Christian Spirituality vol II: Christian Spirituality in the Middle Ages,
Pierre Pourrat, S.J., tr. S.P. Jacques (Newman Pr., Westminster, MD 1953, pp. 108-129)

 III—THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF THE SCHOOL OF ST VICTOR[1]—THE SYMBOLIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD—MYSTICAL INTUITION—CONTEMPLATION AND ECSTASY

THE word mystical, with the Victorines, as with the greater number of the writers of the Middle Ages, was not used in the precise sense in which it is employed to-day, when we distinguish it from the term ascetic. It was synonymous with symbolic or with affective.

At St Victor, by mystical, in accordance with its etymology, was meant that which was hidden beneath a symbol. Mystical contemplation, then, was that which enables us to find, under the symbolism of material realities the truths which lie hidden there. The spirituality of St Victor, as we shall see, postulates a symbolic conception of the world, which comes from Platonism.

The object of contemplation—this ought also to be noticed —was not at St Victor supernatural truth alone. It was all truth. The soul begins with the contemplation of scientific truth that has been discovered by intellectual effort. Then, little by little, under the influence of grace, it is raised to the vision of divine truth.

For the mystics of the twelfth century there was no such thing as profane science ; all science is religious, for it enables us to know what God teaches through creation. The Victorines do not clearly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, nor the object of philosophy from that of faith, although this distinction is in their mind.[2] Has not the whole of the universe been restored by Christ? Also, according to them, contemplation of revealed truth is the continuation, the perfecting of natural truths. The mystical writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries carefully distinguished between mystical contemplation and the contemplation of scientific truths. They deal exclusively with the first. The theologians of St Victor proceeded differently.

The mystical system of the Victorines comprises three parts : the symbolic conception of the universe, which is the basis ; intuitive meditation, which is its method ; and contemplation, which completes it.

Scholastic science, Aristotelian—as we shall see—studies things in themselves as realities. It proceeds by induction in tracing back from the effect to its cause, or by deduction in passing from the principle to its consequence. It makes use of the syllogism as the means by which it strives to attain to reality.

The Victorines, on the contrary, are intuitive : they go directly to the true by meditation and contemplation without passing through the series of more or less complicated discursive acts of the syllogism ; for they looked upon created beings less as realities than as symbols of divine teaching. The sensible world hides invisible realities ; what should be studied is not sensible beings in themselves but the teaching which they contain.

The Symbolistic Conception of the Universe.

The mysticism of the Middle Ages, in fact, looks upon the world as a symbol.

The Christian school of Alexandria, which in the third century was directed by Clement and Origen, had already accustomed minds to seek, beneath the literal sense of a writing or the appearances of an object, deeper and more mysterious realities.

This symbolism was first of all employed in biblical exegesis, and then applied a little to everything. St Ambrose, St Augustine, St Gregory the Great, to mention only the principal allegorists, see in almost all things symbols of vice or virtue. Material beings are like words that express a divine thought to be discovered. It is unnecessary to state that this symbolism is that of the pseudo-Dionysius, the oracle of the Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, also, there were many who looked upon the world as a symbol and each being as expressing an idea of the Word, an idea which it was necessary to evolve by means of mystical contemplation.[3]

Here, for example, is the conception of the universe that was formed at St Victor.

The works of God in the world were narrowed to the creation and to the restoration of creatures through the incarnation. The creation is the work of the Word, it is his outward utterance. Every creature is the sensible expression of a thought of the Son of God ; it is a word which signifies this thought. Each being then contains hidden a divine thought. The whole of created beings together is like an immense book which contains the teachings of God. In a book two things may be considered : the beauty of the letters and the thoughts which they express. Our eyes admire the competence of the calligrapher, and our reason takes pleasure in the ideas which the writer has expressed. Our sight and our intelligence are thus equally charmed. Material beings are the words which make manifest the thoughts of God, they are the marvellous symbols which hide the heavenly teachings.

The Creator has endowed the human soul with a twofold sense ; an outward sense capable of seeing and admiring the beauty of material realities, and an inward sense wholly spiritual, which is able to penetrate beyond material things in order to discover the idea which they conceal.[4] Man alone is so constituted as to be able to contemplate visible realities and those which lie hidden from the senses. The angel is able to see only that which is immaterial. The animal perceives only the sensible. Man, who is both matter and spirit, knows material beings, discerns their beauty and understands also what they signify. He can both admire the wonderful art with which the Creator has formed the letters of the great book of creation, and disclose the thoughts which are expressed by them. Man, therefore, ought to praise God in his work, praise him because of the magnificence of the material world, and because of the wonderful teaching which can be discovered there.[5]

Thus should man, by this spectacle of the universe, be moved to glorify and love the Lord. If, indeed, our first parents had not sinned we should have been raised without effort or difficulty from the sensible to the intelligible. We should easily have discovered, beneath the material envelope of creatures, the truths which lie hidden therein. The symbolism of the world would not have been a secret for us, and our hearts, filled with acknowledgement and love, would have ascended towards God by means of sensible beings.

