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YALE UNIVERSITY
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CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

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CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE WRITINGS OF
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PATRI, AMICO
HUGONI EDMUNDO FORD, O.S.B.
STI. GREGORII MAGNI APUD DOWNSIDE PRIORI
GRATE
FILIUS, AMICUS
A. L. T.

Ertata.
Page i8, Une 5, for and tbe mass of men who are not artists with their painted joys,
&c., r^df/ and the mass of men who are not artists, with their
painted joys, &c.
,, 23 „ 20 ,, place r£«.^ praise.
,, 51 ,, 18 ,, no momentous consequences, &c., read its momentous conse
quences, &c.
,, 174 ,, 29 ,, check ?-^a(^ checks.

CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

In these days, when the methods of democracy not
only claim the outer court of a man's social environ
ment, but also threaten the shrine of his thought,
many words of ancient descent, accustomed in the
past to rule, without question, the peoples of the soul,
are fallen, veritable rois en exil, on evil times. Faith,
for the most part, bereft of her palaces, must dwell in
the hiding-holes of superstition, her deadliest foe :
reason seems on the way to becoming indistinguish
able from the trained use of developed senses.
Mysticism, the sublime child of faith and reason, that
once led the greatest of our race to heights of now
scarcely imaginable intensity of living, hobnobs, in
popular esteem, with the patter of the sorcerer and
the tireuse de cartes.
But the right of words, unlike that of kings, is
truly divine, and if the scheme of the world be guided
by reason, some day, at length, must surely see these
legitimate sovereigns restored to their thrones. B

2 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
I have elsewhere tried to uphold the ' pretensions '
of mysticism in general to be the sole and supreme
mood to which a man must needs betake himself as
soon as he has outgrown the superstitions of ration
alism and sensualism — the mob rule of the senses,
and the fallacies of ' education.' Here I shall en
deavour to deal with the constituents of Catholic
mysticism. In the course of this attempt it will be
necessary, incidentally, and by way of illustration,
to introduce some elements in a hypothetical process
of ' conversion,' and also to suggest the sort of way
in which the modern Catholic mystic may be disposed
to meet, for the sake of his own peace of mind, some
current objections to Catholic faith and practice. I
trust I shall not be understood to be, in this, trenching
on the ground of apologetics proper. That is an out
work of theology with which I am wholly incompetent
to deal. My aim here is much more modest. I wish
to be understood as introducing these elements solely
by way of illustration, for their psychological rather
than for their theological value. It cannot, I think,
be doubted that, whether it be right or not to think
thus (a question I am not here concerned with), many
persons are coming to think in some such manner as
that of my hypothetical mystic. And, under these
circumstances, it cannot be without psychological, and

THE MYSTIC AND THE CHURCH 3
even sociological value to attempt to determine the
scope and goal of such a tendency.
The Catholic mystic, apart from his individual
vocation to real apprehension of Spirit, finds himself
in relation to the Church, i.e. to humanity organised
from the religious point of view, and it is, of course, in
this relation and what comes of it, that his peculiar
note consists. The Catholic or Universal Church is
an organic unity of which the baptised individual is a
member. It has its theoretical and practical con
ditions of membership ; its dogmata of faith and
morals. Like every organism its constitution is
strictly hierarchical, its machinery of authority culmi
nating in the law of Peter, irrevocable, infallible ;
infallibility being the sanction proper to a revealed
system, such as the Church claims to be. The task
of the Catholic mystic is so to adjust these social
claims to his individual vocation, that not only
neither be defrauded, but that each subserve the other.
Now the Church may be regarded from two points of
view, that of faith, which is proper to the Catholic
only, and that of observation, which is common to all
men. Viewed in the latter way, in its purely pheno
menal aspect, i.e. as an element of possible experi
ence to every observer, Catholicism is seen to be
nothing else than the world-society of souls. Other
B 2

4 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
societies of souls there are in plenty amongst men, but
in them the religious organisation has not reached its
goal of universalism, it is still tribal or national, as the
very names of these societies indicate. Their organ
isation may also be said to be opinionative, in contra
distinction to that of the Church, whose organisation
rests upon faith, in that whereas Catholics believe
certain doctrines because they are members of the
Catholic Church, the members of a sect or of a de
nomination belong to this or that body because they
believe particular doctrines. In this case, the Church
does not make the doctrine, but the doctrine the
Church. The motive of their belief to the indivi
duals composing the society is anterior to the
existence of the society, let alone its authoritative
teaching, for the society, in this case, comes into
existence, not to teach anybody anything, but purely
as the social expression of a certain pre-determined
unanimity of opinion among the individuals who
compose it. Whatever claims on the human con
science such a society may afterwards come to make,
it will be for ever logically impossible to exercise the
Catholic quality of faith in regard to its teaching.
It is often supposed by those who approach the
subject of Catholicism from the point of view, and with
the historical methods, of the enemies of the Catholic

THE SPIRITUAL AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY 5
Idea, that the mystic will necessarily find himself in
a state of more or less constant friction with the
ecclesiastical authority. Of course this is not so.
The friction is not constant or in the least inevitable.
But under certain special circumstances of misunder
standing, on one side or the other, such friction may,
and occasionally does, arise. Now the difficulties
which may thus occur between the mystic and the
religious society are more or less analogous to those
which often occur between the individual genius and
the civil society : for the mystic is thereligious genius.
The analogy is not perfect, for civil authority cannot,
as such, claim an ethical sanction, and the proper
solution of the religious difficulty is ^\\o\\y sui generis
and without parallel in the civil order. Still, the
object towards which the social instinct works,
whether on the religious or on the civil plane, is one
and the same, i.e. the greatest good of the greatest
number, and it is the real or apparent conflict between
this aim and the personal good, perceived, and there
fore desired, only, it may be, by the solitary thinker,
that constitutes the crisis in either case. Let us see,
then, what are the elements of such a difficulty when
it occurs between an individual thinker and the civil
society in which he lives.
To go back to truisms : a man is a social being in

6 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
virtue of that which he has in common with every
other man ; he is a genius if his individuality be so
far developed in virtue of that which he alone
possesses. The rope which binds him to his fellows
is plaited out of the strands of those needs which all
men find it necessary, or at least desirable, to satisfy.
As life goes on, and the nervous system grows more
refined and intricate, these needs become more com
plex. It is hardly necessary to point out that the
social organisation of a Central African tribe is as
truly such as the municipal arrangements of London ;
it is simpler, because the circumstances with which it
has to deal, the needs it has to meet, are more
elementary. But man also exists as an individual,
wholly unlike any of the other individuals together
with whom he forms the social organism, of which
interior dissimilarity the fact that no two individuals
are exactly alike in feature is an effective symbol.
Whether this dissimilarity consists in the mixing, so
to speak, of the qualities which go to make the
human being, or whether each soul, to use a term we
can neither fully understand nor do without, be, as
Aquinas teaches of the angels, a species in itself,
this differentiation of individuals has to be admitted
as an ultimate fact in experience.
Here, then, we have a double aspect of man, the

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 7
individual and the social, and the point to note
about these aspects is, that they both represent con
ditions necessary to his existence. For it should be
observed that, without some social environment, the
brain of the human infant, even if, in other respects
its material life survived, would certainly not progress
to the human level, so that, to this extent at least,
the development of the individual is the work of
society. Deprived of human intercourse from the
first, a man would be no more than a tricky sort of
mammal. It is his social environment that develops
in him the latent germs of ideation ; but when these
germs have so far developed as to enable him to reach
the notion of the Self, of his own personality, limited
and for ever solitary, the further development of his
individual genius no longer depends on the external
stimulant of society, but becomes, in proportion to his
personal achievement, more and more self-actuated.
The craving for unification in ideas leads many to
absorb the one aspect of life in the other, and so we
have individualists who push their theories to social
anarchy, and, on the other hand, communists, in whose
ideal state, as such, the individual would be starved
out. This craving for unification is in itself, of course,
a good thing, and directly or indirectly the source of

8 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
all philosophy and religion ; but its proper satisfaction
does not lie in the absorption of the one aspect by
the other, but in the discovery of a synthesis in which
both aspects can be included and made one. Now,
putting aside the hypothesis of a supernatural end to
human life, in which both the above aspects of man
should eventually be made one by God, — a hypothesis
which certainly cannot be entertained on rational
grounds alone — it is evident that such a synthesis has
yet to be formulated. Sensible folk consequently
accept in practice a compromise. The thinker, if he
be a wise man of the world as well as a theorist, wil
accept certain conditions of life to him inherently
absurd, in order to secure himself liberty on another
plane. After all, in order to think it is first necessary
for him to live, so even if from a speculative point of
view, adultery should be to him a venial pastime, and
property a baseless superstition, he will not act on
either of these convictions in a propertied and mono
gamous society. Doubtless he will have his reward.
Now if the Church be regarded simply on its
phenomenal side, this reasoning will hold equally
good for the Catholic mystic. It is not, therefore,
surprising that those who expressly exclude any
other view are driven to the conclusion that a genuine
mystic, remaining in Catholic communion, only does

THE CHURCH A REVELATION OR NOTHING 9
SO by the exercise of some such economy as I have
supposed the radical thinker to practise. But the
moment that the Church is no longer regarded in
this purely subjective way — no longer regarded, that
is to say, as a merely social exteriorisation of a
particular group of man's religious opinions, which,
as we saw just now, is the formative principle of the
sect as such — the whole perspective of the case alters.
The Church is given objectively in her claim to
credence as a Revelation, and it is as such, or not at
all, that she has to be accepted. And wemayTiere
observe, in passing, that the absence of corroboration
of the independent existence ofthat aspect of reality
(by hypothesis otherwise unknowable) which she
claims to reveal to us, need not cause much distress
to those who, in the face of the mysteries of life, are
wise enough to submit to her. The Catholic does
but postulate in the religious order a correspondence
hetwegn experience and reality which has lio~lE5s-te-'
be postulated in any order of knowledge possible to
man. 'From the beginning to the end of oiir
perceptive and imaginative activity, we are synthetis-
ing the material of experience into unities, the
independent reality of which is beyond proof, nay,
beyond the possibility of evidence. And yet the life
of inteUigence, like the joy of contemplation, lies

ID CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
entirely in the formation and inter-relation of theSe
unities. This activity yields us all the objects with
which we can deal, and endows them vvith the
finer and more intimate part of their beauty. The
most perfect of these forms, judged by its affinity to
our powers and its stability in the presence of our
experience, is the one with which we should be
content ; no other kind of veracity could add to its
value.' ^
It may also be noted that the validity of the
religious order can only be evaded on condition of
absolutely ruling out, once and for all, as a disease
of the imagination, the religious tendency of a man's
nature, with all the corollaries in our mutual
relations and our estimate of the value of life which
can be shown to depend on it. At this cost, but at
no less, can we be logically freed from the claims of
the ' soul ' — and of the Church.
Let us now endeavour to see more exactly what
is involved in this^glajm of_the_Church to embody a
positive revelation ; having done this we sHalTbeiiv-

a better position to see the true solution of the
possible difficulties between the Catholic mystic and
ecclesiastical authority.
First of all^jj2P_£l£.'pi fr^ '"nprrajTcy of dogmatic
' The Sense of Beauty, by G. Santayana, p. 190.

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH II
statement, or to what k ra11pH thp infalUhilityn*"^^''
Church, is necessarily involved. This does not mean
that all the propositions ot~faith and morals main
tained in the Catholic Chair all over the world are
final and true, but it does mean that there exists in
the constitution of the Church a means of determin-
iq^their truth ; th"aL a cerLaiu iiuuibei uf LIilui hafii
been so determined, and that, in process of time, as
necessity may demand, others will be so determined.
It does not mean that these determinations, or
definitions as they are called, may lawfully be made
in disregard of ordinary human knowledge, in those
few cases where such human knowledge really bears
on the subject ; a decision of the Church may
supplement human knowledge : indeed, at the cost of
pleonasm it must do so ; no theologian could admit
that it could finally contradict it. Nor is it necessarily

involved in the principle of ecclesiastical infallibility
that the Truth should be stated in the fullest or best
possible way ; what is involved is that the definition,
asTar as it goes, is without error, and that this im
munity from error is not the result of the superior intel
ligence of the defining authority, but of the divine
guarantee. When the Vatican Council defined the seat
of ecclesiastical infallibility, the Roman Pontiff was
said, in the words of the decree, ' to enjoy that

12 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished
His Church to be endowed '—neither more nor less.
Moreover, the practical corollary follows that these
definitions are, as such, irreformable, and that hostile,
as distinguished from explicative, criticism of them is
forbidden. That which does not claim to be the
result of human intelligence cannot logically be held
amenable to its sanctions : you do not accept or
reject an ecclesiastical definition on intrinsic grounds,
but solely on the ground of your acceptance or
rejection of the promulgating authority.
Now what is the relation of the mystic to these
definitions or dogmata of the Church ? It is import-
antjT)_ get this nut clearly^ for it is often supposed
that the mystic's personal communications with God
supersede in his own case the social revelation~or
which dogma is the ratified expression. Such a view

involves a total misunderstanding of what the Church
means by dogma.
In the Catholic view dogma is not opinion
freely selected by the individual for the sake of
his particular needs at the moment, but is a re
vealed statement of spiritual truth, by hypothesis
otherwise unknowable to the human mind. Not all
the intuitions of all the mystics in the world put
together could assert the Catholic doctrine of the

MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE CHURCH 1 3
Incarnation or of the Sacrifice of the Mass, though
the teaching of the pre-Catholic mystics is redeemed
from much that seems puerile, and is at length seen
in its true perspective when viewed in the light of
those sublime mysteries as the fulfilment to which
they unconsciously aspired. In this way Catholic
doctrine sheds a retrospective light over mystical
speculation. There are passages of Plato and Plo
tinus into which only a Catholic can read their
fullest implications. Yet it is not meant by this
that the Mass is the logical terminus of the Platonic
idea, but rather that the latter was one of the divinely
appointed means of educating man into a state of
soul in which he could appreciate the former when,
in sacri plenitudine temporis, it should be revealed
to him. The Catholic mystic would, then, mistake
alike the nature of dogma and the claim made on
his soul by Revealed Religion, were he to discard in
favour of his individual insight the doctrinal generali
sations ' of faith ' among Catholics. Such action
would be retrogressive. He would be substituting
natural for supernatural mysticism. For — and in this
is to be found at once its crux and its only possible
justification — Catholicism claims to be a super
natural religion.' ' Appendix A.

