England has one of the richest and most distinctive histories of medieval mystical experience in all Europe. Resonant echoes of that history linger at places like Walsingham and Norwich.The shrine of the Holy House, destroyed at the Reformation, became one of the leading pilgrimage centres of the Christian west. It emerged out of the visions of Richeldis de Faverches, an eleventh-century Saxon noblewoman, who believed she had been instructed by the Virgin to build in Walsingham a replica of Nazareth's famous hut of the nativity. Twenty miles away in Carrow, a village just outside Norwich's city walls, the solitary anchorite Julian later explored her own profound intimations of divinity in her sensuous Revelations of Divine Love. Both women were moved profoundly to change their lives through a direct sense of personal encounter with the transcendent. They exemplify many religious and spiritual figures in England who claim to have experienced the mystery of God through ascetic discipline and contemplative longing.Vincent Gillespie here introduces some of the greatest mystics of English history: Julian; Ailred of Rievaulx; poetic visionary Richard Rolle; the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing; charismatic Margery Kempe; and Walter Hilton. He vividly places these enigmatic but always fascinating thinkers in the wider context of medieval Christian contemplation.

First collection of late medieval English mystical writing, which has been newly edited with notes and glossary.

This book is an excellent introduction to the individuals, events and currents which shaped medieval English mystical texts.

Originally published as an English translation in 1981, The Middle English Mystics is a crucial contribution to the study of the literature of English mysticism. This book surveys and analyses the language of metaphor in the writings of such mystics as Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and in such anonymous works as The Cloud of Unknowing and the Ancrene Wisse. The main emphasis of this comparative and stylistic study is not theological but rather the means by which theological concepts are communicated through language. The book sets the English mystics in perspective by establishing their place in the European mystical movement of the Middle Ages. It shows how intricate the relationship between English, and continental mysticism really is. The book suggests that there is clear links between English and German female mysticism, yet the mysticism is in the main due not so much to specific influences as to the common background of Christian theology and mysticism.

Examines the extraordinary flowering of English spirituality in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

This book is an excellent, insightful introduction to medieval English mystical texts, their authors, readers and communities. Featuring a guide to further reading and a chronology, the Companion offers an accessible overview for students of literature, history and theology.

Included in this collection of Medieval writings are Ray Petry's careful essays on the province and character of mysticism and the history of mysticism from Plato to Bernard of Clairvaux. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

These papers are the proceedings of the fourth international Exeter Symposium. They promote enquiry into, and understanding of, the medieval mystics and the cultural context to which they belong. Here, historians, literary critics, theologians, philosophers and bibliographical scholars explore ways in which the contemplative tradition was mediated and perceived in the very early and very late medieval period, and ask fundamental questions about the nature of contemporary understanding of this subject. CONTRIBUTORS: GEORGE R. KEISER, SUE ELLEN HOLBROOK, WILLIAM F. POLLARD, JAMES HOGG, SANDRA MCENTIRE, ANNE SAVAGE, PETER DINZELBACHER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PETER MOORE, ROBERT K. FORMAN

Spiritual seekers throughout history have sought illumination through solitary contemplation. In the Christian tradition, medieval England stands out for its remarkable array of hermits, recluses, and spiritual outsiders—from Cuthbert, Godric of Fichale, and Christina of Markyate to Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. In The Secret Within, Wolfgang Riehle offers the first comprehensive history of English medieval mysticism in decades—one that will appeal to anyone fascinated by mysticism as a phenomenon of religious life. In considering the origins and evolution of the English mystical tradition, Riehle begins in the twelfth century with the revival of eremitical mysticism and the early growth of the Cistercian Order in the British Isles. He then focuses in depth on the great mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—Richard Rolle (the first great English mystic), the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich. Riehle carefully grounds his narrative in the broader spiritual landscape of the Middle Ages, pointing out both prior influences dating back to Late Antiquity and corresponding developments in mysticism and theology on the Continent. He discusses the problem of possible differences between male and female spirituality and the movement of popularizing mysticism in the late Middle Ages. Filled with fresh insights, The Secret Within will be welcomed especially by teachers and students of medieval literature as well as by those engaged in historical, theological, philosophical, cultural, even anthropological and comparative studies of mysticism.