But sin disturbed this primitive plan. Since the fall man became the slave of his senses. His intelligence had weakened. It was no longer able to be raised to the divine idea which creatures expressed. It was almost always arrested at the material element, the sensible symbol, without attaining to the truth symbolized. Creation thus became a dangerous book because wrongly read, and far from guiding the soul to God it misled it by inclining it to remain fixed in the sensible as though it were its final end instead of only a means of approaching the Creator.

The work of God, then, required to be restored, to be, so to speak, remade. The divine Word remade his work by becoming Incarnate.

By the Incarnation God offered to man a new sign by which to arrive at the knowledge of invisible realities. The humanity of Christ was added to the world in order to show God to man. Through it we approach the Word which it hides. It enlightens our ailing sight with the light of faith, and thus it brings us out of the darkness into which sin has plunged us.[6] It proffers itself as an admirable model to be imitated, which our outward senses are able to study, and it leads our inward senses, illumined by faith, to the divinity which it conceals.

The Incarnation then redresses the fall by teaching us to raise ourselves to God by the help of the sensible.

“The Word took flesh without losing the divinity, and he offered himself to man like a book written within and without : externally by the humanity, and internally by the divinity, in order that he might be read outwardly by imitation, and inwardly by contemplation ; outwardly in order to heal us, and inwardly to lead us to happiness. . . . Inwardly we read, In the beginning was the Word (John 1, I); outwardly, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1, 14). This book then is unique, written once within and twice without : first, by the creation of the visible world, and then by the Incarnation ; the first time in order to afford us a pleasurable sight ; the second, to heal us ; the first, in order to create nature ; the second, to redress the fall.”[7]

The Word Incarnate has completed this restoration of fallen humanity by the institution of the Sacraments. These accustom man to perceive with the eyes of faith beneath the material appearances of rites, the invisible reality of which is hidden, like remedies in vessels. They thus teach him to raise himself from the sensible to the spiritual. The sacramental rite is not only, like ordinary sensible beings, a symbol which hides the divine thought, it is also a vessel which contains grace (vases cunt spiritualis gratiae sacramenta).[8] It possesses in itself wherewith to heal man wounded by original sin ; it is filled with that which is divine.

The efficacy of the Sacraments is the triumph of mysticism which strives to find God through sensible beings.

The world is not only a great book written by the very hand of God; it is also a mirror which reflects the divine. thought and in which it may be contemplated. The mystical writers of the Middle Ages loved to make use of the term mirror (speculum) as a title for their works. The symbolical explanation of ecclesiastical rites, and of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass, placed in the appendix to the works of Hugh of St Victor, bear the name of the mirror, “because we may there contemplate the mystical image of each rite of the Church.”[9] The great encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages, the work of the famous Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, is entitled the Great Mirror (Speculum Majus).[10] In fact, is not the whole world a great mirror in which is seen the thought of God?

The divine thought is to be sought, first of all, in Holy Writ, by allegorical interpretation. The Middle Ages are in no way inferior to the patristic period in their exaggerated attachment to the mystical sense of the sacred text. The word of God does not appear to them to be expressed by the literal meaning of the words ; they must be discerned by an allegory. Hugh of St Victor notices, as well as censures, those “doctors of the allegorical sense” who entirely despise the literal study of the Bible.

“ We read the Scriptures, they say, but without being bound to the letter. We take no heed of the literal sense ; that which we teach is the allegorical sense. . . . We read, no doubt, the letter of the text, but without stopping at the grammatical sense of the words. For it is the allegory which we are seeking, and we explain the expressions not according to their literal meaning but their allegorical. . . . Thus the word lion literally indicates an animal, and allegorically it indicates Christ. For us, therefore, the word lion denotes purely and simply Christ.”[11]

It is not astonishing to find, side by side with most interesting mystical commentaries, such as those of Hugh on different parts of the Bible[12] and of Richard of St Victor on the Psalms ,[13] others in which the allegorical subtleties sur- prise us much more than they edify.

Honorius of Autun remarks, for example, that the Psalter contains one hundred and fifty psalms, for, he says, “as at the time of the deluge the world was washed from its sins by one hundred and fifty days of flood, so is the penitent Church cleansed in tears from its faults by reciting the hundred and fifty psalms.”[14] It is useless to multiply quotations of this kind.

Since the material world as a whole is looked upon as a discourse of the Word, each being of which is a word,[15] the task of the mystic then is to discover the eternal truths which God has willed each thing to express.