14 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
The claim made on his soul by Revealed Religion !
Ah ! here is the rub ; in this lies the ' open secret of
Christianity.' Let us try to consider what this claim
amounts to. And first, as to its extent.
Revealed Religion, directly or indirectly, claims
the whole man. It directly claims his intellect, his
belief, and the flowering of his emotional being, his
love. It indirectly claims his will. I say indirectly,
for the service of the will unprompted by love has
nothing to do with Revealed Religion, but belongs to
ethics, which, as such, is a conception wholly alien to a
system which counts among its saints Thais, the peni
tent light o' love, and Moses, the converted negro
bandit. This is of course a tremendous claim, and
one may well be surprised at the lightness, the le-
geret^ with which so many, both of those who admit
and of those who deny, appear to treat it. In return
for this complete service. Revealed Religion claims to
heal, once and for ever, the wound of man. Moreover,
given the Church's definition of that wound, there can
be no doubt but that Catholicism does heal it. If
the Catholic analysis of human nature (which is by
no means only held by Catholics) be once admitted,
it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the
Catholic saint represents that nature perfectly
restored. And to say as much as this is to say more

THE CLAIM OF REVEALED RELIGION 1$
than may at first sight appear. For it amounts to
saying that the resources of the Catholic system are
equal to meeting to the full all possible demands that
can logically be made on it. It will, no doubt, be
said that the natural logic of things will account for
this. But in human aft'airs, more particularly religious
systems, is this natural logic so very apparent ? Does
not the arbitrary, the unexpected, constantly cut
short the line of ideal development ? Is not religious
speculation, in particular, a byword for confusion of
thought and tongue } We, at least, who come of
Protestant heredity can hardly think otherwise. That
there should then be just one system among warring
theodicies both speculatively and practically complete
is surely no slight thing, and must, one would think,
arrest the inquirer's attention. I do not say that
alone it can do more, but this, at least, it would seem
it must do. The question remains of the value of
the Catholic analysis of man ; it is the view taken of
this that probably in all cases determines the con
scious attitude towards Revealed Religion.
Now by the Catholic analysis of man I do not
here mean the dogma of the Fall, which is a revealed
mystery, and as such incapable of independent
observation, but rather the state in which, according
to Catholics and many others, man finds himself on

l6 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
this planet. This state may be summed up in one
word— insufficiency. Man is not sufficient_tojiim-
_self His nature forces him to create ideals which
he is incapable of attaining ; on no side, in no single
one of his forms of activity, is it given to him to
realise the equation of thought and being, of desire
and fact. The floating rocks of metaphysical truth
are for him enisled in the black waters of scepticism ;
his god-like reason can ultimately solve no con
crete problem, for the condition of its inerrancy is
to be confined to the abstract. His deepest craving
is for happiness, adequate to infinite desire and
permanent while the conditions and perhaps the
inner nature of life make of such a demand a bitter
mockery. His speech is a burning fire.
With his Ups he travaileth ;
In his heart is a bHnd desire.
In his eyes foreknowledge of death.
He weaves and is clothed vvith derision.
Sows, and he shall not reap ;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
Art is the greatest glory of man. Has the
achievement ever once contented the artist's inmost
desire ? Towards the end of his life, one who achieved
more than most, wrote these sad and beautiful words:

A SONNET OF MICHAEL ANGELO 1 7
Giunto fe gia '1 corse della vita mia
Con tempestoso mar per fragil barca
Al comun porto, ov' a render si varca
Giusta ragion d' ogni opra trista e pia ;
Onde P affettuosa fantasia,
Che r arte si fece idolo e monarca,
Conosco ben quant' era d' error carca ;
Ch' errore h cio che 1' uom quaggiii desia.
I pensier miei gik de' miei danni lieti,
Che fian or s' a due morti m' avvicino?
L' una m' fe certa e 1' altra mi minaccia.
Nfe pinger ne scolpir fia piu che queti
L' anima volta a quell' amor divino,
Ch' aperse a prender noi in croce le braccia.'

' I subjoin the late Mr. Addington Symonds's beautiful translation
of this sonnet for its independent poetic value :
Now hath my life across a stormy sea
Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all
Are bidden ere the final judgment fall
Of good or evil deeds to pay the fee.
Now know I well how that fond phantasy
Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
Of earthly art, is vain ; how criminal
Is that which all men seek unwillingly.
Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed.
What are they when the double death is nigh ?
The one I know for sure, the other dread.
Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul that turns to His great love on high
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

1 8 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
Never perhaps did a man achieve so much in such
varied ways as this child of the gods. Michael
Angelo succeeded supremely as sculptor, painter,
poet, lover ; yet this is what he has to say of his
success. And the mass of men who are not artists.
with their painted joys, their pale, imitative pleasures,
their deliberate raptures, their borrowed wisdom,
their swift-coming death, what of them ?
It is attempted nowadays to turn the force of
such reflections by insisting on the social rather than
the individual aspect of man. In tribe-work, mob-
morality as Nietzche calls it, man is to find individual
happiness. Yet what can be more absurd .'' We do
not know what it is we want ourselves, and we pro
pose to begin by giving it to others ! Surely the
utmost a man can do for his fellow is to put him in
a condition in which he can seek his own happiness,
can ask and answer his own riddle in his own way.
Conceivably through centuries of altruistic effort
which would be futile if not based on the ruthless
extermination of those unfit to survive, society might
reach such a stage of development as that health and
work and comfort should be open to all. But the
question of what to do with these advantages, how to
invest this precious capital, would still gnaw at the
brain of each solitary human being. It was the

HAPPINESS AND ITS CONDITIONS 19
inability to see this distinction between the nature of
happiness and its conditions that led Sainte-Beuve
to say of Pascal's argument for Christianity : 'II est
bien vrai en effet que le jour ou, soit machinalement
soit a la reflexion, I'aspect du monde n'offrirait plus
de mystere, n'inspirerait plus surtout aucun efTroi ; ou
ce que Pascal appelle la perversite humaine ne
semblerait plus que I'etat naturel et necessaire d'un
fonds mobile et sensible. . . . le jour oii le cceur
humain se flatterait d'avoir combl6 son abime ; ou
cette terre d'exil, d6ja riante et commode, le serait
devenue au point de laisser oublier toute patrie d'au
dela et de paraitre la demeure definitive — ce jour-
la I'argumentation de Pascal aura fldchi.' The great
critic cautiously adds : ' Mais la maniere de juger
depend beaucoup ici de la maniere de sentir, et c'est
a chacun de voir si un tel jour est ou n'est pas en
train d'arriver.'^
It is instructive to compare with Sainte- Beuve's
method of handling the question, the view of a living
English thinker, who sees the problem more truly.
' For, as increasing wealth and civilisation set a
greater proportion of mankind free from the constant
pressure of mere bodily wants, the pressure of
spiritual needs becomes more clearly felt and is
' Port-Royal, tome iii. p. 331.
C?

20 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
increased by every advance which is made in intelli
gence and culture. The more we succeed in re
moving such of the evils and limitations of life as can
be removed, the more cleariy do those which cannot
be removed reveal themselves, and the more impera
tive becomes the demand for some assurance that
these also are transitory, and that all things work
together for good. Nor does this tendency of our
nature deserve to be called, as it often is called,
either selfish or abstract. If we care for virtue we
can scarcely fail to be interested in the ultimate
righteousness or iniquity of the universe, as judged
by our moral ideals. If we care for the men and
women we know, it seems not unnatural that we
should sometimes ask ourselves what — if anything—
will happen to them when their bodies have ceased
to exist.' '
Now as regards the fact of man's insufficiency,
most people who take the trouble to consider the
matter will agree. Certain noisy and genial ones
there may be who ' pity the poor neurotic who can
say, Man that is born of a wotnan hath but a short .
time to live and is full of misery,' but have such frati
gaudenti ever lived themselves ? Does not life, real
life, appeal as little to them as the great art of the
' McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, pp. 257-8.

THE FAILURE OF MAN 21
world ! The Bible means no more to them than
' Shakespeare,' but then ' Shakespeare ' means so
little. On the cause of this insufficiency of man, however,
thinkers are divided. Those who incline to a
materialistic monism, in which mind is nothing but a
manifestation of matter when the latter has reached
a certain degree of complexity, are, by their philosophi
cal position, precluded from attributing permanent
value to any mood of mind as such. On this view
man is discontented becajigp hp jg jrnpgi-fprf^anrl he
is imperfect because he is in process of develop
ment. There is no such thing as personality, which
is but the sum of human conditions mechanically
resulting in the illusion of individual consciousness.
Hence the amelioration of his conditions will neces-

^saiily-_iaipiU3iC£_J2an^fof being nothing but their
product, he inevitably changes with them. On the
other hand, the metaphysicians of Spirit, from Plato to
Hegel, recognise, some more and some less fully, this
wound of human kind.
It is not necessary to do more than indicate in
this country the Christian theory. I quote Mr.
Illingworth's admirable statement of this view, in
which the cause of man's insufficiency is sin. ' Sin,

23 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
or moral evil, is a part of our total human experience
which philosophy is bound to take into account ; and
sin, though primarily due to the will, has infected the
bodily organism of the whole human race : moral and
physical depravity mingling with and reacting on
each other, till the entire resultant may be spoken of
as the ' body of this death,' a complex whole in which
it is impossible to disentangle the spiritual element
from the diseased conditions and perverted functions
of organ and tissue which personal and ancestral
sins have brought about.' ' Mr. Illingworth goes on
to point out that this state of things indicates ' a real
breach of universal order — a miracle in the objection
able sense of the term,' fittingly diagnosed in the New
Testament as dvofiia or lawlessness. For sin has
resulted from the refusal of man to obey the most
intimate law of his nature, to serve righteousness,
discernible to him in the immemorial conception of
the Law of God. This ' sense of sin ' is not only due
to Hebrew or Christian revelation ; engraved in the
universal heart of man, it stalks through the pages of
the Greek dramatist and the Oriental sage. Nor is
there a better expression of it than the hymn of a saint
who was neither ]ew nor Christian : —
' Illingworth, Divine Immanence, p. 92.

' SIN ' 23
Thus dost Thou harmonise into one all good and evil things.
That there should be one everlasting reason of them all.
And this, the evil among mortal men avoid and heed not.
Wretched, ever desiring to possess the good.
Yet they nor see nor hear the universal Law of God,
Which obeying with all their heart, their life would be well.
But they rush graceless, each to his own aim.
Some cherishing lust for fame, the nurse of evil strife,
Some bent on monstrous gain.
Some turned to folly and the sweet works of the flesh.
Hastening indeed to bring the very contrary of these things to
pass.
But Thou, oh Zeus, the- All-giver, dweller in the darkness of
Cloud,
Lord of Thunder, save Thou men from their unhappy folly.
Which do Thou, oh Father, scatter from their souls and give
them
To discover the Wisdom, in whose assurance Thou governest
All things with justice ;
So that, being honoured, they may pay Thee honour.
Hymning Thy works continually as it beseems a mortal man.
Since there can be no greater glory for men nor gods than
Duly to plate for ever the universal Law.'
The recognition of sin as the cause of human
disorder and consequent misery, not being confined
to the explicitly Christian conscience, cannot be
merely the subjective effect of Christian belief And
' Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus.

24 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
the apologist does not, as is sometimes supposed,
argue in a circle when he appeals to this endemic
recognition as the base on which he proposes to
erect the edifice of his own creed, as the fullest
explanation of, and, assuming its reality, the sovereign
remedy for, this terrible disease. For whether these
self-judgments and terrors of the ' natural man,' are
the dying rays of some paradisaical illumination, or
the appropriate expression of the human conscious
ness when it reaches the level of religious activity,
they are equally extra-Christian. And more than
this is not required by the logic of his position.
Our hypothetical pilgrim in quest of revelation
will undoubtedly be arrested by this phenomenon.
As a ' natural ' mystic he has learned not to live in
the loose-fitting habit of sensory experience, to dig
deeper in his search for reality than superfluous
abstractions or physical generalisations. Nature in
deed has always seemed haunted to him, but it is
just this illusive suggestion of a Presence that has
passed, this Real Absence from the only Eucharist that
can be celebrated on Nature's altars, that constitutes
for him his sacrament of despair. Arrived so far he
will find nothing incongruous in the claim of
Christianity to be received as supernatural. Indeed,
he may fairly go further and find that claim, not

THE 'SUPERNATURAL 25
only not incongruous, but inevitable. On this wise,
or not at all, must the birth of Christianity be. For
he knows, by experience, that what is called the
' natural order ' does not satisfy him. He is for ever
at war with that order, and at war by what would
seem to be a necessary law of his being. When,
then the first thing that Christianity tells him is that
the race, as a whole, has lapsed from a higher
order, restoration to which involves, first of all its
postulation, and secondly, the use of means which,
when contrasted with the fallen habit of man, are
appropriately described as supernatural, such a con
ception, far from throwing his ideas into confusion,
appears to be just what is required in order to fulfil
and justify those of them which lie the deepest. He
feels that whether there be a God or not, whether the
Catholic mythos be a fairy tale or the least inade
quate expression of Eternal Truth, in this life only
he, as an individual at all events, has no hope. He
is told to work for the race within the scope provided
by the natural order, but the same order tells him
most unmistakably that the ethical and ideal
qualities of man (the only human qualities which
cause him to take any interest in his fellows) have
only been accidentally developed in the course of a
material evolution the purpose of which is utterly

26

CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

inscrutable, and the end of which is rapidly approach
ing in the universal death which must overtake man
and all his works when the planet chills. To suppose
that the personality of man or his satisfaction is the
goal of that evolution would be a grotesque supersti
tion indeed. Either, then, there is no possibility of
such satisfaction, or it must be found in a super
natural order.
The supernatural order, as such, cannot of course
find counterproof in the natural. If the natural order
be assumed to exhaust realitylhe-sucsrnatural musFbe

utterivjncredible. fnr thp natiira! order only exists in
virtue of a theory of causation, or rather of persistence
of force, with which the idea of the supernatural is in-

cotnpatible. And this applies equallyto all miracles.
ThaFthe intervention of any cause other than the
persistence of one and the same force in varied mani
festation should ever occur within the sphere of
observable phenomena is on ' natural ' grounds,
simply a deliramentum. The free-will of man, if held
to mean an undetermined independent direction by
the human personality of any action whatever is as
absurd as a resurrection from the dead.
TEFlmpprtaft^-^hing-tQ note abmitthis is that it
has-QQ.. bearing on the questionwhether the super
natural order exist. For, supposing~~tEar~oraer to

' NATURE ' AND ' MIRACLES ' 27
exist, it will be evidently impossible to trace it in the
' natural ' order which, by hypothesis, it transcends.
Moreover it will be equally impossible to verify, by
natural_jpethDds alon%-^ai£Lh _an_Jntprg'^^''imT~"--f»fL the
tvv^o_orders as is implied jnamiracle. However
strange and unprecedented an event may be, an
investigator who relies on the assumption that the
natural order exhausts reality is logically forced, at
the cost of sacrificing that assumption (on which all
his physical science is based), to refuse to admit such
an intersection. ' Miraculous ' phenomena undoubtedly occur in
the modem as they did in the apostolic Church.
Setting aside the hypothesis of deliberate and
revolting fraud, there is no ' natural ' explanation of
many of the rigorously attested phenomena connected
with the late Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine.' Is a
scientific man obliged in consequence to admit a
miracle in the theological sense ? Not in the least.
He is of course face to face with a difficulty. But
nature is full of difficulties. Such a difficulty, and a
much more crucial one, is the impossibility of proving
experimentally the evolution of life from not-life. It
was thought at one time that experiments would
prove ' spontaneous generation.' Those experiments
' V. Appendix B.

28 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
have been tried and they have failed. Here, then, is
a gap in our scientific knowledge of nature. But
whether the problem be the origin of organic life or
the means by which a saint distinguishes between
the Sacred Host and unconsecrated bread, no theory
can be less plausible to a man of science than one
which would compel him to admit an exception to
the law of the identity and persistence of force, for
the universality of that law represents the assumption
on which the whole of his scientific knowledge rests.
These arguments may, however, appear to prove
too much. Admitting, it will be said, that natural
methods can neither prove nor refute the super
natural thesis, does not the problem of the super
natural become essentially a question of lunar
politics ? And, in a certain sense, this does follow
from what has been said. The question of the
supernatural is not only impossible to answer from
the natural point of view, but, from that point of
view, ought never even to be proposed. The only
question is whether that point of view is the only
one — that is to say, whether that assumption of the
unity of the material universe expressed in the
doctrine of the identity and persistence of force,
admittedly, the necessary prius of ordered knowledge
of the universe as expressed in terms of inevitable

THE LOGIC OF REVEALED RELIGION 29
sensory experience is equally the necessary prius of
every other mode of viewing it. I do not see how
the shadow of a plausible reason can be produced for
thinking it is so.
The inevitable sensory experience of the universe
considered as a collection of physical objects existing
independently of himself (the orderly arrangement
of which is the function, and the only function, of
natural science), is but a small part of man's experi
ence. Why, then, should the canons of natural
science claim to rule the whole of his experience .'
Man experiences his own personality, his own power
of spontaneous action, his ethical and esthetic
judgments, his craving for love and joy, and God,
and in a measure the satisfaction of that craving.
All these things are quite outside the methods of
natural science. Right, Beauty, Will, God, Love,
are mere nonsense-words, so many ' miracles,' in fact,
if the fundamental assumption of natural science
exhausts reality. And yet man undoubtedly experi
ences these things, and, if intensity and permanence
are any test of reality, they should be the most real
elements of his experience. Physical science, in the
modern sense of the word, is a thing of yesterday ;
the perceptions of Right and Beauty are older than
the hills, about whose geological formation our

30 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
professors tell us so much ; it is the monopoly of a
' small group of races ; some sort of spiritual percep
tion seems to be almost, if not quite, universal to man,
for man invariably expresses himself in his style
good or bad and, as Mr. Pater says, ' soul as a quality
of style is a fact.' But it is a fact which natural
science cannot consider otherwise than as an illusion.
A man of mystical temperament, one, that is, who
experiences more immediately the impact of these
spiritual forces than the itch of physical curiosity,
will never allow that in the contentm.ent of the
latter lies the complete and sole explanation of the
former. To do so would be for him to admit the
less known as the key to the better known. For the
ideas of God and the soul and the rest do not hang
round his mind a mere fringe of arbitrary and
inexplicable fact, a not-self embroidered on the self
by the play of the logical impulse ; they spring
together with his consciousness from the fount of his
being ; their source, like his own, he cannot see.
And their reality may well stand or fall with that
of the most immediate element in his own experience,
his personality, for which natural science can make
no provision.' To the man of mystical temperament as above
' V. Appendix C,

THE INTERNAL ORDER 3 I
defined, and to him only, is the message of the
Church addressed. Such an one alone keeps his head
and heart cool in the midst of the bewildering rush
of appearances ; such an one alone truly craves for an
Ultimate Reality that shall be not merely an abstrac
tion of his mind, but whose embrace shall content his
whole concrete being. To this frame of mind
Revealed Religion irresistibly appeals. For though
Catholic dogma is not in itself ultimate in the sense
of being final and complete (the Apostle tells us that
we see and know but in part), the Catholic or
Revealed Religion in which its Dogma is but an
element, though a necessary one, is life in the ultimate
Reality. /-Catholicism does not indeed present us
with any pseudo- philosophy, attempting to sound in
'd"tnil t^" rplnHnnr nf f^nH nn'tb pyt-prnq] phenomenal
disorder, but reveals to us the interior universe of
ma%-where all no doubt is mystery, but all is— mest-
intimately real. Here the darkness gradually lightens,
-^d the dim forms of a perfect Order, in which God
is All in All, stand revealed. The human soul, fixed
at last on God, her true centre, slowly feels her way to
a perfect equilibrium. All her powers, the mysterious
forces of physical instinct, no less than the flights of
pure intellect, come by degrees to expose themselves
in their true hierarchy, an order so inevitable in its

32 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
gradual development, so convincing in its final
achievement, that the poet's words are seen to be after
all but sober fact — •
By Grace Divine, not otherwise,
O Nature, are we thine.
It is this psychological experience that constitutes
the justification of the claim of Revealed Religion.
It may now perhaps be easier to see the true place
of dogma in the Act of Faith. God alone is of
course the ultimate Term of that Act. The Creed
begins with the words : Credo in Deum. We do not
make an Act of Faith in dogma as such, but in
dogma as, and because, revealed by God. In other
words, while the Divine Being is the essential end of
Faith, the dogmatic content of the Act of Faith is
necessary only with what theologians call necessitas
medii as distinguished from necessitas finis. In that
Act we bow the will to the mysterious Will of God
revealing, we make no arbitrary assertion of person
ally acquired knowledge. Catholic jDogmais therefore
supremely 'true' because, and only because, it is
^^^aled as~5Ucli by AliiiigliL_y God. — fts-trirthr-rs not
relative to the intellectual power which cognises it, but
depends on theveracityof God who,in the simple words
of the Catechism, can neither deceive nor be deceived.
This economy of belief is the radical difference

THE CHURCH AND THE SECTS 33
between Catholicism and all forms of non-Catholic
Christianity. It is so because unless the authority of
the revealing Deity be expressed through a delegated
phenomenal medium, which by the necessity of the
case must be held to be infallible, it ceases to play a
real part in a world of phenomena, or to have the
power of eliciting a real Act of Faith on the part of
the believer. For, on any other hypothesis, whether
that of an infallible primitive Church, which lost its
power of teaching just when it was most needed (at the
moment, that is to say, of division), or of that vaguest
of all illusions, 'Bible Christianity,' the act of belief is
no longer a submission to authority, but an act of
conscious selection. TtTslicrionger faith but aptnion
charged with religious emotion. Three hundred y^afs
ago Protestants did not think otherwise, and the Bible

merely superseded the Church. N oonel5T^he~rn no-
vators then doubted the capacity of the Sacred
Book to do this. But since then a double series of
objections to the Protestant thesis has been developed,
and to an outsider at least it seems as if their com
bined effect must in the long run be fatal.
Protestants are logically tied to a special theory
of inspiration which ^Becomes daily harder to main^

tain~agi^inst the increased knowledge uf lhe hisluiy
of the sacred documents derived from modei^
' D 

34 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
criticism. To afford the necessary lever for an act
of faith, that inspiration must be strictly verbal,
jentire, and final ; if it be possible to dispute in any
way the truth or finality of any statement contained
in the holy writings, the whole Protestant position
falls to the ground, just as the Catholic position
would fall were it possible to dispute a single dog
matic ruling of the Church. No theory of different
degrees of inspiration will serve, since it is obvious
''l^hat only an equally inspired authority would be
competent to determine so sacred and delicate a
matter, and it is the basis of the whole Protestant
position that no such equally inspired authority
exists. So much for theor)'. In practice, when men
have got their Bible they still have to determine
what it means. And apart from the question of
competence to do so, it is a patent fact that on the
determination of that meaning they do not agree.
Supposing, moreover, these two difficulties settled,
the fact would remain that the Bible does not con
tain creeds but principles. The creed has to be
inferred from the principles. The connexion between
the inferences accepted by Christendom as dogma
(and in particular by all orthodox Protestants) is in
some cases very vague. The fully developed Nicene
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for instance, cannot be

THE BANKRUPTCY OF PROTESTANTISM 35
strictly inferred from the formula of Baptism and
the gloss in St. John's Epistle. And as a matter of
positive history we know that it was not so inferred.
Other than Jewish traditions went to make it : with
out the Platonist doctrine of the Logos it could not
have been expressed ; its guarantee to Christendom
was the decision of an CEcumenical Council ratified
by a Pope. The Protestant who labours to remove
what he considers the debris of ecclesiastical Chris
tianity, in order to discover beneath it the pure
religion of the Apostles, is in the position of a man
who should spend his time in scraping layer after
layer of sand from a piece of sandstone, thinking
thus to come at the rock itself ; he does not
realise that it is the rock itself that he is destroying.
There is a good instance of this misunderstanding
on the part of one who would have objected very
much to being called a Protestant. It was the
opinion of the late Matthew Arnold that the religion
of the future would be ' Catholicism purged,' and
' opening itself to the light,' ' conscious of its own
poetry, freed from its sacerdotal despotism, and
from its pseudo-scientific apparatus of superannuated
dogma.' Once understand that it is not as fact that
dogma is, humanly speaking, valuable, but as the key
to the mysteries of the soul, as the successive land-
P2

36 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
marks of man's interior development ; while so far
as imposed on us as fact, it is so imposed, not as
deduction from observation or historical knowledge,
(and not therefore as implying knowledge pseudo-
scientific or otherwise on our part), but on the
authority of the Church, whom we know inde
pendently through her Notes, and the sure ' mercies
of David ' to be the true mother of our souls, the
perspective of the case alters.
It will, I know, be said that any assertion of fact,
no matter by whom it is made, comes, as such,
legitimately under the sanction of scientific criticism,
and that such criticism by no means bears out the
statements of the Church in the region of ' dogmatic
facts.' Now, setting aside the question as to whether
the scientific criticism ul' Lhe New 'i estamenTTias
always, when destructive, been exercised in an impar-

tid^ (?ir~a~"5trrentiffcj spirit, it~ls evident that the
historical case against the Church's statements on
the origin of Christianity, is, as far as it goes,
circumstantial only. 1 mean that no one has
collected authentic records giving a different account
of the life of the Founder. The utmost that
can be said from the historical point of view is, that
the evidence producible for the Church's story is not
as strong as it might be, and that on certain points

THE ORGANIC CHURCH AS WITNESS 37
(some would say) it is fatally weak. Of course
various ingenious theories have been devised, to show
how, the facts being otherwise, the Church's belief
came to be what it was. But they are theories
expressly constructed to meet that disparity of fact
and belief, while that disparity itself, in the absence
of positive evidence, can only rest on grounds on
which, as Mr. Balfour says, ' it is for philosophy, not
history, to pronounce.' Now circumstantial evidence,
in the absence of any other, may rightly decide
a case, though the history of the law courts is there
to show what appalling mistakes it may sometimes
occasion, but the greatest amount of it is at once
nullified by the appearance on the other side of
a single credible eye-witness. And the Church is in
far more than that position towards her children.
For how does the case stand for Catholics ? To

begin with, they believe, rightly or wnpcrly^ fh:^±.-this^
Notes ofrhe Church have never been  serisusly
refuted. They believe on grounds of observation
and~"7eason, whicTi are open _to__all_competently
educated pprsnnq^^_HTaj__thp rnntjpiipd life _d£ — the"'
Church as we know her__to be through so__many
centuries, and in_spite_j:Lf "" many nh^tarleq tn h^r
continued existence both_within a,nd__without, con-
ranscendental as

38 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
it is undoubtedly unparalleled.' Now the Church
orders us to believe, under pain of separation from
God, a number of more or less incredible things,
— incredible, that is, if the test of their credibility
be reason or observation. She claims as coming
herself from God to teach us these things on the
authority of God,- irrespective of any possible cor
roboration from any other source whatever, for she
it is of whom the very Scriptures testify. She claims
in her dogmatic system to condense, as it were, the
supernatural order into a form accessible to man.
She is not from the natural point of view more or
less improbable : from that point of view she is
frankly impossible, and it is ju?t this impossibility
that renders her credible, as, of old, Tertullian saw.
No one can believe in the improbable, but one can
have faith in the impossible. If the Catholic dog
matic system were merely presented as a hitherto
overlooked phenomenon, verifiable by the ordinary
methods of phenomenal science, though running
counter to the rest of our phenomenal experience,
it would merely be in the highest degree improbable
and hence quite incredible. And this would seem
to be the way in which Protestantism does present
' The word ' transcendental ' is here used in a strictly relative, and
not in the technically philosophical, sense.

THE MYSTERY OF DOGMA 39
itself Briefly, we can no longer be Christians in the
Protestant sense of the word, but that furnishes
no shadow of a reason why we should not be
Catholics. The dogmata of the Church are known among
Catholics by the name of mystery. They are truths
encased in language often more or less figurative
The mystery of the war in Heaven between Michael
and the Dragon may be taken as a leading instance
of this. We do not in the least know what angels
are, nor does the Church tell us anything about them,
except that they are beings superior to ourselves in
the scale of creation, and capable of giving an
intellectual vrorship to God. To apply the term
' war ' to any proceedings of such beings is evidently
a highlj' figurative use of language. But it may be
true as far as it goes. Impossible as it may be to
know exactly what is meant by the Fall of Lucifer,
the mystery has a very important psychological
bearing. For it removes the origin of evil from the
will of man to that of a superior being through whose
solicitation man was himself afterwards to fall. Evil
is, then, an accidental, not an essential mood of man,
and the Calvinistic view of original sin becomes an
absurdity. Moreover the objection to the commonly
received theological view of the connexion of physical

40 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
evil and suffering throughout the economy of nature
with moral evil, which arises from the consideration of
the long ages during which the sufferings of brutes
must have preceded the very existence of man on the
planet, is met by the fact that it was the fall of Lucifer
rather than that of Adam which introduced for the first
time moral evil with all its possible consequences into
the Creation. In the same way it will be found that
the most apparently cryptic dogmata when considered
in their relation to man, i.e. in their human corollaries
and consequences, are of the highest psychological
value. And though they have to be stated in creeds
and formularies, apart from the consideration of such
corollaries their real life, their full truth, is not to be
found in any abstract statement, but in their progres
sive fructification in the heart of man. ' Nunc vero
liberati a peccato, servi autem facti Deo, habetis
fructum vestrum in sanctificationem, finem vero
vitam eternam. Stipendia enim peccati mors.' ' The
saint alone is the real proof of Christianity, he alone
renders its dark sayings intelligible. ' The obligatory
dogmata of the Church,' says Coventry Patmore, ' are
only the seeds of life.' The justification of the
Church, then, does not lie in the corroboration of
human science as to the authenticity of her Scriptures
' St. Paul the Apostle, in his letter to the Romans.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TRUTH OF CATHOLICISM 4 1
or the occurrence of her miracles. The psychological
value of her claims would be entirely unaffected by
the simultaneous declaration of all the New Testament
critics, that the Resurrection of Christ 'really did
happen,' or by the conversion of any number of
novelists at Lourdes. That value rests exclusively on
the success vvith which she fulfils in us the task which
she alone dares completely to undertake, the purifica
tion of the heart of man until he becomes capable by
union with God, of conscious fruition of the Infinite ;
Unem vero vitam eternam.
' Le vrai dogme centrale du christianisme, c'est
I'union intime et complete du divin et de I'humain,
sans confusion et sans division,' says the Russian
theologian Solowievv. That this is no empty vaunt
but a psychological reality, if ever there was one, is well
known to students of Christian history. Benedict,
Francis, Ignatius, Cecilia, Monica, Theresa, and how
many thousand others, have undoubtedly enjoyed this
experience of union with the Supreme Good. Among
some it is indeed the fashion to say that Catholicism
when younger and more vigorous did produce saints,
but that its modern manifestation is but ' the loathsome
exploitation of a worn-out creed.' Such shafts of igno
rant malice fall short of their mark, and lie harmless like
the lions in the legends of the martyrs — if a mixed

42 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
metaphor be pardoned — at the feet of saints of our
own day, at the feet of a Cure d'Ars, a Lacordaire,
a Clare Vaughan, a Pere Olivaint, a Margaret
O'Hallahan. The claim of the Church on the individual con
science is not, however, solely based on evidence,
however compelling, of sanctity in others. Quod isti et
istae, cur non ego ? and it is in his own experience
that the mystic will ultimately find his strongest
motives for faith, for he will inevitably discover that
the Great Object of his soul's desire grows clearer
and nearer in exact proportion to the purity of his
conscience and to the fidelity of his adherence to
Catholic practice. This process is of course psycho
logical, rather than philosophical, and is therefore quite
compatible with what schemes of examination of con
science call ' thoughts against Faith,' with a more or
less constant suggestion of speculative insecurity which,
usually quiescent, may sometimes be stung into a
strange fictitious activity, by the irritant of an indiscreet
apostle. In the case of those who have not had the
privilege of early Catholic training, such a state of
mind is, during the first few years of Catholic Hfe,
probably more or less inevitable. Nor has it the
slightest psychological value. For the point is not,
as the onlooker might think, that the believer is not

IDEALISM AND CATHOLICISM 43
quite sure, but just precisely that he is quite sure,
and yet cannot help questioning. It is the coexis
tence of certitude and question on the same point,
that causes the poignancy of his pain. He questions
in the abstract what he perceives to be true in the
concrete. This trial, in its purely logical form, is not
confined to those who embrace the Catholic Faith.
Everyone must have gone through it who has come
under the influence of the idealistic philosophy.
The peculiar anguish of the believer is caused by the
fact that the Object of Revealed Religion appeals to
love rather than intellectual curiosity. Scepticism as
regards the independent existence of chairs and
tables, or even of planetary systems, leaves the soul
unruffled, but the mere shadow of doubt blurring the
adorable Image of our Divine Redeemer makes the
heart shiver. And yet — it is perhaps this under
current of logically possible doubt that determines
to some the finer edge, the rarer stuff of their Faith.
For Faith, if no difficulties at all could be raised
against it, would surely be a most ' mentally inex
pensive ' quality. There is more than a spice of the
adventurer in the mystic.
The Catholic dogmata, then, are the seeds of life,
to be sown in the ground of a willing heart, the
heart of the homo bonae voluntatis to whom the

