The Cell of Self-Knowledge Part 1

The Cell of Self-Knowledge.

by Various.

INTRODUCTION

FROM the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century may be called the golden age of mystical literature in the vernacular. In Germany, we find Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1277), Meister Eckhart (d. 1327), Johannes Tauler (d. 1361), and Heinrich Suso (d. 1365); in Flanders, Jan Ruysbroek (d. 1381); in Italy, Dante Alighieri himself (d. 1321), Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306), St.

Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), and many lesser writers who strove, in prose or in poetry, to express the hidden things of the spirit, the secret intercourse of the human soul with the Divine, no longer in the official Latin of the Church, but in the language of their own people, "a man's own vernacular," which "is nearest to him, inasmuch as it is most closely united to him."[1] In England, the great names of Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349), of Walter Hilton (d. 1396), and of Mother Juliana of Norwich, whose Revelation of Divine Love professedly date from 1373, speak for themselves.

The seven tracts or treatises before us were published in 1521 in a little quarto volume: "Imprynted at London in Poules chyrchyarde at the sygne of the Trynyte, by Henry Pepwell. In the yere of our lorde G.o.d, M.CCCCC.XXI., the xvi. daye of Nouembre." They may, somewhat loosely speaking, be regarded as belonging to the fourteenth century, though the first and longest of them professes to be but a translation of the work of the great Augustinian mystic of an earlier age.

St. Bernard, Richard of St. Victor, and St. Bonaventura--all three very familiar figures to students of Dante's Paradiso--are the chief influences in the story of English mysticism. And, through the writings of his latter-day followers, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, Richard of St. Victor is, perhaps, the most important of the three.

Himself either a Scot or an Irishman by birth, Richard entered the famous abbey of St. Victor, a house of Augustinian canons near Paris, some time before 1140, where he became the chief pupil of the great mystical doctor and theologian whom the later Middle Ages regarded as a second Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor. After Hugh's death (1141), Richard succeeded to his influence as a teacher, and completed his work in creating the mystical theology of the Church.

His masterpiece, De Gratia Contemplationis, known also as Benjamin Major, in five books, is a work of marvellous spiritual insight, unction, and eloquence, upon which Dante afterwards based the whole mystical psychology of the Paradiso.2 In it Richard shows how the soul pa.s.ses upward through the six steps of contemplation--in imagination, in reason, in understanding--gradually discarding all sensible objects of thought; until, in the sixth stage, it contemplates what is above reason, and seems to be beside reason, or even contrary to reason. He teaches that there are three qualities of contemplation, according to its intensity: mentis dilatatio, an enlargement of the soul's vision without exceeding the bounds of human activity; mentis sublevatio, elevation of mind, in which the intellect, divinely illumined, transcends the measure of humanity, and beholds the things above itself, but does not entirely lose self-consciousness; and mentis alienatio, or ecstasy, in which all memory of the present leaves the mind, and it pa.s.ses into a state of divine transfiguration, in which the soul gazes upon truth without any veils of creatures, not in a mirror darkly, but in its pure simplicity. This master of the spiritual life died in 1173. Amongst the glowing souls of the great doctors and theologians in the fourth heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas bids Dante mark the ardent spirit of "Richard who in contemplation was more than man."[3]

Benjamin, for Richard, is the type of contemplation, in accordance with the Vulgate version of Psalm lxvii.: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu: "There is Benjamin, a youth, in ecstasy of mind"--where the English Bible reads: "Little Benjamin their ruler."[4] At the birth of Benjamin, his mother Rachel dies: "For, when the mind of man is rapt above itself, it surpa.s.seth all the limits of human reasoning. Elevated above itself and rapt in ecstasy, it beholdeth things in the divine light at which all human reason succ.u.mbs. What, then, is the death of Rachel, save the failing of reason?"[5]

The treatise here printed under the t.i.tle Benjamin is based upon a smaller work of Richard's, a kind of introduction to the Benjamin Major, ent.i.tled: Benjamin Minor; or: De Praeparatione animi ad Contemplationem. It is a paraphrase of certain portions of this work, with a few additions, and large omissions. Among the portions omitted are the two pa.s.sages that, almost alone among Richard's writings, are known to the general reader--or, at least, to people who do not claim to be specialists in mediaeval theology. In the one, he speaks of knowledge of self as the Holy Hill, the Mountain of the Lord:--

"If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and princ.i.p.al study be to know itself. Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and high mountain. This mountain transcends all the peaks of all mundane sciences, and looks down upon all the philosophy and all the science of the world from on high. Could Aristotle, could Plato, could the great band of philosophers ever attain to it?"[6]