With this end in view there was drawn up in the Middle Ages a regular mystical Natural History[16] which the preachers and the artists who adorned our cathedrals turned to account. Minerals, plants and animals are there represented as symbols of Christian realities.

St Francis de Sales must surely have read these curious writings. He discovered there naive and charming comparisons, drawn from real or imaginary properties of minerals and plants, as well as from true or legendary habits of animals, which delight the reader of the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise of the Love of God.

Among minerals are the precious stones which, by their varied colours, best symbolize supernatural realities. Marbod, Bishop of Rennes (1123), at the end of his book Liber de gemmis, explains the mystical symbolism which he finds in the twelve precious stones which were part of the outer wall of the new Jerusalem (Apoc. xxi, 19-20).[17] Jasper, green in colour, signifies living faith, vigorous and full of verdure. Sapphire, the colour of the sky, represents Christians who, think unceasingly of their heavenly country. Every stone is the symbol of a Christian virtue.

Plants and their fruits also provide easy and abundant themes for mystical writers. Roses call to mind the blood of the martyrs, when red, and when white the purity of virgins.[18] Honorius of Autun, in a sermon on the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, explains the symbolism of the nut a propos of the rod of Aaron placed by Moses in the tabernacle of the testimony, miraculously budding and blossoming and bringing forth fruit (Num. xvii, 8).

“The rod of Aaron,” he said, “ is an image of the Virgin Mary, who produced a sweet almond by bringing into the world a God-Man. The almond is, in fact, the symbol of Christ. The green envelope which covers it is his flesh; the shell is his bones ; the kernel is his soul. The sweet savour of the inside of the nut, with which man is nourished, is his divinity. The nut is divided by means of a partition in the form of a cross which symbolizes the separation of the soul and body of Christ on the cross. This mystical nut is the food of the elect, it constitutes the banquet of all the choirs of angels.”[19]

The poor man in his cottage and the monk in the refectory of his convent were equally edified, whilst taking their meal, by this symbolic teaching which they had heard explained in the sermon on Sunday.

But it is zoology which most took the fancy of the mystics of the Middle Ages. The marvellous and more or less legendary habits which the ancient naturalists[20] attributed to animals were singularly favourable to moral reflections. In the Bestiaries the animals of creation, real or fabulous, are like so many symbols of the Christian virtues or of the truths of faith. It was, in a measure, a method of teaching by image, so useful to the unlettered.

“ Do not accuse me of levity,” we read in the Prologue to the De bestiis et aliis rebus,[21] “ because I describe the vulture and the dove. . . . What writing is to the scholar, the image is for the ignorant. In the same way that the learned man enjoys the elegance of style, so are the simple captivated by the simplicity of image.” “ One of the faithful, while assisting at Mass in a cathedral, kneeling near a column, sees sculptured there at the base a reptile with one ear placed against the ground and stopping the other up with the end of his tail : It is the asp, the emblem of prudence.” The asp is a kind of very venomous viper that lives in caves. In order to kill it it must be charmed and thus lured from its hole. “ It is related,” says a Bestiary, “ that when the asp begins to hear the charmer who desires to draw it out of its cave with his chanting, in order not to run the risk of going out it leans one ear down on the ground and stops up the other with the end of its tail. It thus renders itself insensible to the magical accents and does not surrender to the charmer. . . .[22] We must imitate the asp and close our ears to the songs of the sirens—that is to say, to the solicitations of pleasure and the deceitful charms of the passions in order to be, according to the advice of the Lord, as prudent as serpents.”[23]

If from the base of the columns the worshipper should raise his eyes to the windows he would see represented there the symbolic legend of the bird called caradius or charadius.

“ This bird is entirely white,” says Honorius of Autun in his sermon for the Ascension. “ It is allowed to know if sick persons are to be cured or not. When it approaches a sick man, if he is to die, the bird turns away its head. If he is to live the caradius fixes him with a solemn eye, places his beak close to his mouth and breathes in the sickness.[24] He then flies into the air, is exposed to the rays of the sun and discharges, by perspiration, the malady that he has absorbed. The sick man rejoices at his return to health. The white caradius symbolizes Christ, born of the Virgin, who has been sent by his Father to the human race that is sick. The Saviour has turned his face away from the Jews whom he has left in death, and he has turned towards us. He has snatched us from death by bearing our malady on the cross and shedding his sweat of blood. He has afterwards flown with our humanity to his Father in the highest heaven, giving us all eternal life.”[25]

Not far from the caradius is .seen another window in which a young girl is represented mounted on an animal ;[26] it is the fabulous history of the unicorn used as a symbol of the Incarnation. The unicorn is an animal possessing great strength, with a horn in the middle of its forehead, and it is very wild. Only a virgin can master it. As soon as the unicorn sees the young maiden who calls it, it comes to her and allows itself to be taken. In like manner the Virgin Mary alone was able to draw down the Son of God who assumed human form, rested on her breast, and thus allowed himself to be taken by man.[27]

The greater number of animals were thus put before Christians as clever symbols representing the truths of faith.[28]

Finally—and this does not surprise us—it was in the Middle Ages that there appeared the symbolical interpretation of liturgical ceremonies. Amalarius of Metz, in the ninth century, inaugurated these mystical studies of the liturgy.[29] But in the twelfth century liturgists[30] entirely forgot the historical meaning of Christian rites; they were willing only to admit the mystical sense. At seems hardly necessary to state that it often happened that they were inclined to accentuate the subtleties of liturgical symbolism. This exaggeration itself tends once Tore to show the state of mind .at this period. Reality is ‘nothing in itself ; it is only a veil which must be raised, an envelope which must be broken, in order to attain to that which is spiritual and catch a glimpse of God.

Let us see, for example, the mystical teachings which Honorius of Autun finds in the sequence of the different hours of the canonical office :

“ The day,” he says, “ represents the life of each one of us; the different ages correspond with the divers hours at which man, taught by the law of God, labours in the vineyard of the Lord (Matt. xx, 1-16).

“ Lauds reminds us of infancy when we emerged from the night in order to see light when our mothers brought us into the world. It is right to praise God at this hour when we rejoice at having passed, through baptism, from the darkness of error to the light of truth. Prime makes us think of youth, the period when we began to study. Very rightly do we praise God at this time when we were initiated in the divine service. Terce is adolescence, the age for the reception of minor orders. With good reason do we glorify God at this hour when we became his ministers. Sext is the strength of early manhood at which we were promoted to the orders of the diaconate and the priesthood. At this hour, above all, should we bless God for having established us as heads and masters of his people. None makes us think of the decline of life, the age when most of us are laden with some ecclesiastical dignity as with a heavy burden. Is it not meet to glorify God at this hour in which it has pleased him to set us over his people? Vespers represents old age in which many among us, as though living in vanity, having rested all the day idle, begin to be more fervent (Matt. xx, 6). Should we not praise God and thank him for having placed us among those that celebrate his glory? At Cornpline we prepare for the end of life by confession and penitence in which we hone to be saved.”[31]

Similar mystical reflections are made concerning the sacred vestments of the ecclesiastical ministers a propos of the ceremonies and prayers of the Mass, the different objects of devotion, and furniture of the church. For sacred things, even more than ordinary material things, are the expression of some divine teaching.

2. Intuitive Meditation.

What is the method to be followed in order to raise ourselves from the visible to the invisible, and to discover in created beings the mind of God, so that we may profit by it and reach perfection?

This cannot be, surely, by pure dialectics. The idea of the world that is suggested by syllogistic deduction is different from that of the mystics. Intuition and contemplation are better means of finding, beneath the material surface of creatures, the thought that God has desired to express through them.

The Christian who is desirous of knowing God, of loving him and of attaining to holiness should act then in regard to created things as does the artist before a work of art.

The artist begins by examining the work in front of him in order to notice its details; in a word, to read it.[32] Then he reflects, meditates and endeavours to discover, with an intuitive eye, the idea which the painter if it be a picture, the sculptor if it be a statue, or the architect if it be a building, has wished to express. When this idea has been found he contemplates it with love ; he is in ecstasy, so to speak, at the happy manner in which it has been expressed.

Created beings are the chefs d’oeuvre through which God has made manifest his thoughts. We must read them and examine them with attention. Reading is the beginning of knowledge; it is also the first condition for mystical yearning. It gives to the intelligence the first notion as to the meaning of a writing; it is by means of it also that sensible images of creatures penetrate the soul and incite the mind to seek the truth which they conceal. Reading precedes meditation and renders it possible.

In meditation the mind makes an effort to discover the divine thought hidden beneath the veils of sensible images or the surface of holy writings. The truth is presented to us, imprisoned, as it were, in the sensible and enveloped in darkness—we must free it and bring it fully to light. This results from the meditative effort of the soul. It is thus that we learn what it is that God commands us to do in order to avoid vice and practise virtue.[33]

But before we reach contemplation it is necessary that we should conform our life to the teachings discovered in meditation.

The vision of the truth is the work of moral purification and the perfecting of the soul, as much as of intellectual activity. The knowledge of the true ought to be transformed into love and the practice of goodness. Moreover, is not study itself a kind of pious exercise by which we become detached from evil in order to attain to God and to be united to him? To be instructed and to be edified is all one. Did not Plato say that to know leads of itself to goodness and virtue?

In order to become better, doubtless we have need of grace, but we obtain it through prayer. Therefore, after meditating we should pray ; then, by the help of God we shall devote ourselves resolutely and without ceasing—for to stop is to go back—to the practice of what is good.[34]

We thus arrive at contemplation, in which our souls are enkindled with the flames of divine love.