44 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
angels' message was directed. Isolated from each
other, or stated theoretically only, they carry no self-
justification with them, they show no promise of the
life that is latent in them, they appear to be but
arbitrary and intolerable bonds for the spirit of man.
And thus viewed, viewed that is in the perceptive
medium of the natural man, the animalis homo of St.
Paul, they cannot possibly appear otherwise. So,
too, if the simile be not considered too fanciful, a
straight stick plunged into water necessarily appears
crooked in proportion to its straightness. Much
futile controversy, much waste of time and temper,
would be saved if this were only more generally
understood. Nothing short of the saintly mood jus
tifies Catholicism, just as nothing short of the golden
ear justifies the burial of the grain. Many things
become clearer if the claims of the Church and Dogma
are regarded in the light of this principle ; and in par
ticular, the animosity felt by bodies of men as such
to the Church. I do not at all mean that particular
groups of thinkers, political or philosophical as the
case may be, have not in their principles (which it is
idle to blame them for, as without them they would
not be in corporate existence) subjectively sufficient
ground of objection to the very idea of the Church.
I am referring to those many, neither thinkers nor

SOCIAL ANTI-C.\THOLICISM 45
patriots, but private persons, each of whom taken
singly would be found to have rather a weakness, as
he himself would say, for Catholicism ; and indeed the
Church touches human nature so tenderly, so gra
ciously, and at so many different points, that it is not
easy for any who come in contact with her not to a
certain extent, on some point, to feel her charm.
Now six of these persons together will be anti-
Catholic. Moreover the motives which each sincerely
believes to be actuating him have nothing to do
with the motive really producing their corporate
conviction. The former rest on prejudice and igno
rance, and were these critics to compare notes the
mistakes of the one would be found to refute those
of the other. Their corporate conviction rests on
something far deeper, far less innocent than prejudice
or ignorance. The instinctive feeling of the natural
man for the supernatural things of God acquires a
greater momentum and velocity, so to speak, when it
voices itself in a social bond founded solely on the
natural order. In other words the motive which
animates them is the instinctive hatred of the natural
society, of the ' World ' for which Christ declined to
pray, for the supernatural society whose very terms
of membership, the first of which is faith in Catholic
dogma, necessarily appear to them repulsive and

46 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
absurd. Their motive is, then, the jealousy, or some
times the inverted jealousy, the contempt, of the
kingdom of earth for the kingdom of heaven. This
is why what is called the national spirit is at a
certain stage of its development invariably anti-
Catholic, as much in Italy as in England.
This is so universally verifiable that the history of
the Church in most European countries is much the
same. First comes a period of rudimentary civilisa
tion of the conquered and docile savage, during which
the bases of the Church's power are laid deep in the
simple hearts who love her, for they owe everything to
her, both their vista of heaven and their opportunity,
such as it is, of a little decent human happiness on earth.
Then follows an intellectual, spiritual, and artistic
development, wonderfully expressed in the French
and English Cathedrals, the primitive painters, and
the period of scholastic philosophy closed by Aquinas
and St. Bonaventure. Then the intellectual develop
ment begins to outstrip the spiritual : some one
discovers that a state of grace is not necessary in
order to work a printing-press. The intellect
divorced from grace proceeds to think out a secular
state, man borrows for egotistic temporal ends the
social machinery first taught him by the Church to
fit him individually for a heavenly destiny.

COMPROMISE 47
Little by little the older aspirations begin to die
out, lingering here and there in special coteries, men
are led away from their craving for the eternal by the
incessant multiplication of the temporal, while life
itself becomes increasingly difficult in a community
where the pursuit of wealth grows more and more
universal. New objects of interest arise ; art grows
less human and less divine ; morality, depending for
its motive and sanction on temporal social expediency,
slips into the place of righteousness ; the individual
has no time to think of his soul ; gradually the
secularised state idealised as the Fatherland takes
the place of the Church, and a national spirit is formed
which only needs opportunity to betray its anti-
Catholic principles.
Of course there are intermediate stages of com
promise with the Christian idea, there are concordats,
and there are National Churches. The ^tat athh
dares not show its face of death at once.
In the concordat the claims of the Church are
theoretically respected, maintained even, but they
are limited in their exercise by the temporal needs of
the community. Parish priests make, after all, for
social order, and are supposed to mitigate the incen
tives to crime that in the modern state lurk for the
envious poor. Let them remain : they cost less and

48 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
serve the state better than an elaborate police. But
religious orders drain the State of its most valuable
elements : the exotic food of those who hunger and
thirst after righteousness must therefore be placed
under a prohibitive tariff
The National Church takes a different and in
some ways a franker line. In this case the State
simply takes the Christian religion bodily over,
reshapes its doctrines, modifies its moral law, and
having cast aside the Keys of Peter tries to maintain
its own impossible sanctions by borrowing the sword
of Paul. But that two-edged symbol of martyrdom
is too heavy to be wielded by any save by him whose
legitimate heirloom it is. The English and Irish
persecutions — the latter of which, according to Mr
Lecky, was the worst of all religious persecutions — are
at last confessed to have failed abjectly. In Ireland
the Faith has finally triumphed, and it is probably
stronger and more secure in England at the present
day than at any time since the publication of the
Bull Dominus in praecelsis.
Now what has been the effect of this non-Catholic
development of man on his religious belief .? It surely
must be admitted that it has been almost purely
destructive. Religion has under its influence slipped
from her ancient throne and become a waiting woman,

INDIFFERENCE IN MATTERS OF RELIGION 49
sometimes docile, sometimes querulous and obtru
sive. Modern etiquette considers a man's religious
opinions, be they what they may, in the light of some
personal idiosyncrasy which it would be bad taste to
mention. A man is a Romanist or a Plymouth
Brother or he has but three fingers on his left hand ;
in all these cases good manners dictate a like discre
tion. ' I know,' says Newman in a famous passage,
'that even the unaided reason, when correctly exercised,
leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the
soul, and in a future retribution ; but I am consider
ing the faculty of reason actually and historically ;
and, in this point of view, I do not think I am wrong
in saying that its tendency is towards a simple un
belief in matters of religion. No truth however
sacred can stand against it in the long run ; and
hence it is that in the pagan world when our Lord
came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of
former times were all but disappearing from those
portions of the world in which the intellect had been
active and had had a career. And in these latter
days, in like manner, outside the Catholic Church
things are tending — with far greater rapidity than in
that old time, from the circumstance of the age — to
E

so CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
atheism in one shape or another.' ' Indifference to
truth is the true source of the world's politeness on
questions of religion. Opinion can live happily with
its contradictory. The religious instinct, except in so
far as it has reacted against these conditions, bids fair
to die of atrophy. Speculatively unjustifiable from the
point of view of modern naturalism it can only find its
exercise in a world of dreams. For modern naturalismi
as we have seen, can find no place for the self or the
will or the soul ; it therefore brands them as delusions.
Over against this negation of the most precious
part of man's experience stand the affirmations of the
Church. They have never changed and they never
will. Proudhon says somewhere that Catholicism is
the only really complete affirmation. This is a fair
admission from an enemy. A Catholic might prefer
to say that the Church alone affirms the reality of
the whole man. Not of the body without the spirit
nor of the spirit or body without the soul, but the
reality of triune man created in the image of the
Divine Triune. This brings us to the very heart of
Catholic dogma, to the source of its formative
influence on the soul of man as distinguished from
its disciplinary action on his mind, to the Mystery of
Creation. ' Apologia, p. 243,

THE MYSTERY OF CREATION 51
The impression is prevalent in England that what
is called ' Roman Mysticism ' rests on some strained
and fantastic view of the obligations of religion due
to the fertile imagination of the Latin races. On the
contrary, the fundamental element in the psychology
of the Catholic mystic is nothing but recognition to
the full of the consequences of creation. A modern
spiritual writer who has often been accused of
' Italianism ' most truly says : ' If Christianity were
not true, the conduct of a wise man, who acted con
sistently as a creature who had a Creator, would
strangely resemble the behaviour of a Catholic saint.
The lineaments of the Catholic type would be dis
cernible on him though his gifts would not be the
same.' •' The right appreciation of Catholicism
depends almost entirely on the due apprehension of
what is meant by this mystery. It is the funda-
X+5
mental dogma of Christianity. iN^ momentous
consequences extend through and justify every
ramification of the revealed system, and its
psychological effect on those who really believe and
apprehend it, is probably more intense and searching
than that of any other religious doctrine that has evei
been believed by man.
In a matter depending so much on the closest
' Faber, The Creator and the Creature, p. 34.

52 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
verbal accuracy, it is well to begin by referring to the
latest definition of the Church on the subject. The
Vatican Council defines, then, that all things contained
in the universe are produced as regards the whole of
their substance by God out of nothing.
Si quis negaverit res omnes quae in mundo continen-
tur secundum totam suam substantiam a Deo ex nihilo
esse productas, anathema sit}
The Vatican Fathers here adopt and confirm the
definition given by St. Thomas of creation as the
Productio alicujus rei secundum suam totam substan
tiam, nullo praesupposito? The first remark that
occurs on this is that creation is evidently not
'making' of any kind. To assert the 'making' of
anything nullo praesupposito or ex nihilo is simply to
state a contradiction in terms. Paley's transcendental
watchmaker has nothing to do with the Catholic God.
' Making ' necessarily implies the use of means, and
no means are given in the aboriginal act of creation.
That act is rather one of absolute origination both
of means and effect.
How such an act can take place is of course
unknown to us who form part of the universe thus
absolutely originated, moreover not only unknown
but necessarily unknowable. Nor indeed can we
' Constitutio Dei Filius, can. 3, in c. 1. '^ i" i« q. 65, art. 3.

ANALYSIS OF 'CREATION' 53
arrive at any detailed positive conception of such an
act, the utmost that we can directly attain is the
knowledge of what it is not, and hence indirectly of
its psychological consequence to us. We have seen
that creation is not ' making.' On the other hand
the conception of ' Expiration ' which plays so great
a part in all Eastern cosmogonies except the Jewish,
though not quite so far removed from it, is yet
wholly distinct. This idea issues in the identification
of the universe and God. Para-Brahm necessarily
breathes forth his phenomenal manifestation. It is
perhaps not without value at this point to note that
no system except the Christian (in which may here
be included the allied Judaic and Mahomedan
theogonies) has ever taught the mystery of creation.
The extreme abstractness of the idea presents but
little attraction to the mythopoeic imagination, and
the insistence of the Church on this primordial
dogma is said, I do not know with what truth, to be
the principal difficulty in the way of the conversion
of Hindus and Asiatics generally. Not only is there
no word in all their various tongues to express the
notion, but their hereditary bent seems entirely to
prevent them entertaining it. Man left to himself
does not believe in creation in the Christian sense,
though he may, of course, use the term.

54 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
When the supernatural presence and guidance of
Almighty God were withdrawn from the Jewish people,
the doctrine of creation became in process of time
obscured in the highly coloured pantheistic imagery
of the Kabbala.^ As to philosophy, it has invariably
followed the line of least rational resistance, and unless
it has virtually assumed Christian principles has
issued in more or less expirational and pantheistic
conclusions, except in the case of those thinkers
(best represented by the English and French Deists
of the last century) who, seeking the ultimate expla
nation of things in the principles of mechanics, were
bound to assume for their purpose a carpenter or
watchmaker God who had 'made' the mechanical
universe. The unique quality and at the same time the
unfathomable mystery of the Christian doctrine lie of
course in the meaning of the words, ex nihilo-
According to Card. Mazella, a well-known Jesuit
author, for many years Professor of Dogmatic Theo
logy at the Roman College, the phrase might have
three meanings.^
It might mean {\) ex nulla causa sufficiente. This
' See Adam Franck, La Kahbale, p. 132.
' Mazella, S.J. , De Deo Creante, art. I ; De Creationis conctptu,
§4-

ANALYSIS OF • CREATION ' 55
meaning he rejects for the excellent reason that no
production, creative or otherwise, can take place
without a sufficient cause. The sufficient cause of
the Creative Act is the unfettered Will of God.
A second meaning suggested is ex nihilo sui.
This is inevitably to be predicated not only of
creation but of every production. All it means is
that the whole completed product considered as the
terminus effectionis does not exist in its integrity
before the act of production has taken place.
In the third meaning, ex nihilo subjecti, we touch
the kernel of the mystery. Taken in this sense the
phrase is inapplicable to any act of production except
creation. For in every other possible case, though
the product, the terminus effectionis, does not actually
exist before the act of production has taken place, it
does so potentially in its pre-existing elements, which
by their interaction will, at a given moment, produce
it. From which it follows that nihil subjecti alone
is pure not-being, the nihil sui mentioned above is
' not pure not-being, but not-being with an aptitude
to being,' a conception expressed by the Scholastics
in the term Privatio. This conception is alien to the
kind of production supposed in creation, for in the
latter case there are of course no such pre-existing
elements. Were such in existence, they would have

56 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
to be either God or not-God. If the former we should
have Pantheism ; if the latter they would either have
been created and the original difficulty would recur
or not. If not, something besides God exists aborigi
nally and eternally — which is impossible.
I have implied above that there is some analogy
between the doctrines of expiration and creation.
Strictly speaking the analogy is between expiration
and conservation, which is the term applied by
theologians to the act by which God keeps the
creature in existence. Conservation is the prolongation
(eternal a parte post in the case of the human being)
of the original creative act. In Coventry Patmore's
words, ' Creation differs from subsistence only as the
first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.'
The withdrawal of the Divine conservation would
instantly withdraw existence from the creature. It
is not meant that it would presently fade and die, but
that it would on the instant cease to exist. Only
that act of God's stands between it and the nihil
subjecti, the pure not-being from which it was drawn.
Moreover this conservation is no external preservation
effected as by an influence from a distance ; it is the
consequence of a real influx of God into the created
life. Fr. Faber has the following remarkable passage

FR. FABER ON CREATION 57
on this the uniquely characteristic point of the
Catholic doctrine :—
' For we are never really outside of God nor He
outside of us. He is more with us than we are with
ourselves. The soul is less intimately in the body,
than He is both in our bodies and our souls. He as
it were flows into us, or we are in Him as the fish in
the sea. We use God, if we may dare to say so,
whenever we make an act of our will, and when we
proceed to execute a purpose. He has not merely
given us clearness of head, tenderness of heart, and
strength of limb, as gifts which we may use inde
pendently of Him when once He has conferred them
upon us. But He distinctly permits and actually
concurs with every exercise of them in thinking!
loving, or acting. This influx and concourse of God
as theologians style it, ought to give us all our lives
long the sensation of being in an awful sanctuary,
where every sight and sound is one of worship.
It gives a peculiar and terrific character to acts of
sin. It is hard to see how levity even is not sacrilege.
Everything is penetrated with God, while His inex
pressible purity is all untainted, and His adorable
simplicity unmingled with that which He so inti
mately pervades, enlightens, animates, and sustains.

58 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
Our commonest actions, our lightest recreations, the
freedoms in which we most unbend — all these things
take place and are transacted, not so much on the
earth and in the air, as in the bosom of the omni
present God.' ^
Briefly, the Christian God is both transcendent
and immanent.
One point more. The act of creation is the
realisation in time of the eternal idea of creation, and
results of course in its exact objective facsimile.
From all eternity Almighty God has had the idea of
the musca domestica.
The freedom of the creative act cannot be
pressed to mean more than that the Creator was not
impelled to create by any internal necessity. He
created us of His free goodness, bonum diffusivum sui.
He could not create otherwise than in accordance
with His idea.
It is needless to pursue the statement 'of the
doctrine any further, since we are not here engaged
on pure theology but only on the psychological
effect produced by belief in it. The following pro
positions would seem to sum up the mystery in
relation to and as apprehensible by us in its simplest
forms. ' The Creator and the Creature, p. 65.

CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF IN CREATION 59
(A) All that we are and all that we have is
absolutely originated by the creative will of God
realising in time His eternal thought of each one of us.
(B) That we continue to exist from one moment
to another and to retain the use of any of our
faculties is due solely to the conserving influx of
God. (C) We might never have existed, creation being
a free act of God.
(D) The purpose of God's action cannot be less
than adequate to God Himself: He must therefore
have created us, as all other creatures, ultimately for
His own glory.
(E) God is therefore not only our origin but also
our last and only essential end.
All these propositions seem apprehensible enough
as far as they go. Propositions (A), (B), and (C) are
no doubt incomprehensible, i.e. we cannot see all
round them or even apprehend all their implications.
Now if the above be accepted as a fair statement
of the mystery in a form relatively apprehensible to
our mind, a moment's reflection will show the
tremendous consequences which result to man from
belief in it. Of these the most painful to some minds
is no doubt the way in which the dogma cuts straight
across the line of metaphysic. It follows from the

6o CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
freedom of the creative act that no a priori or meta
physical theory of it is possible. That creation is
literally absurd we may cheerfully concede to the
metaphysician. But probably not more than one or
two in a generation have a real passion for pure
thought, and these, if they did but know it, would find
all, and more than all, they seek in theology. Man
has unfortunately a number of less disinterested
ambitions on which the effect of belief in creation is
no less restrictive.
The various forms of man's ambition will be
found, in so far as they transcend the itch for physical
pleasure, to be but different manifestations of one
master-craving, the thirst for dominion. In the
dechristianised modern world wealth brings dominion ;
wealth is therefore pursued at any cost. Now the
idea of dominion is quite incongruous with that of a
creature : it comes from a different quarter ; the
utmost that can be logically attributed to him is a
delegated power implying strict responsibility to the
Creator. Such, neither more nor less, was the theory
of Christian monarchy and aristocracy in the days
when such things existed. Such to-day is still the
theory of the Pontifical sovereignty of Rome. Such
delegated power, precisely because it is only dele
gated, claims the authority belonging to the source

THE MORAL AUTHORITY OF GOD 6l
of its delegation. And only a power so delegated
can logically claim a moral authority, a title to ethical
obedience. There is no moral reason why we should obey
anyone but God. Civil society, except in so far as it
represents the authority of God, has no ethical claim
on us, its pseudo-authority can rest ultimately on
nothing but force, in any case where its ruling
conflicts with self-interest :
For man's grim justice goes its way.
And will not swerve aside :
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride ;
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide.
The appropriate function of the creature is, on
the other hand, devoted self-subordination to the
Divine Scheme in which he finds himself a part.
Whatever we may think of the theology of Parsifal,
it is a true insight that represents the converted
Kundry as replying to Gurnemanz, who asks her what
she wants, with the one word ' Service.' But who shall
serve with unclean hands ?
In the great church at Assisi in Giotto's fresco
stands the bride of St. Francis, the Lady Poverty,
lifting pure pale hands to Heaven. Those venerable

62 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
hands are empty and bare, save for the tears and
kisses of the sufferers she has relieved. They are
empty, for their constant attitude of prayer precludes
the hoarding of the alms on which she lives.
She calls nothing and all things hers, for she is
God's. The evangelical virtue of Poverty is more than
material or exterior denudation : in its perfection it
implies the cutting out of the fibres of self-love, the
soul renounces not only external but internal
dominion as well, for does not the darhng Ego
belong to God as much as any other of His crea
tures? And this brings the soul by a natural
transition to the second great Catholic virtue.
Chastity. God claims the body, and He does not
dwell in luxurious veins. If there ever were a safe
truth, it is this. Our flesh must be kept clean and
fair as His temple. Moreover, he who dishonours
his body dishonours also that sacred Body which
hung on the Cross, and which is daily lifted up in
blessing on the altars of the Church. Since God
became man everything human has become divine,
and lust is inhuman. Observe the glitter in the eye
as of a beast of prey ; note the grotesque brutish
gesture, the thickness of voice as of some chattering
arboreal creature. And if the blood must not riot,

A MISUNDERSTANDING 63
neither must the will or the intellect which have to
be restrained by obedience. The intellect obeys by
assenting to the revealed mysteries on faith in God's
word ; the will obeys by squaring the life with the
doctrine. Now the important point to note about all this
is that these tremendous consequences are not based
on any exotic pietism, they follow necessarily from
the simple premiss of creation, they do not apply to
some special class of men alone ; if they apply to
any, they must apply to all God's rational creatures.
The essential relation of the Deus Creator et
Remunerator to a ballet girl is the same as to a
Carmelite nun.
This brings us to another misunderstanding un
fortunately not infrequent among imperfectly in
structed Catholics ; it appears to have grown up
during that melancholy post-Tridentine, anti-Protes
tant age of the Church from which the Vatican
Council has at length delivered us. The misunder
standing I refer to amounts to this.
Christianity contains two systems radically
differing, the one intended for priests and religious,
the other for lay persons. Perfection is in this view
necessarily and exclusively attached to the former,
which is the supreme and ultimately real expression

64 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
of the religion ; the laity can be at best but amateur
Christians. There is a double fallacy in this position. The
abstract is confused with the real, and the means
with the end. The Religious State, the state, i.e., of
those who live under vows of absolute poverty, entire
continence, and complete obedience, is, as such,
higher than the secular state where these vows are
not. This is, of course, beyond dispute. This
superiority is, however, wholly abstract, as abstract as
the contrasted states. ' Reality is exhausted by
what is.' What alone ' really ' exists is a number of
individuals in the concrete, some of whom live under
vows, and some of whom do not so live. Relatively
to these concrete persons, taken one by one each in
his solitary individuality, it is impossible to predicate
the superiority of the one ' state ' over the other, it is
wholly a matter of vocation. Luther was a bad
religious. Sir Thomas More a lay saint. And in the
actual contrast of those two lives lies the refutation
of the second fallacy. The 'state' of Luther, a
professed Augustinian friar, was the ' state of perfec
tion' till the day of his death. No amount of
licentiousness could alter that. But Luther, to put it
mildly, lived imperfectly in that state. The ' state '
of Blessed Thomas More, on the other hand, was not

THE 'COUNSELS' AND THE 'PRECEPTS' 65
technically the state of perfection at all. He was a
great secular statesman and a wealthy noble, twice
married and blest with a numerous family. Yet in
that technically less perfect state he became so
unusually perfect a Christian as at last to merit the
crown of martyrdom for that Faith from which
Luther died a miserable apostate. The end proposed
by their religion alike to Luther and to Sir Thomas
More was perfection, the perfect love of God imply
ing detachment from all else — from wealth, from lust,
from self-love. Luther chose the more perfect means
to that end, inasmuch as he bound himself by vow to
live all his life under the conditions of absolute
poverty, entire continence, and complete obedience.
We know how he kept his vow. Our blessed martyr
after years of prayer and reflection came to the
conclusion that these high professions were by God's
appointment, in his case, mirabilia super se ; accepting
with surely true Christian humility the abstractly
less perfect means, he unfalteringly persevered and
attained his end.
The end, then, of all Catholics is the . same, the
' perfection ' of the religious state consists in the
greater perfection of the means to that end which it
supplies. They are heroic indeed' in the self-abnega
tion which they imply. Nevertheless, without the
F

66 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
possession of the mood to the production of which
they are so obviously and skilfully directed, neither
monk nor courtier will see the Face of God. And
the essential ingredients of that mood are the fruit of
no eccentric exaltation of spirit, but are, as we have
seen, contained in the logic of creation. It is not
essential to Catholic sanctity that a man should be
under a vow of poverty, but it is essential that he
should be indifferent to riches whether he possess
them or not ; not essential that his continence be
completely and irrevocably made over to God by a
vow of perpetual chastity, but surely essential that his
physical desire being contained within those sacra
mental limits which transubstantiate brute appetite
into the symbol chosen by Christ Himself to express
His relations with His Church, the fine edge of his
soul's craving be sharp-set on the beauty of God.
It is not essential that he should have vowed complete
obedience to a religious superior even in the details
of his daily occupation, but it undoubtedly is essential
that he should obey the known will of God, and if
necessary take his place in ' the bright roll-call of
those who have defied Csesar even unto death.'
Belief in creation is not of course the only element
in the psychology of the Catholic Mystic, but enough
has, I think, been said to show that it is the funda-

THE PYSCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF DOGMA 6j
mental factor in his mental composition. The
other mysteries of the Faith take their place in
his progressively realised Credo, and their succes
sive real apprehension indicates the stages of his
spiritual development, while of that development
the mystery of creation is the necessary point of
departure. Foremost among these are the mysteries of the
Adorable Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Son
of God. Then the wondrous cycle of His actions, at
once Divine and human. The Passion, Death, and
Resurrection of Emanuel — God-with-us — who is both
our Almighty Creator and the redeeming Head of
our race, in whom all our antinomies whether of reason
or will are finally reconciled ; nor will he overlook
the Divine and human maternity of Mary, who being
the Mother of Jesus is as truly our Mother as He is
(to quote St. Paul's words) our Brother.
Carissimi, nuncfilii Dei sumus : et nondum apparuit
quid erimus. Scimus quoniam cum apparuerit, similes
ei erimus, quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.
One day the lyre so cunningly compacted under
the guidance of the Eternal Spirit of words and
logic will be broken for ever, but will not the
Divine Symphony continue ? St. Paul the Apostle
says that everything will fail at the last but Love,

68 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
and in the words of another master in Christianity,
Love is God :
Te trina Deitas unaque posciinus.
Sic nos tu visita, sicut te colimus :
Per tuas semitas due nos quo tendimus,
Adlucem quam inhabitas.
Christian Mysticism, the principles of which are
unmistakably asserted in the earliest writings of the
Church, in the gospels of the four Evangelists, and
those letters of the Apostles which time has preserved,
needed for its development, retreat and silence, for,
like the religion of which it is the supreme expression,
it is a life rather than a theory.
A writer in the ' Annales de Philosophic Chre-
tienne ' says with perfect theological accuracy : ' La
mystique chretienne ne consiste pas a aller a Dieu par
le cce.\xr plUtot que par la raison, mais a chercher Dieu
par le cceur autant que par la raison. Le mystique
n'est pas, comme on I'a pense, un homme qui s'eleve a
des v6rit6s supdrieures a I'experience ; mais, au con-
traire, un homme qui constate par experience des
v^rites superieures a la raison.' It was Palestine,
Syria, Mesopotamia, above all the valley of the Nile
and the Thebaid, which in the middle of the third
century furnished an asylum for the seekers after
communion with God.
' Annates de Philosofhie Chritienne. Mars 1897. 'LaMdthode
Exp&imentale et la Mystique Chretienne.'

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM 69
In the year 253 St. Paul, the first hermit, as he is
called, fled before the persecution of Decius into the
African desert, where he spent ninety years in solitary
contemplation. He opened a wonderful period in
Christian history, the period of the Fathers of the
Desert. St. Anthony, whose life has been recorded
for us by St. Athanasius, saw the aged Paul before
he died and carried on his tradition, modifying it by
the adaptation of its spirit to the condition of the
cenobitic or community life. For Christians had
rushed forth in thousands into the desert to consecrate
their lives to God in perfect purity and abstraction ;
and their numbers no less than the intrinsic diffi
culties of their purpose rendered some sort of legisla
tion necessary. This legislation the Church wisely
left in the hands of those most fitted both by
experience and by the insight of their intuitive genius
to create and apply it. Anthony, Ammon, Palemon,
to mention but three names among the great captains
of the monastic warfare, gradually codified the
spiritual experience of the desert into a form which
was afterwards to be carried on with but little if any
fundamental alteration by St. Basil in the East
and by St. Benedict in the Western Church. To
this day the Rule of St. Basil governs nearly all
Oriental communities, and although in the West the

70 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
fertility of the Christian genius has budded into an
infinite variety of expression, the Rule and the habit
of St. Benedict are always with us. We English,
who owe our Faith to the sons of St. Benedict, cannot
but hope and pray that it may always be so.
It is a very hard thing for us who live in the
modern world with its multiplicity of interest to
realise the intensity of the interior life of our Christian
forbears. For prayer, if not the sole, was undoubtedly
the main occupation of the Fathers of the Desert.
That inner world of the soul into which they retired
did not consist in an otiose vacuity of mind, as we are
too apt, judging from our own poverty of spirit, to think.
For one thing, to those early generations, the story of the
Christ was in no way dimmed by time, but was a piece
of vivid and quite recent history. Mr. Pater has noted
this with wonderful delicacy of touch in his account of
the early Christian Mass in ' Marius the Epicurean ' :
' What Saint Lewis of France discerned and found
so irresistibly touching, across the dimness of many
centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him by
one he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing
of yesterday ; and their hearts were whole with it. It
had the force among their interests, of an almost
recent event in the career of one whom their fathers'
fathers might have known.'

THE CHURCH THE HOJIE OF THE MYSTIC 7 1
This no doubt was much to them ; and then there
was also that craving for the Divine Companionship,
that longing to walk with God as a friend with a
friend, that, never wholly absent from our race, seems
on occasion to fire whole multitudes as individuals,
and perceptibly raises masses of men a stage nearer
some rarefied, quintessential life, of which its partial
and intermittent success is at once the earnest and
the portent.
There have been mystics in all religions, but it is
the glory and, to the philosophic mind, a very cogent
' note ' of the Church, that Catholicism has in all
times been able to deal, as an equal, with these
mysterious developments of human nature.
In other systems, putting aside philosophical
schools for the moment, the mystic sooner or later
becomes the heretic ; but in the Church he finds his
natural home, her liturgy alternately soothes and
stimulates him, her discipline braces his will to that
ascesis without which mysticism degenerates surely
into the abnormal and the insane, her dogma
provides him with ballast and direction for his
lightest, his most ethereal flights.
And so it was that while the age of the Fathers of
the Desert passed, mysticism did not pass away from
the Church.