In the other, still adhering to his image of the mountain of self-knowledge, he makes his famous appeal to the Bible, as the supreme test of truth, the only sure guard that the mystic has against being deluded in his lofty speculations:--

"Even if you think that you have been taken up into that high mountain apart, even if you think that you see Christ transfigured, do not be too ready to believe anything you see in Him or hear from Him, unless Moses and Elias run to meet Him. I hold all truth in suspicion which the authority of the Scriptures does not confirm, nor do I receive Christ in His clarification unless Moses and Elias are talking with Him."[7]

On the other hand, the beautiful pa.s.sage with which the version closes, so typical of the burning love of Christ, shown in devotion to the name of Jesus, which glows through all the writings of the school of the Hermit of Hampole, is an addition of the translator:--

"And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to contemplation of G.o.d, that is to say, to bring forth such a child that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of G.o.d), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu, so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou fulfil that is said in the psalm: 'Lord, I shall bless Thee in churches'; that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of Jesu. And then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this onehead of studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all thy desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in the love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer; evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of G.o.d and ghostly things; so that it be fulfilled in thee that is written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu; that is: 'There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravis.h.i.+ng of mind."'[8]

The text printed by Pepwell differs slightly from that of the ma.n.u.scripts, of which a large number have been preserved. Among others, it is found in the Arundel MS. 286, and the Harleian MSS.

674, 1022, and 2373. It has been published from the Harl. MS. 1022 by Professor C. Horstman, who observes that "it is very old, and certainly prior to Walter Hilton."[9] It is evidently by one of the followers of Richard Rolle, dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. External and internal evidence seems to point to its being the work of the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing.

This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), one of the n.o.blest and most truly heroic women that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold activities only touched England indirectly. The famous English captain of mercenaries, Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the world who, at least for a while, were won to n.o.bler ideals by her letters and exhortations. Two of her princ.i.p.al disciples, Giovanni Tantucci and William Flete, both Augustinian hermits, were graduates of Cambridge; the latter, an Englishman by birth, was appointed by her on her deathbed to preside over the continuance of her work in her native city, and a vision of his, concerning the legitimacy of the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal throne, was brought forward as one of the arguments that induced England, on the outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to adhere to the Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the death. A letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King Richard the Second has not been preserved.

About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St.

Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's mystical treatise the Dialogo: "Here begynneth the Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly fruytes and precyous plantes for the helthe of mannes soule."[10]

This was not translated from St. Catherine's own vernacular, but from Friar Raymond's Latin version of the latter, first printed at Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two works, the Lyf, are selected the pa.s.sages--the Divers Doctrines devout and fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost verbally identical selection, with an identical t.i.tle, is found in the British Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine Cloud of Unknowing.

Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come down to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de Worde:--

"Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of Lynn."

And at the end:--

"Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn.

Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde."

The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It is undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501.[11] With a few insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years later by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like "Our Lord Jesus said unto her," or "she said," and adds that she was a devout ancress. Tanner, not very accurately, writes: "This book contains various discourses of Christ (as it is pretended) to certain holy women; and, written in the style of modern Quietists and Quakers, speaks of the inner love of G.o.d, of perfection, et cetera."[12] No ma.n.u.script of the work is known to exist, and absolutely no traces can be discovered of the "Book of Margery Kempe," out of which it is implied by the Printer that these beautiful thoughts and sayings are taken.

There is nothing in the treatise itself to enable us to fix its date. It is, perhaps, possible that the writer or recipient of these revelations is the "Margeria filia Johannis Kempe," who, between 1284 and 1298, gave up to the prior and convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, all her rights in a piece of land with buildings and appurtenances, "which falls to me after the decease of my brother John, and lies in the parish of Blessed Mary of Northgate outside the walls of the city of Canterbury."[13] The revelations show that she was (or had been) a woman of some wealth and social position, who had abandoned the world to become an ancress, following the life prescribed in that gem of early English devotional literature, the Ancren Riwle.14 It is clearly only a fragment of her complete book (whatever that may have been); but it is enough to show that she was a worthy precursor of that other great woman mystic of East Anglia: Juliana of Norwich. For Margery, as for Juliana, Love is the interpretation of revelation, and the key to the universal mystery:[15]--

"Daughter, thou mayst no better please G.o.d, than to think continually in His love."

"If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water, and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt not please Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to speak in thy soul."

"Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart."

"In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better please G.o.d than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the compa.s.sion that I have of thee."