According to Hugh of St Victor, therefore, there are five mystical stages to be surmounted in order to reach perfection such as he conceives it : reading, meditation, prayer, progress in goodness, and finally loving contemplation.

In this spiritual ascension towards God the soul experiences a work of purification which at times is very difficult. The first step in meditation coincides with a violent agitation of the passions, which casts a shadow over truth and renders the seeking of it toilsome. Then, when the soul has succeeded in mastering its senses and has arrived at the discovery of truth, it is seized with joy at finding it and quivers with admiration. Finally, in contemplation it feels a great calm and tastes the inebriating joys of divine love.[35]

Hugh of St Victor understands how to find striking comparisons in order to show forth this teaching :

“In meditation,” he says, “ there is a kind of struggle between ignorance and knowledge. The light of truth is still obscured by the smoke of error, like fire which catches green wood with difficulty, but when fanned by a strong wind flares up and begins to blaze in the midst of black volumes of smoke. Little by little the burning increases, the moisture of the wood is absorbed, the smoke disappears, arid the flame, with a sudden outburst, spreads, crackling and conquering, to the whole log. . . . But when all is burnt and the wood has entirely assumed the appearance and properties of the fire, all noise and crackling are arrested. . . . This violent and devouring flame, after having reduced everything to submission and assimilated all, maintains a deep silence and great peace, because it finds nothing different from itself or contrary to its nature. We thus see first fire with flame and smoke, then fire with flame and no smoke, lastly fire with neither flame nor smoke.

“ Our carnal heart is like green wood; it is still soaked with the moisture of concupiscence. If it receive some spark of the fear of God or of divine love the smoke of evil desires and rebellious passions first of all arises. Then the soul becomes strengthened, the flame of love becomes more ardent and more bright, and soon the smoke of passion disappears, and the mind, thus purified, is lifted up to the contemplation of truth. Finally, when by constant contemplation the heart has become penetrated with truth, when it has attained to the very source of the sovereign truth in all its ardour, when it has been kindled by it, and when it has become transformed into the fire of divine love it feels neither distress nor agitation any more. It has found tranquillity and peace.

“ Thus, at the beginning, when, in the midst of dangerous temptations, the soul seeks enlightenment in meditation, there is the smoke and flame. Afterwards, when it is purified and begins to contemplate the truth, there is flame without smoke. Then, when it has fully found the truth and charity is perfected within it, it has no longer anything to seek ; it rests sweetly in the tranquillity and in the fire of divine love. It is the fire without either smoke or flame.”[36]

The author of the Imitation of Christ recommends a similar method of reaching to the knowledge of goodness and to the love of God.

“ Happy,” he says, “ is he whom Truth himself teaches, not in figure and passing words, but as he himself is. Our reason and our senses often fail us and perceive but little. . . . He to whom the Eternal Word speaks is set free from many opinions. All things come from the only Word and all things speak of him. He is the beginning who also speaks unto us (John viii, 25). Without him no man understandeth or judgeth rightly.”[37]

Every truth, he teaches, springs from the Eternal Word. We can only have a knowledge of it by participating in the uncreated light of the Son of God. But in order to participate in this light of the Word, to discover easily the truth, we must purify ourselves, free ourselves from all unruly affection and from all self-seeking. For the more we are recollected within and free from outward things the greater the number of lofty truths that we comprehend without effort, because we receive the light of understanding from on high.[38] The soul, thus purified and detached from itself, may be united to the Word and become one with it. “ 0 Truth who art God, grant me to be one[39] with thee in love eternal. Often am I weary of reading and hearing many things ; in-thee is all my will and my desire. Let all teachers hold their peace. Let all creatures keep silence before thee. Do thou alone speak to me !”[40]

3. Mystical Contemplation and Ecstasy according to the School of St Victor.

It is in the writings of Richard[41] that the theory of contemplation and ecstasy is completely synthesized. The elements of it were constructed by Hugh, but they remained scattered through his works.

According to the Victorines—as we have already noticed—contemplation is first of all philosophical : the natural faculties alone of man have worked towards it. Then, little by little, beneath the action of grace, the soul is raised to the consideration of the truths of faith until it reach mystical union and ecstasy, if called thereto.

At St Victor, as we know, there was no division, as is the case to-day, between the domains of philosophy and theology. Mysticism was the final goal of all knowledge. Science, in fact, properly understood, turns into love.

In a very general sense, contemplation is a clear insight into truth, accompanied by lively sentiments of joy which the perception of the beauty of this truth brings to the soul. Exact knowledge of truth and the blissful admiration which it brings about, such are the essential elements of contemplation.