72 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
While the anchorites were conquering the desert
tracts of the soul for the interior life of those rare
and chosen individuals who through the coming ages
of Christendom were to follow in their steps.
Christians who remained in the world were laying the
foundations of the Church's social power. The
expiring forces of the great pagan civilisation
converged in two final attempts to destroy the new
religion. These were the Decian persecution and
the Neo-Platonist philosophy. Towards the close of
the third century, this, the most terrible of the ten
great persecutions of the Church, broke forth.
Neither age nor sex could protect the disciples of
Christ, and the ingenuity of experts in cruelty was
taxed to discover fresh means of torture. Christians
were broken on the wheel, their bodies burnt with
torches, their eyes pierced with pointed reeds : and it
was after these preparations that they were thrown
to the beasts, flayed alive, or slowly burnt to death
on red-hot iron chairs. The extent to which the
persecution spread was unprecedented. In Phrygia
a whole city was burnt to the ground with all its
Christian inhabitants.
The martyrs no less than the anchorites were
specially assisted by God in their heroic struggles.
We read in the letter of the Church of Srnyrna on

THE MYSTICISM OF THE MARTYRS 73
the martyrdom of St. Polycarp these words : ' To a
great number of the martyrs the whips, the torture,
and the flames seemed sweet and agreeable. They
did not heave a single sigh while the blood streamed
from all their limbs, while their torn and open bodies
exposed their entrails, and while the people them
selves could not but weep at such a spectacle. For
the Lord, the Protector of souls, spoke with them,
soothed their suffering, and put before their eyes the
heavenly crown which should reward their patience.'
The martyr Flavian asked St. Cyprian if the death
blow was very painful, and the saint replied, ' The
body feels nothing when the soul is given to
God.' While the new doctrine was thus triumphing in its
martyrs, the more enlightened pagans, disapproving
such useless violence, were preparing a philosophical
opposition to the Church. This opposition took the
form of a dogmatic syncretism, which was to bind
together in a unity capable of being opposed to the
unity of the Catholic faith the various myths and
traditions of paganism. These myths were to "be
understood in a philosophic and non-natural sense,
and it was therefore necessary to find in antiquity a
philosophical principle which should serve as a
unifying basis. This principle was sought in the

74 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
writings of Pythagoras and Plato. Renan observes
somewhere that the only people who do any real
harm to the Church are apostates, and Ammonius
Saccas, the founder of Neo-Platonism, had been a
Christian. His disciple Plotinus, however, had more
to do with the intellectual formation of the school
Circumstances alone made him anti-Christian, and he
may more fitly be considered as an independent
thinker, the last indeed of the purely Greek
philosophers. He practised an austere asceticism,
observed celibacy, and spent much of his time in
prayer and fasting. These religious practices, more
or less successfully imitated by his disciples, soon
developed a true mysticism among the Neo-Platonists.
Porphyry, who wrote his Life, tells us that he had
seen Plotinus four times united to God in ecstasy.
Very remarkable, too, were the last words of the
dying philosopher : ' I am trying,' he said, ' to
re-unite the God who is within me to the Divinity
in the universe.'
The Christian apologists endeavoured to meet
this attack in two ways. Some devoted themselves
to showing the flimsiness of the grounds on which
the hypothesis of the Platonisers rested, while others,
leaving on one side the errors of the school,
endeavoured rather to bring out the elements of

NEO-PLATONISM 75
truth contained in the Platonic traditions. Their
burden was, that Christianity in its admirable sim
plicity contained all that was true in opposing
systems, and that the syncretism which was being
sought for, could only be solidly founded on the
teaching of the Church. Among the latter were
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Synesius. But a
really synthetic thinker was needed, who should be
able to unite in an organic unity the elements of
truth dispersed throughout pagan philosophy, and
thus edify a monument which could be successfully
opposed to the new Pantheon of the Platonists.
This man appeared at the beginning of the fifth
century. His work was mystical, for his object was
to sound the depths of the Christian mysteries. He
found his basis in the writings of the Old and New
Testaments, interpreted by the Christian tradition, and
among the inspired writers he naturally had a special
preference for St. Paul the Apostle, who had been the
first to discover the speculative depths of Christian
dogma. St. Paul was accordingly hailed as the first
initiatorinto the Divine illumination, and the Christian
world came to think that it recognised in Denys the
Areopagite, whom Paul had converted, and conse
crated first bishop of Athens, the anonymous writer
who gave to Christian mysticism its form and

76 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
development. Such was the origin of the books that
have come down to us under the name of the
Areopagite. The writings of the pseudo-Areopagite can be
divided into three parts, of which the first treats of
God, considered in His essental immobility, while the
second contemplates Him pouring Himself by His
Providence through His creatures, and the third is
concerned with creatures returning to God, their first
cause and last end. In the first division may be
classed the De nominibus Divinis : God, who, con
sidered in the simplicity of His essence, can be
called by no name, yet assumes all names, being the
first cause of everything. Himself the essential
goodness. He is the principle, the Beginning and the
End of everything which exists ; and He Himself is
without beginning or end. He is the Life which gives
life to everything, and yet He Himself is above all
life. Considered as wisdom He is the source of all
science ; He is the simple and essential truth which
men seek in everything, and which no creature can
ever know. Considered as power and energy He is
the Cause of all virtue. He is One, and he is All ;
He is the Principle of all unity, and all multiplicity ;
and that is why he can be called by all the names
which are not repugnant to His Essence on condition

TPIE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS -jj
however, of its being recognised that in Himself He
has no name at all.
The Theologia Mystica, on the other hand, con
siders creatures in their return towards God. The
human soul, by an inverse movement to that of God
towards the creature, rising step by step through the
degrees of creation, remounts at last to God, enters
the mysterious night of the Divinity, which no created
light can pierce, and there unites herself intimately
with her last end. These works, which succeeded in
demonstrating that all the truth which the Platonist
school had discovered in humanity was found in
Christianity in a far purer and more perfect form,
gave to mystical speculation a solid basis on which
the following centuries did but continue the edifice
already begun.
While the theory of Christian mysticism was
being vindicated against the Alexandrian sophists,
St. Benedict in Italy was giving a new impulsion to
its practice. In the year 498 he had fled as a
young man of eighteen the temptations of Rome, and
plunged into the solitude of Subiaco. Here, in pro
cess of time companions joined him, to whom he
gave his famous Rule, which, after the inspired writings,
is perhaps the most remarkable document produced
by Christianity. Resuming as it did the pith of the

78 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
spiritual experience of his monastic predecessors, the
Rule of St. Benedict became, in less than a century
after the saint's death, the almost universal code of
monastic life in the West. Not only did it form
contemplatives like St. Bernard and St. Hildegarde,
it trained students like our own Venerable Bede, and
missionaries like St. Augustine and St. Boniface,
The Benedictine Order, unlike those numerous
religious institutes which are the glory of the modern
Church, did not put before itself any particular work
of Christian charity as its special aim. The Bene
dictine monk, once formed to personal holiness,
undertook every duty that might present itself; so,
according to circumstances, he was an evangelist, a
schoolmaster, an agriculturist, but always in his
interior life a mystic. Not vainly in later days did
the Benedictines take ' Pax ' for their motto. A sense
of peace and quiet is stamped upon all Benedictine
achievement, whether we consider the writings of
their doctors and theologians, or the stately abbeys
and churches raised by their patient industry all over
Europe, the noble ruins of which are still dotted over
England, a pathetic heritage from happier days.
While, as has been observed, the Benedictine spirit
in no way confined itself to contemplation, the
Benedictines gradually withdrew into their cloisters

THE BENEDICTINE MOOD 79
as Christendom became organised. Little by little
the parish priests, at first recruited from their ranks,
began to be chosen almost entirely from the secular
clergy, and by the end of the eleventh century, we
find the Benedictines largely, if not exclusively,
devoted to purely intra-claustral duties — to study,
teaching, and the solemn celebration of the Divine
Office. Education, which had always been in some sense
or other inseparable from missionary enterprise, had
remained exclusively in their hands, and a lay as
well as a clerical school was found in every abbey.
While the individual monk was strictly bound to
poverty, the community often became very rich
through the gifts of charitable benefactors.
Some abbeys, again, enjoyed large possessions
under royal charters, and their abbots exercised over
their numerous dependents the feudal jurisdiction of
secular nobles. It is easy to see how here and there
in such circumstances the pristine simplicity of the
monastic institute might suffer. An abbot might law
fully do for his community in the matter of acquiring
and retaining property what as a poor monk he could
not do for himself, and it might well be that in such
delicate circumstances the limits of Christian duty
should sometimes be overpassed.

8o CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
Be this as it may, recent historical research has
proved to be malicious fable on this subject much
which our less critical grandfathers accepted as sober
fact. This is at all events true of English Benedictinism,
and we may plausibly argue from England to other
countries in which the Benedictines obtained political
and social power. But —
The old order changeth, giving place to new.
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
At the end of the twelfth century Italy was ripe
for a new religious manifestation. Joachim of Flora
had died in the first years of the century, and had
left behind him a heritage of terror. Italy was
waiting for the catastrophe of antichrist which had
been prophesied by the Cistercian seer, when a
marvellous religious renaissance touched with a beauty
that can never die the moors and valleys of
Umbria. It is not for the present writer to attempt a new
portrait of St. Francis of Assisi. Among ourselves,
the original biographers of the Saint, the witnesses
of his simple, godlike life, cannot be bettered ; and as
to others, modern students not of our fold, he would
be bold indeed who should attempt to improve upon
the work of Renan, Hase, and Sabatier. The

MANICH-EISM AND 'ASCETICISM' 8 I
conflict between the flesh and the spirit was according
to Joachim the characteristic of the second stage of
humanity, the Kingdom of the Son. The ' Flesh,'
embodied in nature in the waxing and waning of the
seasons, in physical forces, in the spectacle of the
whole beautiful universe of matter, entered at first
into the Christian consciousness as the ' Enemy.'
This blind genetic energy of life, expressing itself not
in reason but in instinct, seemed to have for its
tendency the assimilation of man to the brute ; and
then, too, there was a traitor within the gates, man's
feeble body, which though laved in the waters of re
generation and anointed with the mystic oils of the
Church, would ache at times for the simple pleasures of
instinct, on which, as such, the seal of reprobation had
been for ever stamped in the wounds of Christ.
Small wonder that Manichaeism should have been a
snare to many in the early ages ; and, Manich^eans
apart, we read of St Bernard riding a whole day along
the shores of Lake Leman with downcast eyes, lest the
created beauty of the scene should tempt his soul
from interior contemplation. And in earlier times
St. Augustine, in a well-known passage of his
' Confessions,' curses ' the light, that queen of colours,'
for distracting him from prayer.
The third and final stage of man's religious G

82 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
progress was, according to Joachim, to know no such
harassing division of his nature ; his created spirit
and flesh were to find the rest of perfect equilibrium
in the outpouring of the Divine Spirit ; nature itself,
the old enemy, was to become a means of grace.
What a marvellous fulfilment of this eternal hope
of humanity was St. Francis ! Truly he might have
said with the modern poet :
Let us cry, all good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul.'
He seems to have been little troubled with a
' sense of sin ' in the abstract — considered, that is, as
an offence against law. To him it was personal love
rather than abstract law that had been outraged.
And so penance was no hero's task of balancing the
scales of infinite justice ; it was the spontaneous
abandonment of the soul face to face at last with her
true Lover. ' Qtds non amantem redamet ? ' sings the
Church on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. These
words are the whole of Francis' religion. He troubled
himself with no schemes of transcendental criminal
law ; he loved, and in the immensity of his awakened
passion he embraced every creature that the good
God in His love had made, none were too humble for
him. Nature and Grace seemed indeed to have
' R. Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra,

A CHRISTIAN HEDONIST 83
kissed each other, as the Saint, followed by his shy
woodland friends, walked to and fro, bearing the
wounds of Christ ; and men might be excused if they
thought for a moment that the heavens indeed had
opened, and that the reign of the Holy Ghost had
begun on the Umbrian Highlands. It is hardly
possible perhaps to exaggerate the effect produced
by St. Francis upon his contemporaries, It was as
if the Lord had taken pity upon His widowed
Church, and had once more left His Heavenly Home
on a new mission of Consolation and Redemption.
Christ walked again visibly among men in the person
of His servant. In that distant age the Pelagian
virtues of modern times, as Father Dalgairns finely
calls them, were unknown ; men served Christ or
Satan with a devotion to either Lord ferocious in its
intensity. In Sabatier's words they possessed every
virtue but measure, every vice but vulgarity. In
such times, to such men the words of an absolutely
pure and consistent idealist were wholly convincing.
The emotional possibilities of the illimitable sanctity
to which such a prophet urged his hearers, were
readily understood by men familiar with those of
unlimited vice ; as in the Gospel allegory, the ' first
and the last' became interchangeable terms. And
perhaps there never was so pure and consistent an
a 2

84 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
idealist as St. Francis. His nights were spent in
prayer, but his life was the life of a man of action.
Everything to him was good, both society and
nature. His soul went out with a burst of tenderness
and a word of blessing to everything that lives, even
to the lowliest animals. The characteristic of his
temperament was an inalterable gaiety, and we
should rather imagine him as his first disciples
described him, with his bright dark eyes, his open and
smiling countenance, his gay and easy carriage, than
with the emaciated face and the lugubrious aspect
which characterise him in the tradition of the Spanish
painters. He was born in 1182, and belonged to the privi
leged class of the burgesses of Assisi, then very
flourishing through its commercial relations with the
neighbouring cities. Plis father, Bernardone, was a
cloth merchant of great wealth, and the young
Francis spent his father's florins with generous
hand. He would serenade the Umbrian moon
through the streets of Assisi, at the head of a troop
of festive companions. It was the moment when the
Provengal civilisation was beginning to penetrate
by means of errant troubadours the northern towns
of Italy. Francis appears to have fed his mind on

THE ENTHUSIASM OF FRANCIS 85
the fables and romances of French chivalry, and is
said to have told his friends about this time that he
would one day be a great baron.
But the optimism of pleasure was in time to give
place to the idealism of love — of love awakened by
pity. Francis became gradually aware of the core of
suffering in this brilliant, beautiful world. The narrow
egotism of his fellow-citizens ; the human misery that
he met at every turn of the street ; the star\-ing
beggars who crowded the doors of the churches
while the altars of Christ within shone with gold
and silver ; the hideous lepers who moaned and
wandered, uncared for, in wild places outside the
city gate — such impressions as these under the
smiling Italian sky, in the midst of the vine-clad
plain of Umbria where life, liberty, and joy seemed
the natural gift of Heaven to earth, presented his
fellow-man to Francis as a miserable, disinherited
wretch, the one jarring note in the universal harmony.
Under the influence of these new preoccupations his
nights began to be given more and more exclusively
to prayer, and it was in that nocturnal wrestling with
the Angel of the Lord, that the sinew of his thigh
shrank under the Divine touch. A higher and more
alluring ideal than that of the Provencjal poets

86 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
dawned on his imagination, Christ appeared to him
the true captain of romance :
Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once ;
And he that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.
The supreme abnegation, the all-embracing love
of the Cross fired his heart and brain to apply that
remedy which Christ had found. Francis put off his
bravery, and devoted himself to tending the lepers'
sores. The Franciscan movement was begun. Of
the growth of that movement, of the foundation of
the two regular orders of friars and nuns, it is not my
intention here to speak. Thousands left the world to
follow Francis, to preach his gospel of love and pity.
But there were many others who, although prevented
by circumstances from abandoning their ordinary
duties, were no less fired by the Franciscan spirit.
Such persons remaining in the world, formed a vast
society known as the Third Order, and it is to this
Third Order that some of the most illustrious
Franciscans have belonged. St. Lewis of France,
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Charles Borromeo, are
among its illustrations. It flourishes in our midst
to-day. Years after the death of St. Francis,
Tertiaries began to gather into communities which
only differed by the nature of their engagements

ANGELA OF FOLIGNO 87
from the regular communities of friars and nuns. In
early days, also, many persons retired independently
of any canonical organisation into solitude, and there
lived in the practice of the Franciscan Rule as hermits
of the Third Order. Again, two or three might live
together doing works of penance. Of this latter
class of Tertiary hermits was Blessed Angela of
Foligno. The story of her conversion is remarkable,
and singularly consoling. A married woman, she
had lived for years an irregular life, and being
touched by grace, she suddenly made up her mind to
go to confession. But when she came to the point
her courage failed her, and she felt unable to mention
the more grievous of her sins. She then communi
cated, thus adding sacrilege to her other faults. In
this state she seems to have passed some time
tortured by remorse, and at length invoked the
assistance of St. Francis, and the next night the saint
appeared to her. ' My sister,' said he, ' if you had
called on me sooner I should have granted your
prayer before this.' On going the next morning to
Mass she heard a stranger preaching, and understood
by an interior light that he was the confessor that
Providence had destined for her, and after Mass she
made to him a full confession of her sins. Then
commenced the trials of purification. The reader

88 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
will find them wonderfully detailed in the naive
language of the saint herself in the ' Eighteen Spiritual
Steps.' The slowness and difficulty with which she
advanced towards God (she tells us herself that she
spent many years in these painful stages of purifica
tion), provide a singular commentary on those works
of modern spirituality which appear to teach, or at
least to imply, that to acquire perfection is the work
of a few days. Such was not Angela's experience.
She was a simple Franciscan soul, with no theories,
but with an astonishing faculty for self-observation,
and yet no one was ever less morbid. In those of
her writings which I have collected here, her soul
may be studied in each of its stages, from the state
of sin up to that of the astonishing sanctity which
she attained. The value of this piece of Christian
psychology is, I venture to think, enhanced by the
fact that Angela does not appear by any means to
have been a remarkable person in the natural order.
She appears to have been a commonplace, frivolous,
sinful young woman, and with the hesitation of
character inherent to weak natures, even when
touched by grace, was incapable at first of a sincere
conversion. That in spite of all this she should have
attained eventually to such consummate holiness is
certainly matter of great consolation. Of the facts

ANGELA OF FOLIGNO 89
of her life apart from those narrated in the following
pages by herself and her confessor Arnold, we know
nothing. History has not even preserved the date of
her birth. The following translations have been
made from the Latin edition of her works dedicated
to Cardinal Francesco Maria Casino, and published
at Foligno in 17 14. The text has, however, been
carefully compared with that given by the Bollandists.
Her Office is celebrated in the Franciscan family on
March 30.

