, sapidam reddat, quae per se insulsa quodam modo et aspera sentiebatur’. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum’, pp.  1191D. On the connections between wisdom and taste which Bernard makes: Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, p. 63. 132 E. Rozanne Elder, ‘The Eye of Reason: The Eye of Love: “Divine Learning and Affective Prayer” in the Thought of William of St. Thierry’, in Santha Bhattacharji, Dominic Mattos and Rowan Williams (eds.), Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: Essays in Honor of Benedicta Ward S.L.G. (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 229–242 at 233. 133 For example: Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John’s Gospel, trans. by Fabian Larcher, O.P. and James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2010). 134 For example: Aquinas, Commentary on John’s Gospel, ch. 1.23–24. 135 Theiner, Contra Amatore Mundi, p. 7. 136 Robertson, Lectio Divina, pp. xiv–xv. 137 Alford, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter and Lectio Divina’, p. 47.

214 The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi 138 Though scripture God was believed to speak directly into the lives of Christians – as evidenced in the lives of both Augustine and Francis of Assisi, who Robertson notes both opened the Bible at random and heard words of direct communion for themselves or others. Robertson, Lectio Divina, p. xiii. 139 Cassian, Conference 14.ix.1, p. 515. 140 Robertson, Lectio Divina, p. xiii. 141 In practical terms it involves the slow reading aloud of scripture – a process necessitated, Robertson suggests, by the lack of spaces between words in bibles, Lectio Divina, p. xiv. This type of reading took the form of aural and thematic association. As in the discussed passages from Contra Amatores Mundi, images were often connected in terms of their theme or in relation to a single word. It is with reference to such practices that Hugh of St Victor, writing in the twelfth century, complains that in moving from one biblical reference to another, readers often make nonsense of the literal text. He states, for example, that they take all mention of lions in the bible as allegorically representative of Christ, yet this is problematic in the case of 1 Peter 5.8, where the roaring lion in the literal text is actually the devil! See ‘Hugh of St Victor’ in Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp.  103–104. Some texts were considered much more difficult to interpret than others. The Song of Songs, with its breasts and kisses required advanced training, otherwise, it could, as Origen feared, ‘seem to be the Divine Scriptures that are thus urging and egging him [the reader] on to fleshly lust!’ (n. 41). Although Alford (‘Rolle’s English Psalter and Lectio Divina’) notes that Ivan Illich has argued that lectio divina was a dying art after the twelfth century, he contends that it this is too sweeping a generalisation. Even if it declined in scholastic and monastic contexts, he offers evidence that it continued within vernacular spirituality, showing how Rolle employs it at length in his English Psalter. Robertson (Lectio Divina, pp. xviii–xix) likewise suggests that it continued in vernacular spiritual literature in the later Middle Ages, particularly that intended for or by women. 142 Sutherland, ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’, pp. 705–706. 143 Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 4.161–168, pp. 163–164 amended to reflect the fact that Rolle uses preach not teach. (The verb which Rolle uses is ‘predicare’, which is more commonly translated as ‘to preach’.) ‘Sed quidem si iam cogitarem tacere subito venit in me ut cogar narrare; urgenti igitur caritati quis resistere audeat? Aut pulsanti deo quis assurgere contradicat? Amantes itaque eciam allis amorem predicare studuimus, nam et nobis hoc valde utile est, quia tanto ardencius et suavius in amore capimur, quanto libencius hoc quod capere potuimus aliis predicamus’. Rolle, Contra Amatores Mundi, 4.135–141, p. 81 (my emphasis). 144 Although Rolle speaks of preaching (praedicare) in a number of his Latin writings, both Copeland ‘Richard Rolle and the Rhetorical Theory of the Levels of Style’, and Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, independently dispute the idea that any of Rolle’s Latin works could be construed as attempts at preaching. Watson, for example, argues that this cannot be true of Melos Amoris – the text being far too complicated and convoluted to be didactic. Watson does conceded that some of Rolle’s English writings are more didactic. 145 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p. 189. 146 Copeland, ‘Richard Rolle and the Rhetorical Theory of the Levels of Style’, esp. pp. 70–71, 76. 147 For a discussion of language, the Incarnation and preach and praise: Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968; rev. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983; paperback ed. 2004), esp, pp 3–30.

The Sweet Ductus of Contra Amatores Mundi

215

148 Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 181–182. Watson posits that Melos Amoris is part of a process through which Rolle ‘invents’ his own spiritual authority, investing the text with his own experiential authority and so moving beyond pure experience, even though Watson acknowledges that the experiences continue to function in subsequent writings, such as Rolle’s English Epistles. However, as we noted in Chapter 3, McGinn questions the extent to which Rolle’s approach to authority is as unique as Watson claims such that it would constitute ‘invention’. As Carruthers notes, invention is a modern idea that was not normally attached to texts in this period except in terms of their ductus, in which case invention means something rather different. The sense of invention in Contra Amatores Mundi seems closer to that which Carruthers describes. 149 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 20. 150 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 22. 151 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, pp. 23–24. 152 Theiner, Contra Amatores Mundi, p. 20. 153 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, p. 1009. 154 Rolle, The Form of Living, pp. 17.571–573. 155 For a discussion of this imagery: Jeni Williams, Interpreting Nightingales: Gender, Class, Histories (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). 156 Williams, Interpreting Nightingales, pp. 38ff. 157 Williams, Interpreting Nightingales, pp. 35–74. 158 Anon., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. and trans. by Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 72, trans, by Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 36. 159 The Exeter Book, Riddle 8 (the nightingale) in Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 72, trans. by Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 36. 160 Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 39. 161 Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 39. 162 Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, pp. 39–40. 163 Like the parrot found in Bishop Eusebius’ eighth-century riddle: Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 33. 164 Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 38. Stanton suggests that word play within Riddle 8 suggest that the tradition may have much earlier roots. On The Owl and Nightingale: Williams, Interpreting Nightingales, pp. 79–83. 165 Stanton, ‘Mimicry’, p. 30. 166 Elizabeth Eva Leech, Sung Birds: Music, Nature and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 100. 167 Fire of Love, ch. 42, p. 263. ‘Mundi quippe amatores scire possunt verba uel [et]B carmina nostrarum cancionum, non autem cantica nostrorum carminum; quia uerba legunt, sed notam et tonum ac suauitatem odarum addiscere non possunt’. Incendium, p. 278. [Deanesly has ‘tomum’ which I have amended to ‘tonum’, which appears to be what is written in MS Emmanuel 35]. 168 Psalm 16.1 in Rolle, The Psalter of David, p. 55. ‘Do not be surprised Christ and his lover speak in one voice: for they are united through grace and a conformity of will’ (my translation). 169 A very similar assessment of Rolle’s rhetorical voice in Emendatio Vitae is put forward by Spence, ‘The Prioress’ Oratio ad Mariam and Medieval Prayer Composition’. Features that have been considered ‘annoying’ (Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, p.  119) may well have been meant to slow down the reader, to help them hear the tones of Rolle’s voice.

6

Speaking in Christ: Julian’s Revelations as sacred eloquence1

Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 16.19)

Introduction The above passage in many ways sums up what deification amounts to in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations. As we saw in Chapter 4, whilst she sees no substantial difference between herself and God, she nonetheless differs, even though God is in her and she is in Christ. The difference revolves around this word ‘in’ – its meaning predicated on the sense of divine space that underpins her discussions of enclosure. As Carie Howie puts it, ‘God is enclosed in me; I am enclosed in God: yes, but God’s being is separate from this ‘in’, whereas mine is not’.2 She writes her Revelations speaking in Christ, but nonetheless as a creature. In this chapter I will consider the effect of this on Julian’s voice and the quality and status that this gives it. A number of scholars have commented that Julian’s voice has a special quality. Annie Sutherland has drawn attention to ‘Julian’s frequent characterisation of herself as a figure of scriptural resonance’, and notes that, although Julian rarely quotes from scripture, her text is full of scriptural echoes.3 Nicholas Watson, in a somewhat similar vein, argues that Julian approaches her text as though she were annexing medieval biblical exegetical practice as a means of comprehending her visions, with the addition that the visions and commentary spill over into one another, such that the latter too takes on the authority of the former. As he states, It is as though the Biblical text in the centre of its manuscript page were literally to ‘overflow’ and to merge with the surrounding apparatus; or, to put the same point the other way around, as though the apparatus were to merge with the text, annexing its divinely-inspired status and authority, and forming a layered, composite text which engages in its own exegesis.4

Speaking in Christ

217

Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross have likewise argued that across her Revelations, Julian becomes a means of revelation, seeing not only as God sees but becoming that in which others see God. As they put it, ‘Her beholding allows her to see from God’s perspective (as one who shares God’s meaning) . . . and she beholds it as someone who has herself become a means of showing, a signifier for those who, she expects, will survive her’.5 It is a status that I believe affects both her words and images, a reading that touches on the prophetic quality of Julian’s voice, where prophetic is taken in Aquinas’ sense of bearing images that are both graced and given by God.6 It is such issues that concern me in this chapter. I hope to show that, as with Rolle’s Contra Amatores Mundi, it is helpful to think of Julian’s Revelations as a form of sacred eloquence, that is, as a text containing words and images which at a deep level belong to Christ and like scripture change and adapt as the reader inhabits them, transforming the reader in the process, even though Julian is careful to stress that it is nonetheless the voice of a creature that the reader hears. The lens through which I will approach these issues is the evident debt which Julian’s Revelations owe to what Elizabeth Salter has termed ‘the Life of Christ genre’.7 In lieu of the Gospels, which were the preserve of clerics, the Life of Christ genre offered its female and lay readers Gospel harmonies on which to meditate, with the hope that their lives might better mirror Christ’s, taking on his virtues. Yet this might seem an odd place to situation my argument since rather than being sacred eloquence, this genre only mimics it – indeed, we might argue that it denies its readers access to sacred eloquence proper.8 What I hope to show is that Julian’s book can be read as the highest outworking of the Meditationes Vitae Christi – a key text within the Life of Christ genre – and that as such her text not only imitates but actually becomes a form of sacred eloquence. Reflecting on medieval thinking on contemplation and the use of images within it, in this chapter I will draw particularly on Gillespie and Ross’s reading of Julian, exploring whether the kataphatic-apophatic dialectic that they find within her Revelations might be read in the light of what Martin Laird has termed ‘logophatic’ discourse and whether both might find a home in the Meditationes Vitae Christi. What I mean by ‘kataphasis’, ‘apophasis’ and ‘logophasis’ will become apparent in the course of the analysis.

1. Julian’s visions and the life of Christ genre The Life of Christ genre was hugely popular in the later Middle Ages, with the Passion sequence attracting most attention.9 Three texts were particularly influential – Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientia, Ludolf of Saxony’s Vita Christi and the anonymous Franciscan Meditations Vitae Christi – a work that seems to have been composed around the turn of the fourteenth century, possibly by Johannes de Caldibus.10 The latter was translated into

218

Speaking in Christ

numerous vernaculars on more than one occasion and influenced not only devotional reading practices but also art and drama, crafting the devotional landscape of Europe in which Christ’s Passion took on an increasing importance.11 Salter was one of the first to argue for the direct influence of the Meditationes Vitae Christi on Julian’s Revelations.12 The central place of gospel harmonies in early fifteenth-century English spirituality was affirmed by Arundel’s Constitutions (1407–1409), which forbade the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. At the same time Arundel endorsed Nicholas Love’s Middle English translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi. This work, The Myrror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, promoted what Love calls ‘devout ymaginacion’.13 This phrase neatly sums up the form of devotion that the Life of Christ genre advocated. As is clear from the text of the Meditationes Vitae Christi and other similar works, such as the Passion meditations ascribed to Richard Rolle, those who read this material or heard it read, were encouraged to imagine themselves present at key events in Christ’s life. Michelle Karnes notes that the possibility of such physical witnessing via imagination is apparent across the genre but is made particularly explicit in Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae.14 Meditators became, in their mind’s eye, witnesses at the events in Christ’s life, in this way closing ‘the gap between the present time and the past time of the historical Christ’, as Baker points out.15 She comments in this regard on how Meditationes Vitae Christi frequently invokes the metaphor of seeing, as well as offering ‘concrete imagery’ on which to dwell imaginatively. She also draws attention to the ‘vivid and evocative language’ intended to aid what she terms ‘the visual imagination’.16 In The Privity of the Passion, another Middle English translation of parts of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, for example, she notes the extensive descriptions of the implements used to beat Christ, down to the sharpness of the scourge. As the text states, ‘And as some doctours say, one euery knott was a sharpe hok of Iryne, þat with euery stroke þey rof his tendyr fleshe’.17 Such imagination was devout in that it redirected and deflected human desires onto Christ. We can see the genre’s impact in The Book of Margery Kempe, another of the English Mystics, who frequently, in meditation, visualises herself present at events in Christ’s life. She writes, for example, of how she saw St. Anne when she was pregnant with the Virgin Mary and how she requested to act as her lady-in-waiting: Another day this creatur schuld geve hir to medytacyon, as sche was bodyn befor, and sche lay stylle, nowt knowyng what sche mygth best thynke. Than sche seyd to ower Lord Jhesu Crist, ‘Jhesu, what schal I thynke?’ Ower Lord Jhesu answeryd to hir mende, ‘Dowtyr, thynke on my modyr, for sche is cause of alle the grace that thow hast’. And than anoon sche saw Seynt Anne gret wyth chylde, and than sche preyd Seynt Anne to be hir mayden and hir servawnt. And anon ower Lady was born, and than sche besyde hir to take the chyld to hir and kepe it tyl it

Speaking in Christ

219

wer twelve yer of age wyth good mete and drynke, wyth fayr whyte clothys and whyte kerchys. And than sche seyd to the blyssed chyld, ‘Lady, ye schal be the modyr of God’. The blyssed chyld answeryd and seyd, ‘I wold I wer worthy to be the handmayden of hir that schuld conseive the sone of God’. The creatur seyd, ‘I pray yow, Lady, yyf that grace falle yow, forsake not my servyse’.18 Elsewhere, Margery writes of seeing the three kings bringing their gifts to the new-born Jesus and witnessing Christ cruelly nailed to the cross.19 Visualisation even takes over her physical life when, on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, she rides a donkey into Jerusalem.20 It is clear that Julian too is indebted to this genre. Julian writes of how she longed to be present with those who stood at the foot of the cross, hoping for a physical vision of Christ’s death: Methought I would have beene that time with Mary Magdalen and with other that were Crists lovers, and therefore I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily peynes of our saviour, and of the compassion [of] our lady and all his trew lovers that seene that time His peynes, for I would be one of them and suffer with him.21 The rationale underpinning this form of imaginative devotion seems to have been derived from monastic notions of reading or lectio divina. As we noted in Chapter 5, Mary Carruthers has shown that lectio divina imported classical reading strategies into the monastic reading of scripture. Such reading involved breaking down the text into sections, memorising these, then attributing meaning and emotional responses to each section, word and image.22 As a consequence images, phrases, words, and even grammatical details acted as triggers for the memory. They governed both what the meditator saw as well as teaching them how to feel. The ultimate aim was to provide resources that would form the basis for patterns of thinking (and so moral behaviour) by embedding particular emotional dispositions, intentions and responses into one’s memory that would be triggered by a given image or word.23 It was, if you like, a kind of Pavlovian training. It is apparent that late medieval Gospel harmonies are designed to evoke a similarly affective memorial response, providing a linguistic and imagistic frame of reference in which to understand Christ’s life and death. Consider, for example, the following short extract from Rolle’s Meditation B: Swet Ihesu, I yeld þe þankynges for al þe angyr and sorow þat þou suffred when þou bare þe cros toward þy deth, and me þynketh, lord, I se how þey led þe forth naked as a worme, turmentours about þe and armed kneghtes. Þe prese of þe peple was wondyr mych; þey harried þe shamfully, and spurned þe with har fete as þou haddist be a dogge. A, þis is a reuthful syȝt: þy hede is ful of þornes, þy heere ful of blode, þy

220

Speaking in Christ face is al wan, þy lokyne is mournynge, þy chekes and hede al bolned with buffetys, þy visage is defowled with spittynge. Þe Iewes haue so besene þe þat þou art lyker a mysel þan a clene man. Þe cros was heuy and hegh, and so hard trussed on þy bake þat was bare þat þou art crushed and shrynkes þervundre.24

The reader is invited not only to see how Christ is tortured, they are offered a suite of images through which to do so – they are told to visualise how Christ is kicked, his treatment compared to that of a dog and a worm and that the author shudders when he sees the blood gushing out of Christ’s wounds. The blame for this treatment of their beloved Christ is laid firmly at the feet of the Jews. The passage is designed to create a particular emotional response, crafting future memories as it does so. Thus even though Santha Bhattacharji has commented that the Meditationes Vitae Christi is surprisingly lacking in prescription and Karnes has criticised Love’s translation for being overly controlling, the imagistic framework in which these meditations operated already had a built in limit-formula.25 Those who engaged with this form of meditation were led to operate within a field of signification in which words and images were tied to particular referents. It is a quality which Alexandra Barratt has criticised, since much of the imagery, especially in portrayals of the Passion, is brutally violent and anti-Semitic, shaping and reinforcing stereotypes and arguably narrowing thinking on soteriology, as well as the capacity for this imagery to be truly revelatory.26 In her exploration of the kinds of literary and iconographic material that may have shaped Julian’s visionary repertoire, Denis Baker stresses both the importance of the Meditationes Vitae Christi and echoes Catherine Jones’ assertion that Julian was most likely also familiar with the school of East Anglian art that captured the emotive in late medieval passion meditation. Although not suggesting direct influences in these specific instances, Baker draws attention to the kind of iconographic models that existed in the environs of Norwich. She notes the wall painting of Christ crucified in what was the refectory of St. Faith’s Prior in Horsham, as well as the evocative full page crucifixion image in the Gorleston Psalter. Baker surmises that Julian was familiar with this sort of devotional material and its use. As she states, ‘The eidetic expressiveness of Julian’s account of the bodily showing most likely results from a sensitivity to concrete detail gained from frequent concentration on devotional art, particularly paintings, and through repeated practice of the imaginative visualisation required for meditation’.27 Yet Baker also notes that Julian’s Revelations do not replicated the genre exactly. One difference to which she draws attention is that Julian’s visions lack the narrative quality that was so central to the Life of Christ genre. Julian, for example, does not see the Jews who crucified Christ. As Julian states, for I had syte of the passion of Criste in dyvers shewyngs – in the first, in the iid, in the v, and in the viii – as it is seid aforn, wheras I had in

Speaking in Christ

221

party a felyng of the sorow of our lady and of his trew frends that sen hym in peyne, but I saw not so propirly specyfyed the Iewes that deden hym to ded; notwithstondyn, I knew in my feith that thei wer accursid and dampny(d) without end, savyng those that converten be grace.28 Indeed, the sense of being in a bustling scene is almost totally missing from Julian’s book. Julian rather appears as a solitary viewer who lacks complete sight of the events – her mind’s eye utterly taken over by the bleeding head of Christ and the blood that flows from it.29 Julian even calls on God to give her more light to see the events more clearly, only to be told that she needs no light but Jesus.30 And after this I saw with bodily sight in the face of the crucifix that henge before me, in the which I behelde continualy, a parte of his passion: despite, spitting and sollowing and buffetting and many langoryng peynes, mo than I can tel, and often changing of colour. . . . This saw I bodily, swemely and derkely, and I desired more bodily sight to have sene more clerely. And I was answered in my reason: If God wil shew thee more, he shal be thy light. Thee nedith none but him’.31 Julian’s descriptions of the dying Christ have an almost modern cinematic feel. In a female inversion of the male gaze, a modern cinematic technique that dissects the leading lady through a series of close-ups rather than embedding her in the narrative plot,32 Julian’s visions of Christ ignore the surrounding drama to focus instead on Christ’s wounded body parts. The reader sees with Julian the bleeding head, the lacerated back, Christ’s withered and drying skin.33 Caroline Walker Bynum has noted that Christ’s blood in late medieval devotion often called out for vengeance. Yet Julian appears to apportion very little blame in her visions.34 In her Exemplar, the close association that she draws between Christ and Adam makes it hard for her to attribute culpability, as we discussed in Chapter 4.35 Yet the feature is more widespread. As she states in chapter 33, she does not see the Jews who crucified Christ (see n. 28). Baker comments that there is also a distancing from the images employed, even though many of those that Julian uses are graphic. She notes how ‘Julian describes the results of the scourging rather than the acts itself’.36 The reader hears too Christ’s words spoken from the cross through the medium of Julian’s own head, as she partakes in what Gillespie has termed an act of divine ‘ventriloquism’.37 One example of this is found in chapter 22, where Julian is asked by Jesus whether she was satisfied with his saving work: Than [seide] our good Lord Iesus Christe, askyng, ‘Art thou wele payd that I suffrid for thee?’ I sayd: ‘Ya good Lord, gramercy. Ya, good Lord, blissid mot thou be!’ Than seyd Iesus, our kinde lord: ‘If thou art payde, I am payde. It is a joy, a blis, an endles lekyng to me that ever suffrid I passion for the; and if I myht suffre more, I wold suffre more’.38

222

Speaking in Christ

Again there is no sense of blame. Notice, too, the clever wordplay on the idea of satisfaction. The reader views Christ through Julian, through a series of secret close-ups, hearing and seeing as Julian, able to look and hear through her eyes and ears;39 privy to that which even those present at the time did not witness. Thus as Julian subtly slips the signifiers that would ordinarily underpin the words and images so central to the Life of Christ genre, the reader too is led into a state of doubt concerning their meaning. A feature that adds to this slippage is that the images that Julian uses often seem to be moving, making it difficult for the reader to fixate on them. This is particularly apparent, for example, of the blood that she sees pouring from Christ’s head. Not only is it moving, it covers everything else that Julian see, preventing the reader from seeing what they expect to see, as Gillespie comments.40 Blood too is seen in unexpected ways. Julian writes of how it seemed to have the appearance of herring’s scales, which of course shimmer in the light such that their colour cannot be fully defined.41 When we look at the passage in which this appears, we see that Julian also draws the reader’s attention to the shape of the drops. By getting her medieval reader to focus on seemingly unimportant details, she invites them to see beyond the physicality of Christ’s bleeding head and the signifiers generally imbedded in this image. As she states: notwithstondying the bleding continuid till many things were seene and understondyn. The fairehede and the livelyhede is like nothing but the same. The plenteoushede is like to the dropys of water that fallen of the evys after a greate showre of reyne that fall so thick that no man may numbre them with bodily witte. And for the roundhede, it were like to the scale of heryng in the spreadeing on the forehead.42 She also describes how the colours on Christ’s body continually change, and reports something similar in her vision of the Vernicle – the scarf onto which an impression of Christ’s face was allegedly transferred when he wiped it on the via dolorosa.43 As Julian writes: It made me to thinke of the holy vernacle of Rome which he hath portrayed with his owne blissid face when he was in his herd passion, wilfully going to his deth, and often chongyng of colour. Of the browneheded and blakeheded, reulihede and lenehede of this image.44 As Gillespie and Ross suggest, it would seem that Julian escapes the referential limits that ordinarily constraint the images that she employs.45 Although Karnes has argued that the prevalence of this devotion led to an elevation of imagination as a spiritual tool, such that in this period Passion meditation came to be equated with contemplation – a trait which she finds in Margery’s account,46 these qualities are not as immediately apparent in Julian’s Revelations, which ultimately hold the Passion imagery around

Speaking in Christ

223

which they revolve at arms’ length. Rather than conflating imagination and contemplation, it seems that Julian found imagination to be a somewhat imperfect vehicle through which to express the spiritual reality of being in Christ, an idea which Gillespie and Ross convey by describing her use of imagery as apophatic. This more cautious attitude towards the spiritual status of imagination has its roots in the writings of St. Augustine, and a late fifth-century pseudepigraphical author, now known as Pseudo-Dionysius. Both bequeathed to the later Middle Ages a largely negative view of the ultimate potential of imagery to encapsulate divine ideas. As V.  A. Kolve notes, Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis proved very influential in this respect,47 and his thinking was reinforced by that of Pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings began to circulate widely from the twelfth century. Their views underpin a belief that images and contemplation are largely antithetical. However, Karnes would, at the same time, seem right to suggest that we find a tension with this attitude in the Life of Christ’s genre’s promotion of imaginative devotion.48 It would seem to be as a result of this, that two of the male English Mystics felt compelled to differentiate imaginative meditation from contemplation proper. To understand Julian’s position, we need to carefully consider both classic medieval attitudes towards imagination and contemplation inherited from Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, and the challenge to this embedded in the approaches towards the active verses the contemplative life outlined in the Meditationes Vitae Christi.