And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the simple, poignant cry of human suffering: "Lord, for Thy great pain have mercy on my little pain."

We are on surer ground with the treatise that follows, the Song of Angels.[16] Walter Hilton--who died on March 24, 1396--holds a position in the religious life and spiritual literature of England in the latter part of the fourteenth century somewhat similar to that occupied by Richard Rolle in its earlier years. Like the Hermit of Hampole, he was the founder of a school, and the works of his followers cannot always be distinguished with certainty from his own. Like his great master in the mystical way, Richard of St.

Victor, Hilton was an Augustinian, the head of a house of canons at Thurgarton, near Newark. His great work, the Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection, "which expoundeth many notable doctrines in Contemplation," was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494, and is still widely used for devotional reading. A shorter treatise, the Epistle to a Devout Man in Temporal Estate, first printed by Pynson in 1506, gives practical guidance to a religious layman of wealth and social position, for the fulfilling of the duties of his state without hindrance to his making profit in the spiritual life. These, with the Song of Angels, are the only printed works that can be a.s.signed to him with certainty, though many others, undoubtedly from his pen, are to be found in ma.n.u.scripts, and a complete and critical edition of Walter Hilton seems still in the far future.[17] The Song of Angels has been twice printed since the edition of Pepwell.[18]

In profoundly mystical language, tinged with the philosophy of that mysterious Neo-Platonist whom we call the pseudo-Dionysius, it tells of the wonderful "onehead," the union of the soul with G.o.d in perfect charity:--

"This onehead is verily made when the mights of the soul are reformed by grace to the dignity and the state of the first condition; that is, when the mind is firmly established, without changing and wandering, in G.o.d and ghostly things, and when the reason is cleared from all worldly and fleshly beholdings, and from all bodily imaginations, figures, and fantasies of creatures, and is illumined by grace to behold G.o.d and ghostly things, and when the will and the affection is purified and cleansed from all fleshly, kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed with burning love of the Holy Ghost."

But to this blessed condition none may attain perfectly here on earth. The writer goes on to speak of the mystical consolations and visitations granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguis.h.i.+ng the feelings and sensations that are mere delusions, from those that truly proceed from the fire of love in the affection and the light of knowing in the reason, and are a very antic.i.p.ation of that ineffable "onehead" in heaven.

The three remaining treatises--the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings of the Soul, and the Treatise of Discerning of Spirits[19]--are a.s.sociated in the ma.n.u.scripts with four other works: the Divine Cloud of Unknowing, the Epistle of Privy Counsel, a paraphrase of the Mystical Theology of Dionysius ent.i.tled Dionise Hid Divinity, and the similar translation or paraphrase of the Benjamin Minor of Richard of St. Victor already considered.[20]

These seven treatises are all apparently by the same hand. The Divine Cloud of Unknowing has been credited to Walter Hilton, as likewise to William Exmew, or to Maurice Chauncy, Carthusians of the sixteenth century, whereas the ma.n.u.scripts are at least a hundred years earlier than their time; but it seems safer to attribute the whole series to an unknown writer of the second part of the fourteenth century, who "marks a middle point between Rolle and Hilton."[21] The spiritual beauty of the three here reprinted--and, more particularly, of the Epistle of Prayer, with its glowing exposition of the doctrine of Pure Love--speaks for itself. They show us mysticism brought down, if I may say so, from the clouds for the practical guidance of the beginner along this difficult way.

And, in the Epistle of Discretion, we find even a rare touch of humour; where the counsellor "conceives suspiciously" of his correspondent's spiritual stirrings, lest "they should be conceived on the ape's manner." Like St. Catherine of Siena, though in a less degree, he has the gift of vision and the faculty of intuition combined with a homely common sense, and can ill.u.s.trate his "simple meaning" with a smile.

I have borrowed a phrase from St. Catherine, "The Cell of Self-Knowledge," la cella del cognoscimento di noi, as the t.i.tle of this little volume. Knowledge of self and purity of heart, the mystics teach, are the indispensable conditions for the highest mystical elevation. Knowledge of self, for Richard of St. Victor, is the high mountain apart upon which Christ is transfigured; for Catherine of Siena, it is the stable in which the pilgrim through time to eternity must be born again. "Wouldest thou behold Christ transfigured?" asks Richard; "ascend this mountain; learn to know thyself."[22] "Thou dost see," writes Catherine, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."[23] The soul is a mirror that reflects the invisible things of G.o.d, and it is by purity of heart alone that this mirror is made clear. "Therefore," writes Richard of St.