It is thus distinguished from simple reflection (cogitatio) and from meditation (meditatio), the object of which is the seeking of truth. One who meditates labours to find the true, the contemplative rejoices in the possession of it. In meditation the mind reflects on a particular point ; in contemplation it embraces in one glance a great number of truths ; and when perfection is reached it lovingly contemplates the Creator himself.[42]

Richard endeavours to describe the divers motions of the mind which contemplates truth.

He compares them to the varying flight of different birds. It is noticed, he says, that there are some birds that rise very high is the air and then plunge, a moment later, towards the earth; they renew this double movement continuously. Others incline successively right and left. Some go backward or forward. Some there are that describe circles varying in circumference. Finally, some are seen to rest, as it were, suspended in the air in a motionless state, or have the appearance of remaining still.

In contemplation the mind has movements as varied. Sometimes it goes from the genus to the species or from the whole to the part—this is the movement up and down ; or it goes from a point to its opposite—this is the movement to right and left ; or it passes from cause to effect—this is the movement backwards and forwards ; or it surveys the accidents that surround the substance—this is the circular movement ; or finally it becomes fixed in a motionless and silent consideration of the truth. The mind of each contemplative is impressed with the movement which is most in keeping with his nature and his temperament.[43]

The degree of contemplation is so much the higher as its object is the more perfect and its admiration the more increased.

Richard counts six degrees or six species of contemplation, which correspond, according to him, to the six stages of the sanctification of the soul, and appear to him to summarize the whole spiritual life.

The first degree of contemplation, and the lowest, consists in the consideration and the admiration of corporeal beings which strike the senses. The ignorant, those that are at the beginning of Christian life, are hardly capable of contemplating the material world and of admiring the power and wisdom of the Creator. If they have the good will they will rise little by little to the higher degrees of contemplation.

From considering the spectacle of nature man comes to find the reason for the existence of material things. He discerns the cause of them, their order and their use. The plan of the world becomes apparent to him, and he is enraptured with its beauty. Such is the second degree of contemplation.

In the third man is raised to a knowledge of the immaterial by the aid of reason. Visible things are the reflection of invisible realities ; they make us know, according to the words of St Paul, that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made (Rom. i, 20). The mind makes use of the images of material beings as a kind of “ ladder “ in order to mount to the consideration of spiritual realities. Man, having reached this degree of contemplation, begins to become spiritual; he strives to free himself from that which is earthly in order to fly towards that which is heavenly. The divine light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world (John i, 9) sends its rays on him, illumines him and makes him to know the spiritual world that lies beyond the world of matter.

Continuing his ascent, man is raised to the fourth degree—that is to say, to the region of invisible and incorporeal substances, which are the soul and the angelic spirits. The imagination is nothing here, for the intelligence no longer makes use of material images in order to reflect. The spiritual soul studies itself, retires within itself, gains knowledge of itself, and admires the beauty with which the Creator has adorned it. It forms for itself an idea, as exact as possible, of the angels, always without the help of any image, but with the help of the reason alone.[44]

Until now we have not met with mystical contemplation, properly so-called. That which has just been set forth is concerned rather with the preparation of the soul for contemplation than with contemplation itself. Those which Richard calls degrees of contemplation are in reality only the approach to it. “ In the two first degrees,” he explains, “ we are instructed in outward and corporeal things ; in the two following we reach a knowledge of invisible and spiritual creatures ; in the last two we are finally raised to the perception of super-celestial and divine realities.”[45]

St Thomas Aquinas is more precise in that he reserves the term contemplation for the consideration of the one divine truth exclusively. The consideration of created beings may lead to contemplation, but does not constitute it.

It is therefore when he treats of the fifth and sixth degrees of contemplation that Richard really expounds his mystical theology.

Raised at length to these heights “we come to know, through divine revelation, truth which no human reason can fully understand and no reasoning can enable us to discover with certainty. Such are the teachings of the divine scriptures on the nature of God and the simplicity of his essence.”[46]

Those truths, the contemplation of which belongs to the fifth degree, are simply beyond reason. In the sixth degree the truth contemplated is not only above reason, but it seems to be opposed to it, like the mystery of the Trinity. Here the divine light makes us to know realities which, in appearance, are repugnant to human reason.[47]

This kind of contemplation demands that the human mind should become in a manner angelic.[48] It necessitates in the contemplative, above all, great purity of heart.