2. Image and apophasis Augustine most carefully addresses the lowly status of imagination in his The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Here Augustine distinguishes between three types of vision: ‘bodily’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘intellectual’.49 Bodily vision is seeing with the eyes of the physical body. It is the process that we use to see a cat out of the window, to find our coat in the morning and is one in which errors are possible. For example, sometimes we can see things out of the corner of our eyes that are not there. Sometimes things act as optical illusions, like those images that can appear to be either a duck or a rabbit, and sometimes our eyesight fails us and we mistake one thing for another. Above this, for Augustine, stands an imaginative mode of seeing which he terms ‘spiritual’. This is where we make use of images taken from the world around us which we have stored in our memory. Using this capacity, we can imagine things that we have never seen by combining various already seen images. Augustine’s example is a gold house. Most likely we have never seen a house made entirely of gold, but we can imagine one based on the images of gold and houses that we have already seen. This mode of seeing is one that God can also use to reveal visions. However, like physical sight, it can still be mistaken. We can think that we see images that are from God – a vision – when they are just the product of an overactive imagination or, Augustine points out, they could be the result of illness. Whilst he considers

224

Speaking in Christ

imagination to have some spiritual potential, its dependence on physical imagery taken from the world around us means that this mode of sight is limited, being constrained by physical referents and our emotional responses to them, even as the imagination plays with these. It is not therefore, for Augustine, either the highest mode of seeing or inherently spiritual in the sense that we normally understand the term. Augustine argues that there is a higher mode of seeing which he terms ‘intellectual’ vision. John Hammond Taylor notes we in fact find two types of intellectual vision in Augustine’s Literal Commentary on Genesis.50 The first consists in understanding concepts like love or truth. Augustine, as a Neoplatonist, held that the true forms of concepts resided not in an amalgam of human experience but in God. Real love is God. To understand love one therefore needs intellectual vision – that is, one needs to have one’s mind illuminated by God who is love, such that one can measure one’s experiences of love against this. Since love is found in God, it is not subject to error, nor is it changeable and corruptible. Indeed, for Augustine all judgement depends on being illuminated by the unchangeable light of God, which provides access to such conceptual truths. Yet Taylor notes that Augustine also writes of a second kind of intellectual vision, which is a direct sight of God’s illumination in the soul. This involves seeing the light that illuminates the soul.51 This second type of intellectual vision is one that Augustine associates with ecstasy or rapture. Étienne Gilson refers to it as ‘mystical knowledge’, clarifying the difference between these two forms of intellectual vision thus: ‘when he [Augustine] speaks of knowledge by or in the eternal reason, he speaks of natural knowledge, but when he speaks of knowing or of seeing the eternal reasons and the divine light, he speaks of mystical knowledge’.52 Augustine stresses the difference between such ‘intellectual’ vision of God and more image-based ‘spiritual’ visions by comparing the vision of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, when he is caught up to the third heaven and is unsure whether his soul is still connected to his body, with those of St. John recorded in The Book of Revelation. John’s visions clearly depend on physical imagery. Yet since St. Paul was unsure what relationship, if any, his mind had to his corruptible body, Augustine concluded that his vision was of an intellectual type. As Augustine states in his letter, On Seeing God: He who heard ‘secret words which it is not granted to man to utter’ (2 Cor. 12:2–4) was so enraptured that a certain withdrawal of his consciousness from the senses of this life occurred, and he said that he did not know ‘whether he was in the body or out of the body’, that is, as usually occurs in advanced ecstasy, when the mind is withdrawn from this life unto that life without losing the tie of the body, or whether there is a complete separation as occurs in death.53 Whilst John’s vision was holy, it was not imageless. Augustine concluded, however, that Paul’s vision was imageless since Paul’s report implied to him

Speaking in Christ

225

that it in no way depended on ideas generated through the body. Augustine therefore argues that Paul’s vision is superior.54 In the ninth century the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were translated into Latin. Their impact in the Latin West was however, only really felt from the twelfth century onwards. From this point Pseudo-Dionysius’ ideas were widely discussed and synthesised with those of Augustine.55 Commentaries on his Mystical Theology were produced by Thomas Gallus and Robert Grosseteste, and his thought, along with that of Augustine, permeates the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, as well as those of Bonaventure, to whom the Meditationes Vitae Christi was traditionally ascribed.56 His Mystical Theology was even translated into Middle English by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing in the fourteenth century.57 Like Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius rejected the capacity of images and words to represent spiritual goods. His writings contained a formal methodology for so doing. Indeed it is to Pseudo-Dionysius that the Latin West largely owes its thinking on the interplay between the kataphatic and the apophatic, which are now often used to distinguish mystical from non-mystical modes of writing and speech, and which Gillespie and Ross argue is crucial to the way in which Julian employs both words and images in her Revelations.58 Thomas Knepper notes that Pseudo-Dionysius uses the expression ‘kataphatic’ to refer to ‘positive predicative terms’, such as wise, and when applied to God they form a ‘thesis’, that is, a method of talking about God. This form of language provides a means of saying something about God. It does so in the language used in everyday speech; for example I can say that God is good and my mum is good, with the implication that the language is being used univocally, such that a comparison could be made. Knepper notes that Pseudo-Dionysius uses ‘apophasis’ to negate such univocal language but that when speaking of God he also includes under the term ‘apophasis’ speaking of God in terms of excess. Thus we find in Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings, statements about God that are positive or kataphatic, such as God is wise and statements that are negative or apophatic, such as God is not wise or God is hyper-wise. Knepper shows that this more negative use of language is one that Pseudo-Dionysius connects to a second methodology which he terms ‘aphairesis’, and which he uses for the removal of positive predicates from God in both senses. Yet although Knepper notes that we find two concepts in Dionysian negation, aphairesis and apophasis, he stresses that they work together ‘to yield a single cohesive picture of negation’; they are not two separate processes.59 As Knepper and Denys Turner have both commented, the kataphatic and the apophatic work dialectically in Pseudo-Dionysius’ thought, the two methodologies collectively providing an awareness of who God is.60 As PseudoDionysius indicates in his short work Mystical Theology, it is easy for us to think of God in terms of ordinary language, and in Divine Names he examines many of the names given to God in the Bible, both those that seem appropriate, such as God is good, and descriptions of God that seem less

226

Speaking in Christ

so, such as the comparisons made between God and a worm or a drunken soldier.61 Since God is the source of all that is, it is legitimate for us to name God in relation to the whole of creation. Yet he also points out that it is easy for us to see the limitations of some of this speaking. We instinctively know that God is greater than a worm. The description of God as a worm is therefore not one that it is difficult for us to negate and we see the value of so doing. In denying that God is a worm, we are suggesting that God is greater than a worm. In his Mystical Theology Pseudo-Dionysius urges the reader to first name God in all the ways possible and then unname God starting with the most mundane words and working towards the most elevated and seemingly appropriate, such as God is good and God is wise. He argues that we will come to see that even these names, indeed all language fails to fully encapsulate God. It is for this reason that he writes that ‘we should praise the denials quite differently than the assertions’, since they lead us to a higher understanding of what God is. As he states: If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseen and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way, namely through the denial of all beings. We would be like sculptors who set out to carve an image, and simply by this act of clearing aside they show up the beauty of what is hidden. Now it seems to me that we should praise the denials quite differently than we do the assertions.62 In relation to this passage, Knepper stresses that Pseudo-Dionysius’ method of aphairesis is not designed to make God vanish, but to stretch our understanding of what God is. As Knepper puts it: ‘Dionysius’ metaphor . . . indicates not only that aphairesis flat out removes properties of God, but also that even after “all things” have been removed from God, a finished sculpture remains’.63 It was a line of thinking that proved extremely pervasive in the later Middle Ages. William of St. Thierry, writing in the twelfth century, for example, stresses that words are needed to speak of God but also fail to do any justice when applied to God and other spiritual things. As he writes in his Mirror of Faith: The blessed people who walk in the Lord’s light can see and understand, but we for our part can only get involved in words, and remain as distant as ever from what we try to make them express. And yet, what else can we do but speak in words? Words can at least signify certain things to the mind, things with forms familiar to our sight and thinking. But when they are applied to divine things, such words instead of enlightening our minds, only serve to darken our image of any kind, and therefore, words can do them no justice. Yet if we have no recourse to words we cannot possibly think of spiritual things, although admittedly our words are in no sense an image of

Speaking in Christ

227

the things they stand for. [. . .] Many things have been said about God, but who could speak of God Himself but God?64 Scholars debate whether William’s thinking in this respect is influenced by Augustine or Pseudo-Dionysius.65 We find similar sentiments expressed by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing as well as by Walter Hilton, both writing in England in the fourteenth century. They include not only words but also images in this process of negation. Familiar with Pseudo-Dionysius thought, The Cloud-Author stresses a difference between two modes of language, which he describes as ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’. The former is language used to talk about ordinary everyday things, such as clouds and darkness. The latter is such imagery applied to a spiritual referent. The Cloud-Author stresses that it is very important not to confuse the two. Indeed, he insists that to confuse spiritual things with physical ones will corrupt one’s understanding of God. We can see this at work when he writes that a ‘cloud of unknowing’ has nothing to do with clouds in everyday understanding: And wene not, for I clepe it a derknes or a cloude, that it be any cloude congelid of the humours that fleen in the ayre, ne yit any derknes soche as is in thin house on nightes, when thi candel is oute . . . Lat be soche falsheed; I mene not thus. For when I sey derknes, I mene a lackyng of knowyng; as alle that thing that thou knowest not, or elles that thou hast forgetyn, it is derk to thee . . . And for this skile it is not clepid a cloude of the eire, bot a cloude of unknowyng, that is bitwix thee and thi God. And yif ever thou schalt come to this cloude, and wone and worche therin as I bid thee, thee byhoveth, as this cloude of unknowyng is aboven thee, bitwix thee and thi God, right so put a cloude of forgetyng bineth thee, bitwix thee and alle the cretures that ever ben maad . . . . I oute take not o creature, whether thei ben bodily creatures or goostly.66 His method of arriving at spiritual understanding is apophatic. It involves the active forgetting of all ideas related to God that depend on human conceptions. Thus although The Cloud-Author makes use of kataphatic discourse, his strategy is ultimately predicated on their negation, which, we noted in Chapter 5, Alistair Minnis has helpfully termed ‘imaginative denigration of imagination’.67 The stark and rather absolute difference that the Cloud-Author draws between these two forms of communication is one that seems surprising to modern readers, who are used to thinking of metaphors quite differently, yet it is essential to the Cloud-Author’s methodology that we learn to set them apart. As John Burrow comments, the author’s uncompromising insistence that he means the one and not the other may strike a modern reader as rather primitive; for we are accustomed, especially in post-romantic poetry, to symbols which seem

228

Speaking in Christ to carry something of their physical reality over into the realm of the spirit. But this is precisely what the author of The Cloud does not want.68

Although variously expressed by mystical authors, a kataphatic-apophatic dialectic is generally held to characterise mystical texts. It is a feature that works towards the diminution of image and language, even their eventual extinction, at least in terms of how language ordinarily functions. The Cloud-Author has his reader ultimately plunge silently into the cloud of unknowing with only love as his guide. Pseudo-Dionysius writes of how we are brought to a point of silence when we finally let go of even our most primal language as a means of speaking about God. As he states at the end of Mystical Theology: There is no speaking of it, nor name nor knowledge of it. Darkness and light, error and truth – it is none of these. It is beyond assertion and denial. We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for it is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial.69 God – here even stripped of this name – is, as Turner notes, beyond even our negations.70 Whilst not all mystical texts lapse as easily into silence, we generally find some sense of the mystery of God intentionally communicated to the reader, even whilst, as Knepper notes, that of which they do not speak is held up as supreme. The Middle English mystic Walter Hilton stresses the need to differentiate image-based seeing from contemplation proper on these grounds. Dividing ‘contemplation’ into three forms, Hilton argues that only the highest form of ‘contemplation’ is truly contemplation since only it exceeds all imaginative and linguistic modes of expression. As he clarifies in Book I of The Scale of Perfection, image-based devotion is associated with the second stage of contemplation, and as such may be spiritually beneficial in arousing great affection for Christ’s humanity. Here it seems that he has in mind the kind of devotion promoted in the Life of Christ genre. However, he stresses that the third part of contemplation is superior, since it combines affection with understanding, and in so doing moves beyond imaginative meditation. For Hilton, it is only in the third stage that the devotee experiences a Paulinetype rapture, which he views as a ravishment the leads to understanding that exceed the comprehension of the bodily senses or the power of imagination: The secunde partie of contemplacion [ . . . is w]han a man or a woman in meditacioun of God feelith fervour of love and gostli swettenesse, bi mynde of His passioun or of ony of His werkes in His manhede; [. . .] whiche schoure and clensyn the herte fro al the filthe of synne, and

Speaking in Christ

229

maken hit melten into a wondirful swettenesse of Jhesu Crist, buxum, souple and redi to fulfulle al Goddis wille [. . .] The thridde partie of contemplacioun [. . .] is whanne a mannys soule [. . .] is taken up from alle ertheli and fleisschli affecciones, from veyn thoughtis and veyn ymaginacions of alle bodili thynges, and as it were mykil ravysschid out of the bodili wittes and thanne bi the grace of the Holi Gost is illumyned for to see bi undirstoondynge soothfastnesse, whiche is God.71 Thus even though Hilton recommends imaginative devotion and accepts that it can be termed ‘contemplation’, to his mind it still operates as a kataphatic practice that differs absolutely from the apophatic contemplation that is generated when ‘veyn thoughtis and veyn ymaginacions’ are negated; an understand of God that one only achieves through grace.72 Since Julian’s Revelations recount a vision of the Passion and she continues to speak about her visions twenty years later, doing so in very imagistic ways, some scholars have treated Julian as a kind of kataphatic mystic.73 However, just as Julian exceeds the bounds of Passion meditation as ordinarily understood, so too does her engagement with imagination – a point at which we have already began to hint.

3. Julian as apophatic writer Julian’s account of the passion contains vivid imagery and an attention to detail. Yet as Barry Windeatt argues, it ‘has the power to evoke a fresh response of feeling to this most familiar of icons’.74 Despite its eidetic quality, rather than the stable imagery that we find in other female visionary texts, we noted above that Julian’s imagery has what Nicholas Watson calls a ‘fragmentary’ feel.75 As Gillespie and Ross have demonstrated, Julian artfully undercuts the signifiers on which her kataphatic statements and images depend, engaging in the kind of kataphatic-apophatic dialectic that Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings promote. She does so by means of a wide-range of linguistic and imagistic devices, which they term ‘strategies of imagistic effacement’, through which she pushes the reader beyond any sense that they can understand that which they see and hear in Julian.76 This can be seen operating at the level of words but also applies to the images themselves. One method that Gillespie and Ross particularly highlight is what they term Julian’s use of ‘word-knots’ or semantic clusters. By this they mean that we find the same word, image or metaphor deployed across her text yet each reiteration subtly shifts the signifiers that underpins it.77 Gillespie and Ross draw particular attention to her use of the word ‘mene’ – a term that she employs in reference to the role that physical and pictorial images play within her visions and which, they note, she uses in multiple ways to stress that we cannot approach God through means. As they state: Julian’s lexical exploration of the word mene, as a noun, adjective and verb, is one of the most dazzling illustrations of her verbal dexterity [. . .]

230

Speaking in Christ Julian’s exploitation of the polysemousness of this word means that it becomes a meeting place for many of her key ideas, perceptions, responses and expressions’.78

It is a strategy which causes words and imagery to falter. The reader becomes unsure of what words and images mean or stand for. Gillespie and Ross note that Julian uses other devices to similar effect, such as paradox and punning, conflated time-scales and the ‘syntactical looseness’ that they stress frustrated Colledge and Walsh. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 63. An example of this method at work within imagery is found in her description of Christ as our clothing. We find her using it on multiple occasions in the course of her book to different effect. In revelation 1, Julian states that Christ is like clothing which protects. Jesus ‘for love wrappith us, [halseth] us, and all beclosyth us for tender love’.79 Yet she quickly undercut this in the second revelation by describing Christ as enclosed in our dead lifeless skin: ‘our foule dede hame’.80 Our sense of Christ’s humanity is further confounded when in the Exemplar she again uses a clothing metaphor to describe how, on Christ, our humanity has become the most beautiful clothing ever made, all the while stressing that we need to strip ourselves naked – another term which she uses in multiple ways.81 Images, like words, form an elaborate series of cross-references that reinforce the idea that the Revelations should be read as a book – a point which Baker makes – even as Julian uses these images to undermine the literal referents that underpin them.82 Such destabilising is reinforced by further qualities that we noted earlier – images that move, attention to seemingly insignificant detail, all culminating in a sense that, like Julian, we cannot see the narrative of the Passion unfold. Even her famous image of the hazelnut is not a hazelnut, just something round and small which she sees lying in the palm of her hand. Julian’s images lead beyond themselves, partly as a consequence of having lost the imagistic signifiers that they inherited from the Life of Christ genre. How should we understand this use of image and imagination? We noted above that in Pseudo-Dionysius’ account the apophatic seemingly leads to silence.83 Yet this does not seem to mirror Julian’s strategy. Although somewhat agreeing with the goal of silent apophasis, Michael Sells argues that most mystics do not in fact assume the apophatic to be a permanently attainable state that follows neatly from the kataphatic such that they will be able to cease to speak altogether. Sells suggests that the fragility of apophatic discourse requires that mystics continually create what he calls ‘languages of unsaying’, that is, modes of speaking that constantly undercut the human tendency to attach signifiers to their words and images. Such linguistic strategies, he moots, form part of the mystic’s endless struggle to maintain an apophatic understanding of the divine. For Sells, it is only at the moment in which an image is unhinged from its signifier that the mind is able to fully transcend language and image. As such, these are inevitably brief forays into unknowing, in need of constantly recreation. There are certainly elements in

Speaking in Christ

231

Julian’s account that work along these lines. It is perhaps this dynamic that underpins the moving quality of her images, as well as the constant pushing beyond the whole by focusing on details. This latter feature is importantly central to Julian’s Exemplar, which, she claims, operates as a form of hermeneutical key for the visions entire. Emphasising the kataphatic-apophatic dialectic as Sells understand it, Julian is instructed to enter into the visual detail of what she sees, observing minute features on clothing, including colour: For xx yeres after the tyme of the shewing, save iii monethis, I had techyng inwardly, as I shal seyen. ‘It longyth to the to taken hede to all the propertes and condition that weryn shewid in the example thow thou thynke that they ben mysty and indifferent to thy syte’. I assend wilfully with grete desire [seeing] inwardly with avisement al the poynts and propertes that wer shewid in the same tyme [. . .] begynning myn beholding at the lord and at the servant, and the manner of sytting of the lord and the place that he sate on, and tho color of his clothyng and the manner of shapp.84 As she states here, this led her to she focus on the manner in which the Lord sat and the colour of his clothing and their shape, thus pushing her beyond the images themselves. Keeping images moving, and seeing only parts, prevents the imagination from holding onto their imagistic significations. It is a process that Julian even embeds within the threefold typology that seemingly unpins her revelations and of which she states, All the blissid teching of our lord God was shewid be iii partes: that is to sey, by bodily syte, and by word formyd in myn understondyng, and be gostly sight. For the bodily seyte, I have seid as I saw as trewly as I can; and for the words, I have seid them rith as our lord shewid hem to me; and for the gostly syght, I have seyd sumdele, but I may neve[r] full tellen it, and therefore of this syght I am sterrid to sey more as God will give me grace.85 On the surface it seems that she recommends a simple Augustinian progression from the physicality of images, to the greater abstraction of words, ultimately to arrive at spiritual insights. Yet although we find this movement evidenced in her book Julian is far from constrained by this typology. Words and images operate far more playfully than this – their physicality bleeding into their spirituality, word and image doing so in ways that are both synergistic and disruptive. There is a sustained emphasis on the goodness of physicality and the imagistic that would seem to be more than a desperate attempt to prevent herself from falling back into referentiality, along the lines that Sells describes. Gillespie and Ross note that there are two signifiers that Julian does not feel the

232

Speaking in Christ

need to negate, Christ and herself. United to him, they point out that Julian becomes with Christ the only stable signifier in her text. Indeed, they suggest that both she and Christ are ‘signs [that] are not rejected or despised: they are exacted by being transfigured. The emptiness of the ineffable and the apophatic becomes occupied, filled and fulfilled “in fullhede of joy”’.86 All ‘menes’ to know Christ having been emptied of meaning, Julian becomes the means through which God is able to reveal himself. Gillespie and Ross go so far as to suggest that ‘God means her to be the means of communication to all Christians. This is how God “menyth” or speaks: she becomes the word spoken by God’.87 Julian is that ‘by which the kenotic paradigm can be displayed through the transfigured means of earthly language’.88 As Gillespie and Ross suggest here, Julian’s visions become a source of new revelation; they contain sacred words, what Gillespie and Ross call ‘a new grammar of spiritual imagery’.89 So it is that her text points to her and away from her at the same time; it points to her, as David Aers notes,90 in that we are drawn in by the eidetic nature of her experiences. However, Julian is in Christ and her text also points away from her, never allowing us to rest in familiar images. This would seem to be much more than the verbal prolixity of an apophatic strategy that indicates the limitless nature of God; a reading of Julian posited by Turner.91 It comes close to what Martin Laird has termed ‘logophatic discourse’, in which the mystic becomes the overflowing Word of God. I believe that such logophatic excess better accounts for the dizzying nature of reading Julian’s writings than an apophatic-kataphatic dialectic as traditionally understood. It is a quality that is I hope to show is helpfully understood as sacred eloquence.

4. Julian’s voice as logophatic and her Revelations as sacred eloquence Rather than the mystical journey resulting in silence, as we noted in the previous chapter, Laird argues that in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, it culminates in a new mode of speech, additional to the ‘kataphatic’ and the ‘apophatic’, which Laird terms the ‘logophatic’. According to Laird, this is an apophatic mode of discourse that arises from and overflows with the words of Christ with whom the soul is united in apophatic understanding/ union. It seems worth repeating Laird’s definition which we quoted earlier: By this neologism I intend the following: as a result of apophatic union, in which concepts, words and images have been abandoned, characteristics of the Word are taken on: the Word indwells the deeds and discourse of the one in apophatic union. Hence a new mode of discourse emerges: the Word says itself.92 Laird finds this form of speaking in Gregory’s discussions of the Gospel writers, St. Paul and the Bride in the Song of Songs, all of whom, Gregory

Speaking in Christ

233

holds, emit the fragrance of the divine: ‘John, Luke, Matthew, Mark and all the others, all are noble plants of the bride’s garden. When they were breathed through by that bright southerly wind at midday, they became fountains of fragrance that gave off the good odour of the Gospels’.93 According to Laird, such speaking comes about as a consequence of God’s indwelling. Indeed, for Gregory it is predicated on St. Paul being a ‘vessel of election’ (Acts 9:15). As Gregory states, ‘When Paul became a “vessel of election”, he no longer lived his own life but revealed Christ living in him [. . .] and gave proof of Christ speaking in himself’.94 It is out of Christ’s indwelling that Paul speaks. As Laird clarifies: ‘As Paul inhales the divine fragrance he is transformed through indwelling union into a vehicle of the Word itself; his deeds and discourse becomes vehicles of divine presence’.95 Laird suggests that this constitutes more than kataphatic or apophatic discourse, where the latter is understood to be the simple negation of the former. This is speech that is transformative for its hearers by conducting them into the Word of God. Commenting on Gregory’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, Laird argues that it arises out of apophasis but ultimately pushes beyond it: ‘After this profoundly apophatic experience of union, the silent chamber of the bride’s heart begins to speak “[. . .] in a loving manner to the daughters of Jerusalem”’. As a consequence, he suggests, that ‘Gregory does not tell us precisely what the bride says rather he draws attention to the effect of this discourse on her maiden companions’.96 He argues that we find something similar in Homily three, where Gregory comments on Paul’s rapture to third heaven. Paul subsequently speaks out of his intense and apophatic union with God. His words are no longer his own. Although he speaks, his words are not kataphatic, rather they are transformative and imbued with the divine Word, drawing the hearer into Paul’s unitive experience. As Laird states of Gregory’s discussion of St. Paul here: Moreover, this union reveals a dynamic that extends beyond Paul and the bride themselves: they transmit to others the communion with the Word that they themselves enjoy. The transforming dynamic of the indwelling Word indwells and transforms others through Paul and the bride. Paul’s announcement of the gospel is also a vehicle of indwelling communion with the Word. Through Paul the Word brings itself, expresses itself.97 Being transformed by Christ’s indwelling, Paul, for Gregory, becomes Christ’s mouthpiece and his embodiment on earth through whom Christ is able to convey an understanding of himself to others who have not yet experienced a unitive encounter for themselves. Although J. B. Wallace has argued that Laird’s understanding of logophasis represents a confused understanding of kataphatic discourse, his terminology is being increasingly embraced as helpful.98 Indeed, it seems illuminative of a movement that we find in a number of Christian mystical texts and even within the Meditationes Vitae Christi itself.