Victor, "let whoso thirsts to see his G.o.d, wipe his mirror, purify his spirit. After he hath thus cleared his mirror and long diligently gazed into it, a certain clarity of divine light begins to s.h.i.+ne through upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before his eyes. This light irradiated the eyes of him who said: Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us; Thou hast put gladness in my heart. From the vision of this light which it sees with wonder in itself, the mind is wondrously inflamed and inspired to behold the light which is above itself."[24]

Pepwell's volume has been made the basis of the present edition of these seven treatises; but, in each case, the text has been completely revised. The text of the Benjamin, the Epistle of Prayer, the Epistle of Discretion, and the Treatise of Discerning of Spirits, has been collated with that given by the Harleian MSS. 674 and 2373; and, in most cases, the readings of the ma.n.u.scripts have been adopted in preference to those of the printed version. The Katherin has been collated with Caxton's Lyf; the Margery Kempe with Wynkyn de Worde's precious little volume in the University Library of Cambridge; and the Song of Angels with the text published by Professor Horstman from the Camb. MS Dd. v. 55. As the object of this book is not to offer a Middle English text to students, but a small contribution to mystical literature, the orthography has been completely modernised, while I have attempted to retain enough of the original language to preserve the flavour of mediaeval devotion.

EDMUND G. GARDNER.

I.

HERE FOLLOWETH A VERY DEVOUT TREATISE, NAMED BENJAMIN, OF THE MIGHTS AND VIRTUES OF MAN'S SOUL, AND OF THE WAY TO TRUE CONTEMPLATION, COMPILED BY A n.o.bLE AND FAMOUS DOCTOR, A MAN OF GREAT HOLINESS AND DEVOTION, NAMED RICHARD OF SAINT VICTOR

A TREATISE NAMED BENJAMIN

THE PROLOGUE

A GREAT clerk that men call [25] Richard of Saint Victor, in a book that he maketh of the study of wisdom, witnesseth and saith that two mights are in a man's soul, given of the Father of Heaven of whom all good cometh. The one is reason, the other is affection; through reason we know, and through affection we feel or love.

Of reason springeth right counsel and ghostly wits; and of affection springeth holy desires and ordained[26] feelings. And right as Rachel and Leah were both wives unto Jacob, right so man's soul through light of knowing in the reason, and sweetness of love in the affection, is spoused unto G.o.d. By Jacob is understanden G.o.d, by Rachel is understanden reason, by Leah is understanden affection.

Each of these wives, Rachel and Leah, took to them a maiden; Rachel took Bilhah, and Leah took Zilpah. Bilhah was a great jangler, and Zilpah was ever drunken and thirsty. By Bilhah is understanden imagination, the which is servant unto reason, as Bilhah was to Rachel; by Zilpah is understanden sensuality, the which is servant unto affection, as Zilpah was to Leah. And so much are these maidens needful to their ladies, that without them all this world might serve them of nought. For why, without imagination reason may not know, and without sensuality affection may not feel. And yet imagination cryeth so inconveniently[27] in the ears of our heart that, for ought that reason her lady may do, yet she may not still her. And therefore it is that oft times when we should pray, so many divers fantasies of idle and evil thoughts cry in our hearts, that on no wise we may by our own mights drive them away. And thus it is well proved that Bilhah is a foul jangler. And also the sensuality is evermore so thirsty, that all that affection her lady may feel,[28] may not yet slake her thirst. The drink that she desireth is the l.u.s.t of fleshly, kindly, and worldly delights,[29] of the which the more that she drinketh the more she thirsteth; for why, for to fill the appet.i.te of the sensuality, all this world may not suffice; and therefore it is that oft times when we pray or think on G.o.d and ghostly things, we would fain feel sweetness of love in our affection,[30] and yet we may not, for are we so busy to feed the concupiscence of our sensuality; for evermore it is greedily asking, and we have a fleshly compa.s.sion thereof. And thus it is well proved that Zilpah is evermore drunken and thirsty. And right as Leah conceived of Jacob and brought forth seven children, and Rachel conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Bilhah conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children, and Zilpah conceived of Jacob and brought forth two children; right so the affection conceiveth through the grace of G.o.d, and bringeth forth seven virtues; and also the sensuality conceiveth through the grace of G.o.d, and bringeth forth two virtues; and also the reason conceiveth through the grace of G.o.d, and bringeth forth two virtues; and also the imagination conceiveth through the grace of G.o.d, and bringeth forth two virtues, or two beholdings. And the names of their children and of their virtues shall be known by this figure that followeth: