The Complete Cloud of Unknowing E-Book

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The Christian mystical tradition has its roots in Holy Scripture but was enunciated most clearly by the late 5th century author writing under the name Dionysius the Areopagite. It was acquaintance with the medieval version of that work which inspired the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and led him to develop his insights and perceptions of the obscurity and "unknowability" of God. His understanding was that God was on an entirely different plane of existence from human beings—indeed, so different that time-bound human language was inadequate to describe God exhaustively or accurately. Intellect and emotion both fail in seeking God, who can only be encountered by rejecting of all common earthly means in a "cloud of forgetting" and the discovery of Godself in the dark "cloud of unknowing" which can be pierced only with a "lance of longing love."

Leseprobe

THE COMPLETE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

PARACLETE

GIANTS

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

Each Paraclete Giant presents collected works of one of Christianity’s greatest writers—“giants” of the faith.These essential volumes share the pivotal teachings of leading Christian figures throughout history with today’s theological students and all people seeking spiritual wisdom.

Also in this Series…

THE COMPLETE FÉNELON

Edited with translations by Robert J. Edmonson, CJ and Hal M. Helms

THE COMPLETE JULIAN OF NORWICH

Translation and commentary by Father John-Julian, OJN

THE COMPLETE THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

Edited with translations by Robert J. Edmonson, CJ

THE COMPLETE MADAME GUYON

Edited with translations by the Rev. Nancy C. James, PhD

THE COMPLETE IMITATION OF CHRIST

Translation and commentary by Father John-Julian, OJN

THE COMPLETE FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Edited, translated, and introduced by Jon M. Sweeney

For more information, visit www.paracletepress.com.

For John Patrick Hedley Clark,who best knows The Cloud,and for James Hogg,who has told the rest of the world.

2015 First Printing

The Complete Cloud of Unknowing: with The Letter of Privy Counsel

Copyright © 2015 by The Order of Julian of Norwich

ISBN 978-1-61261-620-9

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The complete Cloud of unknowing : with the Letter of privy counsel / translation and commentary by Father John-Julian, OJN.      pages cm    Translated from the Middle English.  ISBN 978-1-61261-620-9 (paperback)  1. Mysticism—Early works to 1800. I. John-Julian, Father, O.J.N. II. Cloud of unknowing. III.Letter of privy counsel.   BV5082.3.C58 2015   248.2'2—dc23                     2014042297

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.comPrinted in the United States of America

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

The Cloud of Unknowing

The Letter of Privy Counsel

NOTES FOR THE TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

APPENDICES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As it is now here in this book: where we enter into the darkness that is above mind, we shall not only find the inadequacy of words, but, as it were, a madness and a total irrationality in all that we say.And in all the other books our composition descends from the highest things to the lowest; and after the amount of descending, it spreads out to a great number. But now [our composition] ascends in this book from the lowest things to the highest; and after the movement of the ascension—which is sometimes more rapid than others—it is focused. And above all such ascension, it shall all be without voice and it shall be all knitted to a thing that is unspeakable.

—DEONISE HID DIUINIEby the author ofThe Clowde of Vnknowyng

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Devout friend in God (as our author would put it): When you open this book, you are opening the door on a profound mystery and on the deep struggle this devout author has undertaken to try to share that mystery with a younger, contemplative protégé. His efforts necessarily stretch and strain the language as he strives to explain what is virtually inexplicable and can only be “known” by being experienced—but he is a serious and devout mystical guide who knows the territory from his own experience, and he provides hints, suggestions, and warnings that will serve any devout Christian sincerely committed to the development of a serious ascetical life of prayer.

This unknown monk is, preeminently and inescapably, a mystic. Dom Cuthbert Butler wrote in the early twentieth century:

There is probably no more misused word in these days than “mysticism.” It has come to be applied to many things of many kinds: to theosophy and Christian Science; to spiritualism and clairvoyance; to demonology and witchcraft; to occultism and magic; to weird psychical experiences and visions; to other-worldliness, or even mere dreaminess and impracticability in the affairs of life; to poetry and painting and music of which the motif is unobvious and vague. It has been identified also with a certain outlook on the world—seeing God in Nature, and recognizing that the material creation in various ways symbolizes spiritual realities: a beautiful and true conception . . . but which is not mysticism according to its historical meaning. And, on the other side, the meaning of the term has been watered down: it has been said that the love of God is mysticism; or that mysticism is only the Christian life lived on a high level; or that it is Roman Catholic piety in extreme form. Against all of this stands the perfectly clear traditional historical meaning, handed down in the Christian Church throughout the centuries, not subject to confusion of thought until recent times.1

A mystic is one who is not satisfied with limiting reality to only what can be seen as visible, or comprehended as rational, or experienced as sensory. The mystic lives, in a sense, “beyond the dictionary,” beyond systematic theology, beyond legalistic morality, and beyond creedal simplicity. (Please note, however, that here “beyond” must also be understood to be inclusive and not taken to suggest “opposition.” Christian mysticism should be thought of as “all of ordinary Christianity plus….”) The world in which a mystic lives is—for her or him—alive with God, pulsing with divinity, and overflowing with spiritual reality. God is no mere abstract concept but is present in all dimensions of life—in every breath, every movement, every object, every thought. A mystic is unwilling to live life at a level acceptable to most others—not in derision of their commitments and concerns, but simply in dissatisfaction with less than the heart-stirrings of grace that press one into the heart of the Divine Mystery itself.