234

Speaking in Christ

Although often read as a simple meditative text, the Meditationes Vitae Christi suggests that the Christian life does not simply consist of active and contemplative states, with meditation leading from one to the other. It actually proposes a threefold movement from the active life – in which one’s understanding is largely kataphatic – to the contemplative life – in which one arrives at apophatic awareness – back to a second form of action – in which one’s words now carry the fragrance of God. This movement resonates strongly with Laird’s notion of the logophatic. To express this, the Meditationes Vitae Christi quotes from various contemplative works, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. In Bernard of Clairvaux’s forty-first sermon on the Song of Songs, he comments on the very passage99 – Song of Songs 1.10 – which Laird has argued is pivotal to Gregory of Nyssa’s thinking on the logophatic dimension of speech. Here Bernard poignantly expresses how, after the mind has been raised up to union with God in knowing that exceeds imagery, angelic messengers offer the soul a reconfigured mode of imagistic discourse through which to convey its encounter to others. These angelic goldsmiths take the ‘gold’ of divine transcendence and spin it into a form accessible to the human mind. This heavenly discourse is conveyed by means of spiritual images which allow human minds to grasp the ungraspable (at least to the extent that this is humanly possible). Such language, Bernard explains, shares in the mode of prophesy. Although he differentiates it from the lightening-flash of divine splendour, there is clearly a close correlation between this encounter and the images that immediately succeed it, the effect of which not only allows the experience to be comprehended by the recipient but imbues him/her with a capacity to communicate its meaning to others. It seems worth quoting this slightly lengthy passage in full: The heavenly goldsmiths to whom this work is committed, promise that they will fashion resplendent tokens of the truth and insert them in the soul’s inward ears. I cannot see what this may mean if not the construction of certain spiritual images in order to bring the purest intuitions of divine wisdom before the eyes of the soul that contemplates, to enable it to perceive, as though puzzling reflections in a mirror, what it cannot possibly gaze on as yet face to face. These things we speak of are divine, totally unknown except to those who have experienced them. While still in this mortal body, whilst still living by faith, while the content of the clear interior light is not made clear, we can, in part, still contemplate the pure truth. Any one of us who has been given this gift from above may make his own the words of St. Paul: ‘Now I know in part;’ and: ‘We know in part and in part we prophesy’. But when the spirit is ravished out of itself and granted a vision of God that suddenly shines into the mind with the swiftness of a lightning-flash, immediately, but when whence I know not, images of earthly things fill the imagination, either as an aid to understanding or to temper the intensity of the divine light.

Speaking in Christ

235

So well-adapted are they to the divinely illuminated senses, that in their shadow the utterly pure and brilliant radiance of the truth is rendered more bearable to the mind and more capable of being communicated to others [. . .] they also inspire the elegance of diction which so fittingly and gracefully embellishes with greater clarity and keener enjoyment our communication of them to the audience.100 This section of sermon forty-one is used by the author of the Meditationes Vitae Christi to clarify the relationship between the active and contemplative lives. It appears at the point in which the text details a movement from action to contemplation, culminating in a discussion of a second form of action. Quoting almost the entire passage above, the Meditationes Vitae Christi uses it to outline a threefold spiritual progression, in which the most elevated souls are ultimately led into a second form of active life, which consists of a call to preaching and pastoral care. In the Meditationes Vitae Christi ordinary living appears to parallel ordinary speaking, the solitary life parallels apophatic speaking, whilst this new mode of action comes very close to Laird’s notion of logophasis. Although to some extent, for Bernard, this amounts to a relinquishment and so diminution of contemplation, the effect of the divine goldsmiths nonetheless remains. Indeed the passage seems to imply that imagery used in preaching belongs to an extended apophatic mode, which endows the contemplative’s subsequent speech with a kind of prophetic and thus logophatic quality, that is, it is inspired and thus inspiring. As Bernard states, it gives ‘the elegance of diction which so fittingly and gracefully embellishes with greater clarity and keener enjoyment our communication of them [rapturous encounters] to the audience’. Given the lowly status normally attributed to meditation manuals such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi it is quite a surprise to find this here. The tension between the two forms of action, which seem to involve two forms speaking – kataphatic and logophatic discourse – is one that Bernard appears to expound elsewhere, for example, in sermon 18. This is a text that the Meditationes Vitae Christi again draws on in its discussion of the relationship between action and contemplation. Here Bernard argues that Paul’s vision of the third heaven led him to boil over in preaching, his words arising out of the charity that had come to fill him. As the Meditationes Vitae Christi quotes, ‘This fills, this warms, this boils, this, now untroubled spreads in abundance [.  .  .] Let him preach, bear fruit, renew miracles, and transform marvels’.101 The text, as quoted in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, goes on to warn, echoing 1 Corinthians 13, that those not thus filled with charity should refrain from preaching since their words will be empty: ‘Oh how many things must first be instilled and gathered in, so that we may then spread out liberally’.102 Preaching, it is stated, must stem from a contemplative encounter or it will fail to be effective, by which the text appears to mean transformative. This idea seems to closely echo that which Laird sees at work in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, in which he finds

236

Speaking in Christ

a differentiation between kataphatic and Word-breathed speech, the latter being, for Gregory, that which scripture itself contains. As Laird states, ‘kataphasis involves language that is searching for God, logophasis [. . .] involves language that is full of God’.103 This appears to be precisely the claim that the Meditationes Vitae Christi is making through Bernard regarding pastorally orientated, post-contemplative speech. In the context of Bernard’s sermons and the Meditationes Vitae Christi rather than speaking of logophatic discourse it perhaps seems more helpful to describe this as ‘sacred eloquence’ since it involves both speaking as the Word and expounding the word.104 Whilst the text dismisses the idea that this will be of any relevance to female readers, given that the text was written with female readers in mind it is perhaps best not the take the Meditationes Vitae Christi at its word at this point. Whatever the case, it provides a ready source through which a female reader could encounter the idea of logophasis. It is a dynamic that I think we find at work within Julian’s Revelations. Although this is a trait that would seem to underpin Julian’s Revelations as a whole, which is characterised by what Gillespie and Ross term ‘apophatic images’, the tension between the kataphatic, apophatic and the logophatic is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the chapters which mark her transition from a bodily sight of the crucifixion to the auditory revelations that underpin her subsequent showings. Drawing a comparison between herself and St. Paul in relation to his rapture to the third heaven, which as we noted above was widely acknowledged as signalling an entry point into an apophatic, non-conceptual form of knowing,105 Julian undercuts the silence of apophasis. Rather than causing her to let go of the humanity of Christ – which one would expect if she were being true to a kataphaticapophatic dialectic – in her vision of the three heavens, Julian insists that Christ’s humanity negates the rejection of the created order (which of course includes both language and image). Indeed, she see no hierarchical relationship between the three heavens, all of which she sees in the humanity of Christ. As she states, Than seyd Iesus, our kinde lord: ‘If thou art payde, I am payde. It is a ioy, a blis, an endles lekyng to me that ever suffrid I passion for the; and if I myht suffre more, I wold suffre more’. In this felyng my vnderstondyng was lifte up into hevyn, and there I saw thre hevyns, of which syght I was gretly mervelyd. And thow I se thre hevyns, and all in the blissid manhode of Criste, non is more, non is less, non is heyer, non is lower, but evyn lyke in blis.106 Notice the interaction between the idea that Christ has paid for our sins, Julian’s own satisfaction and her seeing conducted in Christ’s humanity, which reveals the redemption of all. Seen in Christ, everything takes on the quality of Christ’s divinised humanity. In this way her words and images call her readers to a new mode of seeing, inviting the reader to see as Julian

Speaking in Christ

237

sees – in Christ – which entails not a rejection but an embracing of our humanity in him. It would seem to be for such reasons that rapture does not therefore mark a total departure from images or speech for Julian, but rather involves welcoming them in transformed mode, in which they too convey the divine.107 Her exclamation in her Exemplar,108 when she cries out to God to enable her to see her visions in Christ, seems to echo such thinking: ‘I cryed inwardly with al my myte, sekyng into God for helpe, menand thus: “A! lord Jesus, king of bliss, how shall I ben esyd? Ho that shal techyn me and tellyn me that me nedyth to wetyn if I may not at this tyme sen it in the?”’109 True spiritual seeing, as she states here, can only be found in Christ, it is not simply given by him. Although it might seem that there is a danger that the boundaries between the physical and spiritual will become blurred in ways that worry both the Cloud-Author and Walter Hilton, Julian is able to hold them together and keep them apart at the same time through her insistence that she speaks in Christ. As Howie puts it, ‘If Julian sees “no difference between God and our substance”, it is because this distinction is not, strictly speaking, visible. Sight and the “between” across which sight reaches, stops just short of its object, just this side of what transcends it’.110 Yet as Howie continues this is not to say that there is no difference between God and the person: ‘For what is “between” God and me is no ordinary object of perception. It is something that I am in, but (or and) it is my addition, my exteriority to God, inasmuch as I am in it at all’.111 Thus it is that, seeing in the ‘king of bliss’, Julian is afforded logophatic speech. The imagery and words through which she writes constitute a mysterious example, one that eludes complete interpretation, ‘And than our curtes lord answerd in shewing full mystily a wondirful example’.112 They serve as means of transforming the reader, as they are drawn into such seeing. Thus even though Julian’s Exemplar opens by stating that the vision moves towards ‘spiritual likeness: ‘on partie was shewid gostly in bodily lyknes, and the other partie was shewid more gostly without bodyly lyknes’,113 at the same time it is clear that its various elements can in no way be prised apart such that the physical, linguistic and imagistic is abandoned. As she states of the three ‘stages’ within her spiritual progression, having starting at the beginning and moved to inwards learning, one arrives again at the whole revelation – with the implication that it is now seen in Christ: and therfore me behovith now to tellen iii propertes in which I am sumdele esyd. The frest is the begynnyng of techyng that I understod therein in the same tyme; the ii is the inward lernyng that I have vnderstodyn therein sithen; the iii al the hole revelation from the begynnyng to the end, that is to sey, of this boke, which our lord God of His goodnes bryngyth oftentymes frely to the syte of myn vnderstondyng. And these iii arn so onyd, as to my vnderstondyng, that I cannot, ner may, depart them.114

238

Speaking in Christ

As she engages with the vision, attempting to make sense of it, spiritual insight that exceeds what she sees descends into her soul, moving her outside the immediacy of the images and words, endowing these words and images with revelatory properties. So, for example, as she watches the servant writhing in the ditch she learns that he is worthy of and will received even greater rewards than if he had never fallen: And in this an inward gostly shewing of the lords menyng descendid into my soule, in which I saw that it behovith neds to ben, stondyng his grete and his own worship, that his dereworthy servant which he lovid so mech shuld ben verily and blisfully rewardid without end aboven that he shuld a ben if he had not fallen.115 Although we looked at the Exemplar through a somewhat rational lens in Chapter 4, her bringing together of Christ and Adam throws a completely intellectual understanding of the Fall and redemption into disarray. Her words lay claim to divine logic; the sense of love that is conveyed here is transformative in ways that are difficult to explain rationally, in that it eludes any one dogmatic reading, thus pointing the reader to God who exceeds all human rationality. Thus it is that I think that we can argue that Julian’s images and words not only negate their immediate referentiality but operate as logophatic discourse/sacred eloquence. The key is not mastery of what is seen but the sense of wonder it conveys, a point illustrated to Julian when God removes the exemplar from her sight: And at this poynte the shewing of the example vanishid, and our good Lord led forth myn understondyng in syte and in shewing of the revelation to the end. But notwithstondyng al this forthledyng, the mervelyng of the example cam never from me; for methowth it was goven me for an answere to my desir.116 As she states, although the vision vanished, the wonder of it never left her – and it was this rather than the vision that she senses has been given to her in response to her asking for a bodily sight of the Passion. We might argue that it is in this sense that the Exemplar stands as a testimony to the truly revelatory nature of Julian’s ‘shewings’, such that she holds them up as a kind of spiritual primer, through which a transformative encounter with the divine can be embarked upon.117 This also lends her Revelations a scriptural quality. Since her words and images are the words and images of the Word, in whom she sees them, they contain hidden secrets, waiting to be revealed to those who, through meditative engagement, likewise come to see them in Christ: Also in this mervelous example I have techyng with me, as it were the begynnyng of an ABC, wherby I may have sum understondyng of our

Speaking in Christ

239

lo[r]dis menyng; for the privities of the revelation ben hidd therin, notwithstondyng that al the shewing arn ful of privityes.118 In this way, the seeing and hearing that the Exemplar constitutes has more akin to her own experience of union than to the words through which Christ speaks to her of which she states: ‘I have seid them rith as our Lord shewid hem to me’. In contrast to such kataphatic discourse, as she makes clear in revelation 12, her unitive encounter is characterised by unnumbered words that lie beyond human comprehension and expression: The nombre of the words passyth my witte and al my vnderstondyng and al my mights, and it arn the heyest, as to my syte; for therin is comprehendid – I cannot tellyn – but the ioy that I saw in the shewyng of them passyth al that herte may willen and soule may desire; and therefore the words be not declaryd here but every man, after the grace that God gevyth him in vnderstondyng and lovyng, receive hem in our Lords menyng.119 Her Revelations do not reveal these innumerable words, but are coloured by them, such that those who engage with her Revelations may also be brought to ‘receive hem in our Lords menyng’, being transformed by them in the same way that one can be transformed through meditative engagement with scripture. Her experience is akin to that of Moses who sees God in the burning bush, who hears God declaring that he is the great ‘I am’, who defies denomination. As she states, Our lord Jesus oftentymes seyd: ‘I it am, I it am, I it am that is heyest; I it am that thou lovist; I it am that thou lykyst; I it am that thou servist; I it am that thou longyst; I it am that thou desyrist; I it am that thou menyst; I it am that is al; I it am that holy church prechyth and teachyth the; I am that shewed me here to thee’.120 Her subsequent discourse implies that, like Moses, she accepts a prophetic call to bear witness to what she has seen and heard, as she becomes, in Christ, the mouthpiece of the Word. Whilst this might seem a bold claim, a similar line of thought is found in Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae. In addressing the question of how God in known by us, in 1.qu.12a.12 Aquinas explores whether, through grace, God can be known by means of natural reason. Arguing that human nature precludes us from direct knowledge of God, Aquinas places emphasis on the role of images as mediators of prophetic knowledge. As Bauerschmidt points out, in this relation Thomas writes of two forms of prophecy. The first arises from images already known to us. Prophecy occurs when the natural reason is strengthened by the light of God’s grace so that deeper truths can be seen by means of them. Better still is the second form of prophecy, where

240

Speaking in Christ

God provides the imagination with images directly. As Bauerschmidt clarifies quoting this section of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas notes that normal human cognition involves both the images of sensible objects as well as ‘the natural intelligible light’ by which we derive general concepts from these images. In the case of the knowledge of God that we have by prophecy, both of these are affected. Not only is the natural light of reason strengthened by ‘the infusion of gratuitous light’ but also, at least sometimes, images are formed by God in the imaginatio, ‘so as to express divine things better than the images that we receive from sensible objects are able to do’.121 In both case the images are in some sense limiting, reinforcing our created nature. They are, however, no less revelatory and prophetic for this since Aquinas holds that images are essential if we are to approach God at all in this life. Without positing the direct influence of Aquinas’ theory of images on Julian, the distinction that he provides nonetheless seems helpful. In Julian’s Revelations images would seem to operate in both these ways. Some of the images ultimately derive from the Life of Christ genre and possibly devotional aids, others come directly to her as she meditates on her visions. In both instances, Julian is enabled – in Christ – to see beyond that which the light the reason could offer her. Throughout her Long Text imagery thus seen allows Julian to push beyond the silence of apophasis into logophatic/sacred eloquence; this is despite Julian’s initially claim in the Short Text that she is not a teacher – an idea she interesting omits from the Long Text.122 Like Moses, Paul and the Gospel writers, to whom Julian compares herself, at least by the time Julian composes the Long Text, her visitations would seem to have left her with a calling – a calling to action through the transformed language that she now employs. In placing her witnessing on a par with theirs, she affords her visions an almost scriptural status, and in so doing confirms her pastoral role.123 In a manner analogous to Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the bride’s discourse with her companions, Julian speaks to her ‘even Cristen’, inviting them to share in her revelatory encounter through an engagement with words and images whose nature appears prophetic in the senses considered above. It is interesting that, as such, she fulfils the threefold typology outlined in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, becoming a kind of contemplative preacher, yet as we noted in Chapter 4, doing so only in Christ. Indeed, this reading of her seeing in some ways echoes the Bonaventurean understanding of imagination that Karnes argues underpins the genre as a whole.124 We know from Margery Kempe’s Book that Julian was revered as a spiritual advisor.125 I would like to suggest that, in Christ, Julian dared to offer the ultimate spiritual advice – words that transform by guiding the reader to meet Christ in whom all these words and images

Speaking in Christ

241

reside, even though being in Christ herself, she, like them, remains a creature awaiting the final consummation when God will be all in all. For these reasons I think that we might also argue that Julian Revelations operate as a vision of Christ within the Life of Christ genre, at least as outlined in the Meditationes Vitae Christi. In so doing, they comments both on the ultimate ends of imaginative devotion and the role that women can play in realising this, challenging the authors of both the Meditationes Vitae Christi and the Ancrene Wisse, who cast doubts on the potential of women to act as revealers of absolute truth, as teachers and, at least in written form, ‘preachers’.126 As such and in this sense, I think we are justified in viewing her Revelations as a discourse that – without any taint of heresy – stands on a par with that of Hadewijch, Porete, Mechthild and Angela, who McGinn heralds as ‘the four female evangelists of the thirteenth century’.

Conclusion In this chapter we have explored the nature and use of words and images within Julian’s Long Text. Gillespie and Ross seem right to see Julian’s Revelations as something of an antidote to a form of crass image-based meditation that perpetuated in Europe in the later Middle Ages.127 Likewise Alexandra Barratt argues that, although influenced by passion meditation, Julian avoids the narcissism that we find in Margery Kempe’s Book or Richard Rolle’s Meditationes on the Passion.128 Julian does not so much reject these more humble forms of passion meditation as take them to their logical conclusion. Indeed, as we noted, the Meditationes Vitae Christi hints at the possibility that she who truly engages in meditation on Christ’s life may be raised to a level of knowing that endows her words with divine gold, so that she, like Moses, Paul and the Gospel writers, may come to bear witness to Christ’s salvific action; her words inspired by the Word who speaks through them in their transformative capacity. This dimension of Julian’s Revelations springs from her belief that she is in Christ and that she speaks as such. Using images in ways that reinforce this lends her Revelations a quality which exceeds the narrow confines of a kataphatic-apophatic dialectic and the imagistic repertoire that ordinarily governed the Life of Christ genre. Given the relationship between voicing the word and contemplation outlined in the Meditationes Vitae Christi and that Julian appears to lay claim to a belief in deification, by which I means she views herself as in some sense already in Christ, it seems helpful to also describe her Revelations as sacred eloquence, with the proviso that Julian speaks with the voice of a creature. The sense in which Julian is worthy of comparison with mystical writers such as Hadewijch and Porete requires a little more teasing out and it is to this that we will finally turn in the conclusion, in which I will briefly consider whether either Julian and Rolle lay claim to deification in ways that are similar to their continental counterparts.

242

Speaking in Christ

Notes 1 An earlier version of this paper was published as ‘Julian’s Logophatic Discourse’ in Louise Nelstrop and Simon D. Podmore (eds.), Christian Mysticism: Between Transcendence and Immanence (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013; repr. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 191–216. I am grateful for Routledge for permission to rework and extend this material. 2 Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 133. 3 Annie Sutherland, ‘“Oure Feyth Is Groundyd in Goddes Worde”: Julian of Norwich and the Bible’, in E. A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 7 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 1–20. 4 Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic’, p. 93. 5 Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 69. 6 Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, ‘Imagination and Theology in Thomas Aquinas’, Louvain Studies, 34 (2009–2010), 169–184. As we will further discuss, Aquinas’ position on images and prophecy somewhat resonates with Bernard of Clairvaux’s understanding, even though Aquinas approaches the topic from a more Aristotelian perspective. 7 Salter, Nicholas Love’s Myrror, p. 53l. 8 Gillespie and Ross, ‘The Apophatic Image, pp. 53–77. Laird, ‘Apophasis and Logophasis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Canticum Canticorum’; Laird, Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith; Laird, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and the Mysticism of Darkness’; Laird, ‘Whereof We Speak’. 9 Geographies of Orthodoxy Project: www/qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/ discuss/; Alasdair A. MacDonald, H. N. Bernard Ridderdos and Rita M. Sclussemann, The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late Medieval Culture (Egbert Forsten: Groningen, 1998); Ian A. Doyle, A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy Therein (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1953), 2 vols. For a discussion of these texts as meditation aids intended to stimulate the imagination: Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), esp. chapter 4 in which she also notes the importance of James of Milan’s, Stimulus Amoris. 10 Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, ed. by P. Künzle (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016); Henry Suso, Wisdom’s Watch Upon the Hours, trans. by Edmund Colledge (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994). This translation is used unless otherwise stated; Ludolf of Saxony, Vita Christi, ed. by A. C. Bolard, L. M. Rigollot and J. Carnandet (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 2006–7), 5 vols. Anon., Mediationes Vitae Christi, corpus christianorum continuatio mediaevalis, ed. by Mary Stallings-Taney (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1997); Anon., Meditationes on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, trans. by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). This translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi is used unless otherwise stated. 11 For a discussion of different aspects of this development: MacDonald, Ridderbos and Schlusemann (eds.), The Broken Body. However as Robert N. Swanson comments the relationship between social response and the ubiquity of Passion meditation in this period is not always clear: ‘Passion and Practice: The Social and Ecclesiastical Implications of Passion Devotion in the Late Middle Ages’, in Alasdair A. MacDonald, H. N. Bernard Ridderbos and Rita M. Schlusemann (eds.), The Broken Body, pp. 1–30.

Speaking in Christ

243

12 For the relationship between Julian’s Revelations and the Life of Christ genre: Salter, Nicholas Love’s Myrror, p. 53l; Baker, Vision to Book, esp. pp. 40–62; Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ’ pp. 77–78. 13 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. by Michael G. Sargent (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), proem 9.1–11.22. Although Love uses the phrase across the text, it is here that he outlines what he means by this idea. 14 ‘Et hoc quoque iam in praesenti tibi aliqualiter videre dispensative conceditur’, Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, 1.3, p. 394 quoted in Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, p. 143. 15 Baker, Vision to Book, p. 44. 16 Baker, Vision to Book, p. 45. 17 Anon., ‘The Privity of the Passion’, in Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church and His Followers, ed. by Carl Horstmann (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895–1896), vol. 1, pp. 198–218. ‘And as some doctors say, on every knot was a sharp hook of iron, so that with every stroke they tore his tender flesh’, trans. by Baker, Vision to Book, p. 45. For a full translation: Anon., ‘The Privity of the Passion’, trans. by Denise. N. Baker, in Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas Howard Bestul (eds.), Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 85–106. 18 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 6, lines 402–413 (online edition). All quotations are from this edition. ‘Another day, this creature was giving herself over to meditation as she had been asked before, and she lay still, not knowing about what she might best think. Then she said to our Lord Jesus Christ, “Jesus, what shall I think about?” Our Lord Jesus answered her in her mind, “Daughter, think about my mother, for she is the cause of all the grace that you have”. And then at once she saw St. Anne, pregnant, and then she asked St. Anne to if she might be her lady-in-waiting and her servant. And forthwith our Lady was born, and then she busied herself taking the child to herself and looking after her until she was twelve years of age, with good food and drink, with fair white clothing and white [hand]kerchiefs. And then she said to the blessed child, “My Lady, you shall be the mother of God”. The blessed child answered and said, “I wish I were worthy to be the handmaiden of her that should conceive the Son of God”. The creature said, “I pray, my Lady, that if such grace should befall you, do not relinquish my service”’: Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. by Anthony Bale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Book I, ch. 6, pp. 20–21 (amended). All translations are from this version [henceforth Bale]. 19 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 7, p. 22 (Bale). 20 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 29, p. 63 (Bale). 21 Julian, Revelations, ch. 2, p. 3. ‘I thought that I wished that I had been at that time with [Mary] Magdalen and with the others who were Christ’s lovers. . . . Therefore I desired a bodily sight, in which I might have knowledge of our saviour’s bodily pains, and of the compassion of our Lady and all of his true lovers who were living at that time and saw his pains, for I would have been one of them and have suffered with them’, Julian, Showings, pp. 177–178 (amended to bring it into line with Sloane). 22 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 89. 23 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 72ff. Cf. Robertson, Lectio Divina, especially his discussion of Cassian, pp. 80ff.

244

Speaking in Christ

24 Richard Rolle, ‘Meditation B’, in S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson (ed.), Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse , EETS, vol. 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 76.307–77.317. ‘Sweet Jesus, I give you thanks for all the anger and sorrow that you suffered when you bore the cross towards your death, and I think lord, I see how they led you forward, naked as a worm, torturers surrounding you, and armed soldiers. The throng of people exceedingly oppressive; they pulled you and dragged you along with no respect at all; they kicked you with their feet as if you were a dog. And this is a wretched sight: your head is full of thorns; your hair is full of blood; your face so pallid; your gaze an expression of sorrow; your cheeks and your head so swollen with punching and hitting; your face all foul with spitting. The Jews so furnished you that you are more like a leper than a healthy man. Your cross was heavy and high, and hard thrust on your bare back, that you are crushed and shrink underneath it’. Richard Rolle, ‘Meditation B’, trans. by Rosamund Allen, Richard Rolle: The English Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), p. 95 (amended for MS Longleat). 25 Santha Bhattacharji, ‘Medieval Contemplation and Mystical Experience’, in D. Dyas, V. Edden and R. Ellis (eds.), Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 51–63, at 56; Michelle Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ’, Speculum, 82/2 (2007), 380–408. 26 Alexandra Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae: Women as Readers and Writers of Passion Prayers, Meditations and Visions’, in Alasdair A. MacDonald, H. N. Bernard Ridderbos and Rita M. Schlusemann (eds.), The Broken Body, pp. 55–71. Barratt is particularly critical of Rolle’s Meditation B and its possible impact on Margery Kempe. She suggests that such forms of meditation were more likely to result in ‘[n]arcissim and despair [. . .] than self-knowledge and repentance’ (p. 58). On the power of imagery to be both revelatory and a human limitation: Bauerschmidt, ‘Imagination and Theology in Thomas Aquinas’. 27 Baker, Vision to Book, p. 46. 28 Julian, Revelations, ch. 33, p. 46. ‘For I had sight of Christ’s Passion in various revelations, in the first, in the second, in the fourth, in the eighth, as is already related, in which I had partial feelings of our Lady’s sorrow, and of his faithful friends who saw his pains. But I saw nothing so exactly specified concerning the Jews who put him to death; and nonetheless I knew in my faith that they were eternally accursed and condemned, except those who were converted by grace’. Julian of Norwich, Showings, p. 234. 29 On blood as a kind over covering mechanism: Gillespie, ‘“[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices”’. 30 On theories of light and Julian: Vincent Gillespie, ‘The Colours of Contemplation: Less Light on Julian of Norwich’, in E. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 8 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 7–28. 31 Julian, Revelations, ch. 10, pp. 14–15. 32 For the seminal discussion of this idea: Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16/3 (1975), 6–18. I am grateful to Juliana Dresvina for pointing out that this strategy echoes the Arma Christi on which people often meditated. 33 For example: Julian, Revelations, chapters 16 and 17. 34 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 35 Consider for example the opening passage of the Exemplar in which she sees nothing to blame the servant for when he falls: ‘I saw ii persons in bodyly likenes, that is to sey, a lord and a servant; and therewith God gave me gostly

Speaking in Christ

36 37 38

39 40 41 42

43

44

45 46 47 48 49

245

understondyng. The lord sittith solemnly in rest and in peace, the servant standyth by, aforn his lord reverently, redy to don his lords will. The lord lookyth upon his servant ful lovely and swetely, and mekely he sendyth hym to a certain place to done his will. The servant, not only he goeth, but suddenly he stirtith and rynnith in grete haste for love to don his lords will. And anon he fallith in a slade and takith ful grete sore. And then he gronith and monith and waylith and writhith, but he ne may rysen ne helpyn hymself be no manner way. And of all this the most myschief that I saw him in was faylyng of comforte; for he cowde not turne his face to loke upon his loving lord, which was to hym ful nere, in whom is ful comfort; but as a man that was febil and onwise for the tyme, he entended to his felyng, and induryd in wo’, Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 72. Baker, Vision to Book, p. 48. Gillespie comments on the audacity of such divine ventriloquism: ‘“[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices”’. Julian, Revelations, ch. 22, p. 32. ‘Then our good Lord put a question to me: Are you well satisfied that I suffered for you? I said: Yes, good Lord, all my thanks to you: yes, good Lord, blessed may you be. Then Jesus our good Lord said: If you are satisfied, I am satisfied. It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to me that ever I suffered my Passion for you; and if I could suffer more, I should suffer more’, Julian, Showings, p. 216. It is in this sense that Aers suggests that Julian’s imagery actually draws attention to her even whilst she seeks to distance herself from it, ‘The Humanity of Christ’, p. 86. On blood as a covering mechanism that calms the ordinary effects of imagination in Julian: Gillespie, ‘“[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices”’. I am grateful to my student David Jasper for this observation. Julian, Revelations, ch. 7, pp. 10–11; ‘even so the bleeding continued until I had seen and understood many things. Nevertheless, the beauty and the vivacity persisted, beautiful and vivid without diminution. The copiousness resembled the drops of water which fall from the eaves of a house after a great shower of rain, falling so thick that no human ingenuity can count them. And in their roundness as they spread over the forehead they were like a herring’s scales’. Julian, Showings, pp. 187–188. It is possible that the vernicle might have been hung up in Rome in a such way that it moved and so changed colour as the light hit it from different angles. Devotion to the vernicle developed after a miracle in which the image turn itself upside down. For a discussion of differing medieval accounts of the Vernicle: Barry Windeatt, ‘“Vera Icon”?: The Variable Veronica of Medieval England’, The European Fortune of the Roman Veronica in the Middle Ages, Convivium, 4/Supplementum (2017), 58–71. The publications in this special issue maps the history of medieval reception of the vernicle. Julian, Revelations, ch. 10, p.  15. ‘It made me think of the holy Vernicle at Rome, which he imprinted with his own blessed face, when he was in his cruel Passion, voluntarily going to his death, and of his often-changing colour, the brownness and the blackness, the sorrowfulness and wasted appearance of this image’. Julian, Showings, pp. 193–194 (slightly amended). Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’. Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ’, pp. 380–408. V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (London: Edward Arnold, 1984). This is the central argument of Karne’s monograph, Imagination, Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages. Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 2, book 12, esp. ch. 8.

246

Speaking in Christ

50 Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 2, p. 316, n. 155. While corporeal and spiritual vision both also have two parts, Taylor notes that the difference between the levels here is nothing compared to the one that Augustine makes between the two types of intellectual vision, in which the distinction is absolute. 51 ‘But distinct from objects is the Light by which the soul is illumined, in order that it may see and truly understand everything, either in itself or in the light. For the Light is God Himself, whereas the soul is a creature; yet since it is rational and intellectual it is made in His image. And when it tries to behold the Light, it trembles in its weakness and finds itself unable to do so. Yet from this source comes all the understanding it is able to attain. When, therefore, it is thus carried off, and after being withdrawn from the senses of the body, is made present to this vision in a more perfect manner (not by a spatial relation, but in a way proper to its being), it also sees above itself that Light in whose illumination it is enabled to see all the objects that it sees and understands in itself’ Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 12.31.59, p. 222. For the Latin: Augustine of Hippo, ‘De Genesis ad Litteram Libri XII’, Patrologia Latina, vol. 34 (Paris, 1841), cols., 245–486 at 479–480. 52 Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St Augustine, p. 92. 53 Augustine of Hippo, ‘On Seeing God’, in Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, trans. by M. T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 365–402 at 389–390. 54 Augustine discusses this idea at length in Book 12 of his The Literal Meaning of Genesis, esp. chs. 26 and 27, pp. 216–217. 55 On the influence of Dionysius in the Middle Ages: Jean Leclercq, ‘The Influence and Noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages’, in PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, pp. 25–32; Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang (eds.), Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). On the transmission of Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings in England: Robert Boenig, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius and the Via towards England’, in William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig, Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 21–38. 56 For example: James J. McEvoy, Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De Mystica Theologia (Paris: Peeters, 2003). On Dionysian influence in Hugh and Gallus: Boyd Taylor Coolman, ‘Magister in Hierarchia: Thomas Gallus as Victorine Interpreter of Dionysius’, in Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (eds.), A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 516–546. He notes that although Gallus was the first to write a commentary on the Mystical Theology Hugh of St Victor had already commented on Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy (p. 533). For an interesting reading of Richard of St. Victor’s approach to contemplation and the extent to which it came to be read through a Dionysian lens: Jean Grosfillier, Quelques considérations sur l’influence du De contemplatione de Richard de Saint-Victor, Sacris Erudiri, 52 (2013), 235–274. 57 Anon., ‘Deonise Hid Diuinite’, in Phyllis Hodgson (ed.), Deonise Hid Diuinite: And Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to the Cloud of Unknowing: A Tretyse of Þe Stodye of Wysdome Þat Men Clepen Beniamyn: A Pistle of Preier: A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings: A Tretis of Discrescyon of Spirites (London: Early English Text Society, 1955 repr. 2002). 58 Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’. On the importance of Pseudo-Dionysius for shaping the language of late-medieval mysticism: Turner, The Darkness of God, pp. 13ff. 59 Thomas Knepper, Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), p. 68.

Speaking in Christ

247

60 Knepper, Negating Negation; Turner, Darkness of God, esp. pp. 19–49. 61 Psalm 22.6; Psalm 78.65. 62 Pseudo-Dionysius, ‘The Mystical Theology’, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, pp. 133–141 at 138. 63 Knepper, Negating Negation, p. 66. 64 William of St. Thierry, The Mirror of Faith, p. 69 (my emphasis). ‘Videt haec, intelligit haec beatus populus, qui scit jubilationem, qui ambulat in lumine vultus Dei. Non vero verba jactamus, verbis involvimur, et impedimus ab eo quod nullis verbis exprimi potest: et tamen non nisi verbis de eo aliquid dici potest. Suas enim formas verba habent in significandis rebus in locutione; et eas imaginant in loquentis vel audientis cogitatione. Et cum significant formas et formata, mentem ab interioribus suis foras trahunt ad res, quarum ipsa signa sunt. Cum vero rerum spiritualium vel divinarum signa sunt, intus quidem nos mittunt, sed intro non nisi impediunt, et oculis mentis caliginem obducunt. Sic enim mentem admissa inficiunt imaginationibus suis, ut vix sine eis cogitari possint spiritualia vel divina, quarum nullae pentius formae vel imagines sunt. [. . .] De ipso ergo multa multis edicere fas est, ipsum autem cui praeter ipsum?’ William of St. Thierry, ‘Speculum Fidei’, J.-P. Migne (ed.), PL, vol. 180 (Paris: Migne, 1855), cols., 365–397, at 395B-D. 65 Arblaster, ‘Pious Jackal’, pp. 133–134 n. 41. 66 Anon., The Cloud of Unknowing, lines 410–412, 415–419, 412–424, 429–430 (online edition). ‘Now when I call this exercise a darkness or a cloud, do not think that it is a cloud formed out of the vapours which float in the air, or a darkness such as you have in your house at night, when your candle is out . . . leave such falsehood alone. I mean nothing of the sort. When I say ‘darkness’, I mean a privation of knowing, just as whatever you do not know or have forgotten is dark to you. . . . For this reason, that which is between you and your God is termed, not a cloud of air, but a cloud of unknowing. If you ever come to this cloud, and live and work in it as I bid you, just as this cloud of unknowing is above you, between you and your God, in the same way you must put beneath you a cloud of forgetting, between you and all creatures that have ever been made. . . . I make no exceptions, whether they are bodily creatures or spiritual’, Anon., The Cloud of Unknowing, trans. by James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 127–133 (Chapters 4–5). 67 Alistair Minnis, ‘Affection and Imagination in the Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, Traditio, 39 (1983), 323–366 at 346. 68 John A. Burrow, ‘Fantasy and Language in the Cloud of Unknowing’, Essays in Criticism, 27 (1977), 283–298 at 296. 69 Pseudo-Dionysius, ‘The Mystical Theology’, p. 141 (my emphasis). For Greek text: Corpus Dionysiacum II, ed. by G. Heil and A.  M. Ritter (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), p. 150. 70 Turner, The Darkness of God, esp. p. 22. 71 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book I, ed. by Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), ch. 5, pp. 35–36 and ch. 8, pp.  37–38. ‘The second part of contemplation [is when] a man or a woman mediating on God feels a fevour of love and spiritual sweetness in the remembrance of his passion, or any of his works in his humanity [. . .] which scour and cleanse the heart from all the filth of sin and make it melt into a wonderful sweetness of Jesus Christ – obedient, supple and ready to fulfil all God’s will. [. . .] The third part of contemplation [. . .] is when a person’s soul is [. . .] taken up from all earthly and fleshly affections, from vain thoughts and imaginations of all bodily things, and is as if forcibly ravished out of the bodily senses; and then is illumined by the grace of the Holy Spirit to see intellectually the Truth, which is God’. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection,

248

72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81

82 83 84

85

86 87 88 89

Speaking in Christ trans. by J.P.H. Clark and R. Dorward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), ch 5 and 8, pp. 80 and 82. On how Hilton and the Cloud-Author differ over imagination: Minnis, ‘Affection and Imagination’. See n. 15. For Julian as a kataphatic mystic: Roger Corless, ‘Comparing Cataphatic Mystics: Julian of Norwich and T’an-luan Source’, Mystics Quarterly, 21/1 (1995), 18–27. Baker, Vision to Book, p. 55. Watson has noted how a ‘surface fragmentariness’ and ‘imagistic sparseness’ sets her writings apart from those of medieval female visionaries. Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic’, p. 85. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 58. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, pp. 53–77 note numerous ‘strategies of imagistic effacement’, not only word-knots or ‘semantic clusters’ but paradox and punning, conflated time-scales and the ‘syntactical looseness’ that frustrated Colledge and Walsh. They draw particular attention to her play on the word ‘mene’ – the term that she employs in reference to the role that physical images and pictorial imagery play within her visions: ‘Julian’s lexical exploration of the word mene, as a noun, adjective and verb, is one of the most dazzling illustrations of her verbal dexterity [. . .] Julian’s exploitation of the polysemousness of this word means that it becomes a meeting place for many of her key ideas, perceptions, responses and expressions’ (p. 56). Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 56. Julian, Revelations, ch. 5, p. 7. ‘He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love’, Julian, Showings, p. 183. Julian, Revelations, ch. 10, p. 15. On the image of clothing and nakedness in Julian’s Revelations: Louise Nelstrop, ‘Nakedness and Anthropology in Julian of Norwich and Maurice MerleauPonty: Conversation Partners or Dangerous Liaisons?’ Medieval Mystical Theology, 25/1 (2016), 69–85. Baker, Vision to Book, pp. 141ff. Turner, The Darkness of God; Sells, Languages of Unsaying. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 74. ‘For twenty years after the time of the revelation except for three months, I received an inward instruction, and it was this: You ought to take heed to all the attributes, divine and human, which were revealed in the example, though this may seem to you mysterious and ambiguous. I willingly agreed with a great desire, seeing inwardly with great care of the details and the characteristics which were at that time revealed [. . .] beginning with when I looked at the lord and the servant, as to how the lord was sitting and the place where he sat, and the colour of his clothing and how it was made’, Julian, Showings, p. 270. Julian, Revelations, ch. 73, p. 117. ‘All this blessed teaching of our Lord God was shown in three parts, that is to say by bodily vision, and by words formed in my understanding and by spiritual vision. About the bodily vision I have said as I saw, as truly as I am able. About the words, I have repeated them just as our Lord revealed them to me. And about the spiritual vision, I have told a part, but I can never tell it in full; and therefore I am moved to say more about this spiritual vision, as God will give me grace’. Julian, Showings, p. 322. In this typology words and images appear to be given equal spiritual value, only taking on a revelatory quality when they partake of logophatic discourse. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 68. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 69. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 77. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’, p. 71.

Speaking in Christ 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98

99

100

249

Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ’, p. 86. Turner, The Darkness of God, pp. 162 and 257; Turner, Julian of Norwich. Laird, ‘Whereof We Speak’, p. 2. Laird’s translation, Grasping, p.  159. For the Greek text: Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorii Nysseni in Canticum Canticorum, Gregory Nysseni Opera VI, ed. by Hermannus Langerbeck (Leiden: Brill, 1960), Oratio X, pp. 302.16–303.2. Laird’s translation, Grasping, p. 163. For the Greek text: Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum, Oratio III, pp. 88.1–5. Laird, Grasping, p. 161. Laird, ‘Whereof We Speak’, p. 3 (emphasis in original). Laird, Grasping, p.  161. For a similar idea of mystical language as transformational and therapeutic: Peter Tyler’s comparative analysis of the use of language within the writings of Wittgenstein and Teresa of Avila: The Return to the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical Tradition (London: Continuum, 2011). Laird’s conception of logophasis is increasingly being viewed as helpful in Nyssen scholarship. For a positive reading: Giulio Maspero, ‘The Fire, the Kingdom and the Glory: The Creator Spirit and Intra-Trinitarian Processions in the Adversus Macedonianons of Gregory of Nyssa’, in Henning Drecoll and M. Berghaus (eds.), Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatise on Trinitarian Theology and Appolinarism: Proceedings of the 11th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa V. Tübingen, 17–20 September 2008 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 229–276 at 274. For a less positive treatment: Morwenna Ludlow’s review of Martin Laird’s, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith’, Journal of Theological Studies, 57/1 (2005), 310–312; and James Buchanan Wallace, Snatched in Paradise: (2 Corinthians 12: 1–10): Paul’s Heavenly Journey in the Context of Early Christian Experience (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), p. 311, n. 78, who argues that the neologism is of ‘questionable value’, representing a confused understanding of kataphatic discourse. Bernard’s confrere William states that after contemplative union the soul will therefore continue to think through imagery, but such imagery will no longer be a distraction. Cf. Guillelmi A. Sancto Theodorico, Expositio Super Cantica Canticorum, ed. by P. Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis vol. 87 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1997), praefactio, 21, pp. 29–30. Bernard of Clairvaux, Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: Volume 3: On the Song of Songs II, Cistercian Fathers Series, 7, trans. by Kilian Walsh (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), Sermon 41, III.3–4, pp. 206–207 (my emphasis). ‘Hoc auro fulgentia quaedam quasi veritatis signacula spondent se figuraturos hi, quibus id ministerii est, superni aurifices, atque internis animae auribus inserturos. Quod ego non puto esse aliud, quam texere spirituales quasdam similitudines, et in ipsis purissima divinae sapientiae sensa animae contemplantis conspectibus importare, ut videat, saltem per speculum et in aenigmate, quod nondum facie ad faciem valet ullatenus intueri. Divina sunt, et nisi expertis prorsus incognita quae effamur; quomodo videlicet in hoc mortali corpore, fide adhuc habente statum, et necdum propalata perspicui substantia luminis, jam tam [alius, interim] purae interdum contemplatio veritatis partes suas agere intra nos vel ex parte praesumit; ita ut liceat usurpare etiam alicui nostrum, cui hoc datum desuper fuerit, illuid Apostoli: Nunc cognosco ex parte: item, Ex parte cognoscimus, et ex parte prophetamus (1 Cor. xiii, 12.9). Cum autem divinius aliquid raptim et veluti in velocitate corusci luminis interluxerit menti spiritu excedenti, sive ad temperamentus nimii splendoris, sive ad doctrinae usum, continuo, nescio unde, adsunt imaginatoriae quaedam rerum inferiorum similitudines, infusis divinitus sensis convenienter accommodatae, quibus quodam modo adumbratus purissimus ille ac splendidissimus veritatis

250

101

102

103 104

105

106

107

108 109

110

Speaking in Christ radius, et ipsi animae tolerabilior fiat, et quibus communicare illum voluerit, capabilior [. . .] sed nitorem quoque eloquii per ipsos extrinsecus ministrari, quo congrue atque decenter ornatae, et facilius ab auditoribus capiantur, et delectabilius’. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum’, col. 986A-D. Anon., Meditations, p.  252 quoting Bernard of Clairvaux, sermon 18 III.6. ‘hic replet, hic fervet, his ebullit, hic iam securus effundit, exundans et erumpens [. . .] Praedicet, fructificet, innovet signa, et immutet mirabilia’. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum’, col. 862C. Anon., Meditations, p. 252 quoting Bernard of Clairvaux, sermon 18, III.6. ‘En quanta prius infundenda sunt, ut effundere audeamus, de plenitudine, non de penuria largientes’. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum’, col. 862D. Laird, Grasp of Faith, p. 31. William of St. Thierry appears to take a different view of images. Despite stressing in his Exposition on the Song of Songs that true knowledge of God cannot be attained in this life, and that all humans can hope for is a certain ‘quasiknowledge’ which is not image-based, and which consists instead of ‘a certain devout affection’ that is given by God (William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, Preface 20, p. 15), he accepts that images can sometimes have a more positive value. He writes that when one prays who is still in the process of being purified, and thus thinks of God in terms of images, on occasion it is possible for him to overcome the difficulties caused by the imagination through an act of grace. In such instances the imagination can even act as a helpmate. Guillemi Abbatis S. Theodorici, ‘Expositio Altera Super Cantica Canticorum’, pp.  473C–546D at 480D–481A. Although William is clearly close to the traditional Augustinian model this slight contrast between William and Bernard nicely brings out the tension created by kataphatic, apophatic and logophatic use of imagery. Augustine makes this point very clearly in his Literal Commentary on Genesis book 12. Cf. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, p. 92. This idea is also apparent in the previously discussed passages from Gregory and Bernard. Julian, Revelations, ch. 22, pp.  31–32 (my emphasis). ‘Then Jesus our good Lord said: If you are satisfied, I am satisfied. It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to me that ever I suffered my Passion for you; and if I could suffer more, I should suffer more. In response to this my understanding was lifted up into heaven, and there I saw three heavens; and at this sight I was greatly astonished, and I thought: I see three heavens, and all are of the blessed humanity of Christ. And none is greater, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but all are equal in their joy’, Julian, Showings, ch, 22, p. 216 (my emphasis). As Marlene Cré has noted in a very illuminating discussion of Julian’s Short Text, Julian’s transcendence of imagery involves its assumption into the highest form of spirituality rather than its negation: Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse, p. 113. For example: Roland Maisonneuve, ‘The Visionary Universe of Julian of Norwich’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 1 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1980), pp. 86–98 at 87. Julian, Revelations, ch. 50, pp. 71–72 (my emphasis). ‘I cried within me with all my might, beseeching God for help, in this fashion; Ah, Lord Jesus, king of bliss, how shall I be comforted, who will tell me and teach me what I need to know, if I cannot as this time see it in you’. Julian, Showings, pp. 266–267. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 133. Although we might argue that according to the theory of extramission sight touches its object and brings some of that object

Speaking in Christ

111 112 113 114

115

116

117 118

119

120

251

back into itself, it does not bring the whole object and in this sense, particularly where God is concerned and Julian’s sense that she is ‘in’ Christ, I think that Howie’s reading is extremely helpful. Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 133. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 72. ‘And then our courteous Lord answered very mysteriously, by revealing a wonderful example’. Julian, Showings, p. 267. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 72. ‘One part was shown spiritually, in a bodily likeness. The other part was shown more spirituality, without a bodily likeness’. Julian, Showings, p. 267. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p. 74. ‘And therefore I must now tell of three attributes through which I have been somewhat consoled. The first is the beginning of the teaching which I understood from it at the time. The second is the inward instruction which I have understood from it since. The third is all the whole revelation from the beginning to the end, which our Lord God of his goodness freely and often brings before the eye of my understanding. And these three are so unified, as I understand it, that I cannot and may not separate them’. Julian, Showings, p. 269. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p.  73. ‘And in this an inward spiritual revelation of the lord’s meaning descended into my soul, in which I saw that this must necessarily be the case, that his great goodness and his own honour require that his beloved servant, whom he loved so much, should be highly and blessedly rewarded forever, above what he would have been if he had not fallen’. Julian, Showings, p.  269. The idea that the future state will exceed that of the first paradise is possibly one of the features that gives Julian’s account an Irenaean feel, although as we noted in Chapter 1 the exact nature of Irenaeus’ account of recapitulation is both complex and disputed in the scholarship. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, pp. 73–74. ‘And at this point the example which had been shown vanished, and our good Lord led my understanding on to the end of what was to be seen and shown in the revelation. But despite the leading on, the wonder of the example never left me, for it seemed to me that it had been given as an answer to my petition’. Julian, Showings, p. 269. On alphabetic spiritual primers: Tyler, The Return of the Mystical, ch. 5. Julian, Revelations, ch. 51, p.  79. ‘Also in this marvellous example, I have teaching within me, as it were the beginning of an ABC, whereby I may have some understanding of our Lord’s meaning, for the mysteries of the revelation are hidden in it, even though all the showings are full of mysteries’. Julian, Showings, p. 276. For a discussion of different ideas of revelation in the Middle Ages  – both those that came as flashes of inspiration and those arrived at through processes such as lectio divina: Barbara Newman, ‘What Did It Mean to Say “I Saw”? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture’, Speculum, 80/1 (2005), 1–43. Julian, Revelations, ch. 26, p.  37. ‘The number of the words surpasses my intelligence and my understanding and all my powers, for they were the most exalted, as I see it, for in them I cannot tell what; but the joy which I saw when they were revealed surpasses all that heart can think or that soul may desire. And therefore those words are not explained here, but let every man accept them as our Lord intended them, according to the grace God gives him in understanding and love’. Julian, Showings, pp. 223–224. Julian, Revelations, ch. 26, p. 37. ‘Again and again our Lord said: I am the one, I am the one, I am the one who is highest. I am the one whom you love. I am the one in whom you delight. I am the one whom you serve. I am the one for whom you long. I am the one whom you desire. I am the one whom you intend. I am the one who is all. I am the one whom Holy Church preaches and teaches to you. I am the one who showed itself before to you’. Julian, Showing, p. 223.

252

121

122 123

124

125 126

127 128

Speaking in Christ I have altered this translation to remove gendered references to God which are not present in the Middle English. Bauerschmidt, ‘Imagination and Theology in Thomas Aquinas’, pp. 177–178: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1q.12.a12 in Thomas Aquinas, The Collected Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation, 1993), vol. 3. Julian of Norwich Short Text, chapter 6. Julian, Showings, p. 134. On the importance of penitential ideas in Julian’s thought: Emma Pennigton, “All the Helth and Life of the Sacraments . . . I It Am”: Julian of Norwich and the Sacrament of Penance (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Oxford University, 2014). Karnes argues that the genre elevates the imagination in general as a tool that can provide access to contemplation. She posits that it is underpinned by a Bonaventurean understanding of image. Julian’s account would seem to somewhat complicate the idea of all imagination operating in this way. Karnes’ account of Bonaventure as advocating that images are read in Christ the true Exemplar may nonetheless offer an extremely useful way of understanding Julian’s account of imagery and how the Life of Christ genre could have facilitated this: Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, esp. ch. 2. See Chapter 4, n. 18. The author of Ancrene Wisse argues that anchoresses should not assume the role of advisor, Anon., Ancrene Wisse, part II, lines 209–217 (online edition). The Meditationes Vitae Christi tells the reader – originally poor Clares – that this third stage of the spiritual life is not applicable to them. However, enough details of the action that flows from contemplation are given that the reader would understand that it involves a form of teaching or preaching that flows out of contemplative union and is in some sense imbued with it. (Anon., Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. 253–254). This section does admittedly only appear in the Long Latin text, many version circulated without it, suggesting that there were those who did not consider it applicable for a wider audience. Gillespie and Ross, ‘Apophatic Image’. Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae, pp. 58, 67–68.

Conclusions

The aim of this book has been to challenge the view that there is no deification within Middle English Mysticism. I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich, two of the Middle English Mystics, advocated spiritual trajectories that culminate in or imply deification, and that this had a significant impact on their respective literary voices. These two writers approach deification in different ways. Rolle’s account has an ethical accent, Julian’s is more realistic in tone. More research is needed before we can say whether only these two of the Middle English mystics promote deification. Yet it seems likely that Rolle and Julian are not alone. Edward Vasta claimed as much of Walter Hilton and the Middle English poem Piers Plowman prior to Riehle’s 1981 study.1 This is not the place to explore such ideas or to attempt ascertain whether deification is also present in the writings of the anonymous Cloud-Author or in Margery Kempe’s Book. One question that does seem pertinent in the light of the present study, however, is the extent to which Rolle and Julian differed from their mystical counterparts on the continental. Whilst there is not space for a fully fledged comparison, we can draw attention to some of the issues which might be said to set them apart. To facilitate this, drawing on research by John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, particularly their essay ‘Common Love in Beatrice of Nazareth and Marguerite Porete’, I will offer some preliminary reflections on recent scholarly treatment of one of the earliest mystics associated with the ‘new mysticism’ that we find within the Low Countries, Marguerite Porete (d. 1310).2 I will likewise make passing reference to Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268), who is slightly earlier and advocates similar ideas but whose treatment of deification and union has not met with the same extensive and often negative scholarly criticisms that have been levelled against Porete. Marguerite Porete was burned alive in la Place de Grève in Paris in 1310 as a relapsed heretic. She left behind just one work, The Mirror of Simple Souls. The work was identified as hers in 1946 by Romano Guarnieri, based on her study of the Middle French Chantilly manuscript (Chantilly Musée Condé MS F xiv 26). A number of scholars have suggested that it is not entirely orthodox. As Arblaster and Faesen point out, Bernard McGinn, for

254

Conclusions

example, considers Porete to belong to what he calls the ‘new mysticism’ that emerged on the continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. According to McGinn, much of this new mysticism is characterises by a dangerous and possibly heterodox approach to union, which moves beyond earlier ideas of ‘unity of spirit’, laying claim to ‘a level of indistinction, or lack of difference, between God and human’.3 It appears mostly in the writings of ‘women vernacular theologians’, who advocated what McGinn sees as ‘a potentially more radically and possibly more questionable understanding [of mysticism] which emphasized a goal of “union without difference”, or what in Eckhartian terms we can describe as an unitas indistinctionis – the insistence that in the ground of reality there is absolute identity between God and the soul’.4 For McGinn such claims potentially come close to neoplatonic ideas of deification. As he states: ‘the new emphasis on substantial union is remarkably similar to the conception of union as identity or fusion found in the thought of Plotinus and Proclus’.5 Arblaster and Faesen note too that Barbara Newman holds a similar view of Porete, who she argues ceases to exist in her union with God. As she puts it, ‘Marguerite’s abjection is, in an ontological sense, absolute. As an annihilated soul, “she” no longer exists. Yet by the same token, she is God. . . . Abjection and exaltation . . . coalesce in a Zenlike tranquility that orthodox mystics . . . would judge to be dangerous self-delusion’.6 For Newman therefore, ‘From an ecclesiastical point of view, Marguerite was indeed a heretic’.7 Arblaster and Faesen draw attention to the fact that Edmund Colledge, Jack C. Marler and Judith Grant read Porete’s Mirror in a like manner. They suggest that for these critics, Porete offers an account of deification that transgresses the parameters that safeguarded this idea within Early Christian thinking. In particular they argue that for them Porete fails to discuss deification in the context of Christology – a key feature of Early Christian considerations of deification, as we saw in Chapter 1. Instead these scholars consider her to have based her thinking on transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. This, they hold, leads to a denial of the essential distinction between creator and creature in her thought: Even before the era of Pseudo-Dionysius, deification had been understood as an act of God in the soul, received by the soul in terms of the limitations of its nature and developed capacity, and, especially, in terms of the distinction between creator and creatures. Deification, accordingly, is nowhere but in the soul; and it does not remove these distinctions. This being so, the soul and its abilities are the receptive ‘means’ of deification. Margaret seems, however, to have little concern for preserving the soul’s human identity, and, instead, she regards humanity not as anything to be redeemed, but as a barrier which should be transcended . . . she does not consider whether the Hypostatic Union, the joining of the divine and the human in the single person of Christ, according to nature, can serve as the model of what, through deification,

Conclusions

255

man might be according to grace . . . she finds her model rather in transubstantiation. . . . This [her] conversion of the Soul, by Love, into Love, obliterates the distinction between the creator and the creature.8 If these reading encapsulate the thinking around deification that we find in continental writers like Beatrice and Marguerite then, based on my account of Rolle and Julian in the preceding chapters, their thinking on deification differs from that of their continental counterparts in a number of notable ways. As we have seen, Rolle and Julian, albeit in different ways, safeguard the created status of the soul even in deified union. One way that Rolle does this is through the medium of sensation. Although he lays claim to a near continuous experience of union with God, it is clear that the stilling of the mind that culminates in deification is a process that redeems his body. Through the sensual denigration of sensation that characterises the texts considered here, Rolle encourages the replacement of the external stimuli that galvanise the physical senses with spiritual stimuli, a process which results in the spiritual experiences of heat, sweetness and song taking over the body. What his more, having learnt to control his wandering mind and so entered into a ‘Zen-like tranquillity’ in which his thoughts are always fixed on God, such that not even the touch of a woman can remove his thought from God nor sleep disturb it (at least in his later works), Rolle is careful to stress that this is not equivalent to beatific vision. He longs for this absent sight of God which will enable a more complete union with and knowledge of God. Indeed, although Rolle’s experiences do not affirm the body in the way that Caroline Walker Bynum notes of many female spiritual writers of the High and Later Middle Ages, Rolle nonetheless holds the body to be an essential vehicle for the unitive encounter with God. There is no ontological blurring of creator and creature in Rolle’s thought, even though the Spirit fills Rolle, inspires his words and allows him to speak forth with the voice of the Word, Jesus Christ. The same is true of Julian. What I have described as Julian’s account of deification feels much closer to her continental counterparts than Rolle’s, perhaps because it carries a realistic rather than ethical accent. Katherine Kerby-Fulton has gone so far as to suggest that Julian mostly likely knew Marguerite’s account.9 Yet, as we have seen, Julian is careful to distinguish God from the soul at the level of creator and creature even in deified union. Julian does this using ideas of mutual indwelling and by stressing that the soul is only deified in Christ. Indeed, the soul is only brought to share in the Trinity in the deified body of Christ. Julian places a great emphasis on Christ Incarnate – all that she sees, she sees in and through the bleeding head of Christ. As she stresses in a discussion of three heavens (which brings to mind St. Paul’s rapture) as far as she is concerned no heaven exists for the soul outside of the Incarnation. She also plays with ideas of created and uncreated love in ways that somewhat resonate with thinking found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, who use this idea to distance the soul from God in terms of its created nature. Even Julian’s most daring

256

Conclusions

statements about the Godly will and its sinlessness are tempered by her claim that the soul only has this because it is in Christ. As we have seen, Julian employs the spatial metaphor of ‘in’ Christ in more than physicalist terms. Howie notes that it works in much the same way as time does for Augustine, safeguarding the ontological difference between God and soul, even though the soul shares in God’s substance.10 Whilst this would appear to distinguish Rolle and Julian from their continental counterparts like Porete, in comparison to whom they appear far less radical, Arblaster and Faesen have recently mooted that Porete and Beatrice have been misunderstood. They argue that Marguerite does not in fact claim that ‘the soul is either transubstantiated into God or that its will no longer exists’.11 Indeed they see her continuing to maintain that ‘The soul retains its human nature and one human subject, one “I”’. What they hold that the soul loses is what we might call, echoing Paul Mommaers, its ‘me-ness’, that is, its self-orientated focus.12 They thus understand its ‘Zen-like tranquillity’ along lines similar to those that I find in Rolle. They stress too that there are passages, such as the following, in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, in which Porete appears to differentiate the love which God has by nature and that which the soul can have through grace: ‘I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God through its condition of Love, and I am Love through my divine nature, and this Soul is God by Love’s just law’.13 There is, they argue, also an interplay between transcendence and immanence in Marguerite’s discussions of the Trinity, epitomised by the term she coins to describe the Triune Godhead, ‘Far-Near’. They reason that she would hardly describe the Trinity as such if she had completely merged with it. As they comment, we must conclude that if Marguerite genuinely sought to describe the total ontological destruction of the human self through deification (in the sense that the soul as such no longer exists as a creature), the very term Far-Near would make little sense. If the human soul were to become God essentially, the Trinity would no longer be described as far or near.14 Indeed, they hold that Marguerite maintains that the deified soul comes to share in that Trinity in the same way that Christ’s body does, raised up into the Godhead through the deifying action of Christ’s divinity, such that Marguerite’s soul likewise enters the Godhead in Christ. They do not believe that she considers the soul to be another person within the Trinity (in which case the Trinity would cease as Trinity qua Trinity).15 They also find in her writing no overpowering of the human will but its voluntary submission to the will of God. In all this they see her developing ideas found in the earlier writings of William of St. Thierry and Richard of St. Victor. William, as we discussed in Chapter 1, claims that the soul comes to love God with the love through which God loves God’s self. For example, as they note, in his Exposition on the Song of Songs he writes:

Conclusions

257

This union is nothing other than the unity of the Father and the Son, their divine kiss, their embrace, their love, their goodness and everything they have in common in the absolute unity of the divine nature. All this is the Holy Spirit, God and Love, which gives itself in every gift: Both Giver and Gift.16 The same is true of Beatrice of Nazareth, who they argue is not rejecting the soul’s created nature despite writing that ‘her spirit has climbed above time into eternity, and is raised above the gifts of love into the eternity of love which is without time [. . .] elevated above human manners in love, above her own nature’.17 What they hold that she is claiming, is that ‘The soul retains its nature, but is, at the same time, drawn above itself into the love shared by the Father and the Son: The Holy Spirit’.18 If this reading is correct, Marguerite and Beatrice are closer to Julian and Rolle than Riehle allows. Yet even whilst we might concede that there is not such a distinction between continental mysticism and its English counterpart as has previously been suggested, there are, I think, differences of emphasis. Consider for example the following passage quoted by Arblaster and Faesen from chapter 25 of The Mirror: Love: . . . A man who is on fire feels no cold, a man who is drowning knows no thirst. Now this Soul, says Love, is so burned in Love’s fiery furnace that she has become very fire, so that she feels no fire, for in herself is fire, through the power of love which has changed her into the fire of Love.19 If we compare this to Rolle’s account of union from The Form of Living, discussed in Chapter 3, Porete seems to imply a greater merging with God that Rolle who, echoing Bernard of Clairvaux, argues that it only seems that the soul disappears into God in the same way that iron disappears into fire, taking on its form and colour. As he states, In þis maner shal a trewe louer of Ihesu Crist do: his hert shal so bren in loue þat hit shal be turned in to fire of loue, and be as hit ware al fyre, and he shal so shynynge in vertuȝ þat in no partie of hym [he] be durke in vices.20 Julian likewise clearly emphasises that a distinction remains between creator and creature, even though it seems that there is nothing between the loving soul and God: And I saw no different atwix God and our substance, but as it were al God, and yet myn vnderstonding toke that our substance is in God: that is to sey, that God is God, and our substance is a creture in God.21

258

Conclusions

Nowhere is Porete this clear. One issue of course is the difficulty that a text like Porete’s Mirror presents (McGinn suggests that it is one of the most challenging medieval mystical texts every written).22 Yet even given this, we find a greater emphasis on the Incarnation in both Rolle and Julian’s mystical theology that helps to safeguard against the misunderstandings that Arblaster and Faesen moot have dogged Porete’s Mirror. This focus perhaps also accounts for another difference. Arblaster and Faesen note that both Beatrice and Porete enter a stage in which they move beyond human agency such that they become forgetful of everything but God. As Ablaster and Faesen put it: ‘In the progression of Beatrice’s manners and Marguerite’s states, human agency reduces in importance relative to the agency of God . . . [ultimately] the soul is no longer concerned for anything’.23 Yet Rolle and Julian retain a concern for others and doctrinal problems such as sin. It could of course be that they do not attain the level of deified union to which both Porete and Beatrice lay claim. Perhaps, however, in grounding their mysticism firmly in the Incarnation, they maintain a dialectic tension between creator and creation that is less overtly expressed by Porete and Beatrice, whose focus is more fixedly on the Trinity. More research is needed to tease out this subtle distinction. English and continental mystics shared concerns and an overlapping circulation, it seems important therefore to draw Rolle and Julian into a wider pan-European consideration of deification in the later Middle Ages. Since some of Rolle’s works, including Incendium Amoris, saw a wide circulation on the continent, Rolle’s approach warrants particular consideration. Fresh attention needs to be paid not only to whether ethical approaches to deification also existed on the continent but to whether Rolle’s thinking of the calmed mind influenced continental thinking. To date the English tradition is overlooked in the scholarly literature on deification. New research may well help us to see that understandings of deification in the Middle Ages were as varied and rich as Jules Gross notes that they were in the Early Church – reflecting the wider concerns that this idea was used to clarify. So to conclude: this study of Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich has indicated the importance of deification as well as the literary implications of this belief for each of these writers, even if for Rolle deification is implicit rather than directly engaged with, at least in his early writings. For both Julian and Rolle, a deified status also appears to be connected to a capacity to engage in sacred eloquence. This occurs for the benefit of future readers (fictional or otherwise). Although in many ways heterogeneous writers, deification would seem to be a concern that connects them. It also appears to be an idea that is central to the mystical theology that each propounds. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly given the controversy that is often associated with beliefs in deification, this idea somewhat normalises Rolle’s mysticism by indicating that it does not merely rest on a spiritual authority of his own invention. This said, Rolle and Julian also differ in important ways, not least, in that Julian’s approach resonates more immediately with those accounts

Conclusions

259

found within the Rhineland and the Low Countries, whilst Rolle’s account is more firmly grounded the Desert tradition. Yet these two accounts in their own small ways nonetheless add weight to Russell’s typology. Although he recognises no absolute distinction between ethical and realistic approaches, in helpfully stratifying Early Church accounts into ethical and realistic types, Russell provides a model that I hope this study shows extends beyond the confines of Early Church History, enriching our sense of how deification has been understood not only in the Christian East but also in the Christian West.

Notes 1 Edward Vasta, The Spiritual Basis of Piers Plowman (The Hague: Mouton, 1965). Also: Edward Vasta, ‘Truth, the Best Treasure, in Piers Plowman’, Philological Quarterly, 44/1 (1965), 17–29. According to Vasta, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians were important in propagating deification, which Vasta defines as ‘through a conformity of man’s will with God’s, man becomes like God and is thereby deified’ (27). 2 Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’. 3 Bernard McGinn, ‘The Significance of Ruusbroec’s Mystical Theology’, Louvain Studies, 31 (2006), 19–41 at 26. Arblaster and Rob Faesen, ‘Common Love’, reference this passage and also the one mentioned in note 4 (303, n. 16). 4 McGinn (ed.), Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, p. 12. 5 McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union’, p. 14. As we noted in Chapter 1 (pp. 38–39.), McGinn concedes that Paul Verdeyen’s reading militates against this. 6 Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. 164. 7 Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ, p. 164. This passage is referred to by Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, pp. 315–316. 8 Edmund Colledge et al., in Margaret Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans., intro and notes by Edmund Colledge, Jack C. Marler and Judith Grant (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. lxxiv–lxxvi. This passage is referred to by Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, who quote it at length, pp. 302–303. 9 Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion, esp. pp. 297–301. 10 Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 133. 11 Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 310. 12 Arblaster and Faesen draw their idea of Marguerite as having ‘an “I” without a “me”’ from Paul Mommaers, ‘La transformation d’amour selon Marguerite Porete’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 65/1 (1991), 88–107. 13 Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, p. 41. The passage is discussed by Ablaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 302. 14 Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 318. 15 Ablaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 318. 16 William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, 1.15–19. The passage is discussed by Ablaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 307. 17 Beatice of Nazareth, The Seven Manners of Love, 1.30–36 (trans. Arblaster, in Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 299). 18 Arblaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 299. 19 Colledge, et al., in Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, pp. 44–45.

260

Conclusions

20 Rolle, Form of Living, 19–20: pp. 670–677. My emphasis. Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living, p. 59. 21 Julian, Revelations, ch. 54, p. 87. ‘And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God, and still my understanding accepted that our substance is in God: that is to say that God is God, and our substance is a creature in God’. Julian, Showings, p. 285. It is a point that Julian makes in a number of places in the Long Text. For example: ‘[God] is endles soverain trueth, endles severeyn wisdam, endles sovereyn love, onmade; and man soule is a creature in God and doith that it was made for: it seith God, it beholdyth God and it lovyth God; whereof God enioyith in the creature, and the creature in God’, Julian, Revelations, ch. 44: 62. Cf. Julian, Revelations, ch. 54: p. 87. 22 Bernard McGinn, ‘“Evil-Sounding, Rash, and Suspect of Heresy”: Tensions between Mysticism and Magisterium in the History of the Church’, The Catholic Historical Review, 90/2 (2004), 193–212 at 179. This essay carefully outlines many of the problems that scholars face in reading a text like Porete’s Mirror. It also details a number of different scholarly appraisals of it. 23 Ablaster and Faesen, ‘Common Love’, p. 313.

Bibliography

Primary sources Manuscripts British Library MS Additional 37049. British Library MS Cotton Faustina B VI, pars ii. British Library MS Stowe 39. Brussels, KBR, Ms 4987. Cambridge MS Emmanuel 25.

Printed texts Anon, Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, trans. by Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). Anon, Ancrene Wisse, ed. by Robert Hasenfratz (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000) (online edition). Anon, Apophthegmata Patrum, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 65, cols., 71–440, ed. by J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1864). Anon, The Cloud of Unknowing, trans. by James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). Anon, The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. by Patrick J. Gallacher (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997). Anon (The Cloud-Author), ‘Deonise Hid Diuinite’, in Phyllis Hodgson (ed.), Deonise Hid Diuinite: And Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to the Cloud of Unknowing. A tretyse of Þe Stodye of Wysdome Þat men Clepen Beniamyn. A Pistle of Preier. A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings. A Tretis of Discrescyon of Spirites (London: Early English Text Society, 1955 repr. 2002). Anon (The Cloud-Author), Divina Caligo Ignorancie: A Latin Glossed Version of the Cloud of Unknowing, trans. by Richard Methley, ed. by John Clark (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2009). Anon., Christina of Maryate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. by Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (London: Routledge, 2005). Anon, The Life Christina of Maryate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. by C. H. Talbot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). Anon, Meditationes Vitae Christi, corpus christianorum continuatio mediaevalis, ed. by Mary Stallings-Taney (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1997).

262

Bibliography

Anon, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, trans. by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). Anon, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. and trans. by Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977). Anon, The Philokalia, the Complete Text, vol. 1, ed. and trans. by Gerald Eustace Howell Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber & Faber, 1979). Anon, ‘The Privity of the Passion’, in Carl Horstmann (ed.), Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole: An English Father of the Church and His Followers, vol. 1 (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895–1896), pp. 198–218. Anon, ‘The Privity of the Passion’, trans. by Denise N. Baker, in Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas Howard Bestul (eds.), Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 85–106. Anon, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetic Collection, trans. by B. Ward (London: Mowbrays, 1975). Aristotle, De anima, trans. by C. David C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2017). Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 400, ed. by Gerhardus J. M. Bartelink (Paris: Cerf, 1994). Athanasius of Alexandria, Athanasius Werke, ed. by H. G. Optiz, et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1934). Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of St. Antony, trans. by Robert T. Meyer (New York: Newman Press, 1950). Athanasius of Alexandria, ‘On the Incarnation’, in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. by Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Augustine of Hippo, ‘On Seeing God’, in Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, trans. by Mary T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 365–402. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions with an Introduction and Contemporary Criticism, trans. by Maria Boulder, ed. by David Vincent Meconi S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012). Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms, the Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. by Maria Boulding, O.S.B, ed. by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. (New York: New City Press, 2002). Augustine of Hippo, ‘De Genesis ad Litteram Libri XII’, Patrologia Latina, vol. 34 (Paris: Migne, 1841), cols. 245–486. Augustine of Hippo, De Natura et Gratia (On Nature and Grace) in St. Augustine Anti-Pelagian Writings: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, ed. by Peter Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: W. R. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1956). Augustine of Hippo, ‘De Natura et Gratia’, Patrologia Latina, vol. 44 (Paris: Migne, 1841), cols. 247–292. Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. by John Hammond Taylor, 2 vols. (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). Augustine of Hippo, Sancti Augustini episcopi opera omnia, ed. by J.-P. Migne and the Maurists, Patrologia Latina, vols. 32–47 (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2012). Augustine of Hippo, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarratatione in Psalmos, 3 vols., ed. by D. Eligius Dekkers OSB and Johannes Fraipont, CCSL vols. 38–40 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1956).

Bibliography

263

Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, the Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. by Edmund Hill, O.P., ed. by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A (New York: New City Press, 1993). Augustine of Hippo, Vingt-Six Sermones au Peuple d’Africa, ed. by François Dolbeau (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996). Benedict of Nursia, RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. and trans. by Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981). Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber De Diligendo Deo’, in J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 182 (Paris: Migne, 1859), cols. 973A–1000B. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, trans. by Emero Stiegman with an analytical commentary, Cistercian Studies, vol. 3 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1973, repr with analytical commentary, 1995). Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs IV, trans. by Irene Edmonds, Cistercian Fathers Series 40 (Cistercian Publications: Kalamazoo, 1980). Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs II, Cistercian Fathers Series vol. 7, trans. by Kilian Walsh (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976). Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum’, in J-P., Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 183 (Paris, 1854), cols. 785A–1198A. Bernard of Clairvaux, Song of Songs I, Cistercian Fathers Series vol. 4, trans. by Kilian J. Walsh, OCSO (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981). Bonaventure, ‘Breviloquium’, Opscula Varia, Theologica, Opera Omnia, vol. 5 pp. 199–292. Bonaventure, The Breviloquium, The Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 9, ed. and trans. by Dominic V. Monti, OMF (New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005). Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Man of Laws Tale, ed. by Nevill Coghill and Christopher Tolkien (London: Harrap, 1969). Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, ed. by Joel Elowsky, trans. by David Maxwell (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2015). Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogues sur la Trinité, ed. and trans. by George Matthieu de Durand, OP, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 97 (Paris: Édition de Cerf, 1976–1978). Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Dialogues Sur La Trinité I and II, ed. by George Mattieu de Durand, O.P, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 231 (Paris: Cerf, 1976). Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Dialogues Sur La Trinité III, IV and V, ed. by George Mattieu de Durand O.P, Source Chrétiennes vol. 237 (Paris: Cerf, 1977). Cyril of Alexandria, Lettres Festales, vol. 3, ed. by W. H. Burns, trans. by M.-O. Boulnois and B. Meunier, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 434 (Paris: Édition de Cerf, 1998). Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, trans. by John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2015). Cyril of Alexandria, Sancti Patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi in D. Ioannis Evangelium, ed. by Philip Edward Pusey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872). Dionysius the Areopagite, Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Coelesti Hierarchia, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, De Mystica Theologia, Epistola, vol. 2, ed. by Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991). Dionysius the Areopagite, Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De Divinis Nominibus, vol. 1, ed. by Beate Regina Suchla (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990).

264

Bibliography

Dionysius the Areopagite, Pseudo Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid with collaboration from Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). Évagre le Pontique, Évagre le Pontique, ed. and trans. by Géhin, Paul, Guillaumont Clair and Guillaumont Antoine, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 438 (Paris: Cerf, 1998). Évagre le Pontique, Sur Les Pensées, ed. by Paul Géhin, Claire Guillaumont and A. Guillaumont, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 438 (Paris: Cerf, 1998), pp. 148–301. Évagre le Pontique, Traité Pratique ou Le Moine, ed. by Antoine Guillaumont and Clair Guillaumont, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 171 (Paris: Cerf, 1971). Evagrius Ponticus, On Thoughts, trans. by Augustine Casiday in Evagrius Ponticus (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. by John Eudes Bamberger, Cistercian Studies Series 171 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1972). Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorii Nysseni in Canticum Canticorum, ed. by Hermannus Langerbeck, Gregory Nysseni Opera 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1960). Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. by Columbia Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, ed. by P. Künzle (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016). Henry Suso, Wisdom’s Watch Upon the Hours, trans. by Edmund Colledge (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994). Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, trans. by D. H. Williams (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). The Holy Bible: Douay version, translated from the Latin Vulgate [Douay, A.D. 1609: Rheims, A.D. 1582] (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1956). Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, trans. by Philip Schaff et al., Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, reproduced, originally printed, 1885). Irenaeus of Lyons, Sancti Irenaei episcopi Lugdunensis Libros quinque adversus Haereses, 2 vols., ed. by W. Wigan Harvey (Cambridge: Typis Academicis, 1817). Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre 3, ed. by F. Sagnard O.P with French Translation, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 34 (Paris: Cerf, 1952). Irénée de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Book 5, ed. by Adelin Rousseau, Loui Doutreleau S.J. and Charles Mercier, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 153 (Paris: Cerf, 1969). Hilary of Poitiers, Sur Matthieu, 2 vols., ed. and trans. by J. Doignon, Source Chrétiennes, vols. 254, 258 (Paris: Édition de Cerf, 1978–1979). Jan van Ruusbroec, ‘Little Book of Explanation/Boecksen der verclarighe’, trans. by Phayre Crowley and Helen Rolfson in Guido de Baere and Thom Mertons (eds.), The Complete Ruusbroec: English Translation with the Original Middle Dutch Text, trans. by Helen Rolfson, Andre Lefevere and Phayre Crowley, Corpus Christianorum Scholars Version, vol. 101 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014), pp. 625–637. Jan van Ruusbroec, Opera omnia 1: Boecksken der verclaringhe, ed. by Guido de Baere, P. Crowley and H. Rolfson (Leiden: Brill and Tielt: Lannoo, 1981). John Cassian, The Conferences, trans. by Boniface Ramsey O.P., Ancient Christian Writers 57 (New York: Newman Press, 1997). Jean Cassien, Conférences, 1–7, trans. by E. Pichery, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 42 (Paris: Cerf, 1955). Jean Cassien, Conférences, 8–17, trans. by E. Pichery, Sources Chrétiennes, vol. 54 (Paris: Cerf, 1958).

Bibliography

265

John Cassian, ‘Libri de Incarnatione’, Patrologia Latina, vol. 50, ed. by J-P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1846), cols. 9–367. John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. by Russell A. Peck, trans. by Andrew Galloway, (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006). John Lydate, Saint Albon and Saint Amphibalus, ed. by Geoffrey F. Reinecke (New York: Garland, 1985). John Scotus Eriugena, Iohannes Scottus Eriugena: Periphyseon, 5 vols., Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, ed. by Jeauneau, Édouard (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1996–2003). John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon/the Divisions of Nature, trans. by I. P. SheldonWilliams, revised by John J. O’Meara (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1987). John Scotus Eriugena, The Voice of the Eagle: The Heart of Celtic Spirituality, John Scotus Eriugena’s Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, trans. by Christopher Bamford (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 1990, repr. 2000). Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols., ed. by Edmund Colledge O.S.A. and James Walshe S.J., Studies and Texts 35 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978). Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich: A Showing of Love, ed. and trans. by Julia Bolton Holloway (London: DTL, 2003). Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. by Elizabeth Spearing (London: Penguin Books, 1998). Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, ed. by Marion Glasscoe, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986 rep. 1993). Julian of Norwich, Showings, trans. by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (London: SPCK, 1978). Julian of Norwich, The Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, ed. by Sister Anna Maria Reynolds C.P. and Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence: Sismel, 2001). Julian of Norwich, Writings of Julian of Norwich A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Philadelphia: University Press of Pennsylvania State, 2006). Ludolf of Saxony, Vita Christi, 5 vols., ed. by A. C. Bolard, L.M. Rigollot and J. Carnandet (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 2006–2007). Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. by Anthony Bale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by. Lynn Staley (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996) (online edition). Margaret Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. by Edmund Colledge, Jack C. Marler and Judith Grant (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999). McEvoy, James J. (ed.), Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De Mystica Theologia (Paris: Peeters, 2003). The Monk of Farne, Meditation to Christ Crucified in Dame Frideswide Sandeman, Christ Crucified and Other Meditations of a Durham Hermit (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994). The Monk of Farne, ‘The Meditations of the Monk of Farne’, in Hugh Farmer (ed.), Studia Anselmiana, 41 (1957), 141–245. Nicholas, Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with

266

Bibliography

Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. by Michael G. Sargent (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005). Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6–10, trans. by Thomas Scheck (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2002). Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 1–10, trans. by Ronald E. Heinem, FOTC 80 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989). Origen, ‘Commentary on the Song of Songs’, trans. by R. P. Lawson, in Origen: The Song of Songs Commentary and Homilies, Ancient Christian Writers (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1957). Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 1–3, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1990). Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 4–6, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1997). Origen, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 7–10, ed. by Caroline Hammond Bammel (Freiburg: Herder, 1998). Origen, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte: Origenes Werke, 1–12 vols., ed. by Paul Koetschau (Leipzig and Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1899–1993). Origen, Origenes Werke, 12 vols., ed. by P. Koetschau, et al., Greek and Latin texts (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs and Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1899–1955). Pseudo-Macarius, Collection II. De 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios, ed. by H. Dörries, E. Klostermann and M. Kroeger, Patristische Texte und Studien 6 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1964). Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. by George A. Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). Pseudo-Macarius, ‘Homiliae’, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 34, (Paris: Migne, 1860) cols. 449–822. Richard Rolle, An Edition of the Judica me Deus of Richard Rolle, ed. by John Philip Daly (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984). Richard Rolle, Biblical commentaries: Short exposition of Psalm 20, Treatise on the Twentieth Psalm, Comment on the First Verses of the Canticle of Canticles, Commentary on the Apocalypse, trans. by Robert Boenig (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984). Richard Rolle, The Contra Amatores Mundi of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. trans. and intro. by Paul Thenier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Richard Rolle, De emendatione vitae: eine kritische Ausgabe des lateinischen Textes von Richard Rolle: mit einer Übersetzung ins Deutsche und Untersuchungen zu den lateinischen und englischen Handschriften, ed. by Rüdiger Spahl (Göttingen: V&R Unipress; Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2009). Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. by Clifton Wolters (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972). Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love and the Mending of Life by Richard Rolle, trans. by M. L. Del Mastro, (New York: Image Books, 1981). Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, and the Mending of Life: Or the Rule of Living, trans. by Richard Misyn, ed. by Ralph Harvey, vol. 106 (London: Early English Text Society, 1896).

Bibliography

267

Richard Rolle, ‘The Form of Living’, in Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. by S. J. Olivie-Thomson, Early English Text Society, vol. 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3–25. Richard Rolle, The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises by Richard Rolle of Hampole, A.D. 1300–1349, trans. by Gerlaldine E. Hodgson (London: Thomas Baker, 1910). Richard Rolle, The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by Margaret Deanesly (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1917). Richard Rolle, Le Chant d’Amour (Melos Amoris), 2 vols., ed. by E.J.F. Arnould, trans. by les Moniales de Wisques, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 168–169 (Paris: Cerf, 1971). Richard Rolle, ‘Meditation B’, in Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. by S.J. OlivieThomson, Early English Text Society, vol. 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 69–83. Richard Rolle, ‘Meditation B’, trans. by Rosamund Allen, Richard Rolle: The English Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1989). Richard Rolle, The Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by E.J.F. Arnould (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957). Richard Rolle, The Officium and Miracula of Richard Rolle, ed. by R.  C. Woolley (London: Dent & co, 1919). Richard Rolle, The Psalter of David and Certain Canticles with a Translation and Exposition in English, ed. H. R. Bramley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884). Richard Rolle, ‘Richard Rolle’s Comment on the Canticles, Edited from MS Trinity College, Dublin 153’, ed. by E.  M. Murray (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Fordham University, 1958). Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle’s Expositio super novem lectiones mortuorum: An Introduction and Contribution Towards a Critical Edition, ed. by Malcolm Robert Moyes (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1988). Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle’s Melody of Love: A Study and Translation with Manuscript and Musical Contexts, trans. by Andrew Albin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018). Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. by Sarah J. Ogilvie-Thomson, Early English Text Society, vol. 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Richard Rolle, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse with Related Northern Texts, ed. by Ralph Hanna (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2007). Richard Rolle, The Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. by James C. Dolan (Lewiston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). Richard Rolle, ‘A Translation of the Legenda in the Office Prepared for the Blessed Hermit Richard’, trans. by Francis Comper, in Francis Comper (ed.), The Life and Lyrics of Richard Rolle: Together with an Edition of His English Lyric (London: Dent & Sons Ltd, 1928 rept. 1933), Appendix 1, pp. 301–314. Robert Grosseteste, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste: Bishop of Lincoln, trans. by F.A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Thomas Aquinas, The Collected Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation, 1993). Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John’s Gospel, trans. by Fabian Larcher, O.P and James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2010).

268

Bibliography

Thomas of Cantimpré, The Life of Christina the Astonishing, in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saint’s Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, trans. by Margot H. King and Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2008), pp. 123–157. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. by J.P.H. Clark and R. Dorward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book I, ed. by Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000). William Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions, ed. by Aubrey V. C. Schmidt (London: Longman, 1995–2008). William of Saint-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris, ed. by Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 88 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003), pp. 175–212. William of Saint-Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei, ed. by Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 88 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003), pp. 263–264. William of Saint-Thierry, Exposé sur le cantique des cantiques, ed. by Jean-Marie Déchanet, Source Chrétiennes, vol. 82 (Paris: Cerf, 1962). William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren of Mont Dieu, trans. by Theodore Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 12 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971). William of Saint-Thierry, ‘Guillelmi A. Sancto Theodorico’, in P. Verdeyen (ed.), Expositio Super Cantica Canticorum, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 87 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1997). William of Saint-Thierry, The Mirror of Faith, trans. by G. Webb and A. Walker (Oxford: Mowbray, 1959). William of Saint-Thierry, The Nature and Dignity of Love, trans. by Thomas X. Davis, Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 30 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981). William of Saint-Thierry, ‘Speculum Fidei’, in J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 180 (Paris: Migne, 1855), cols. 365B–398A. William of Saint-Thierry, The Works of William of St. Thierry, 2, Exposition on the Song of Songs, trans. by Columbia Hart, Cistercian Fathers Series 6 (Shannon: Cistercian Publications, 1970).

Secondary literature Abbot, Christopher, Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999). Aers, David, ‘The Humanity of Christ: Reflections of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Love’, in D. Aers and L. Staley (eds.), The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1996), pp. 77–104. Aers, David, Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). Albin, Andrew, ‘Canorous Soundstuff: Hearing the Officium of Richard Rolle at Hampole’, Speculum, 91(2016), 1026–1039. Albin, Andrew, ‘Listening for Canor in Richard Rolle’s Melos Amoris’, in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.), Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), pp. 177–197.

Bibliography

269

Alfeyev, Hilarion, ‘The Deification of Man in Eastern Patristic Tradition (with Special Reference to Gregory Nazianzen, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas)’, Colloquium, 36 (2004), 109–122. Alford, John A., ‘Rolle’s “English Psalter” and “Lectio Divina”’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 77/3 (1995), 47–60. Allen, Hope Emily, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle (New York: D.C. Heath and Co. and London: Oxford University Press, 1927). Allen, Rosamund, ‘“Singular Lufe”: Richard Rolle and the Grammar of Spiritual Ascent’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers, vol. 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 28–53. Anderson, James F., St Augustine and Being: A Metaphysical Essay (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965). Anlezark, Daniel, ‘Cyril of Alexandria’s Reputation in the Early Medieval West: From Bede to Alcuin’, Phronema, 29/2 (2014), 65–86. Arblaster, John, ‘The Blessed and the Burned: 13th-Century Female Discourse on Deification’, in Kikuchi Satoshi and Patrick Cooper (eds.), Commitments to Medieval Mystical Texts within Contemporary Contexts (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), pp. 273–290. Arblaster, John, ‘On Being “Not God But What God Is”: Essays on the Doctrine of Deification in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, (KU Leuven: Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2016). Arblaster, John, ‘The Pious Jackal and the Pseudo-Woman: Doctrine of Deification in Medieval France’, in L. Nelstrop and B. B. Onishi (eds.), Mysticism in the French Tradition: Eruptions from France (Farham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 121–148. Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen, ‘Commune à tous par largesse de pure charité: Common Love in Beatrice of Nazareth and Marguerite Porete’, Ons Geestlijk Erf, 84/4 (2012), 297–323. Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen (eds.), A Companion to John of Ruusbroec (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen, ‘The Influence of Beatrice of Nazareth on Margaret Porete: The Seven Manners of Love Revised’, Citeaux, 64/1–2 (2013), 41–88. Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen, Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen (eds.), Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen, ‘Mysticism with or without the Church? John Ruusbroec’s Conflict with the Clergy’, Bijdragen: International Journal for Philosophy and Theology, 74 (2013), 18–32. Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen (eds.), Theosis/Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, vol. 294 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018). Arblaster, John and Paul Verdeyen, ‘The Reciprocity of Spiritual Love in William of Saint-Thierry and Hadewijch’, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 78/1–2 (2017), 39–54. Archimandrite George of Mount Athos, Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life (Mount Athos, Holy Monastery of St. Gregorios, 2006). Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is (Essex, UK: Patriarchal Stravropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2008). Arnould, Émile Jules François, ‘On Rolle’s Patrons: A New Reading’, Medium Aevum, 6/2 (1937), 122–124.

270

Bibliography

Ayres, Lewis, ‘Deification and the Dynamics of Nicene Theology: Contribution of Gregory of Nyssa’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49 (2005), 375–394. Baker, Denise Nowakowski, Julian of Norwich’s ‘Showings’: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Baker, Denise Nowakowski, ‘The Structure of the Soul and the “Godly Wylle” in Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in E.A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 37–50. Bardy, Gustav, ‘Divinisation: Chez les Père Latins’, in Édourd de Place et al (eds.), ‘Divinisation’, Dictionnaire Spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), pp. 1370–1459. Barnes, Hazel A., ‘Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley’, Philosophy and Theology, 1/1 (1976), 3–24. Barratt, Alexandra, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae: Women as Readers and Writers of Passion Prayers, Meditations and Visions’, in MacDonald, Ridderbos and Schlusemann (eds.), The Broken Body: Passion Meditation in Late-Medieval Culture (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), pp. 55–71. Barth, Karl Church Dogmatics, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, vol. 4/2 ed. by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958). Bassi, Roberta, ‘Visions of the Otherworld: The Accounts of Fursey and Dryhthelm in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and the Homilies of Ælfric’, in Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop (eds.), Art and Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Periods (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 241–245. Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, ‘Imagination and Theology in Thomas Aquinas’, Louvain Studies, 34 (2009–2010), 169–184. Bauerschmidt, Fredrick Christian, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999). Behr, John, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Behr, John, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Bell, David N., The Image and Likeness: The Augustinian Spirituality of William of St. Thierry (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984). Bendon, Davis Carmel, Mysticism & Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, the Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). Beu, Christine, Deification in Cassian’s Conferences: Analysis of John Cassian’s Writings on Unceasing Prayer in Conferences Nine and Ten as a Description of Deification (unpublished MA dissertation: Providence College, 2015), Theology Graduate Theses. Paper 8. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/theology_graduate_theses/8. Bhattacharji, Santha, ‘Medieval Contemplation and Mystical Experience’, in D. Dyas, V. Edden and R. Ellis (eds.), Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 51–63. Bielfeldt, Dennis, ‘Deification as a Motif in Luther’s Dictata super psalterium’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 28/2 (1997), 401–420. Bloomfield, Morton W., ‘Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and James Walsh S.J. (eds.), A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, Studies and Texts 35. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978). 2 vols. (review)’, Speculum, 55/3 (1980), 548–549. Boenig, Robert, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius and the Via towards England’, in William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (eds.), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 21–38.

Bibliography

271

Bonner, Gerald, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification’, Journal of Theological Studies, 37 (1986), 369–386. Børresen Kari Elisabeth and Adriana Valerio, ‘The Middle Ages’, in The Bible and Women: An Encyclopaedia of Exegesis and Cultural History [The Bible Society/ Feminist Studies in the 20th Century: Scholarship and Movement] (9/1 Atlanta and Brill: Leiden, 2015 [English version]). Breen, Katharine, Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Brown, Jennifer N. (ed.), Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2008). Bunzel, Benjamin, et al., ‘Does Changing the Heart Mean Changing Personality? A Retrospective Inquiry on 47 Heart Transplant Patients’, Quality of Life Research, 1 (1992), 251–256. Burton-Christie, Douglas, ‘Early monasticism’, in A. Hollywood and P. Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 37–58. Burrow, John A., ‘Fantasy and Language in the Cloud of Unknowing’, Essays in Criticism, 27 (1977), 283–298. Capánaga, Victorino, ‘La deificación en la soteriología augustiniana’, Augustinus Magister: Congrès international augustinien, Paris 21–24 Septembre 1954, 3 vol. 2 (Paris: Études Augustinienne, 1954), pp. 745–754. Caroll, Antony J., ‘Luther, Loyola and La La Land’, New Blackfriars, 99/1080 (2018), 163–176. Carruthers, Mary, ‘The Concept of Ductus: Or Journeying Through a Work of Art’, in Mary Carruthers (ed.), Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 190–213. Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Carruthers, Mary, ‘Sweetness’, Speculum 81/4 (2006), 999–1013. Casey, Michael, A Thirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988). Casiday, Augustine M., ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, Origeniana Octava (Leuven: Peeters 2003), 995–1001. Casiday, Augustine M., Evagrius Ponticus (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). Casiday, Augustine M., Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus: Beyond Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Casiday, Augustine M., ‘St Augustine on Deification: His Homily on Psalm 81’, Sobornost, 23 (2001), 23–44. Casiday, Augustine M., The Tradition and Theology of John Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Cavero, Domingues, G., ‘Anchorites in the Spanish Tradition’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), Anchoritic Traditions in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), pp. 91–111. Chadwick, Henry, ‘New Sermons of Augustine’, Journal of Theological Studies, 47 (1996), 69–91. Chandler, Erin T., ‘The Present Time of Things Past: Julian of Norwich’s Appropriation of St. Augustine’s Generative Theory of Memory’, Rhetoric Review, 31/4 (2012), 389–404.

272

Bibliography

Christensen, Michael J., ‘John Wesley: Christian Perfection as Faith Filled with the Energy of Love’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 219–229. Christensen, Michael J. and Jeffrey A. Wittung, Partakers of Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007). Clark, John P. H., ‘Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator’, Downside Review, 104 (1986), 165–213. Clark, John P.  H., ‘Richard Rolle: A Theological Re-Assessment’, The Downside Review, 101 (1983), 108–139. Clay, Rotha Mary, Hermits and Anchorites of England (London: Methuen, 1914). Clayton, Mary, ‘Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Paul Szarmach (ed.), Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). Coakley, Sarah and Charles M. Stang (ed.), Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Colish, Marcia, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968; rev. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983; paperback ed. 2004). Collins, Paul M., Partaking in Divine Nature: Deification and Communion (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). Coniaris, Anthony, Achieving Your Potential in Christ: Theosis: Plain Talks on a Major Doctrine of Orthodoxy (Brookline, MA: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1993). Conus, Humbert-Thomas, ‘Divinisation: Théologiens du 13e siècle’, in Dictionnaire Spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), pp. 1413–1432. Coolman, Boyd Taylor, ‘Magister in Hierarchia: Thomas Gallus as Victorine Interpreter of Dionysius’, in Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (eds.), A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 516–546. Copeland, Rita, ‘Richard Rolle and the Rhetorical Theory of the Levels of Style’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 55–80. Corless, Roger, ‘Comparing Cataphatic Mystics: Julian of Norwich and T’an-luan Source’, Mystics Quarterly, 21/1 (1995), 18–27. Cré, Marleen, ‘Take a Walk on the Safe Side: Reading the Fragments from Ruusbroec’s De geestelike brulocht in The Chastising of God’s Children’, in Rob Faesen, F. Hendrickx and K Schepers (eds.), De letter levende maken: Opstellen aangeboden aan Guide Baere bij zijn zeventigste verjaardag (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), pp. 233–246. Cré, Marleen, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2006). Cré, Marleen, ‘“We Are United with God and God with Us”: Adapting Ruusbroec in The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God and The Chastising of God’s Children’, in E. A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 21–36. Crouzel, Henri, Origen, trans. by A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989). Crumps, David, ‘Re-Examination of the Johannine Trinity: Perichoresis or Deification’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 59 (2006), 395–412.

Bibliography

273

Daniélou, Jean, Origen, trans. by Walter Mitchell (New York: Stead and Ward, 1955). Davis, Carmel Bendon, Mysticism and Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing Author and Julian of Norwich (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). Davis, Stephen, Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Delio, Ilia, Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ (Franciscan Press: Cincinnati, OH, 1998). de Place Édourd, et al.,‘Divinisation’, Dictionnaire Spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris: Beauchesnes, 1957), pp. 1370–1459. Donovan, Mary Ann, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1997). Doyle, Ian A., ‘A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy therein’, 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1953). Dutton, Anne M., ‘Passing the Book: Testamentary Transmission of Religious Literature to and by Women in England 1350–1500’, in Women, The Book and the Godley: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda’s Conference, 1993, ed. by Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 41–54. Dysinger O.S.B., Luke, ‘The Condemnation of Evagrius Reconsidered’, (unpublished paper read at the Oxford Patristics Conference, 2003). Dysinger O.S.B., Luke, ‘Evagrius Ponticus, Exegete of the Soul’, in Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Darling Young (eds.), Evagrius and His Legacy (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), pp. 73–95. Dysinger O.S.B., Luke, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Edwards, Marie Hughes, Reading Medieval Anchoritism: Ideology and Spiritual Practices (Cardiff: University of Wales press, 2012). Edwards, Mark, ‘Deification in the Alexandrian Tradition’, in Edwards and D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 74–88. Edwards, Mark, ‘Growing Like God: Some Thoughts on Irenaeus of Lyons’, in Edwards and D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 37–51. Edwards, Mark, ‘Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (review)’, Theology, 117/3 (2014), 228. Edwards, Mark, Origen against the Plato (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). Edwards, Mark and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Elder, E. Rozanne, ‘The Eye of Reason – The Eye of Love: “Divine Learning and Affective Prayer” in the Thought of William of St. Thierry’, in Santha Bhattacharji, Dominic Mattos and Rowan Williams (eds.), Prayer and Thought in Monastic Tradition: Essays in Honor of Benedicta Ward SLG (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 229–242. Elliot, Dyan, ‘The Physiology of Rapture and Female Spirituality’, in Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, York Studies in Medieval Theology I, ed. by Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (York: York Medieval Press, 1997), pp. 141–173. Faesen, Rob, ‘The Abyss of the Soul: A Response to Saskia Wendel’, in Lieven Boeve, Terrance Merrigan and Colby Dickenson (eds.), Tradition and That Normativity of History (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 199–209.

274

Bibliography

Faesen, Rob, ‘The Radical Humanism of Christian Mystics: William of St. Thierry, Hadewijch and Ruusbroec versus Abelard and Ockham’, in Hein Blommestijn, et al. (eds.), Seeing the Seeker: Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality: A Festschrift for Kees Waaijman on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 263–278. Faesen, Rob, ‘Relationality as the Hidden Side of the Apophatic: William of St. Thierry’s Appreciation and Critique of XIIth Century Apophaticism’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 25 (2016), 1–12. Faesen, Rob, ‘Poor in Ourselves and Rich in God: Indwelling and Non-Identity of Being (Wesen) and Suprabeing (Overwesen) in John of Ruusbroec’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 21/2 (2012), 147–169. Fairbairn, Donald, Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Fairbairn, Donald, ‘Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories’, Journal of the Evangelical Theology Society, 50/2 (2007), 289–310. Finlan, Stephen, ‘Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul?’ in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 68–80. Finlan, Stephen, ‘Deification in Jesus’ Teaching’, in Vladimir Kharkamov (ed.), Theosis. Volume 2: Deification in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2012), pp. 21–41. Finlan, Stephen, ‘Second Peter’s Notion of Divine Participation’, in Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds.), Theōsis: Deification in Christian theology, vol. 1 (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick Publications, 2006), pp. 32–50. Finlan Stephen and Vladimir Kharlamov (eds.), Theōsis: Deification in Christian Theology, vol. 1 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2006). Flood, Gavin, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Folkerts, Suzan, ‘The Transmission and Appropriation of the Vita of Christina Mirabilis in Carthusian Communities’, Church History and Religious Culture, 96 (2016), 80–105. Fraeters, Veerle, ‘Mi smelten mine sinne in minnen oerewoede: reflecties over genre en subjectiviteit in de Liederen van Hadewijch’, Spiegel der Letteren, 55/4 (2013), 427–457. Frank, Georgia, Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Fulton Brown, Rachel, From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary: 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). Fulton [Brown], Rachel, ‘“Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet” (Ps. 33.9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West’, The Journal of Religion, 86/2 (April 2006), 169–204. Fulton, Thomas, ‘English Bibles and Their Readers 1400–1700)’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 47/3 (2017), 415–435. Gandt, Lois, ‘A Philological and Theological Analysis of the Ancient Latin Translations of the “Vita Antonii”’, (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Fordham University: New York, 2008). Gardiner, Eileen (ed.), Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1993). Gardiner, Eileen (ed.), Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante (New York: Italica Press, 1989).

Bibliography

275

Gavrilyuk, Paul L., ‘The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once-Despised Archasim Became an Ecumenical Desideratum’, Modern Theology, 25/4 (2009), 647–659. Gavrilyuk, Paul L., ‘Theopatheia: Nestorius’s Main Charge against Cyril of Alexandria’, Scottish Journal of Theology 56/2 (2003), 190–207. Gilchrist, Roberta, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994). Gillespie, Vincent, ‘The Colours of Contemplation: Less Light on Julian of Norwich’, in E. A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 8 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 7–28. Gillespie, Vincent, ‘[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices’: Pastiche, Ventriloquism and Parody in Julian of Norwich’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), pp. 192–207. Gillespie, Vincent and Ian A. Doyle (eds.), Syon Abbey with the Libraries of the Carthusians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002). Gillespie, Vincent and Maggie Ross, ‘The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition In England, vol. 5 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992). 53–77. Gilson, Étienne, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans. by L.E.M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960). Gilson, Étienne, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955). Gorman, Michael J., Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmands, 2009). Gould, Graham, ‘Cyril of Alexandria and the Formula of Reunion’, The Downside Review, 106 (1988), 235–252. Grant, Robert McQueen, Irenaeus of Lyons (London: Routledge, 1997). Grillmeier, Aloys, Christ in the Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, vol. 1. trans. by John Bowden (London and Oxford: Mowbrays, 1975). Grosfillier, Jean, ‘Quelques considérations sur l’influence du De contemplatione de Richard de Saint-Victor’, Sacris Erudiri, 52 (2013), 235–274. Gross, Jules, The Divinization of the Christian According to the Greek Fathers, trans. by Paul A. Onica (Anaheim, CA: A & C Press, 2002). Gustafson, Kevin, ‘Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and the Making of a Lollard Text’, Viator, 33 (2002), 294–309. Hallosten, Gösta, ‘Theosis in Recent Research: A Renewal of Interest and a Need for Clarity’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 281–293. Hamburger, Jeffrey F., St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Hanna, Ralph, ‘Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris: A Prospectus for a Future Editor’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 26 (2016), 227–261. Harrison, Carol, ‘Getting Carried Away: Why Did Augustine Sing?’ Augustinian Studies, 46/1 (2015), 1–22. Harrison, Carol, On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Hart, Bentley, ‘The Bright Morning of the Soul: John of the Cross on Theosis’, Pro Ecclesia, 12/3 (2003), 324–344.

276

Bibliography

Hide, Kerrie, Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfilment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001). Hide, Kerrie, ‘Only in God Do I Have All: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich’, Downside Review, 112/426 (2004), 43–60. Hide, Kerrie, ‘The Showings of Julian of Norwich as Lectio Divina’, Tjurunga, 49 (1996), 39–50. Hilles, Caroll, ‘Gender and Politics in Osborne Bockenham’s Legendary’, in Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland and David Lawton (eds.), New Medieval Literatures, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 189–212. Holsinger, Bruce and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.), ‘“Vernacular Theology” and Medieval Studies: Literary History and the Religious Turn’, English Language Notes, 44/1 (2006), 77–137. Hollywood, Amy, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Horstmann, Carl, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, and English Father of the Church and His Followers, 2 vols. (London and New York: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895–1896). Howie, Cary, Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). Hudson, Nancy J., Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). Illych, Ivan, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Jantzen, Grace, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (London: SPCK, 1987). Jensen, Chris, ‘Shine as the Sun: C.  S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification’, In Pursuit of the Truth: A Journal of Christian Scholarship, Journal of the C. S. Lewis Foundation (31st October, 2017), np: www.cslewis.org/journal/shine-as-the-suncs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/ (accessed 06/06/18). Jervis, L. Ann, ‘Becoming Like God Through Christ: Discipleship in Romans’, in Richard N. Longenecker (ed.), Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmands, 1996), pp. 143–162. Joby, Christopher, ‘The Extent to Which the Rise in Image Worship in the Later Middle Ages Was Influenced by Contemporary Theories of Vision’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 60/1 (2007), 26–44. Johnson, Lynn Staley, “The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe”, Speculum, 66 (1991), 820–838. Jones, Edward A., Hermits and Anchorites in England, 1200–1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019). Jones, Edward A., ‘Hermits and Anchorites in Historical Context’, in Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden and Roger Ellis (eds.), Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 3–18. Jones, Edward A. and Alexandra Walsham, Syon Abbey and Its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion, c.1400–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010). Jordan, Erin L., ‘Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Speculum, 87/1 (2012), 62–94. Kärkkäinen, Veli Matti, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004).

Bibliography

277

Karnes, Michelle, Imagination, Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Karnes, Michelle, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ’, Speculum, 82/2 (2007), 380–408. Katz Steven T. (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978). Keating, Daniel A., The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Keating, Daniel A., Deification and Grace (Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007). Keating, Daniel A., ‘Deification in the Greek Fathers’, in David Vincent Meconi S.J and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Be Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), pp. 40–58. Keating, Daniel A. ‘Justification, Sanctification and Divinization in Thomas Aquinas’, in Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating and John P. Yocum (eds.), Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (London: T & T Clark, 2004), pp. 139–158. Keating, Daniel A., ‘Typologies of Deification’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 17/3 (2015), 267–283. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). Kerr, Fergus, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Kerr, Nathan R., ‘St Anselm: Theoria and the Doctrinal Logic of Perfection’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 175–188. Kharlamov, Vladimir, ‘Rhetorical Application of Theosis in Greek Patristic Theology’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 115–131. Kharlamov, Vladimir, Theosis: Volume 2: Deification in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2012). Knepper, Thomas, ‘Ineffability Investigations: What the Later Wittgenstein Has to Offer to the Study of Ineffability’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 65/2 (2009), 65–76. Knepper, Thomas, Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014). Knowles, David, The English Mystical Tradition (London: Burns and Oates, 1964). Knowles, David, What Is Mysticism? (London: Burns and Oates, 1967). Kolve, V. A., Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (London: Edward Arnold, 1984). Köpf, Ulrich, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie im 13 Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, vol. 49 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1974). Köpf, Ulrich, ‘Monastische Theologie im 15 Jahrhundert’, Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, 11 (1992), 117–135. Kraebel, Andrew B., ‘Chaucer’s Bible: Late Medieval Biblicalism and Compilation Form’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 47/3 (2017), 437–460. Kraebel, Andrew B., ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Richard Ullerston’s Expositio Canticorum Scripturae’, The Mediæval Journal, 3/1 (2013), 49–82.

278

Bibliography

Kren, Thomas and Roger S. Wieck, The Visions of Tondal from the Library of Margaret of York (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990). Kuczynski, Michael, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 165–188. Kuczynski, Michael, ‘Rolle among the Reformers: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Wycliffite Copies of Richard Rolle’s English Psalter’, in William Pollard and R. Boenig (eds.), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 177–202. Kuhner, Matthew, ‘The “Aspects of Christ” (Epinoiai Christou) in Origen’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans’, Harvard Theological Review, 110/2 (2017), 195–216. Laird, Martin, ‘Apophasis and Logophasis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Canticum Canticorum’, Studia Patristica, 37 (2001), 126–132. Laird, Martin, Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge and Divine Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Laird, Martin, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and the Mysticism of Darkness’, The Journal of Religion, 79/4 (1999), 592–616. Laird, Martin, “Where of We Speak”: Gregory of Nyssa, Jean-Luc Marion and the Current Apophatic Rage’, Heythrop Journal, 42 (2001), 1–12. Lake, Stephen, ‘Knowledge of the Writings of John Cassian in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England, 32 (2003), 27–41. Lang, Judith, ‘“The godly wylle” in Julian of Norwich’, Downside Review, 102/348 (1984), 163–173. Lanzetta, Beverly, ‘Wound of Love: Feminine Theosis and Embodied Mysticism in Teresa of Avila’, in Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman (eds.), The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 225–244. Laurioux, Bruno, ‘Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach’, Food and Foodways, 1/1–2 (1985), 43–75. Lawler, Trawgott, ‘Paul F. Theiner (ed. and trans.), “The ‘Contra Amatores Mundi’ of Richard Rolle of Hampole”’ (Review), Speculum, 44/2 (1969), 319–321. Leclercq, Jean, ‘The Influence and Noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages’, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Lubheim (London: SPCK, 1987), pp. 25–32. Leclercq, Jean, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. by Catharine Misrahi (London: SPCK, 1974, repr 1978). Lee, Yang-Ho, ‘Calvin on Deification: A Reply to Carl Mosser and Jonathan Slater’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 63/3 (2010), 272–284. Leech, Elizabeth Eva, Sung Birds: Music, Nature and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007). Leftow, Brian, ‘Anselm on the Necessity of the Incarnation’, Religious Studies, 31 (1995), 167–185. Lemeni, Daniel, ‘Shining Face and White Body: Holy Flesh and Holiness in the Spirituality of the Desert’, International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 7/4 (2016), 38–53. Lemeni, Daniel, ‘“You Can Become All Flame”: Theology of the Deification as Foundation of Desert Monasticism’, Studia Monastica, 58/2, (2016), 243–252. Leneghan, Francis, ‘Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Hesychasm and Theosis’, Neophilologus, 100/1 (2016), 121–142.

Bibliography

279

Leneghan, Francis and Tamara Atkins (eds.), The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017). Lerner, Robert, ‘The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought’, Church History, 40 (1971), 397–411. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), The Great Divorce (London: Collins, 2012; copyright 1946). Lewis, John M., ‘An Examination of Nestorius of Constantinople’s Appeal to Christological Compatibility with Athanasius of Alexandria as represented in Le Livre de Héraclide de Damas’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005). Licence, Tom, Hermits and Recluses in English Society 950–1200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Liegy, M. Gabrielle, ‘The Rhetorical Aspects of Richard Rolle’s “Melos Contempativorum”, University Microfilms, n. 8716 (unpublished doctoral thesis: Columbia university, 1954). Litwa, M. David, ‘The God “Human” and Human Gods: Models of Deification in Irenaeus and the Apocyphon of John’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal for Ancient Christianity, 18/1 (2013), 70–94. Litwa, M. David, ‘“I Will Become Him”: Homology and Deification in the Gospel of Thomas’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 134/2 (2015), 427–447. Litwa, M. David, ‘You Are Gods: Deification in the Naassene Writer and Clement of Alexandria’, Harvard Theological Review, 110/1 (2017). Lockett, Lesley, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). Lootens, Matthew, ‘Augustine’, in Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds.), The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 56–70. Lorié, Ludovicus, Spiritual Terminology in the Latin Translations of the Vita Antonii: With Reference to Fourth and Fifth Century Monastic Literature (Nijmegen and Utrecht: Dekker & Van De Vegt N. V., 1961). Louth, Andrew, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 2nd edition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007 [first edition Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981]), p. 142. Louth, Andrew, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, in Michael J. Chistensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 32–44. Lovatt, Roger, ‘Henry Suso and the Medieval Mystical Tradition in England’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 2 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1982), pp. 47–52. Ludlow, Morwenna, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith’, Journal of Theological Studies, 57/1, 310–312. Lutton, Rob, ‘“Love this name of IHC”: Vernacular Prayers, Hymns and Lyrics to the Holy Name of Jesus in Pre-Reformation England’, in E. Salter and H. Wicker (eds.), Vernacularity in England and Wales c1300–1550 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011), pp. 119–145. Lutton, Rob, ‘The Name of Jesus, Nicholas Love’s Mirror, and Christocentric Devotion in late Medieval England’, in Ian Johnson and A. F. Westphall (eds.), The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013), pp. 97–119.

280

Bibliography

Magill, Kevin, Julian of Norwich: Mystics or Visionary? (London: Routledge, 2006). Maisonneuve, Roland, ‘The Visionary Universe of Julian of Norwich’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 1 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1980), pp. 86–98. Maloney, George, The Undreamed Has Happened: God Loves within Us (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2003). Mannermaa, Tuomo, Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus: Rechfertigumg and Vergottung (Hannover: Arbieten zur Geschichte und Theologie des Luthertums, 1989). Maspero, Giulio, ‘The Fire, the Kingdom and the Glory: The Creator Spirit and IntraTrinitarian Processions in the Adversus Macedonianons of Gregory of Nyssa’, in Henning Drecoll and M. Berghaus (eds.), Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatise on Trinitarian Theology and Appolinarism: Proceedings of the 11th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa, vol. 5 (Tübingen, 17–20 September 2008) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 229–276. McAvoy, Liz Herbert (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008). McAvoy, Liz Herbert, Medieval Anchoriticism: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011). McCann, Daniel, ‘Medicine of Words: Purgative Reading of Richard Rolle’s Meditations on the Passions’, The Mediaeval Journal, 5/2 (2015), 53–83. MacDonald, Alasdair A., H. N. Bernard Ridderdos and Rita M. Sclussemann (eds.), The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late Medieval Culture (Egbert Forsten: Groningen, 1998). McGinn, Bernard, ‘“Evil-Sounding, Rash, and Suspect of Heresy”: Tensions between Mysticism and Magisterium in the History of the Church’, The Catholic Historical Review, 90/2 (2004), 193–212. McGinn, Bernard, ‘The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350’, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 3 (New York: Crossroads, 1998). McGinn, Bernard, ‘The Four Female Evangelists of the Thirteenth-Century: The Invention of Authority’, in Walter Haug, et al. (eds.), Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang (Tübingen: Continuum, 2000), pp. 175–194. McGinn, Bernard, ‘The Growth of Christian Mysticism’, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 2 (New York: New City Press, 1994). McGinn, Bernard, ‘Love, Knowledge and Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries’, Church History, 56/1 (1987), 7–24. McGinn, Bernard (ed.), Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York: Continuum, 1984). McGinn, Bernard, ‘Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal’, Spiritus, 8/1 (2008), 44–63. McGinn, Bernard, Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. by M. Idel and B. McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp. 59–86. McGinn, Bernard, ‘Regina quondam . . . ’, Speculum, 83/4 (2008), 817–839. McGinn, Bernard, ‘Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority. (Review)’, Catholic Historical Review, 80/1 (1994), 141–142. McGinn, Bernard, ‘The Significance of Ruusbroec’s Mystical Theology’, Louvain Studies, 31 (2006), 19–41.

Bibliography

281

McGinn, Bernard, ‘Unio Mystica/Mystical Union’, in Amy Hollywood and Patricia Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion of Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 200–210. McGinn, Bernard, ‘The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550’, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 5 (New York: Crossroads, 2012). McGuckin, John A., Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). McGuckin, John A., ‘The Strategic Adaptation of Deification in the Cappadocians’, in Michael Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 95–114. Meconi, David Vincent, ‘Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification’, in David Vincent Meconi and Elenore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; first edition 2001), pp. 208–228. Meconi, David Vincent, ‘Consummation of the Christian Promise: Recent Studies on Deification’, New Blackfriars, 87 (2006), 3–13. Meconi, David Vincent, ‘No Longer a Christian But Christ: St Augustine on Becoming Divine’, in David Vincent Meconi S.J. and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), pp. 82–100. Meconi, David Vincent, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). Meconi, David Vincent, Union with Christ: Living with God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2006). Meconi, David Vincent S.J. and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Be Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016). Medley, Mark S., ‘Participation in God: The Appropriation of Theosis by Contemporary Baptist Theologians’, in Vladimir Kharlamov (ed.), Theosis: Volume 2: Deification in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2012), pp. 205–245. Metz, Detlef, Gabriel Biel and die Mystik (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001). Meyerdorff, John, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. by Lawrence George (London: Faith Press, 1964). Miles, Laura Saetviet, ‘Space and Enclosure in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Love’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), pp. 154–165. Miles, Margaret, ‘Vision: The Eyes of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’, The Journal of Religion, 63 (1983), 125–142. Miller, Tanya Stabler, The Beguines in Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Miller, Tanya Stabler, ‘What’s In a Name? Clerical Representations of Parisian Beguines (1200–1328)’, Journal of Medieval History, 33/1 (2007), 60–86. Minnis, Alister, ‘Affection and Imagination in The Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, Traditio, 39 (1983), 323–366. Minnis, Alistair, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes In the Later Middle Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). Minns, Denis, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994). Molinari, Paul, Julian of Norwich: The Teaching of a Fourteenth Century English Mystic (London: Longmans, Green and Co, repr. 1958).

282

Bibliography

Moltmann, Jürgen, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1973). Mommaers, Paul, ‘La transformation d’amour selon Marguerite Porete’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 65/1 (1991), 88–107. Montefusco, Lucia Calboli, ‘Ductus and Color: The Right Way to Compose a Suitable Speech’, Rhetorica, 21 (2003), 113–131. Moore, Christopher G., Heart-Talk: Say What You Feel in Thai (Bangkok: Heaven Lake Press, 2006). Morgan, Ben, On Becoming God: Late Medieval, Mysticism and the Modern Western Self (New York: Fordham, 2013). Morgan, Jonathan, ‘The Role of Asceticism in Deification in Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters’, The Downside Review, 135 (2017), 1–10. Mosser, Carl, ‘The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Antecedents, and the Origin of Christian Deification’, The Journal of Theological Studies, 56/1 (2005), 30–74. Mosser, Carl. ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and Deification’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 55/1 (2002), 36–57. Mouron Anne, ‘The Desert of Religion: A Voice and Images in the Wilderness’, in Helen Appleton and Louise Nelstrop (eds.), Art and Mysticism: Interfaces in the Medieval and Modern Period (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 165–185. Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B., Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16/3 (1975), 6–18. Murk-Jansen, Saskia, ‘Hadewijch’, in Alistair J. Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden (eds.), Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2010), pp. 663–685. Nelson, Jinty and Damien Kempf, Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Nelstrop, Louise, ‘Eros and Nuptial Imagery’, in E. Howells and M. McIntosh (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 forthcoming). Nelstrop, Louise, ‘Julian’s Logophatic Discourse’, in Louise Nelstrop and Simon D. Podmore (eds.), Christian Mysticism: Between Transcendence and Immanence (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013; repr. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 191–216. Nelstrop, Louise, ‘The Merging of Eremitic and “Affectivist” Spirituality in Richard Rolle’s Reshaping of Contemplatio’, Viator, 35 (2004), 289–310. Nelstrop, Louise, ‘The Monk of Farne: A Forgotten Medieval English Mystic’, in John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 135–151. Nelstrop, Louise, ‘Nakedness and Anthropology in Julian of Norwich and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Conversation Partners or Dangerous Liaisons?’ Medieval Mystical Theology, 25/1 (2016), 69–85. Nelstrop, Louise, ‘What Happened to the Fourth Degree of Love? Richard Rolle, Hermit Preacher’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 23/1 (2014), 65–87. Newman, Barbara, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Newman, Barbara, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). Newman, Barbara, ‘What Did It Mean to Say “I Saw”? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture’, Speculum, 80/1 (2005), 1–43.

Bibliography

283

Nguyen, Joseph H., Apatheia in the Christian Tradition: An Ancient Spirituality and Its Contemporary Relevance (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018). Norris, Richard A., Jr, God and the World in Early Christian Theology: A Study of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966). Nuth, Joan M., ‘Two Medieval Soteriologies: Julian of Norwich and Anselm of Canterbury’, Journal of Theological Studies, 53 (1992), 611–645. Nuth, Joan M., Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (New York: Crossroads, 1991). Oberman, Heiko, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1986). Oberman, Heiko, ‘Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism, with Attention to its Relation to the Renaissance’, Harvard Theological Review, 53 (1960), 47–76. O’Keefe, John J., ‘Impassible Suffering: Divine Passion and Fifth Century Christology’, Theological Studies, 58 (1997), 39–60. Olmes, Antoine, Sprache und Stil der englishchen Mystik des Mittelalters, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Richard Rolle von Hampole (Halle: M Niemayer, 1933). Olson, Roger E., ‘Deification in Contemporary Theology’, Theology Today, 64/2 (2007), 186–200. O’Meara, John J., Eriugena (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Ortiz, Jared, ‘Deification in the Latin Fathers’, in David Vincent Meconi S.J. and Carl E. Olson (eds.), Called to Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), pp. 59–81. Ortiz, Rhonda, ‘What Is Theosis? Christianity’s Most Radical Claim’, 15/03/16, www.rhondaortiz.com/blog/what-is-theosis. Osborn, Eric Francis, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, ‘The Transformation of the Whole World: Contemporary Implications of the Orthodox Doctrine of Theosis’, in John Arblaster and Rob Faesen (eds.), Theosis/Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, Biblotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, vol. 294 (Leuven, Peeters, 2018), pp. 9–18. Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition [100–600] (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1971). Pelphrey, Brant, Love Was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysticism of Julian of Norwich (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1982). Peterson, Toby, ‘The Arab Influence on Western European Cooking’, Journal of Medieval History, 6/3 (1980), 317–340. Pollard, William, “Richard Rolle and the ‘Eye of the Heart’”, in W. Pollard and R. Boenig (eds.), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 85–105. Power, Eileen, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922). Puchniak, Robert, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification, Revisited’, in Finlan and Kharlamov (eds.), Theosis: Volume 2: Deification in Christian Theology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2012), pp. 122–133. Ramelli, Ilaria L. E., ‘The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena’, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 120 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

284

Bibliography

Ramelli, Ilaria L. E., ‘Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism and its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line’, Vigiliae Christianae, 65 (2011), 21–49. Reveney, Denis, Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001). Renevey, Denis, ‘Name above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s ‘Scale of Perfection I’, in M. Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition:England, Ireland and Wales, vol. 6 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 103–121. Riehle, Wolfgang, The Middle English Mystics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). Riehle, Wolfgang, The Secret within: Hermits, Recluses, and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England, trans. by Charity Scott-Stokes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). Rivalland, Neil, ‘The Doctrine of Deification’, Apologetics Coordination Team, www. deceptioninthechurch.com/deification.html. Roberts, Jane, ‘An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials’, Mediaeval Studies, 32 (1970), 193–233. Robertson, Duncan, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2011). Roman, Christopher M., Queering Richard Rolle: Mystical Theology and the Hermit in Fourteenth-Century England (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Rombs, Ronnie J., Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell and His Critics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006). Rosenberg, Stanley P., ‘Not So Alien and Unnatural after All: The Role of Deification in Augustine’s Sermons’, in Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (eds.), Visions of God and Ideas of Deification in Patristic Thought (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 89–117. Rudd, Jay, ‘Julian of Norwich and the Nominalist Questions’, in Richard J. Utz (ed.), Literary Nominalisms and the Rereading of Late Medieval Texts (Lewiston: Mellon Press, 1995), pp. 31–49. Rudy, Gordon, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Russell, Norman, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Russell, Norman, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking of Theosis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). Russell, Norman, ‘“Partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4) in the Byzantine Tradition’, in Kathēgētria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her 80th Birthday, ed. by Joan Mervyn Hussey (Camberley: Porphyrogentius, 1988), pp. 51–67. Russell, Norman, ‘Why Does Theosis Fascinate Western Christians?’ Sobornost, 34 (2012), 5–15. Salih Sarah and Denise Baker (eds.), Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Mysticism and Postmodern Reception (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Salter, Elizabeth, Nicholas Love’s ‘Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg: Institute für Englische Sprache and Literatur, Universität Salzberg, 1974). Sargent, Michael, ‘Medieval and Modern Readership of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties: The Manuscripts of the Continental Latin and Italian Tradition’, in Alessandra Petrina (ed.), with the assistance of Monica Santini, The

Bibliography

285

Medieval Translatior. Traduire au Moyen Age: In principio fuit interpres (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013), pp. 85–96. Sargent, Michael, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27/3 (1976), 225–240. Sauer, Michelle M., ‘“Prei for me mi leue suster”: The Paradox of the Anchoritic “Community” in Late Medieval England’, Prose Studies, 26/1–2 (2003), 153–175. Schnieder, John Philip, The Prose Style of Richard Rolle of Hampole, with Special Reference to Its Euphuistic tendencies (Baltimore: J. H. First, 1906). Schultz, Dirk, ‘Wisdom in the Margins: Text and Paratext in The Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom’, Études Anglaises, 3 (2013), 341–356. Schwarzwdller, Klaus, “Verantwortung des Glaubens”, in Dennis Bielfeldt and Klaus Schwarzwdller (eds.), Freiheit als Liebe bei Martin Luther (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), pp. 133–158. Scully, Ellen, ‘The Assumption of All Humanity in Hilary of Poitiers’, Tractatus super Psalmos (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Marquette University, 2011). Scully, Ellen, Physicality Soteriology in Hilary of Poitiers (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Sells, Michael, Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994). Sergent, F. Tyler, ‘Unitas Spiritus and the Originality of William of St. Thierry’, in F. Tyler Sergent, Aage Rydstrøm-Poulsen and Marsha L. Dutton (eds.), Unity of Spirit: Studies of William of Saint-Thierry in Honor of E. Rozanne Elder (Ohio: Liturgical Press, 2015), pp. 144–170. Shea, Mary Lou, Medieval Women on Sin and Salvation: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Margaret Ebner and Julian of Norwich (New York: Peter Lang, 2010). Sheldrake, Philip, Julian of Norwich: In God’s Sight, Her Theology in Context (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018). Shon, Frank, ‘The Teleological Element in Richard Rolle’s “Contra amatores mundi”’, The Modern Language Review, 101/1 (2006), 1–15. Slavin, Regine, ‘Thirsting for God’ through the Lens of Psalms 42 and 63’, (unpublished MA dissertation: Sarum College and University of Winchester, 2016). Southern, Richard, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1990). Sommerfeldt, John R., The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux: An Intellectual History of the Early Cistercian Order (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991). Sparrow, Tom Adam Hutchinson (eds.), A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). Spence, Timothy L., ‘The Prioress’ Oratio ad Mariam and Medieval Prayer Composition’, in Scott D. Troyan (ed.), Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York: Routledge, 2004). Smith, Jeremy J., ‘Dialect and Standardisation in the Waseda Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle and Michael G. Sargent (eds.), Nicholas Love: Waseda, 1995 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 129–142. Smith, Leslie, ‘The Use of Scripture in Teaching at the Medieval University’, in John H. Van Engen (ed.), Learning Institutionalized: Teaching in the Medieval University (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), pp. 229–243. Staikos, Konstaninos S., (ed.), From the Incarnation of Logos to the Theosis of Man: Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Icons from Greece (Athens: Hellenic Foundation for Culture, 2008).

286

Bibliography

Staley, Lynn, ‘Julian of Norwich’, in Larry Scanlon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 179–190. Stang, Charles M., Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: No longer ‘I’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Staniloae, Dumitru, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2: The World: Creation and Deification trans. by Ioan Ioanita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000). Staniloae, Dumitru, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar, trans. by Archimandrite Jerome Newville and Otilia Kloos (South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Press, 2002). Stanton, Robert, ‘Mimicry, Subjectivity and the Embodied Voice in Anglo Saxon Bird Riddles’, in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.), Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 29–43. Starr, James M., ‘Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak of Deification?’ in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung (eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 81–92. Starr, James M., Sharers in Divine Nature: 2 Peter 1.4 in Its Hellenistic Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003). Stavropoulos, Christoforos, Partakers in Divine Nature (Brookline, MA: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1976). Steenberg, Matthew C., ‘Children in Paradise: Adam and Eve as “infants” in Irenaeus of Lyons’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004), 1–22. Steenberg, Matthew C., Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Strobel, Kyle, ‘Jonathan Edwards and the Polemics of Theosis’, Harvard Theological Review, 105/3 (2012), 259–279. Sutherland, Annie, ‘Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle’, The Review of English Studies, 56/227 (2005), 695–671. Sutherland, Annie, ‘“Oure Feyth Is Groundyd in Goddes Worde”: Julian of Norwich and the Bible’, in E. A. Jones (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 7 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 1–20. Swanson, Robert N., ‘Passion and Practice: The Social and Ecclesiastical Implications of Passion Devotion in the Late Middle Ages’, in MacDonald, Ridderbos and Schlusemann (eds.), The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, pp. 1–30. Tamás Karáth, ‘Mediating the Immediate: Richard Rolle’s Mystical Experience in the Translations of his Self Revelations’, in Miklós Vassányi, Enikő Sepsi and Anikó Daróczi (eds.), The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition (Cham: Springer, 2017), pp. 85–104. Tannehill, Robert C., The Shape of the Gospel: New Testament Essays (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007). Teske, Ronald J., ‘Augustine’s Epistula X: Another look at deificari in otio’, Augustinanum, 32 (1992), 289–299. Townsend, Luke Davis, ‘Deification in Aquinas: A Supplementum to The Ground of Union’, Journal of Theological Studies, 66/1 (2015), 204–234. Trostyanskiy, Sergey, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Peter Lang, 2016).

Bibliography

287

Turner, Denys, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Turner, Denys, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995). Turner, Denys, Julian of Norwich: Theologian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Tyler, Peter, The Return to the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical Tradition (London: Continuum, 2011). Tzamalikos, Panayiotis, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, Supplements to Virgilae Christianae, vol. 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, ‘Ruusbroec’s Notion of the Contemplative Life and his Understanding of the Human Person’, in Rob Faesen and John Arblaster (eds.), Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 73–88. Vasta, Edward, The Spiritual Basis of Piers Plowman (The Hague: Mouton, 1965). Vasta, Edward, ‘Truth, the Best Treasure, in Piers Plowman’, Philological Quarterly 44/1 (1965), 17–29. Verdeyen, Paul, Ruusbroec and his Mysticism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994). von Harnack, Adolf, History of Dogma, vol. 2, trans. by Neil Buchanan (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1901). Wada, Yoko (ed.), A Companion to Ancrene Wisse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003). Walker Bynum, Caroline, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Walker Bynum, Caroline, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Walker Bynum, Caroline, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Wallace, James Buchanan, Snatched into Paradise: (2 Corinthians 12: 1–10): Paul’s Heavenly Journey in the Context of Early Christian Experience (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011). Ward, Benedicta, ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Kenneth Leech and Benedicta Ward (eds.), Julian Reconsidered (Oxford: SLG Press, 1988), pp. 11–35. Waters, Claire M., Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance and Gender in the Late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Watson, Nicholas, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70 (1995), 822–864. Watson, Nicholas, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68/3 (1993), 637–683. Watson, Nicholas, ‘Melting into God the English Way’: Deification in the Middle English Version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirour des simples âmes anienties’, in Rosalyn Voaden (ed.), The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 19–50. Watson, Nicholas, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in David Wallace (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 539–565. Watson, Nicholas, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

288

Bibliography

Watson, Nicholas, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1992), pp. 79–100 [reprinted in Sandra J. McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1998), p. 61–90)]. Weedham, Mark, The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Wedgeworth, Steven, ‘Reforming Deification’, Credenda/Agenda, 05/01/11, www. credenda.org/index.php/Theology/reforming-deification.html. Wei, Ian P., Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c.1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Weinandy, Thomas G., In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993). Wessel, Susan, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Wiens Ryan Kade, ‘The Doctrine of the Imago Dei in the Soteriology of Julian of Norwich’, (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Waterloo and Conrad Grebel University College, 2008). Wild, Philip Theodore, The Divinisation of Man According to St Hilary of Poitier (Mundelein: St Mary’s of the Lake Seminary, 1950). Wiles, Maurice, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 114–115. Wilkens, Robert L., Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). Williams, Jeni, Interpreting Nightingales: Gender, Class, Histories (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). Williams, Rowan, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2002). Williams, Rowan,‘Deification’, in Gordon S. Wakefield (ed.), A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1983), pp. 106–108. Wilson, Daniel, Deification and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in Hellenistic Culture (Bloomington, IN: CrossBooks, 2010). Windeatt, Barry, ‘“Vera Icon”?: The Variable Veronica of Medieval England’, The European Fortune of the Roman Veronica in the Middle Ages, Convivium, 4, issue Supplementum (2017), pp. 58–71. Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001). Yardley, Anne Bagnall, ‘“Ful Wel She Sonng the Service Dyvyn”: The Cloistered Musician in the Middle Ages’, in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 15–38. Zaehner, R. C., Mysticism, Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry Into Some Varieties of Preternatural Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957). Zecher, Jonathan L., ‘Antony’s Vision of Death, Athanasius of Alexandria, Palladius of Helenopolis, and Egyptian Mortuary Religion’, Journal of Late Antiquity, 7/1 (2014), 159–177. Zieman, Katherine, ‘“The Perils of Canor”: Mystical Authority, Alliteration, and Extragrammatical Meaning in Rolle, the Cloud-Author, and Hilton’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 22 (2008), 131–163. Zieman, Katherine, Singing a New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

Bibliography

289

Zuijdwegt, Geetjan, ‘“Utrum caritas sit aliquid creatur in anima”: Aquinas on the Lombard’s Identification of Charity with the Holy Spirit’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 79/1 (2012), 39–74.

Web resources Geographies of Orthodoxy Project, www/qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/discuss/. Guide to Evagrius Ponticus, http://evagriusponticus.net/corpus.htm (maintained by Joel Kalvesmaki). Julian Centre, http://juliancentre.org/community/about-friends-of-julian.html. Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/.

Index

Abbott, Christopher 135, 141, 168, 173 Aers, David 151, 159, 165, 172, 245 Albin, Andrew 77, 80, 110, 112, 125 Alford, John 80, 103, 113, 131, 198, 214 anchorite xii, xv, 60, 74, 122, 128–130, 159–162, 252 Anchorite, Winchester 129 Angela of Foligno xiv, xviii, 177, 241 Antony, St. 58, 67–68, 74–76, 78, 86, 124 aphairesis 225–226 apokatastasis see universal salvation apophasis 14, 119, 176, 217, 223, 225, 227, 229–230, 232–236, 240, 250 Aquinas, Thomas, St. 7–9, 11, 18, 39, 115–116, 127, 139, 147–151, 157, 198, 217, 239–240, 242, 244, 255 Arblaster, John xix, 20, 35, 37–39, 49–50, 107, 147, 149, 167, 173, 254, 258 Aristotle 39, 183–185, 194, 209, 242 Athanasius of Alexandria 16, 22, 25–26, 41, 43–45, 73, 75, 124, 149, 155 Augustine of Hippo 6–7, 11–13, 17, 19, 30–35, 40, 45–48, 63, 83, 90, 115, 125, 134–137, 140, 142, 147, 152, 154–155, 158, 165, 167–169, 194, 196, 206, 210–211, 214, 223–225, 227, 246, 250, 256; Confessions 84, 200 Baker, Denise 128, 138, 150–152, 157, 167, 173, 218, 220, 230 Bauerschmidt, Fredrick Christian 239–240 Beatrice of Nazareth 39, 170, 253, 255–258 Bell, David N. 49–50, 134–135, 140, 154, 167 Bernard of Clairvaux 7, 17, 35–38, 48–50, 103, 105, 115, 118, 124, 152,

171, 181–182, 184–185, 189–190, 197–198, 210–213, 234–236, 242, 250, 257, 259 Bonaventure, St. 7, 11, 13, 17, 20, 39, 118, 127, 147–150, 157, 166, 225, 240, 252, 255, 263, 273 canor see singing Carruthers, Mary xvi, 64, 176, 183–186, 188, 192–198, 201, 215, 219 Casiday, Augustine M. 53, 59, 63, 65, 69, 73–75 Cassian, John xiv, 11–12, 20, 34, 52–53, 63–66, 68, 73–75, 78, 103–104, 109, 120–121, 179, 194–196, 199, 205, 211, 243 children of God 29, 40–41 Christina the Astonishing 88–89, 91, 115, 118 Christology xv, 1, 6, 13, 22, 26, 30, 34, 37, 41, 43–44, 50–53, 59, 69–70, 89, 109, 127, 132–133, 138, 142–143, 254 Clement of Alexandria 5, 15, 52, 60, 71 Cloud-Author, the xiii–xiv, 80, 88, 107, 159, 171, 191, 225, 227–228, 237, 248, 253 creation 7, 9, 32, 34, 41, 59, 133–136, 139–140, 142, 145, 149, 152, 154, 156–157, 177, 226, 258 Creator, the 9, 12, 30, 59, 94–96, 120, 134, 146, 166, 175, 187, 254–255, 257–258 Cyril of Alexandria xv, 14, 22, 26–30, 34, 38, 42–46, 53, 107, 109, 127, 142–143, 145, 149, 157 darkness 227–228, 247 demons 58, 60–61, 67, 92, 104, 123–124 desert asceticism xiv–xv, 5, 52–53, 58, 62, 66–69, 73, 77–78, 86–87, 91, 93,

Index 95, 102, 104–105, 107–109, 114, 116, 124, 140, 175, 211, 259 Dionysius see Pseudo-Dionysius ductus xvi, 193–198, 203–204, 215 Eckhart, Meister 39, 106, 127, 131–132, 147, 149, 151, 172 Edwards, Mark xv, 16, 18, 23–28, 41, 43–45, 53, 57, 72, 140–143 emotion 44, 58, 122, 192, 194, 202 enclosure 85–86, 128–130, 132–134, 139–140, 143–146, 149–150, 152, 155, 160, 162, 165, 167–169, 171–172, 216, 230 epinoiai 55–58, 101 eremiticism xii, 73, 78–79, 130, 161–163 Eriugena, John Scotus 12, 35, 48, 115, 153 Evagrius Ponticus xv, 5, 52–53, 58–66, 68, 70, 73–75, 78, 90–92, 102, 104–105, 109, 120, 124, 179 exegesis 1–2, 13, 15–16, 25–26, 37, 42, 52–53, 59, 95–96, 113, 120, 198, 210, 214, 216 Faesen, Rob xv, xix, 17, 38, 80, 107, 137–138, 253, 258 flesh 3, 23, 26–29, 37, 44, 64, 68, 84, 87–88, 135, 141–143, 145, 155–156, 168, 178–179, 181, 185–187, 189–190, 212, 214, 218, 233, 243, 247 Fulton, Rachel Brown 183–186, 209 Gallus, Thomas 225, 246 Gillespie, Vincent xvii, 129, 173, 217, 221–223, 225, 229–232, 236, 241, 245 grace 2, 4, 11, 20, 25, 34, 36, 39, 46, 59, 62–64, 86–87, 96, 100, 102, 106–107, 122–123, 126, 137, 140, 148, 153–154, 156, 166–167, 170–171, 173, 175, 178, 204, 215, 218–219, 221, 229, 231, 239, 243–244, 247–248, 250–251, 255–256 Gregory of Nyssa xiv, 24, 45, 58–59, 70, 121, 176, 205, 232–236, 240, 249 habitus 39, 69, 148–149, 157, 170, 194 Hadewijch of Brabant xiv, 39, 49–51, 147, 166, 173, 177, 241 Hallosten, Gösta 7–10, 13, 34, 40, 69 heart, the 29, 33, 61, 83, 87–88, 90, 97–99, 185–186, 188, 191, 197–198, 209, 233 heaven 36, 63, 86–89, 94, 101–102, 115, 119, 123, 142–143, 146, 168–169,

291

172, 178, 190–192, 207, 250; third 83–84, 88, 146, 169, 178, 180, 207, 210, 224, 233, 235–236, 250, 255 heresy 5, 10, 17, 22, 43–44, 53, 63, 74, 132, 147, 151, 156–157, 159, 172, 241 hermits see eremiticism heterodoxy see heresy Hilton, Walter xiv, xvii, 107, 111, 171, 227–229, 237, 253 Holy Spirit 3–4, 22–23, 25, 28, 30, 33–34, 38–39, 43, 52, 56–57, 59, 69, 89, 120, 136, 141, 144–145, 147–150, 152–154, 166, 168–172, 211, 216, 229, 247, 257 Howie, Cary 145–146, 237, 251 identity 27, 38, 96, 133–135, 254 illumination 85, 182, 187, 224, 235, 246 imagination 83, 95, 133, 191, 218–220, 222–224, 227–231, 234, 240–242, 245, 247–248, 250, 252 indwelling xv, 3–4, 8, 22–23, 29, 33, 41–42, 52, 56, 59, 63, 96, 120, 133–134, 138, 140–141, 143, 199, 233; mutual 133–134, 149, 152, 154–155, 164, 171, 173–174, 255 ineffabability 28–29, 48, 68, 79, 83, 88, 96, 112, 121, 126, 200, 232 intention 65, 123, 194, 197, 219 invention 105, 108, 197–198, 215, 258 Irenaeus of Lyons 12, 15–16, 18, 22–25, 28, 30, 40–43, 53, 106–107, 139–143, 147, 157, 251, 264, 270, 273, 275, 279, 282–283, 286 joy 36, 68, 84–85, 88, 94–96, 98, 100, 102–103, 107, 121–123, 141, 144, 146, 150, 154–157, 159, 168–169, 173–174, 181, 187, 189–191, 211, 221, 232, 236, 239, 245, 250–251 Justin Martyr 12, 24, 42 Karnes, Michelle 220, 222–223, 240, 252 kataphasis 176, 217, 225, 227–236, 239, 241, 248–250 Keating, Daniel A. 2–5, 16, 18, 26, 28, 30, 42 Knepper, Thomas 225–226 Knowles, David xiii, 79, 88, 111 Laird, Martin xiv, xvi, 176, 217, 232–236 lectio divina 64–65, 103, 131, 176, 192–196, 198–199, 203–204, 212–214, 219, 251

292

Index

light 55, 60, 62, 67, 87, 95, 103, 124, 149, 170, 221–222, 224, 228, 239–240, 244, 246 liturgy 14, 79, 89–91, 93 logophasis xiv, xvi, 176, 217, 232–236, 238, 248–250 lust 61, 79, 136, 181, 214 Margery Kempe xiv, 107, 128–129, 159, 218–219, 222, 240–241, 244, 253 Marguerite Porete xiv, 39, 106, 123, 147, 151, 166, 170, 172–173, 177, 241, 253–254, 256–258 McGinn, Bernard xiv, xviii, 5, 17, 19, 38–39, 50–51, 105, 131, 147, 166–167, 173, 177, 215, 241, 253–254, 258–259 Meconi, David Vincent 21, 33–35, 46, 48, 69, 158, 168 Meditationes Vitae Christi xvii, 217–218, 220, 223, 225, 233–236, 240–242, 252 memory 36, 49, 60–61, 64, 66, 92, 123, 188, 192, 194–198, 209, 219–220, 223 Monk of Farne xiv, xix, 20, 88–89, 118, 124 Moses 67, 239–241 Mosser, Carl 9, 24–25, 42 Origen 15, 37, 49, 52–60, 69–73, 101, 109, 153, 176, 181–182, 210, 214 Palamas, Gregory 8 pantheism 3, 8, 27, 73, 108, 148, 150, 157 participation xv, 3–5, 8, 10, 14, 16, 22–23, 28–29, 33–34, 39, 42, 50, 52, 54, 56–58, 127, 134–135, 140, 148, 153–154 Paul, St. 10, 19, 52, 83, 100, 115, 146, 169, 176, 178–179, 210, 212, 224, 228, 232–234, 236, 255 Pelagianism 31, 46, 56 perfection 12, 18, 36–37, 41, 46, 52, 56–58, 65, 86, 90, 93, 100, 105, 127, 143, 151, 182 Piers Plowman 162, 253 prayer 12, 61–62, 64–66, 68, 71, 90, 94–95, 99, 101, 103, 120, 122, 129–130, 153–154, 156, 173, 194–195, 199, 205, 243 preaching 55, 96, 121, 132, 199–200, 214, 235, 240–241, 251–252 prophecy 55, 63–64, 96, 164, 176–177, 217, 235, 239–240, 242 Psalms, the 24–25, 30, 32–34, 36, 42, 46–47, 49, 53–54, 59, 61, 80–81,

90–91, 93–97, 99, 102, 106, 120–124, 175, 183, 192, 195, 198, 204, 211, 214 Pseudo-Bonaventure see Meditationes Vitae Christi Pseudo-Dionysius 1, 14, 223, 225–230, 246, 254 purgation 65, 102, 123, 182, 184–185, 187–188, 192 Ramelli, Illaria 48, 53–55, 71, 73, 153 rapture 37, 66, 83–88, 90–91, 95, 115–116, 120, 178, 180, 207, 224, 236–237 Riehle, Wolfgang 106–107, 174, 253, 257 Rosenberg, Stanley 13, 31–35, 46, 69 Rudy, Gordon 181–182, 185, 189, 210 Russell, Norman xiv–xv, 2–5, 13–16, 19, 22–26, 28–31, 34, 39–41, 43, 46, 52–53, 55–56, 58–59, 69, 71–72, 75, 77, 93, 108–109, 127, 143, 157, 175–176, 259, 265 Ruusbroec, Jan van xv, 38–39, 87–89, 103, 138, 149, 154–155, 169, 171, 173 sacraments 3, 5, 11, 16, 23, 25, 29–30, 42, 45, 69, 92, 119 sanctification 6, 8, 31, 52, 56, 59, 67, 84, 87, 90–91, 96, 98, 101, 106, 117–118, 123, 143, 168, 178–179, 206, 222, 224, 239, 245, 251 sensuality 133, 135–137, 140–141, 143, 152, 154–155, 157–158, 165–167, 173–174, 181–183, 190 sight, bodily 219, 221, 223, 236, 238, 243–244 silence 190, 194, 199–200, 228, 230, 232–233 singing 36, 61, 82, 90–91, 93, 95, 114, 118, 121–122, 186, 189–190, 201–202, 207 sleep 60–61, 92, 99–100, 103, 122, 255 Song of Songs, The xiv, 37, 54, 82, 100, 103–104, 106, 108, 124, 152, 176, 181, 189, 211, 214, 232–234 soteriology 1–2, 6–11, 13, 23, 26, 30–32, 34, 40, 46–47, 57, 70, 109, 127, 132–133, 138–139, 143–144, 153, 156–157, 169, 188, 220 soul’s sensorium 87, 91, 116, 180, 182, 188–189, 211; single 109, 116, 189 spiritual sensation 44, 86–88, 91, 94, 103, 109, 127, 182, 185, 187, 189–192, 255; hearing 68, 83, 87, 89, 91, 95–96, 120–121, 123, 175,

Index 181, 185, 189–190, 194, 202–203, 214–215, 217, 221–222, 224, 229, 233–234, 239; sight xiii, 14, 34, 50, 68, 89, 115–116, 120, 123, 133–134, 167, 169, 172, 180, 217–219, 221–224, 226, 231, 236–240, 244, 248, 250, 255; smell 89, 117, 185, 187, 189, 191, 209–210, 233–234; taste 65, 85, 92, 176, 181–192, 198, 204, 209, 213; touch 60, 87–89, 96, 185–186, 189, 195–196, 250 stability 61, 85–86, 90–91, 98–100, 105, 108, 116, 162, 207, 229 substance 27–28, 36, 38, 49–50, 103, 127, 133–138, 140–145, 149, 151–152, 154–155, 158, 165–169, 171–174, 237, 256–257, 260 Summa Theologiae see Aquinas, Thomas Sutherland, Annie 80, 112, 199, 216 synderesis 151–152, 172 Theiner, Paul 110–111, 113, 177–178, 180–183, 188, 198, 201, 205–208, 212 Tondal, vision of 84 Trinity, the 27–28, 38, 54, 57, 65, 95, 103, 107, 115, 127, 132–133, 143–144, 146, 148–151, 153, 155, 157, 164, 169–171, 177, 211, 255–256, 258 union xii, xviii, 1, 5–6, 8, 23, 26, 28, 35–39, 43, 49–51, 55–56, 65, 73–74, 83–88, 103, 120, 125–126,

293

131, 133–134, 137–138, 143, 147, 149, 152, 154–158, 164, 166–168, 171, 173–174, 176, 182, 189, 207, 211, 232–234, 239, 249, 252–255, 257–258, 263; hypostatic 148, 254; pre-creational 50 universal salvation 48, 54, 57–58, 153 Virgin Mary 12, 143–144, 147, 171, 177, 218 virtues 3–5, 38, 42, 52, 56–58, 61–62, 64, 68, 72, 87, 97–98, 100–102, 104–105, 108–109, 124, 136, 149, 153, 166, 170, 198, 217 vision, beatific 105, 108, 180, 207, 211, 255 von Harnack, Adolf 1, 5–8, 10, 13, 23–24, 30, 39, 108 Walker- Bynum, Caroline xvii, 144, 221, 255, 287 Wanderer, The xiv, 66 wandering mind 61–64, 66, 68, 77–109, 195–197, 255 Watson, Nicholas xiv, xviii–xix, 79, 82, 93, 96–97, 105, 107, 110, 115, 118, 120, 126, 131–132, 155, 157–158, 161, 173, 175, 177, 182, 200, 205–207, 214–216, 229, 248 William of St. Thierry 12, 30, 35, 37–39, 50, 76, 96, 107, 121, 147, 149, 157, 173, 211, 226, 249–250, 256