Christian Mysticism
Contemplative writers of the Christian tradition, East and West, from Augustine to John of the Cross.
- Christian MysticismThe contemplative and mystical currents of Christianity, East and West, centred on union with God in love.
- HesychasmThe Eastern Orthodox tradition of inner stillness and the Jesus Prayer, defended by Gregory Palamas.
- Carmelite mysticismThe contemplative tradition of the Carmelite order, above all Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross.
- Rhineland MysticismThe mystical movement of the fourteenth-century Rhine valley and Low Countries: Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and Ruusbroec.
- Desert MonasticismThe monks and nuns of the Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian deserts, whose sayings and practices founded Christian contemplative life.
- OrigenAlexandrian scholar and theologian, the first great Christian interpreter of scripture as a path of the soul’s ascent.
- Evagrius PonticusDesert monk who gave Christian contemplative practice its first systematic form: the eight thoughts, apatheia and pure prayer.
- John CassianMonk who brought the wisdom of the Egyptian desert to the Latin West in his Institutes and Conferences.
- Maximus the ConfessorByzantine monk and theologian of deification, for whom the reasons of all things are gathered in the divine Logos.
- Hildegard of BingenBenedictine abbess, visionary, composer and naturalist, who saw the cosmos and the body as the living work of God.
- BonaventureFranciscan theologian and mystic, whose Journey of the Mind into God maps the ascent through creatures to God.
- Catherine of SienaItalian mystic and reformer whose Dialogue records the soul’s conversation with God on truth, love and the bridge of Christ.
- Angelus SilesiusGerman poet whose rhymed couplets, The Cherubinic Wanderer, distil the mysticism of Eckhart into epigrams.
- Brother LawrenceCarmelite lay brother whose practice of the presence of God in the kitchen became a classic of everyday prayer.
- ApatheiaFreedom from the passions: for the Stoics the calm of the sage, for the desert monks the health of soul that opens into love and prayer.
- Augustine of HippoBishop and theologian whose Confessions describe the soul’s restless search for God.
- Gregory of NyssaCappadocian Father and theologian of the soul’s endless ascent into God.
- Pseudo-Dionysius the AreopagiteAnonymous author of the Mystical Theology, the classic of the Christian negative way.
- Meister EckhartDominican theologian and preacher of the ground of the soul and the Godhead.
- The author of The Cloud of UnknowingAnonymous English author of a classic guide to contemplative prayer.
- Johannes TaulerDominican preacher of Strasbourg who carried Eckhart’s teaching into the practice of the inner life.
- Jan van RuusbroecFlemish mystic who described union with God as a rest and a flowing-out at once.
- Simone WeilFrench philosopher and mystic of attention, affliction and the decreation of the self.
- Thomas MertonAmerican Trappist monk and writer on contemplation, who opened Christian monasticism to the wisdom of Asia.
- Nicholas of CusaCardinal and philosopher of learned ignorance and of God as the coincidence of opposites.
- Jacob BoehmeGerman shoemaker and visionary who taught that God reveals himself through the play of opposites.
- DetachmentThe letting go of self-will, images and attachments so that God, or the true self, can be found: Eckhart’s abegescheidenheit.
- Coincidence of oppositesThe meeting of contraries in the ultimate, beyond the reach of reason: Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum.
- Julian of NorwichEnglish anchoress and author of the Revelations of Divine Love.
- Gregory PalamasAthonite monk and archbishop of Thessalonica who defended hesychasm.
- Teresa of ÁvilaSpanish Carmelite reformer and author of The Interior Castle.
- John of the CrossSpanish Carmelite poet and theologian of the dark night.
- Apophatic theologySpeaking of God by negation: saying what God is not.
- TheōsisDeification: in Eastern Christianity, the human being’s participation in God.
- A Book of Contemplation the Which is Called The Cloud of UnknowingEvelyn Underhill’s edition, with modernized spelling and an introduction, of the anonymous fourteenth-century English guide to contemplative prayer, in which God is reached by love through a “cloud of unknowing”.
- The Interior CastleAn early twentieth-century English translation of Teresa’s Interior Castle, her account of the soul as a castle of seven dwelling places through which the soul passes in prayer, from self-knowledge to the spiritual marriage at the centre where God dwells.