“ In my opinion,” Richard declares, “ in order to reach this contemplation compunction of heart is more needed than deep investigations of the mind, yearning of the soul more than reasoning, groanings more than proofs. We know, indeed, that nothing renders the heart more pure, nothing brings greater purity of soul, nothing more effectively drives away the clouds of error, nothing gives greater calm than true repentance and compunction. What in fact does the Scripture say ? Blessed are the clean of heart, for they sball see God (Matt. v, 8). Let him, therefore, who desires to see God and to reach the contemplation of things divine, strive to purify the heart.”[49]

To contemplate the truths of faith, to fathom them and to take sweet delight in their beauties and sublimities is a wholly supernatural favour reserved for the perfect, and is the fruit of a special grace which is not given to all.[50] One of the conditions is an extended acquaintance of the mind with heavenly matters. And even he who is thus prepared for it cannot attain to it by his own effort. God himself must raise him to this sublime state.[51] We may have an earnest (desire to experience these signal benefits ; we shall obtain them if it please God by prayer. In any case we must always hold our souls ready to receive them.[52]

Richard makes mystical contemplation consist in the vision of God and in the intimate and beatific union of the soul with him. The object of this contemplation is God himself : God considered in the unity of his nature and in his attributes, God considered in the Trinity of his persons. The divine Trinity, according to Richard, is shown to those that have reached the last degree of contemplation, in which the mind, supernaturally enlightened, perceives truths contrary in appearance to human reason.[53]

In contemplation the intelligence is raised to a means of knowledge higher than that which is natural to it : Intelligentiae vivacitas divinitus irradiata humane industriae metal transcendit.[54] It is enlightened by the divine light itself, which, like a dazzling sun, transforms the pale dawn of reason into the light of day.[55]

Richard makes use of the term “ revelation “ to indicate this manifestation of divine light in the soul.[56] He compares it to the prophetic illumination so frequent in the Old Testament.[57] He also uses the expression “ divine inspiration “ to describe the illuminating action of God in the contemplative. At the moment of contemplation “ the breath of divine inspiration “ (divinae inspirations aura) drives away the darkness of the mind and makes “ the rays of the true sun to shine.”[58] And when “ the intelligence is opened by means of this divine inspiration the prophetic grace is, in a way, renewed.”[59]

Doubtless, inspiration and revelation do not teach the contemplative new truths which were not already in the deposit of Christian revelation ; but there is revelation in the etymological sense. Divine truths are unveiled to the contemplative much more completely than to those that know them by the ordinary means of faith. And even occasionally the veil may fall altogether, and vision of divine realities be produced.

This vision is purely- intellectual. Imagination would only be a hindrance, for all sensible representation is essentially unfitted for perception of the divinity. Besides, contemplative vision is ecstatic ; it requires the alienation of sense and the suspension of the faculties of the soul.[60]

The Patriarch Abraham, seated at the door of his tent ready to receive the visit of the angels (Gen. xviii), and the prophet Elias at the entrance of his cave awaiting the passing of God (3 Kings xix) are types of the contemplative who sighs after the coming of the Lord.[61] When he feels him approach “ he goes out of his tent [by ecstasy] and casts himself down before the Lord, and being outside he sees him face to face, and rapt outside of himself in ecstasy he contemplates the light of the, sovereign wisdom unveiled, unshadowed by figures, not as through a glass in a dark manner, but in plain truth, if I dare to speak thus.”[62]

Often enough Richard contrasts the knowledge acquired by faith with that which is brought about by ecstasy.[63] Faith perceives things through a mirror, contemplation sees them without shadow.

“Although contemplation and speculation (speculatio) are taken one for the other, and the language of Scripture confuses them, nevertheless our expressions are more appropriate and become more precise when we call speculation the seeing of truth through a glass and contemplation the vision of truth in its purity without veil or shadow.”[64]

The hills which, according to the Psalmist (Ps. cxiii, 4), skip like lambs, symbolize the speculatives who consider the heavenly mysteries only in a glass in a dark manner. But the mountains which skip like rams are the contemplatives who, in their ecstasy, see the divine realities in their pure and simple truth (in Pura et simplici veritate vident quod minores . . . vix per speculum et in aenigmate videre valent).[65]

Richard differs then markedly from St Bernard, to whom the mystical vision takes place through the veil of images. He maintains the tradition of St Augustine and of the Areopagite, according to which the mystic sees the sovereign Truth directly, without mediation. Later on we find, in St Thomas Aquinas, a strong reaction against this claim of the mystics to the direct vision of God in their raptures.

Man, in this vision, learns many things which he is powerless to express when, the mystical state having ceased, he returns to his ordinary condition.[66]

At the moment when it sees God the soul becomes united with him in the intoxication of love inexpressible. The terms made use of by Richard in order to express the charm of this union yield nothing in strength to those of St Bernard.[67] Contemplation is the work of charity. Like all mystics, the Victorines sang the praises of divine love. Within the cloisters of the Abbey of St Victor, as in those of Clairvaux, ardent hymns in honour of heavenly charity resounded.[68] The twelfth century perhaps is the period in which the celebration of mystical love reached its highest point.