Consequently, the mystic often moves along the knife-edge of metaphor, paradox, poetry, and enigma—aware of the contradictions of theodicy, the ambiguity of biblical incongruities, and the challenges of theological conundrums, but recognizing a divine reality deeper and more profound than all these matters. It was once put simply that a mystic is one who lives as though God actually existed—unsatisfied with anything less than Godself—“one who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain union with or absorption into the Deity, or who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding.”2

It is important to recognize that although a true Christian mystic may be discovering dimensions of faith and reality not commonly or universally discerned, these intuitive insights are not “secret” or “covert” as were the teachings of the heretical Gnostics of the early centuries. They are not withheld from any Christian, but they often involve a deeper spiritual insight than most Christians take the trouble to seek, and also a dimension of vocation in which some are led by God’s grace to pursue a life of deeper contemplative prayer than others.3

The four notable identities that tend to be characteristic of the mystical way are (a) the repudiation of literalism; (b) the development and practice of some form of contemplation; (c) engagement with apophatic theology, known as the via negativa, focusing on what God is not rather than what God is; and (d) the goal of absolute identity and total union of the soul with God. These are so close that what was called mysticism (or hesychasm4) in the Eastern Orthodox traditions could be thought of as almost identical to what in the West came to be called simply “contemplation”—a solitary, eremitical prayer, dedicated to liberation of the soul from its ties to the world, and whose goal was perfect willed union with God.

This desire most often steered one toward the apophatic via negativa (“the negative way”) that declared that nothing we can say in earthly speech about what/who God is can ever be exhaustively true, unqualifiedly accurate, or pragmatically meaningful. As Giles Fraser recently put it: “all religion exists to make raids into what is unsayable.”5 The Divine Nature is so far beyond us, so far beyond our culture, our world, our imagination, and our understanding that all of our language fails to describe God, and the only thing we can say with any truth or accuracy about God is what God is not—for example, God is not created, not multiple, not evil, does not take up space, is not bound to time, does not change.6 Apophatic prayer is a way of praying that makes no reference to earthly or material realities but is only concerned with purity of heart and total detachment from worldly thought and language as one seeks a fleeting experience of God.7

The final goal for a mystic is immersion in God—the abandonment of ego in a perfect union of one’s will with God’s will in love. The operative human dynamic is neither intellect nor emotion, but the vision of the intuition and the action of the will—which is the agent of love/charity.8

The author’s comprehension of the human process of understanding basically describes the imagination and sensuality (the action of the five senses) as producing the raw material—that is, the senses give us information about the physical world around us, and the imagination produces information about what could be. Both of these feed into the reason/intellect, which in turn “organizes” the input from the imagination and the senses and “passes it on” to the mind, which then acts by way of the will to make choices and decisions. And the act of the will that is central to the author’s purposes here is the willful act of love—the choice to love unsentimentally, unselfishly, and sacrificially.

In that act of love, one utterly chooses God above and beyond all else—and thus one’s own will comes into union with the Divine Will. “The exercise of the will directed solely to God pleases God more than any other exercise.”9 For the mystic this union may be brief—even ephemeral—occasional, and rare. It is the transient momentary experience on earth of the ultimate eternal union of heaven. This process is often referred to as “divinization” (or “deification” or theosis) as the soul takes on itself a more and more celestial nature and shares more intimately with God’s very Self. (It must be pointed out that a proper contemplative’s practice may aim less high and may aspire to opening the self to God simply in order to be silently available and vulnerable to spiritual insights, intuitions, or discernments short of divinization—and this less “strenuous” approach to contemplation is not to be discredited: it is entirely mystically valid and spiritually beneficial.)

In our author’s fourteenth-century church, mysticism was endemic and extensive—especially in England and the German Rhineland—but it had its roots in much earlier ages—indeed, to some degree, in Scripture itself. None of the following passages, for instance, can be interpreted simply in literal terms; they must all lend themselves to an allegorical, metaphorical, or mystical sense and carry meanings beyond the merely denotative designations of their words.10

“We look not to things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are transitory: but the things that are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). (And one may reverse the tautology: “Things that are eternal are invisible.”)

“He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become sharers in the divine nature, having escaped from the carnal corruption that is in the world” (2 Pet. 1:4). Note: Humans will share in God’s own Divine Nature—a common notion of the Christian mystic.

“For you are dead, and your life has been swallowed up with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Note: A living human is declared to be dead, but spiritually “consumed” by Christ within God! Here the human is mystically made one with the risen Christ who is in perfect union with God the Father—hence it is in union with Christ that a Christian is one-ed to God.

“While I live, it is no longer I: but, in truth, Christ lives within me” (Gal. 2:20). A person who has died (Christ) now lives inside a live human—a typical mystical paradox!

“He who believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his belly will flow rivers of fresh water” (Jn. 7:38). Certainly this verse cannot be read in any literal way but must be interpreted allegorically and mystically.

“But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17). Union with God means that one shares the divine spirit.

It is likely that the very early emphasis on the importance of allegorical and mystical interpretation of the Scriptures may, in a way, be the initial expression of Christian mysticism and the agent for the application of the same dynamic to ascetical and speculative theology itself.

And among the early Fathers of the Church, we find many expressing strongly mystical concepts and insights. In many cases they reveal what came to be called “Christian gnosticism” (Greek gnosis translates as “knowledge”), which suggests a particular knowledge that was not broadly available to non-Christians.11 Here is only a collection of samples to demonstrate the breadth of mystical and speculative theology among the early Church Fathers. (All translations are mine.)

• Justin Martyr († 165): “But pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the one to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom” (Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 7).

• Theophilus of Antioch († 190): “[By] keeping the commandment of God, [one] should receive immortality as a reward from [God], and should become God” (To Autolycus, bk. 2, ch. 27).

• Irenaeus of Lyons († 200): “… the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who became what we are … that he might cause us to become even what he is himself” (Against Heresies, bk. 5, preface).

• Clement of Alexandria († 215): “I say, the Word of God became human so that you could learn from a human how a human can become God” (Exhortation to the Heathen, ch. 1); and “We, then, are those who are believers in what is not believed, and who know what is unknown” (Stromata 5, ch. 1).

• Origen of Alexandria († 254): “If one considers that the richness of what there is in God to contemplate and know is incomprehensible

• to human nature and perhaps to all beings which are born, apart from Christ and the Spirit, one will understand how God is enveloped in darkness, for no one can formulate any conception rich enough to do him justice. It is then in darkness that he has made his hiding-place; he has made it thus because no one can know all concerning him who is infinite” (Commentary on John 2.28).

• Gregory of Nazianzus († 390):“How can words sing praise to youwhen no word can even speak of you?How can the mind think about youwhen no mind can ever grasp you?You alone are indescribablesince you created all things that can be described.You alone are unknowablesince you created all things that can be known”(Hymn 1.1.2 “On the Incarnation of Christ”).

• Gregory of Nyssa († 395): “For abandoning everything that can be seen … [the soul] keeps on penetrating deeper until by intelligence’s longing for comprehension it gains access to the invisible and the incomprehensible and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought: this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because what is sought passes beyond all knowledge, being separated on every side by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness” (Life of Moses 163).

• Augustine of Hippo († 430): “Under your guidance I entered the depths of my soul ... and with the eye of my soul ... I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays … over my mind.... What I saw was something very, very different from any light we know on earth. It shined above my mind, but not as oil floats above water or the sky hangs over the earth. It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it. Everyone who knows the truth knows this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity.... And, far off, I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS …” (Confessions 147).

• Maximus the Confessor († 662): “For God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing; His revelation itself is also truly a mystery of a most divine and extraordinary kind, since the divine manifestations, even if symbolic, remain unknowable by reason of their transcendence” (The Triads 1.3.4, trans. Nicholas Gendle).

• Symeon the New Theologian († 1022): “Be aware also how those men are changed who leave behind all things out of love for Him who has loved us … how those who are darkness become light in marvelous fashion as they draw near to the Great Light; how those who come from below . . . become gods as they are united to things above” (Discourse 17.4).

• Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153): “And yet, ‘he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him,’ his whole being somehow transformed into a movement of divine love. He no longer has the power to experience or savor anything except God and whatever Godself experiences and relishes, because he is filled with God. But God is love, and the deeper one’s union with God, the more full one is of love” (On the Song of Songs, Sermon 26.5).

• Thomas Aquinas († 1274): “Furthermore, everything infinite, as such, is unknown. And, indeed, God is infinite ... therefore, he is unknown” (Summa Theologica 3.1.12 [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006]).

• Meister Eckhart († 1327): “A man should not have, or be satisfied with, an imagined God, for then, when the idea vanishes, God vanishes! Rather, one should have an essential God, who far transcends the thought of man and all creatures” (The Tasks of Instruction, sect. 6).

• Johann Tauler († 1361): “And in this way all our conditions are transformed into God so that we neither notice nor enjoy anything nor know anything more truly than God, though in a way that transcends the powers of reason and rational knowledge” (Sermon 50).

• Henry Suso († 1366): “[Christ speaks in the person of Wisdom]: ‘Although I give myself to be felt by men in their inmost hearts, yet no tongue can ever declare or explain in words what I am. For verily all the beauty, grace, and adornment that can be conceived by you or by others exists in me far more excellently, more copiously, than anyone could say in words.… By no other way can you know the certainty of my presence better than when I hide myself from you and withdraw what is mine from your soul. Then at last you know by experience what I am and what you are’” (“A Meditation on the Passion of Christ” in Inge, William Ralph, trans., Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages [Methuen; London; 1904], 91).

• Walter Hilton († 1396): “After being reformed by virtues to the likeness of God, we see the face of our soul uncovered by the opening of our spiritual eye, and behold as in a mirror the heavenly joy, completely conformed and one-ed to the image of our Lord, from brightness of faith into brightness of understanding, or else from clarity of desire into clarity of blessed love. And all this is wrought in a person’s soul by the spirit of our Lord” (The Scale of Perfection, Clark, J.P.H. and Dorward, Rosemary, eds. [Paulist Press, New York; 1991], ch. 9).

As Saint Edith Stein wrote: “The mystical stream, which flows through the centuries, is not a meandering side-stream that has separated from the prayer life of the Church; it is her very lifeblood. If it breaks with traditional forms, it does so because the Spirit is living in it, a Spirit that blows where it wills. He created all the old forms and he has to create new ones.”12

It should be clear that the mystical way is not something invented in the late medieval Church but has been a quiet undercurrent in Christianity from the very beginning. There were Christian eras when almost nothing was heard of it, and other periods when it seemed to blossom—and, up to that time, no such period or place more than fourteenth-century England.

In our day some lament the supposed departure of modern Christianity from its orthodox theological roots, or from its mandate to serve the poor, or for its own accumulation of wealth and comfort, or for its narrow and exclusive character. But perhaps the most pervasive and most critical deviation had been the tendency for the early modern Church to abandon its mystical roots. Fortunately contemporary efforts have been made recently to try to reclaim the mystical heritage and the contemplative way by people such as the Benedictines John Main and Laurence Freeman with their “World Community for Christian Meditation,” the Trappist Thomas Merton (who at one point seriously considered leaving the Trappists for a Carthusian Charterhouse),13 and Cistercians William Meninger, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating with their “Centering Prayer” movement. And, indeed, the recent comment by Pope Francis is notable: “A religion without mystics is a philosophy. . . . The mystic manages to strip himself of action, of facts, objectives and even the pastoral mission and rises until he reaches communion with Beatitude. Brief moments but which fill an entire life.”14 Evelyn Underhill wrote that mystics are “the great pioneers of humanity.”15

But the mystical way has also been seen as dangerous and either discounted or condemned by ecclesiastical authority because it challenges the neatness of reason-based theology, the orderly operation of the institutional church, and the superficiality of much ordinary Christian practice and belief. A contemplative who in the height of ecstatic experience encounters the very Self of God makes an awkward and uncomfortable fellow traveler for a regimented and disciplined monsignor or a passionately enthusiastic evangelical pastor. So the movement has not been without its critics. And we are reminded of Cardinal Newman’s old saw: “Mysticism begins in mist and ends in schism.”16

To these criticisms, I can only add Karl Rahner’s wise words: “The devout Christian of the future will be a ‘mystic,’ one who has ‘experienced’ something, or he will cease to be anything at all.”17 And I especially appreciate Ann Fontaine’s remark, “Even the word ‘God’ is like a pronoun without antecedents.”18

THE AUTHOR

Certainly the first mystery we encounter in taking up The Cloud is the identity of its anonymous author.19 And let it be said at the outset that no one—no expert, no commentator, no analyst, no translator—has ever been able to make a firm, indisputable identification of the person who wrote this book. There are practically as many proposals and opinions as there are translators20—and I shall offer my own—but none are or can be wholly certain unless some new evidence turns up in the future.

It does seem a virtual certainty that the author was a priest: he uses a vesting prayer that only a priest would ordinarily know21 and he offers a clear priestly blessing.22 The literary quality of the text also gives evidence that he is a highly educated person—another suggestion of his ordained status since relatively few laity in the fourteenth century would have had access to the level of literacy he manifests. His reference to communal and liturgical prayer is quite probably good evidence of his own base in monasticism.23

For some years, he was identified by authorities as Walter Hilton—a fellow English fourteenth-century mystic—but that identification has been virtually expunged in later scholarship,24 although our author and Walter Hilton do remain closely associated, possibly even knew each other personally, and were certainly acquainted with each other’s works25 (which may suggest that they lived not far apart geographically, as well).

Our priestly author also seems to be a serious contemplative and a solitary in his own right. He does not discuss the contemplative experience as an objective observer, but as one who has “been there” himself and knows the experience firsthand. And this opens doors to several possibilities: the Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Dominicans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinian Hermits all have provisions in their rules and statutes for derivative solitaries and hermits—and most of them could involve the practice of meditation of one kind or another. And certainly the Carthusians’ entire monastic model is eremitic (although within a community of other hermit-monks) and contemplative. It is possible that our author could have spent communal time with any one of these orders and then, under that aegis, have become a solitary/hermit. The fact that at the time of his writing he is living as a solitary is plainly evident from his writings.26

But what one may call the severity, rigorousness, and strictures of the style of contemplative practice promulgated by the author gives extremely great weight to his engagement with the Carthusian tradition. No other monastic tradition promoted and practiced so thorough and scrupulous an eremitic and contemplative lifestyle as did the Carthusians—what might almost be called “immoderate contemplation” was, indeed, the very heart of their tradition. And it is inconceivable to me that the author should have made up his complicated mystical system by himself without reference to a broader precedent contemplative tradition.

The Carthusian Order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084.27 His first hermitage was built in the Chartreuse Mountains in the French Alps, from which the name “Carthusian” is derived. (Chartreuse became “Charterhouse” in English—the name given to all Carthusian monasteries in England.) Eventually, after an avalanche killed seven of the brothers, the monastery was relocated and enlarged and became the famous Grande Chartreuse—the motherhouse for all Carthusians.

In the beginning the order was simply a small group of hermit priests living separately, independently, and privately but geographically together in one community, sharing in liturgy and occasional festal meals. Saint Bruno wrote no formal rule, but in 1129 Guido I, the fifth prior of the order, compiled the first Consuetudines (“Customs”), which described the life of a Carthusian and with a few later additions came to serve as the Statutes of the order. The prologue to the Statutes begins:

To the praise of the glory of God, Christ, the Father’s Word, has, through the Holy Spirit, from the beginning chosen certain men, whom he willed to lead into solitude and unite to himself in intimate love. In obedience to such a call, Master Bruno and six companions entered the desert of Chartreuse in the year of our Lord 1084 and settled there; under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they and their successors, learning from experience, gradually evolved a special form of hermit life, which was handed on to succeeding generations, not by the written word, but by example.28

The Charterhouse was unlike any other monastery in that it was comprised (ideally) of either twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six individual and separate cells or cottages arranged around a common cloister, a church, a refectory, a chapter room, and a courery or separate settlement for lay brothers. Each monk’s cell consisted of a small two-level cottage with a high-walled garden where the monk could grow flowers for himself or vegetables for the community. On the ground floor was a workshop with workbench or loom or lathe, since each monk engaged in manual crafts work of some kind, and a store of lumber as well as firewood for the hearth. In the loft above was a narrow entryway, and a room with a wooden box bed (with a straw mattress and woolen blankets), a small table for meals, a study desk, a bookcase, a wood stove, and a prayer niche with stall and kneeler.29 Next to the door of the cell was the guichet—called a “turn” or a “hatch”—a small revolving compartment through which food and other items could be passed into or out of the cell without a monk’s direct contact with anyone from the outside world—including the lay brother who delivered his food. There was also usually a covered ambulatory in the garden where the monk could take private exercise. A fairly modern piping system brought fresh water to each of the cells and carried away waste from their outhouses.

According to the Statutes a Carthusian monk was also supplied for writing with “pens, chalk, two pumice-stones, two inkwells, a small knife, two razors for leveling the surface of the parchment, a punctorium [a small compass used to mark the parchment for drawing lines], an awl, a lead pencil, a ruler, writing tablets, and a stylus.”30

The Carthusian spent most of his day in the cell, praying, working on his craft, studying, writing, or cultivating his garden. He left the cell only three times a day (and always in silence) for the Office of Matins, for Mass, and for the Office of Vespers. On Sundays and feast days all the monks would eat a meal together (in silence), and once a week the whole community would take a three-hour spacia (communal walk) together around the monastic property during which talking was allowed. But the monastery’s isolation and seclusion was so complete that even the bishop of the diocese was not allowed a visit.31 Twice a year on appointed days, a monk’s family was allowed to call on him. As the Statutes put it plainly: “Our special study and intention is to spend time in silence and the solitude of the cell.”32

The Carthusian priories—unlike many other monastic establishments—were inevitably extremely poor and often on the brink of dissolution. A story is told that on one occasion a nobleman visited the monastery and was so moved by the monks’ poverty that he sent them some silver plate “of great price.” The monks sent back the silver, saying that they had no need for it, but they could use some parchment for writing books.33

Unlike all other monastic orders in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, the Carthusians were universally praised and respected for their devout sincerity, their freedom from scandal and abuse, their unswerving commitment to their vows, and the unvarying strictness of their lifestyle.34 Indeed, there is an adage applied to the Carthusians: Nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata—“Never reformed because never deformed.”35

The Carthusian Order alone was committed to precisely the radical contemplative model described in The Cloud. Other monastic traditions practiced meditation and contemplation, but none fits so well with the exactitude, extremity, and specificity of The Cloud. Indeed, many of the surviving manuscripts of The Cloud were found to have been in Carthusian hands.

It is also true that it has long been part of the ascetical Carthusian tradition to write and publish anonymously, and it may well be that the author seriously took trouble to remain nameless.36 A simple conclusion would certainly be that the author was, indeed, a Carthusian monk, but the matter is not entirely that simple. And we need first to consider the recipient of the book.

THE PROTÉGÉ

The Cloud is addressed to a young man37 of twenty-four, who has just come (or was just about to come) into a “singular” or “solitary form of living,” but who had previously been “a servant of His Special servants [of God, where he had] learned to live more specially and more spiritually in his service.”38 This phrase, if it is an accurate description, would perfectly depict the class of Carthusian affiliates called redditi or conversi.39 These lay brothers were, in fact, retainers for the monks and lived under somewhat less stringent vows in a courery—a separate community building usually attached to the gate house of the monastery, with facilities for worship and domestic accommodation.40 They prepared and delivered food to the cells, chopped wood for heating, repaired and maintained the monastery buildings, managed the properties, saw to the planting and harvesting of crops, and served under the direction of the Procurator or Steward, who, although he was a regular monk, had responsibility for the administration of the monastery, serving as a liaison between the monks and the conversi and redditi—usually with living quarters beside or outside the monks’ cloister.41

It seems likely that the protégé was at the brink of becoming one of the Cloister Monks himself. It is also possible—since all Carthusian monks were ordained priests or were preparing for ordination—that he may have been approaching ordination to the priesthood as well.42

THE PLACE

Before anything can be said about the location, we must understand that “the basis of the language in all the manuscripts is that of an East Midland Dialect … written in the north part of the central East Midlands.”43 That is to say, the writer had quite certainly been brought up and lived a significant period of time in that area of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire where he was raised and learned that dialect.44

It is also held by all the linguists and historians who have studied The Cloud that the writing can be reliably dated to the late second half of the fourteenth century—in most cases between 1380 and 1400.

There was only one regular Carthusian priory in the East Midlands: Beauvale,45 which was founded in 1343.46 It is likely that if our author was a Carthusian (as we believe), he began his monastic life there at Beauvale Charterhouse.

In 1381, the new Charterhouse in Coventry was in unusual difficulty even before it was fully established. Its intended founder—William, Lord Zouch—had given fourteen acres of land for the Charterhouse and had just arranged for the seconding of three monks from the London Charterhouse to Coventry when his intended further endowment and engagement was lost by his unexpected death. These three monks, in turn, arranged for three more to come from the Beauvale Charterhouse and added four newly professed monks for Coventry. In 1382, King Richard granted the Coventry community a license, although there were as yet no proper buildings. They built each cell/cottage as they found funding, but it was seven years before the monastic structures at Coventry were completed.47

However, there was also one curious Carthusian establishment in the East Midlands, which no modern commentator seems to have noticed: in 1080, land in Haugham, Lincolnshire, had been given to the French Benedictine abbey of St. Severus in Coutances, Normandy, by Hugh of Chester (one of the Norman knights who came with William the Conqueror), and it functioned as a Benedictine grange (i.e., a farm and barns separate from the monastery itself) ever since. Although not properly a priory, it was locally called “Haugham Priory,” and it was maintained by one or two French monks who oversaw the lands, the laborers, and the harvest. During the Hundred Years’ War with France, King Richard II began to seize alien monastic foundations, and in 1397 the French Haugham property was granted to the struggling Coventry Charterhouse.48 It would have been necessary, then, that a Carthusian Procurator (or Rector) be sent to oversee that Haugham property, its lay brothers, and its laborers.49

The Connection

Against that background, it might be productive to consider possible connections between the author and his protégé.

1.   I maintain that the English author’s strenuous, demanding, and radical model of contemplative prayer could only have been the product of Carthusian training and practice. Although several other monastic traditions included provisions for solitary contemplative life, none, to my knowledge, promoted a practice as intense and severe as that promulgated in The Cloud.

2.   I recognize, based on that premise, that since the author certainly had been personally experienced in the strenuous model of contemplative prayer that he presents, it is extremely probable that he was a professed Carthusian monk. It is extremely improbable that he had actually left a Carthusian Charterhouse and still continued the strenuous contemplative practice. Carthusians were seldom released from their vows.50

3.   Since all Carthusian monks were ordained priests (or in preparation for ordination), our author, if a longtime Carthusian, was assuredly a priest. There are also two evidences of priesthood in the text.

4.   Since his language indicates that he was native to the northern East Midlands, it is likely that when he sought out a Carthusian Charterhouse to join, it would have been Beauvale—the only Charterhouse in the East Midlands.

5.   In 1381–82 when the Coventry Charterhouse was new and in trouble and three monks were sent from Beauvale to help shore up the community, it is likely that those would have been monks whose experience and leadership abilities would benefit the struggling Coventry Charterhouse. It is therefore entirely possible that the author was sent from Beauvale to Coventry, where he served in a leadership position. Since we know that John Netherbury (who had been Procurator of the London Charterhouse) became prior at Coventry and Robert Palmer followed him as second prior, it is possible (even likely) that our author could have been named Procurator at Coventry and thus would have had oversight over the lay brethren, redditi, and other laborers there. Note: The spiritual advisor of a professed Carthusian monk was always the prior himself; but the spiritual director of a redditus or conversus would have been the Procurator.

6.   When Coventry Charterhouse was given the property of Haugham Priory in Lincolnshire, the monk who was sent to Haugham as Rector51 to oversee the property and laborers would need to have been experienced in leadership and management—and the author’s native familiarity with the northern East Midlands (where Haugham was located) would have made his selection a strong possibility.

7.   At Haugham he would have been a solitary, contemplative monk—over a hundred miles from Coventry—writing back to a young redditus or conversus who had in the recent past been under his direction (in the Coventry Charterhouse). Note: The author and protégé would not reasonably have been in the same monastery when The Cloud was written. No Carthusian could have afforded to use precious and very expensive parchment for in-house notes and advice.52 The two must have been separated, but also must have had a previous close association of director-to-directee—that is, before the author left Coventry and went to live alone at Haugham.

8.   One more purely personal view: the writing in The Cloud seems to include some fairly intimate autobiographical references, some harsh criticism of another spiritual writer (Richard Rolle), some strong personal approval of others (e.g., Walter Hilton), and even humor.53 All of this suggests a liaison between author and protégé that is more personal than that of merely a formal director-directee relationship. There is a “paternal” feeling to much of the writing in The Cloud (and even more in The Letter of Privy Counsel), and while it is unlikely there is a natural father-son relationship here, I sense a kinship of some kind—perhaps uncle to nephew.

All of this would lead to a simple conceivable timeline:

13??—Author joins Beauvale Charterhouse, possibly becoming Procurator.

1382—Author is moved to Coventry Charterhouse and made Procurator in charge of lay brothers—one of whom becomes his protégé.

1397—Author is sent to be solitary Rector of the Haugham Grange.

1397–98—Author writes The Cloud to send back to his erstwhile protégé at Coventry and later writes The Letter of Privy Counsel as a follow-up.

Of course, all of the above is ultimately a conjecture and cannot be substantiated, but it provides a scenario that seems to meet the criteria we know about the author, his protégé, and their relationship. In the barren facts alone, there are only seven things we can reasonably be sure of: we have an (a) experienced, (b) educated, (c) solitary, (d) contemplative (e) priest, addressing a (f) young (g) novice contemplative. That’s all we can certify as incontrovertibly true.

THE BOOK

In her definitive volume on The Cloud, Phyllis Hodgson provides ninety-two pages of meticulous and exhaustive word-by-word analysis and comparison among the various early manuscripts of The Cloud and The Letter of Privy Counsel, and John Clark offers three entire volumes of profound further analysis.54 The recounting of the intricacies of these analyses would be of little value here, since they cannot be improved upon and are of significant interest only to the most serious scholar. With deep gratitude for the superb work, I refer my readers to those volumes should they be interested in a more detailed textual and philological analysis.

As the basis for this translation, I have followed the conclusions of Hodgson, Clark, and Gallacher55 in using British Library MS Harleian 674—in the handsome and meticulous Middle English transcription made by Patrick Gallacher—as the basis for my translation of The Cloud (Gallacher 21ff.), and Phyllis Hodgson’s transcription of A Letter of Privy Counsel—which she titled The Book of Privy Counselling (Hodgson 135ff.).

Many Cloud scholars (notably Clark, James Walsh, and Hodgson) have provided extensive information regarding influences and other sources which may have affected and influenced the author’s work—Hugo de Balma, Thomas Gallus, Richard of St. Victor, John Cassian, Ludolph of Saxony. These references are of value and I respect them greatly, but, once again, they have worth primarily for scholars and academics, and the intricate details do little to help us understand the author’s own work, so I have chosen not to include them (except specific instances in which they may actually affect a translation). Since the author purposely chose not to give scholarly or authoritative references within his work, I have followed his lead. In his own words: “You do not need it and therefore I do not do it .”56

But special mention must be made of one major influence: somewhere around the year ad 500—give or take twenty years—a highly literate Christian philosopher and theologian, probably in what is now Syria, wrote a series of works that took the philosophical insights of the neo-Platonists Plotinus, Proclus, and the Platonic Academy of Athens and transposed them into a entirely unique pattern of Christian mystical thought. He wrote under the pseudonym of “Dionysius the Areopagite”—that is, the Athenian who was converted by Saint Paul57—thereby virtually guaranteeing himself an audience. His known works include The Divine Names, Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and some ten letters.

Dionysius’s use of the pseudonym was not considered a “forgery” in the modern sense and was a common practice in his day in that the writer intended to convey not a unique personal idea, but a tradition older than himself. It seems to have worked well, and his writings took on enormous importance in Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. There were occasional doubters (e.g., Hypatius of Ephesus and Nicholas of Cusa), but by and large his work was accepted and several Latin translations were made of it. By the thirteenth century his thought became widely popular—indeed, he is quoted by the great Saint Thomas Aquinas over 1,700 times.

The Latin version of his treatise Mystical Theology was a groundbreaker—the first serious proposal that Christian theology had a dimension that was “hidden” and not apparent to all. It was an idea that had significant impact on our author, who translated a Latin version into Middle English as Dionese Hid Divinite.

The principal theological feature stressed by Dionysius and embraced by our author was the concept of the via negativa, the negative way. As we have said above, this perception implied that God was so transcendent, so immeasurably unique, and so incalculably beyond our human experience that there were literally no human words that could accurately describe God or any human concepts that could include God. God was entirely a Deus Absconditus, a hidden God, and could only be described accurately by reference to what God was not—hence the negativa. Our author embraced this understanding wholeheartedly in The Cloud.

In general, I hope to leave the understanding of the author’s specific message to the reader, assisted (I hope) by the parallel commentary to the text. However, there are some generic concepts and understandings that underlie all the work, and since these are often radically difficult to grasp, I think it wise to deal in a broad and introductory way with some of those basic notions and tenets.

First, be aware of considerable repetition; with careful reading one will come to realize that each recurrence of any particular matter will be a bit clearer, a bit more detailed, or a bit richer. The structure is more like a spiraling gyre than a mere repetitious circle.

As the author explains, he proposes a four-part division of the Christian spiritual life: Common, Special, Singular, and Perfect. The “Common” life is that which was lived by most ordinary Christians: attending Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, fasting during Lent, paying one’s annual tithe, praying before meals and at bedtime, avoiding mortal sins, and making formal confession and receiving Holy Communion once a year on Easter. Indeed, this pattern is continued fairly closely in ordinary Christian lives today. It describes what might be called the fundamental, basic minimum of a “good Christian life” in the Catholic tradition.

