In A Companion to Jesuit Mysticism, Robert A. Maryks provides thirteen unique essays discussing the Jesuit mystical tradition, a somewhat neglected aspect of Jesuit historiography that stretches as far back as the order’s co-founder, Ignatius of Loyola, his spiritual visions at Manresa, and ultimately the mystical perspective contained in his Spiritual Exercises. The volume’s contributions on the most significant representatives of the Jesuit mystical tradition—from Baltasar Álvarez to Louis Lallemant to Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle—aim to fill this lacuna in Jesuit historiography. Although intended primarily as a handbook for scholars seeking to further their own research in this area, the volume will undoubtedly be of interest to scholars and students of Jesuit studies more broadly.

The French mystic Jean-Joseph Surin (1600–65) was the chief exorcist during the infamous demonic possession in Loudun in 1634–37. During the exorcism, a demon entered Surin’s own soul, and the exorcist became demoniac. He spent the following eighteen years of his life mute and paralyzed. All the while his troubled mind conversed with God, and he composed hymns and poems that tried to comprehend his agony. Surin left detailed descriptions of the dramatic events that shaped his life and fascinated his fellow Jesuits. But Surin was also an author of spiritual texts, a spiritual director of souls, a poet, and a prolific correspondent. This volume is the first to offer English readers a comprehensive selection of Surin’s mystical writings.

The canon of Hispanic mysticism is expanding. No longer is our picture of this special brand of early modern devotional practice limited to a handful of venerable saints. Instead, we recognize a wide range of marginal figures as practitioners of mysticism, broadly defined. Neither do we limit the study of mysticism necessarily to the Christian religion, nor even to the realm of literature. Representations of mysticism are also found in the visual, plastic and musical arts. The terminology and theoretical framework of mysticism permeate early modern Hispanic cultures. Paradoxically, by taking a more inclusive approach to studying mysticism in its marginal manifestations, we draw mysticism---in all its complex iterations---back toward its rightful place at the center of early modern spiritual experience. Contributors: Colin Thompson, Alastair Hamilton, Christina Lee, Clara Herrera, Darcy Donahue, Elena del Rio Parra, Evelyn Toft, Fernando Duran Lopez, Piancisco Morales, Freddy Dominguez, Glyn Redworth, Jane Ackerman, Jessica Boon, Jose Adriano de Freitas Carvalho, Luce Lopez-Barat, Maria Mercedes Carrion, Maryrica Lottman, and Tess Knighton.

The Mysticism of Ordinary Life: Theology, Philosophy, and Feminism presents a new vision of Christian mystical theology. It offers critical interpretations of Catholic theologians, postmodern philosophers, and intersectional feminists who draw on mystical traditions to affirm ordinary life. It raises questions about normativity, gender, and race, while arguing that the everyday experience of the grace of divine union can be an empowering source of social transformation. It develops Christian teachings about the Word made flesh, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the Christian spiritual life, while exploring the mystical significance of philosophical discourses about immanence, alterity, in-betweenness, nothingness, and embodiment. The discussion of Latino/a and Black sources in North America expands the Western mystical canon and opens new horizons for interdisciplinary dialogue. The volume challenges contemporary culture to recognize and draw inspiration from quotidian manifestations of the unknown God of incarnate love. It includes detailed studies of Grace Jantzen, Amy Hollywood, Catherine Keller, Karl Rahner, Adrienne von Speyr, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Michel Henry, Michel de Certeau, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Gloría Anzaldúa, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Alice Walker, M. Shawn Copeland, and more.

In Jesuit Art, Mia Mochizuki considers the artistic production of the pre-suppression Society of Jesus (1540–1773) from a global perspective. Geographic and medial expansion of the standard corpus changes not only the objects under analysis, it also affects the kinds of queries that arise. Mochizuki draws upon masterpieces and material culture from around the world to assess the signature structural innovations pioneered by Jesuits in the history of the image. When the question of a ‘Jesuit style’ is rehabilitated as an inquiry into sources for a spectrum of works, the Society’s investment in the functional potential of illustrated books reveals the traits that would come to define the modern image as internally networked, technologically defined, and innately subjective.

By the time of his death in 1933 Henri Bremond, priest and member of the elite Académie française, had established himself in France, and increasingly in England and the United States, as a distinguished historian of Christian spirituality and as a Catholic modernist who helped to shake the church out of its dogmatic slumbers by embracing "pure love," artistic-poetic expression, and mystical prayer as the privileged manifestations of spiritual truth. Drawing on substantial new scholarship in France, that has resuscitated and reinterpreted Bremond's work for our own times, and that sees Bremond as an important precursor of current trends in literary interpretation as well as spirituality, Gorday surveys the entirety of Bremond's corpus of writing, setting his work in its context of his personal struggles, as well as the wider setting of French historical and cultural development.

Beginning with a personal recollection of the achievements of Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., by David L. Schinder, this work includes twelve essays by theologians who acknowledge a debt to Father Fessio and Ignatius Press. These twelve essays treat topics such as the Church as the mystical body, the liturgy, Christian apologetics in post-modern culture, public theology, analogy, Scriptural interpretation, marriage and the Trinity, theological dramatics, Pope Benedict XVI's sources, Tradition, and development of doctrine. Among the major 20th century figures treated in these essays are Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and Josef Pieper. The contributors hope that the topics of the essays represent a large swath of the interests of Father Fessio, from his early scholarly work on the Church, his commitment to liturgical renewal and Catholic catechesis, through his devotion to Ignatian spirituality and his appreciation for Thomistic philosophy, and his lifelong engagement with the theology of von Balthasar and Ratzinger.

In the wake of the French Revolution and other upheavals, Don Bosco (1815–1888) and other nineteenth-century founders and spiritual leaders contributed to the development of spiritual practices and perspectives on the Christian life that have been described as the “Salesian Pentecost.” Here are translations of and commentaries on the little-known spiritual writings of Don Bosco, his collaborators, and his contemporaries involved in the Salesian Pentecost. These diverse persons, fully engaged in apostolic ministry or occupied with the demands of ordinary life as lay women and men, were at the same time engaged in conscious spiritual practices that sought the interior exchange of the heart of Jesus for the human heart.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism brings together a team of leading international scholars to explore the origins, evolution, and contemporary debates relating to Christian mystics, texts, and the movements they inspired. Provides a comprehensive and engaging account of Christian mysticism, from its origins right up to the present day Draws on the best of current scholarship by bringing together a collection of newly-commissioned readings by leading scholars Considers examples of mysticism in both Eastern and Western Christianity Offers a brilliant synthesis of the key figures and historical periods of mysticism; its core themes, such as heresy, gender, or aesthetics; and its theoretical considerations, including theological, literary, social scientific, and philosophical approaches Features chapters on current debates such as neuroscience and mystical experience, and inter-religious dialogue

The Golden Age of Spanish mysticism has traditionally been read in terms of individual authors or theological traditions. God Made Word, however, considers early modern Spanish mysticism as a question of language and as a discourse that circulated in concrete social, institutional, and geographic spaces. Proposing a new reading of early modern Spanish mysticism, God Made Word traces the struggles over the representation of interiorized spiritual union – the tension between making it known and conveying its unknowability – far beyond the usual canon of mystic literature. Dale Shuger combines a study of genres that have traditionally been the object of literary study, including poetry, theatre, and autobiography, with a language-based analysis of other areas that have largely been studied by historians and theologians. Arguing that these generic separations grew out of an increasing preoccupation with the cultivation and control of interiorized spirituality, God Made Word shows that by tracing certain mystic representations we come to understand the emergence of different discursive rules and expectations for a wide range of representations of the ineffable.