Contemplation is specially helpful in averting evil, in making rapid progress in virtue, in becoming detached from the world in order to restore a yearning for heaven.[69]

It is very uncertain. Sometimes God grants this favour to the soul, at others the blessing is withdrawn, only to be granted again afterwards in greater measure.[70]

According to Richard, true contemplation is ecstatic.

In the last two books of Benjamin major, also, he treats of ecstasy at length in connection with the two highest degrees of contemplation.

In fact, there is a certain amount of ecstasy in all rather intense contemplation. When the soul is in the presence of a beautiful sight, whatever it may be, it is seized with admiration ; it is as though outside itself and insensible to things around it. Thus understood, ecstasy may be produced by the sight of a lovely landscape or by any other vision of nature.[71]

But what is important for us to know is what Richard thought of true ecstasy, of that supernatural ecstasy which God grants to holy souls, raised to mystical contemplation. He looks upon it as a state in which the soul becomes a stranger to itself (alienatio mentis):

“ Contemplation,” he says, “ takes place occasionally by the alienation of ;he soul, which is produced when the soul loses the remembrance of things present and, transformed by divine action, acquires a new and unwonted state, that is naturally inaccessible.”[72] In ecstasy the soul is outside itself, mentis excessus, to the extent of forgetting not only outward things but also what is passing within during this supernatural phenomenon.

“ When,” adds Richard, “ we are violently raised to the contemplation of divine realities in ecstasy, immediately we forget all that is around us and that is within us. And when we return to ourselves from this sublime state we are incapable of recalling that which we have contemplated in the brightness of the heavenly truth.”[73]

Mystics favoured with ecstasy have all declared, like St Paul (i Cor. xii, 4), that they heard in their raptures words ineffable.

Alienation of the soul in ecstasy admits of degrees. The lowest of these is that in which the use of the corporeal senses is suspended. The ecstatic is so absorbed by the contemplation that he does not see anything in front of him and hears nothing when spoken to. The imagination, nevertheless, retains the power of producing images. At times—in the second degree—the imagination is completely bound and incapable of action. Finally, the intelligence itself may find it impossible to reflect or to exert itself. Flooded with the heavenly light it can only receive what God lets it know. Richard states that he is unable to be more precise as regards this highest degree of ecstasy.[74]

He describes, on the other hand, at some length, the causes, or rather the occasions, of ecstatic contemplation, for the true cause can only be divine grace. Ecstasy is produced sometimes through intensity of love, at others through the greatness of admiration, at others, lastly, by the extreme joy experienced by the soul.

“ Intense love,” he says, “ produces ecstasy when the soul is so enkindled with the fire of heavenly desire that the flame of divine love, growing within it in an unusual way, liquefies it like wax,[75] renders it light like smoke and causes it to rise to the heavenly regions.”

Admiration is ecstatic when the soul, penetrated by the rays of divine light and seized with surprise at the sight of celestial beauty, is smitten with such stupor that it is wholly thrown outside itself. The sight of the beauty which it sees brings about, by way of contrast, a great contempt of itself and inclines it at first to humble itself. But soon the desire for the joys of on high causes it to rebound, raises it above itself and carries it to the sublime regions.

Finally, intense joy throws a man into ecstasy when his heart, overwhelmed by inward sweetness, inebriated even by it, entirely forgetting what it is and what it has been, is rapt outside itself by the fulness of the intoxication and finds itself suddenly filled with divine love, feeling at the same time an ineffable joy.[76]

• The gift of ecstasy’ is bestowed very unequally among fervent souls. With some the ecstatic phenomena are most rare ; they are only produced after long waiting. Others experience them almost at will.[77] I am inclined to think that on this last point Richard somewhat exaggerates. Is not ecstasy a state to which we are unable to attain by our own effort?

Richard is one of the mystical writers who has given the greatest number of details as to contemplation and ecstasy. It has therefore been felt necessary to assign him an important place in this history of spirituality.

It is to be regretted that the reading of his works is no easy task. His style is strained. In fact, the description of mystical states is always laborious. The expressions often lack the power to make us grasp those realities which come within the experience of but a small number of Christians. Above all, Richard is a subtle symbolist, like all the mystics of his time. He sees figures and symbols of contemplation in the least details of the Old Testament, even at the risk of tiring the reader. Here is an example :

“ It seems to me,” he says, “ that Moses gave a mystical description of the six degrees of contemplation when, from instructions from the Lord, he disclosed the plan of the ark of the old covenant. The first degree is typified by the making of the parts of the ark, which were of wood ; the second, by the gildings with which they were adorned; the third, by the crown round about the ark ; the fourth, by the mercy seat ; the fifth and sixth, by the two Cherubim which overshadowed the mercy seat.”[78]

In spite of these three undoubted imperfections Richard was looked upon, in the Middle Ages, as a great mystic. St Thomas Aquinas often quotes him as an incontestable authority, as great as Dionysius the Areopagite or St Gregory the Great.

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