90 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

PART I
OF THE CONVERSION OF BLESSED
ANGELA
A SINGLE CHAPTER RELATING HER EIGHTEEN SPIRITUAL
STEPS
In my progress towards the road of penance, says
Angela of Foligno, / travelled by eighteen spiritual
steps, before I knew the imperfection of my life.
THE FIRST STEP
THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN
Beginning at first to reflect on my sins, I' attained
to the knowledge of them : and at this knowledge
my soul feared greatly, lest she should be damned in
Hell, which caused me to weep bitterly.
THE SECOND STEP
THE SHAME OF CONFESSION
In the second place I began to blush for my sins
and so great was my confusion that for shame I

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 91
could not confess them. Wherefore many times,
being unconfessed, I went to Communion, and in my
sins received the Body of the Lord. Day and night,
on this account, was I reproved by my conscience,
by reason ofwhich I implored the Blessed Francis to
grant me the grace of finding a suitable confessor,
who would truly understand my sins, and to whom I
could rightly confess them. So, that very night, an
old man appeared to me and said : ' Sister, hadst
thou asked me sooner I should the sooner have
heard thy prayer ; as it is, what thou hast asked is
done.' In the morning, therefore, while I was on my
way to the Church of St. Francis, I found, preaching
in the Church of St. Felician, a friar who was a true
Chaplain of Christ, filled with His power, and as soon
as the sermon was over, I made up my mind to
confess to him. I made a complete confession of
my sins and received absolution. In this confession,
however, I felt no love, only bitterness, shame, and
grief
THE THIRD STEP
SATISFACTION
In the third and next place, I persevered in the
performance of the satisfaction and penance imposed

92 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
on me, and yet still remained full of grief and
without any consolation.
THE FOURTH STEP
THE CONSIDERATION OF THE MERCY OF GOD
In the fourth place, I began to contemplate and
learn the mercy of God, which had extended to me
the aforesaid grace, and had drawn me out of Hell.
By this contemplation I began to be enlightened,
and now wept and grieved more bitterly than before,
and I applied myself to severer penance, of which I
speak not here.
THE FIFTH STEP
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Fifthly : being thus illuminated, and seeing
nothing in myself but defects, I condemned myself,
knowing and perceiving most certainly that I was
worthy of Hell, from which knowledge I received a
still more bitter sorrow. And I would have you
understand that between these ' steps ' I have men
tioned a certain time elapsed. Wherefore we should
have great pity and sorrow of heart for the soul
who moves so slowly and with such grief, going to
God so heavily and making such slight advance, As

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 93
for me, I know that I delayed at each step, and
wept, not having the grace to advance at the time,
although it was a certain consolation to me to weep
at each step : truly a bitter consolation.

THE SIXTH STEP
THE ILLUMINATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF
SIN
When I passed the sixth and next step I received
a certain illumination of grace by which was con
ferred on me a profound knowledge of all my sins,
and I began to see that by offending God I had also
offended all creatures made for me, and from the
depths of my soul my sins were all brought back into
my memory : and I deeply pondered them in the
confession which I made. And I invoked all the
Saints and the Blessed Virgin that they would
intercede for me, and beg the merciful Lord, who
had conferred such great benefits on me, to have
mercy on me, and, since I knew myself to be dead
in sins, to cause me to live again, reviving me by His
o-race. And I begged all creatures, all of whom I
saw myself to have offended (inasmuch as I had
offended their Creator), not to accuse me before God.
And it seemed to me that all creatures had pity on

94 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
me, and also all Saints ; and then the grace was
given me of praying to God with a great fire of love
more abundantly than I had ever been wont to.

THE SEVENTH STEP
THE SIGHT OF TIIE CROSS
Seventhly, was given to me the special grace of
gazing on the Cross, on which with the eyes of the
heart and of the body I beheld Jesus Christ dead for
us : but this vision and contemplation were, as yet,
insipid to me, though I conceived a great grief by
means of them.
THE EIGHTH STEP
THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSE OF CHRIST'S
DEATH
Eighthly, there was given me, while gazing on the
Cross, a further knowledge of how Christ had died
for our sins ; and then I recognised all my own sins,
and realised that I had crucified Him. But I did
not yet know of what great benefit the Passion of
Christ had been to me, nor did I then understand, so
profoundly as afterwards, how He had withdrawn me
from sin and converted me to penance and died for

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 95
me. Nevertheless, in the knowledge of the Cross
that I then had, I received such a fire of love and
compunction, that standing by the Cross I stripped
myself, in resolution, of everything, and offered Him
my whole self; then itwas too, though with trembling,
that I promised Him to observe perpetual chastity,
and not offend Him with any of my members,
accusing all my members in turn of their past deeds.
And I implored Him to give me the grace of observ
ing this promise of chastity, and the guarding of all
my senses, for, on the one hand, I feared to promise
these things, and, on the other, the aforesaid fire of
love urged me so that I could not do otherwise.
THE NINTH STEP
THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WAY OF THE CROSS
Afterwards was given me, in the ninth place, a
desire to seek the Way of the Cross, that I might
stand at its foot and find the refuge to which all
sinners fly. And I was illuminated and instructed,
and the Way of the Cross was made known to me in
the following manner. For it was revealed to me
that if I wished to go to the Cross, I should strip
myself so as to travel thither more lightly and more
freely ; in other words, that I should forgive all who

96 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
had offended me, and that I should strip myself of
all earthly things, of all men and women, friends and
relations, and of my possessions and of my very self,
and give my heart to Christ who had conferred on me
such great benefits as I have mentioned, and thus
walk over a road of thorns, a road, that is, of tribu
lation. And so I began to give up good clothes and
dresses and delicate food, and also head-dresses.
But as yet this was a cause of shame and suffering to
me, because I did not feel much the love of God, and
I was living with my husband, so that it was bitter
to me when I heard or sustained any injury ; I
suffered, however, as patiently as I could. Now it
happened at that time by the will of God that my
mother died, who was a great impediment to me in
the way of the Lord, and my husband also died, and
all my sons in a short space of time. And because I
had commenced the aforesaid Road of the Cross and
had begged God to deliver me from them, I received
a great consolation from their death, although I
suffered somewhat with them in their death, yet I
thought that henceforward, as God had granted me
this grace, my heart would for ever be in His Heart
and Will, and the Will and Heart of God in my
heart.

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 97
THE TENTH STEP
THE APPARITION OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED
In the tenth place, when I inquired of God what
1 could do to be more pleasing to Him, He, in His
kindness, appeared several times to me both sleeping
and watching, crucified on the Cross, and bid me gaze
into His wounds, and showed me in a wonderful way
how He had endured all for me ; and this happened
several times. And when He was showing me all the
sufferings one by one that He had endured for me
He would say to me : ' What then canst thou do for
me that shall suffice .' ' Also He appeared to me
many times watching, though less pleasingly to me
than while I slept, although He always appeared to
me in great pain and sorrow. And he showed me
the sufferings of His Head and, in particular, the Hair
torn out of His Eyebrows and Beard and enumerated
all the scourgings that had been inflicted on Him,
assigning each to the part of His Body where Pie
had endured them, and said to me : ' All this I
endured for thee.' And then were brought back into
my memory all my sins, and it was shown me how, by
my own sins, I had again struck Christ Jesus, and
what great grief I ought to have ; and then indeed I
experienced a greater grief for my sins than ever I
H

98 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
had had before, and, showing me His Passion, He
would say : ' What canst thou do for me that shall
suffice ? ' And then I groaned heavily and wept so
ardently that my tears burnt my flesh to such an
extent that I had to apply cold water for refresh
ment.
THE ELEVENTH STEP
THE SEVERITY OF HER PENANCE AND HER FLIGHT
FROM THE WORLD
In the eleventh place I determined, on account
of my sins, to perform a severer penance, which I
imagined and endeavoured to perform and of which
I cannot here speak, and, as it did not appear to me
that I could do sufficient penance amid the circum
stances of the world, I determined to completely
abandon everything so as to be able to do penance
and come to the Cross as had been inspired me by
God. Now this determination was granted me by
the grace of God, in the following marvellous
manner. For, when I vehemently desired to become
poor, I would frequently think, with much anxiety,
that I might perchance die before I should have
arrived at poverty, and, on the other hand, I would
be assaulted by many temptations ; as, for instance,

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 99
that I was young and that, for that reason, begging
might be a great danger and a shame to me. It
would also be suggested to me that, if I did this, I
should have to die of hunger, of cold, and nakedness,
and that, moreover, all my friends would dissuade me
from it. At length, by the mercy of God, my
heart was enlightened, and with that illumination,
there came to me such a fixity of purpose that I did
not then think, nor do I now think, that I can ever
lose it for all eternity, and I disposed and determined
myself that if it were necessary for me to die of
hunger, or nakedness, or shame, if that pleased or
could please God, I would in no way, on account of
those possibilities, give up my purpose, even if I were
certain that all those evils I have mentioned would
occur to me, because, even if they all occurred, I should
be dying for God's sake of my own will, and then it
was that I really took the determination which has
been mentioned.
TWELFTH STEP
THE MEMORY OF THE PASSION
My next and twelfth step was that I begged the
Blessed Mother of Christ and St. John the Evangelist
by the grief which they had endured that they would
H 2

lOO CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
obtain for me a certain sign by which I might always
keep in memory the Passion of Christ.

THE THIRTEENTH STEP.
THE SHOWING OF THE HEART OF CHRIST
In the thirteenth place, persevering in this
prayer and desire, I fell into a dream in which the
Heart of Christ was shown me and it was said to me :
' In this heart there is no falsehood, but all things
there are true.'
And it appeared that this happened to me because
I had ridiculed a certain preacher.

THE FOURTEENTH STEP
A CLEARER KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST
The fourteenth step was on this wise. Once
when I was standing in prayer, Christ showed Himself
to me watching, more clearly, and gave me greater
knowledge of Himself, and then called me to Him and
bid me place my mouth on the wound of His side, and
it seemed to me that I did so, and that I drank His
blood flowing freshly out of His side, and it was given
me to understand that in that blood He would wash

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA IGI
me. And at this point I began to receive great consola
tion, although the consideration of the Passion caused
me sadness, and I asked the Lord that He would make
me to shed and pour out all my blood for His love's
sake as He had done for me, and I desired, for the
sake of His love, that all my limbs should be afflicted
and should suffer a vile and more bitter death than
His Passion, and I took thought and desired to find
someone to kill me, so long as I should suffer for His
faith or for His love, and I thought that I would beg
Him to grant me this grace, namely that as Christ
was crucified on a tree He should crucify me on a
river bank or in some very vile way. And, because I
was not worthy to die as the holy martyrs had died,
I desired to die a viler and more bitter death, and I
could not think of a death vile enough for my desire,
which should be altogether unlike the death of the
saints, for of their death I deemed myself altogether
unworthy.
THE FIFTEENTH STEP
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE GRIEF OF
CHRIST'S PASSION
In the fifteenth place, I began to fix my desire
on the Virgin Mother of God and on St. John, dwelling

102 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
on the thought of them in my memory, and begging
them, by the grief which they endured at the Lord's
Passion, to obtain for me the grace always to feel the
sorrow of Christ's passion, or, at least, the sorrow that
they had endured ; and they obtained for me, by their
prayers, this grace, and once St John obtained for me
so great a grief that it was among the greatest I had
ever felt. And it was given to me to understand
th^t St. John had suffered such grief at the passion
and death of Christ, and at the grief of the Mother of
Christ, that I thought, and still think, that he was
more than martyr. But this time was given me a
desire of expropriating myself with my whole will,
and although I was much assaulted by the Devil, and
frequently tempted not to do so, and was prevented
having communication with the friars minor, and with
all from whom it was fitting for me to take counsel, on
no account, whatever good or evil things might have
happened to me, could I have abstained from devoting
all my goods to the poor, and, even if I should not
have been able to do this, from at least stripping my
self completely of them all. For it did not seem to
me that I could keep anything without gravely
offending Him who had so enlightened me. However,
I still remained in bitterness on account of my sins,
and did not know whether what I was doing was

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA I03
pleasing to God, but, with bitter groaning, I cried to
Him saying: 'Lord, even if I am damned, I will
nevertheless do penance and will strip myself of
everything and serve Thee.' And while I was still in
bitterness on account of my sins, and did not yet feel
any divine sweetness, the state of my soul was
changed in the following way.
THE SIXTEENTH STEP
HER CONSOLATION IN READING THE
PATERNOSTER
My sixteenth step was on an occasion when I
had come to Church and was praying God to grant
me a certain grace. And while I was praying, and
saying the Paternoster, God placed the Paternoster
itself in my heart with such clearness and such an
understanding of the divine goodness and my own
unworthlness, that I cannot express it. The prayer
was expounded to me in my heart, word by word,
and I said it very slowly, with contrition and with
compunction, so that, although on one hand I was
weeping for my sins and my unworthlness, which I
there recognised, I yet had great consolation and
began to taste somewhat of the Divine sweetness,
for, in the Paternoster, I began to learn better the

104 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
Divine goodness than in any other thing, and to this
day I still find it better there than elsewhere.
Moreover, inasmuch as my sins and unworthlness
were shown to me in that Paternoster, I began to be
so ashamed of them that I did not dare lift my eyes
to heaven, or to the crucifix, or to anything else,
but I recommended myself to the Blessed Virgin
that she should obtain for me grace and pardon for
my sins, while I myself still remained in bitterness
on account of them. Oh, sinners, how heavily does
the soul go forth to penance ! for her feet are so
strongly fettered, and she has such evil counsellors
who are indeed but obstacles, the world, the flesh,
and the devil. Know, moreover, that in all these
steps that I have mentioned I delayed for a good
time before I could move to the next, but in some I
waited longer time, in others, less.
THE SEVENTEENTH STEP
SHE OBTAINS A GREATER FAITH THROUGH
THE BLESSED VIRGIN
In the seventeenth step, it was shown me that
the Blessed Virgin had obtained for me a grace by
which she gave me a more than human faith, for it
seemed to me, up to that time, that my faith had

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 105
been, as it were, dead in comparison with that which
she obtained for me, and that my tears had before
been scant}' in comparison with those which I after
wards had. For, afterwards, I grieved over the
Passion of Christ, and the sorrows of His mother,
and what I had done before, however great it
may have been, seemed to me as nothing ; and I
wished to do greater penance, and I enclosed my
heart in the Passion of Christ, and hope was given
me that, in that Passion, I might become free. And
now I began to receive consolation in dreams, and I
had beautiful dreams, and I began to receive sweet
ness and consolation from God, both in my soul, and
in my body continuously, both waking and sleeping.
But because I did not yet enjoy a perfect certitude,
my pleasure was mingled with bitterness, nor did my
heart yet rest, for I desired something else as well as
God. AN ADDITION FROM THE MS. OF ARNOLD
THE AUTHOR
She told me one out of many of these dreams
and visions, saying. On one time, while I was in the
dungeon in which I had shut myself up for the
greater Lent, and was exercising myself in love, and
in meditation on one word of the Gospel, which was
of great condescension and charity, being near a

I06 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
book, which happened to be a missal, and, desiring to
see that word written so much that I could hardly
restrain myself from opening the book with my
hands, I was overcome by sleep and, being led
away in vision, it was said to me that the under
standing of that particular epistle is so delightful a
thing that, if one truly understood it, one would
forget all earthly things, and he who was leading me
said to me : Wouldst thou prove this? And when I
agreed and desired to prove it, he gave me straight
way the proof. And I then understood so clearly
the goods of God that I forthwith forgot all earthly
things. And he who was leading me said again to
me, that the understanding of the Gospel was so
delightful a thing that if one understood it, one
would forget not only all earthly things, but also
oneself And he made me prove this too, and I forth
with understood the goods of God with such delight,
that I besought of him who was leading me that I
might never fall from that state. But he replied
that my petition could not yet be granted, and
straightway led me back, and I opened my eyes
and felt a great joy in those things which I had
seen, though I bitterly grieved at having lost them.
And it still delights me much to recall them, and
from that moment so great a certitude and light and

CONVERSION OF BLESSED ANGELA 107
ardour of the love of God has been mine, that I can
confidently assert that nothing is ever preached
about the love of God, and that those who try to
preach about it cannot do so, for they do not under
stand the words they use. So indeed had he said to
me who led me away in vision.
THE EIGHTEENTH STEP
ARDOUR AND ASSIDUITY IN PRAYER
In the eighteenth step I began to have such a
sentiment of God, and such delight in prayer that I
would forget to eat, and I used to desire that eating
were unnecessary, in order that I might remain in
prayer, and, with this feeling, was mingled the
temptation not to eat, or, if I did, to eat as little as
possible ; but I knew that this was a delusion. And
there was such a fire of love in my heart that I was
not wearied by kneeling or by any other penance.
Afterwards indeed I attained to a greater fire and
fervour of love of the Divine Charity. For, if I heard
anyone speaking of God, I would groan, and I could
not have refrained from doing so, even if anyone had
stood over me with an axe to slay me. This happened
to me, for the first time, when I sold my farm in order
to give the money to the poor, for it was the best

Io8 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
piece of land I had. And formerly I used to make
fun of Petruccio, but afterwards I could in no way do
so. Frequently also whenever I heard anyone speak
about God I would groan even when in company.
And, when people would say to me that I was
possessed on account of what happened to me, I
would admit that I was sick and out of myself, and
unable to do otherwise ; yet I could not, by this
admission, content my enemies, but was put to great
shame by them. And when I saw a picture of the
Passion of Christ I could hardly hold myself together
but would fall into a fever, so that my companion
began to hide from me pictures of the Passion as
much as she could, so that I might not see them.
In this time of groaning I had many illuminations,
emotions, visions, and consolations, some of which
will be related further on.

