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Mystics

The way of unknowing, in the texts themselves

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Field of Study

There is a stream in Christian theology that works by subtraction. It holds that every name we give God — good, wise, being, light — is true and yet not true, since the One named exceeds the name; and that the mind comes nearest to God not when it has understood most but when it has fallen silent. It is called the apophatic or negative way, and it runs from Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius through The Cloud of Unknowing and John of the Cross into every serious school of contemplative prayer since.

This shelf reads that stream in its primary texts, whole — not summarised, not filtered through a modern interpreter, and not excerpted down to the quotable lines. Each text is set out complete and typeset to be read, with whatever notes its translator left, and a colophon saying plainly where the text came from and what was done to it. No verdict is offered on any of it.

Only translations that are free to publish appear here in the open — public domain, or released by their translators — which is a real constraint and occasionally a painful one: the best modern rendering of a text is often the one that cannot be posted. One text on this shelf is the exception that states the rule: the Hesychios is kept in a rendering that is still in copyright, and so its door is locked — it opens for the owner of this desk and no one else.

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The Texts

9 texts

The Ascent of Mount Carmel John of the Cross, 1542–1591 — David Lewis’s public-domain translation, complete: three books and ninety-one chapters on the active night of sense and spirit. Desire is stripped of attachment; understanding passes under faith, memory under hope, and will under charity. The long work behind the short rules below, set a chapter to a page from the 1864 volume. The Cautions & the Four Counsels John of the Cross, 1542–1591 — both short rules entire, written for friars of the reform he was imprisoned for: nine cautions against the world, the devil and the flesh, in David Lewis’s 1864 translation, and four counsels on resignation, mortification, the virtues and solitude. The least literary things he wrote and the most practical — the stripping of the Ascent brought down to the twenty feet around a man. No free English of the Counsels existed, so one was made here from the Spanish and given away. The Mystical Theology Dionysius the Areopagite, c. 500 — translated by C. E. Rolt, 1920. Five chapters, complete: the ascent that leaves behind both the senses and the intellect and enters the divine Darkness. The founding text of negative theology, and the shortest — about a quarter of an hour to read. The Journey of the Mind into God Bonaventure, 1259 — translated by Oleg Bychkov. The Itinerarium Mentis in Deum entire: a prologue and seven chapters, written on Mount La Verna where Francis had received the stigmata, and built on the six wings of Francis’s Seraph. The soul climbs through God’s traces in the world, His image in the mind, and His names above, to a seventh step that is not sight but a passing over into the divine darkness — Dionysius set atop a Franciscan ladder. A modern translation, kept here for study. Homilies on Ecclesiastes Gregory of Nyssa, c. 378–381 — translated by Richard McCambly, and released by him. Eight homilies, complete, with his introduction and notes: the Preacher’s vanity of vanities read as the soul’s education — and, in the fourth homily, the ancient world’s most thorough condemnation of slavery. The Institutes and the Conferences John Cassian, c. 420–429 — twelve books and twenty-four conferences in Edgar C. S. Gibson’s 1894 translation, page by page: the desert of Egypt carried into the Latin West, and the book Benedict told his monks to read. The four passages Gibson refused to translate — on chastity, on nocturnal illusion — have been restored from Petschenig’s Latin and given away. The Showings Julian of Norwich, c. 1373–1395 — the Long Text entire, in Grace Warrack’s 1901 translation from Sloane MS 2499, with her introduction, glossary and notes. Sixteen showings received in a single night of illness and then turned over for twenty years: the hazelnut, God as Mother, the lord and the servant, and a refusal to make the problem of sin easy. The earliest surviving book in English known to be written by a woman. On Watchfulness and Holinessprivate · in copyright Hesychios of Sinai, 7th–9th century — two hundred and three chapters on nepsis, the watch kept over the heart, joined throughout to the invocation of the name of Jesus; first of the hesychast texts of the Philokalia. The English is Palmer, Sherrard & Ware’s 1979 translation, still in copyright — so this one door is locked, and opens for the owner of this desk alone. The Mystic Treatises Isaac of Nineveh, 7th century — all eighty-two chapters in A. J. Wensinck’s 1923 translation from Bedjan’s Syriac, with his introduction and registers: a bishop of the Church of the East who resigned his see for the desert, on solitude, tears, mercy wider than judgment, and the knowledge that is higher than knowledge. The longest text on the shelf by far.

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From the Bench

1 study

Works read and annotated while they wait to be set whole — summaries with quoted passages, not the texts themselves. The shelf above prints whole texts; what follows does not pretend to be one.

The Life of Moses Gregory of Nyssa, c. 390s — the ascent of Sinai read as the soul’s endless approach to an infinite God, episode by episode: summaries, key points, and passages quoted in a translation made for this page from the Greek of Migne’s columns and given away. No public-domain English of the whole exists; until one is made, this is the reading desk’s copy.