The “Special” Christian life assumes all the above and then adds extra efforts and activities: perhaps the recitation of the Offices from a Book of Hours, attendance at Mass on weekdays, intentionally striving to practice the Seven Virtues, providing aid to the poor and needy, caring for those who are ill, and making confession regularly. Once again, this is a pattern of life a seriously devout Christian of either the fourteenth or the twenty-first century might well choose to live. It is certainly above the minimum and involves a more resolute commitment and dedication.

Beyond this point in spiritual growth, one crosses a line: it might be described as “turning toward heaven”—that is, in addition to all the above (which involve regular earthly activities) a person at the “Singular” level begins to seek a palpable nearness to God and will in all likelihood undertake some form of meditation—perhaps pondering one’s own sinful life, or meditating on the life and miracles of Jesus, or on the details of Christ’s passion, or on the virtuous lives of the saints. And there is a good likelihood that at this point one might also seek entry into a religious order as a way of making a more perfect offering of oneself. The previous activities and degrees of devout life continue, but the balance of one’s commitment now begins to tip more thoroughly toward God and one’s relationship with God. It is also likely that in entering this stage, one may enter the monastic life. Note: It is this “Singular” state that our author’s protégé is apparently about to enter.

And the final and “Perfect” level of spiritual development is demonstrated when one chooses to detach entirely from any and all earthly things, to repudiate even the outward characteristics of one’s own self, and to direct one’s entire attention and consideration to an intimate bonding with God’s very Self. It is almost impossible to imagine this life in any other configuration than eremitic solitude. It is for those who may be approaching this final level of ascetical and mystical life that this book has been specifically written. It is, as it were, the deepest, most serious, and most profound level of Christian ascetical spirituality possible during earthly life.

It must be said, however, that this ladder of spiritual development is not merely a convenient way for a Christian to decide to approach God. Each of the four levels requires what the author calls a “stirring” of the soul by God—an inexplicable sense of desire for a deeper union with divinity—what Julian of Norwich called a “longing” or “yearning”58 that God implants in a soul to draw it onward. This calling or vocation has its source in God, and the serious Christian must commit to vulnerability and openness to this divine “stirring” if she or he is to receive it. The primary action of the contemplative soul is passivity, vulnerability, and the willing submersion of one’s ego—none of which is easy even for the most devout among us.

But it must be clear that the author does not intend to discount any of the earlier stages. Indeed, living at any of these levels is creditable in itself, and surely the vast majority of very good and devout Christians seldom move beyond the Special stage. Very few are “stirred” or called to the Singular level, and still less to the Perfect stage, so that as a complete guide to Perfection, The Cloud and Privy Counsel are aimed at a tiny quota of Christians. However, before the author writes a word, he has bought into the theology, ecclesiology, Christology, and soteriology of late medieval Catholic England (although he doesn’t hesitate to criticize it). That means there is relatively little of what we would call “ordinary Christianity” in the book—but the thoughts, insights, and basic teachings are still entirely relevant to any seriously devout Christian.

The author is further clear that one does not move to the next higher level without (1) acceptance of the move by one’s own clear conscience, and (2) approval of one’s spiritual advisor. There is not a do-it-yourself project—because if one senses a true “stirring” or a calling to a further level of growth, one will also be provided with the divine grace to make the next step possible. Without that peculiar grace, spiritual advancement in this particular mode is impossible, and without significant reference to a spiritual advisor, one can easily stray into serious spiritual and mental trouble.

There is much talk of “grace” in this book—and it is a word whose meaning in our day has been almost entirely worn away by overfamiliarity. The Middle English word means not only a “gift from God,” but also “an attribute of God.” For our purposes here, we need to recognize it clearly as the actual life or vitality of Godself imparted to a human being. When our author speaks of “grace,” he means a sharing out of the Divine Life itself—that is, in “receiving grace” one is given a free and unmerited share of the divine Élan Vital, the grant of a sliver of God’s own essence, a “spilling out,” as it were, of divinity into the human soul—a manifestation of the divine created nature of human beings who in that creation were made so like God, so much in God’s image, that they were open and receptive to sheer Divinity itself. It is an extremely powerful aspect of the mystic way to comprehend this apportioned divinity—still manifested in our Eucharistic prayer, “that he may dwell in us and we in him,”59 and in our Bible: “If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is brought to full measure in us. By this we know that we remain in him and he in us because of his spirit he has delivered to us.”60 In his book The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote the famous line: “Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”61 And as a Christian mystic might have it: “We still bear in our souls the indelible stamp of our heavenly origin.”

There are, for our author, six preconditions for entry into the author’s “Perfect” state: (1) God’s “stirring” in one’s soul—the call or vocation; (2) the authenticating intuition of one’s conscience—the morality; (3) the consonance with Holy Scripture—the compatibility; (4) full sacramental confession of all one’s sins—the absolution; (5) the support and approval of one’s spiritual advisor—the validation; and (6) the gift of God’s grace without which any spiritual step forward would be impossible—the faculty. It is also clear that in this complicated and extensive process, it is virtually essential that one undertake an eremitic life of solitude with little, if any, spiritual commerce with the rest of the world—at least the life of a hermit, if not an anchorite.