109

PART II
OF THE PROGRESS OF BLESSED ANGELA
CHAPTER I
OF HER VARIOUS TEMPTATIONS
Lest I should be exalted and set up by the multitude
and magnitude of the visions which were vouchsafed
to me, I was given a manifold tempter, by whom I
suffered, in the body as well as in the soul, many
temptations and trials. Indeed I think it is hardly
possible to describe the infirmities and passions of
my body, for I have not a single member which does
not suffer horribly, and the innumerable torments
which I undergo are increased by many devils. For
never am I free from pain, infirmities, and weariness,
and I am so weak and fragile that I am constantly
obliged to lie down, and I have no member which is
not struck, tortured, and punished by the devils. So
ill am I always, and my limbs so swollen and painful,

no CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
that I can only move with great pain, and lying down
causes me great weariness, and I am not able to eat
sufficiently. But, from the very same devils, I under
go torments and passions of the soul almost con
tinually, and these latter I declare to be incomparably
more numerous and severe than those of the body.
I can think of no other similitude to describe them
than that of the state of a man, who is hanged with a
rope by the neck, whose hands are tied behind his
back, and his eyes bound, and who is left, still living
upon the gibbet, without help and support and with
out the smallest remedy. I say that the tortures I
endure from the devils are more desperate and cruel
than these. I see my soul hanging in like manner,
with no support, and all her strength overthrown by
the devils, and yet with knowledge and consideration
left to her. And so great is the dolour of the soul,
when she sees all her strength overthrown and fallen
and her inability to oppose herself to herself that, at
times, I can hardly weep for despairing sorrow and
anger, and again, at other times, I weep inconsolably.
Sometimes even I can scarcely restrain myself from
tearing myself to pieces, so great is my anger ; and at
other times I cannot help striking myself so horribly
that swellings are produced on my head and limbs.
And the soul, seeing all her strength fall and depart

HER TEMPTATIONS III
from her, groans, and I call almost unceasingly to my
God : ' My God, my God, forsake me not ! '
Yet another torment I endured, which was caused
by the renewal, within me, of all the vices. Not in
such a manner as to subject my reason durably, but
in a way to cause me great suffering. And vices
which had never been in my body came to me and
burned me, bringing me to great suffering. These,
however, had not a continued life and their death
brought me great consolation. And I perceived that
I had been given over to many devils, who caused
dead vices, which I had abhorred, to revive in me, and
who had added many which had never existed. And
I, remembering that God, when here, was afflicted,
despised, and poor, wished that, were it necessary, my
troubles might be doubled.
And when I am in the most horrible darkness of
the devils, wherein all hope of good is utterly lacking,
then those vices arise in my body, which, in my inner
most soul, I know to be dead, and are awakened
only by the devils, who also arouse others that never
existed. In the body I suffer in at least three parts,
and at times so great is the fire of concupiscence
that, until my confessor forbade me, I was wont to
apply material fire to extinguish the other. When I
find myself in that darkness I verily believe that.

112 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
could I choose, I would rather be roasted alive than
remain in it, yea, I cry and call for death, no matter
in what way God should bestow it upon me, and I
say to Him : ' O Lord, if Thou must put me in Hell,
delay not, but do it at once, and, inasmuch as Thou hast
deserted me, finish, and plunge me into the depth ! '
I know that all this is the work of the devils, and
that those vices have no life in the soul, because she
does not consent to them, and that the body suffers
violence ; but, were it to continue, the body could not
endure it, so weary and full of pain is it. And the
soul perceives that all her strength is taken from her,
and, although she does not consent to the vices, yet
she has not complete power to resist them, and then
she sees herself to be against God, and so she falls
and is tortured by the devils. And a certain vice,
greater than all the others, which had never been
mine, is permitted by God to come to me, and I know
clearly that it is permitted by God. And, against
the said vice, God gives me a certain strength, by
which I am delivered. And had I not, apart from
this, an assured faith in God, by this token alone, I
should have a certain and sure hope, which it would be
impossible to doubt. And that strength always
prevails against the vice, and holds me, and does not
permit me to fall, and so great is its power that it

HER TEMPTATIONS II3
not only holds me, but gives me so great a force
of strength, that, in it, I know God, and am so
illuminated and confirmed, that all the men in the
world, and all the Devils in Hell, and all things that
are, could not move me to the smallest sin ; and, with
this strength, there remains to me faith in God.
And so great is that vice that I am ashamed to speak
of it, and it seems to me that, were the aforesaid
strength taken away from me, there is nothing,
neither shame nor punishment, which could hold me
back from rushing straightway into sin. But that
strength intervenes and delivers me manfully, so that
neither for all the world nor all the evil could I sin.
And these labours I endured for two years and more.
Within my soul a certain pride and a certain
humility were wont to struggle most tediously. The
cause of the humility is the sight of myself, fallen
from all good and outside all strength and all grace,
and full of such a multitude of sins and defects, that
it is impossible to think that God still wishes to have
mercy upon me. And I see that I am the home of
the Devil, and the servant and the daughter of the
demons, outside all rectitude and veracity, and worthy
of the lowest depth of Hell. And this humility
which I describe is not such as I have had at other
times, which brought content to my soul, and led her
I

I '4 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
to reflect upon Divine goodness,' but it is a humility
which brings me nothing but innumerable ills. And
in my soul I see myself to be surrounded by demons
and full of defects in soul and body, and with no
power of remembering God, for on every side He is
closed to me, and grace taken from me, and it is His
will that I should have no memory of Him. The sight
of my own damnation does not cause me any care, so
much greater is my care and grief at having offended
my Creator, whom for all the good and evil which
can be named I would not have offended nor offend.
Wherefore, seeing my aforesaid innumerable offences,
I fight with all my members against the demons, that
I may conquer them and prevail against the aforesaid
vices, which I can by no means do completely ; for
I can find no ford nor opening by which I can escape,
nor any escape nor any remedy to help me, and I
meditate upon the depth of my fall.
Wherefore, being frequently plunged into depths
of humility, I see my sins and the superabundance of
my wickednesses and iniquities, yet I see no way by
which I can make them manifest and discover all
their hypocrisy. I would like to go through the
cities and plains and hang meat and fish about
my neck saying : ' Here is that most vile woman,
full of evil and deceit, sower of all vices and ills I '

HER TE.MPTATIONS

US

For I did well for the glory of men, and I replied to
persons who invited us, that I ate neither fish nor
meat, when I was, all the time, full of gormandising,
gluttony, and drunkenness, and making a parade of
taking only what was necessary. I was eager to be
poor exteriorly, and when I lay down I had many
coverings, which in the morning I caused to be taken
away, lest persons coming by should remark upon
them. See the devil of my soul and the malice of
my heart ! Listen to my hypocrisy, and learn that
I am the daughter of pride, a deceiver and the
abomination of God I For I seemed to be the
daughter of prayer, while I was the daughter of anger,
pride, and the Devil, and while I seemed to have God
in my soul, and in my cell divine consolation, I had
really the Devil in both soul and cell. And know,
also, that the whole time of my life, I was eager
to have the fame of holiness, and that, in truth, on
account of the hidden malice and deceit of my
heart, I deceived many people and am the murderer
of many souls and of my own.
And afterwards, being in this abyss, I turned to
those my brethren who are called my sons, and I
said to them : ' Be unwilling to believe in me any
more : see ye not that I am a demoniac ? Do ye, who
are called sons, implore of God this justice, that the
12

Il6 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
demons may depart from my soul, and that my
worthless deeds may be made manifest, so that God
may be no longer abused through me. And see ye
not that all I say to you is false, and see ye not
that were there no malice in the world I, out of my
abundance, could fill it ? Be unwilling to believe any
more in me ! Be unwilling to adore any more this
idol, for therein is hidden the Devil, and all the words
that I have spoken to you were diabolical and
deceitful. I implore the justice of God, that this
idol may fall and be broken, and that her gilded and
tinselled words and her diabolical works may be
made manifest. For, in order that I might be
honoured instead of God, I gilded myself with divine
words. I implore that the Devil may depart from
this idol, and that the world may be no longer
deceived by this woman. Wherefore I beseech the
Son of God, whom I dare not name, that if He will
not make me manifest through Himself, that He will
do it through the earth, that it may open and swallow
me up, and so I shall be an example, and men and
women will say : ' Oh, how she was gilded and
covered with tinsel ! and how entirely deceitful
within and without I ' I would like to have a chain
about my neck instead of any decoration, and to be
dragged through cities and plains, and I would like

HER TEMPTATIONS II7
the boys who lead me to say : ' This is that most
vile woman who, all her life, showed false for true I '
And I would like the men and women to say :
' Oh, behold the miracle that God has done ! For He
has caused the malice, iniquities, and sins which were
hidden the whole time of her life to be made manifest
and to be told by herself But, were all this said,
it would scarcely satisfy the soul : and know, that
though I was in a desperate state, I never despaired
to such an extent as to despair of God and His
goodness, and I made a compact between Him and
me. And yet I was certain that there was no person
in the world so full of malice and damnation as I was,
and that God permitted whatever He gave to me
and bestowed upon me for my greater despair and
damnation. Wherefore I beseech you all to implore
the justice of God that He may not delay to extract
the Devil from this idol and make manifest her most
worthless deeds, for, because I cannot make manifest
my malice and the lies of my soul, my head is
splitting, my body fails, and my eyes are becoming
blinded through the multitude of my tears, and all
my bones are out of joint. But I rejoice because, in
part, my malice begins to be made manifest. And I
perceived that all these things which I have described
were without true humility. And know, thou, who

H8 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
writest, that, in comparison with all my sins, iniquities
and false use of words, thou writest too poorly, for
when I was little I began to work iniquity. These
and other similar things I am obliged to say, plunged
and sunk into the aforesaid humility.
After these things came pride, for I wrought all
anger, pride, and sadness, and I was most bitter and
puffed up. And from the good which God did to me
I received great bitterness, not being mindful of it
as a means of assistance, but of injury and painful
amazement. It was easy to see that in me there
could be no virtue, and verily I doubt whether there
ever was any, and indeed, I see no reason why God
should permit there 'to be any. In this temptation I
am so completely possessed by anger and pride, and
am so bitter and puffed up, that all good is closed to
me and hidden from me, and my pain and grief are
greater than I can say. For, unless God Himself
should change me altogether, or work quite differently
in my soul, it would not console me, nor do me any
good, were all the wise men of the world and all the
saints of Paradise to speak words of consolation to
me, and to promise me every good thing which they
could name, and which God Himself should give me.
Indeed I should not believe them, for they would
increase my trouble and sorrow, and would cause me
greater anger, amazement, and sorrow and pain than

HER TEMPTATIONS I I9
I can say. Wherefore I would cheerfully choose and
willingly suffer every evil, infirmity, and human bodily
pain for a commutation of the aforesaid torments
if God would take them away from me. And I often
times said that any kind of torture would be prefer
able and, I verily believe, a lesser evil than the afore
said torments. And the aforesaid state of torment
began, in some degree, before the pontificate of Pope
Celestinus and lasted for more than two years, during
which time I was often tormented, and to this day I
am not wholly cured, although I only suffer now for
short periods, exteriorly and not interiorly. But
since I was in this state, I know that great purging
and purification of soul accompany the aforesaid
evil humility and pride. For by them I acquire
that true humility without which no one can be
saved. And between the aforesaid humility and
pride my soul is consumed and tortured. And the
greater the humility, the greater is the purification
of soul. And, through the knowledge of her offences
and defects, which the soul obtains through the
aforesaid humility, she is purged of pride and the
devils, and therefore the more she is levelled and im
poverished, and the lower she is humiliated, so much
the more purged and purified she is, and ready to
rise, for she can only rise inasmuch as she is humili
ated, levelled, and impoverished.

I20 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM

PART III
OF HER MANIFOLD VISIONS AND
CONSOLATIONS

CHAPTER I
VISION IN WHICH SHE SAW GOD INASMUCH A
HE IS SUPREME GOODNESS
Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who consoles us in all our tribulations, and who has
deigned to console me a sinner in every tribulation.
Now after that striking time of which mention is
made in the Eighteenth Step of my conversion, and
that marvellous illumination which I received whilst
saying the Lord's Prayer, I experienced a great
consolation of the sweetness of God in this way. I
was inspired to a consideration of the blessed union
of the Deity and the Humanity of Christ, and of the
Divinity and Humanity in Christ. And I felt a
greater consolation and pleasure in this meditation

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 121
than I had ever felt before, so great, indeed, that I
stood in my cell for the greater part of those days,
shut in and alone, and I prayed, as it were, stupefied.
And so greatly was my heart affected by the delight
of that meditation that I at length lay down and
lost speech. And my companion came in to me,
and thought I was dying, but she was an impediment
to me and wearied me.
Whilst I continued in this state, and was praying
late one evening in my cell, it seemed to me as if I
felt nothing of God, and I lamented thereat, and
cried, saying : ' O Lord, that which I do, I only do
to find Thee ! Therefore shall I find Thee when I have
completed these things ? ' (For I had not, at that
time, completely bequeathed all my possessions to
the poor, although there remained but little to be
done.) And I said in prayer many similar things.
And He replied to me thus : ' What desirest thou ? '
I replied : ' I want not gold nor silver, and if Thou
gavest me the whole world, I would still desire
nothing but Thee ! ' And He replied, saying : ' Strive
diligently, and prepare thyself, for after thou hast
finished doing that which thou hast commenced, the
whole Trinity will come to thee.' And He promised
me many other things, and, having drawn me out of
much tribulation. He dismissed me with great divine

122 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
sweetness. And then I expectantly awaited the
performance of those things which had been promised
to me. And, although I had been left with so much
divine sweetness, I related what had been said to me
in my great vision, and the promises which had been
made to me, to my companion, with some hesitation.
After these things I went to the Church of St.
Francis at Assisi, and, while on the way there, I
received the fulfilment of the aforesaid promise, not
withstanding that I had not completely bequeathed
all my goods to the poor, because a certain holy man
who was to have done this for me had died, and so
had not been able to bring it to an end. (This man
had been converted, by the grace of God, at my
admonitions, and had died while he was in the act
of hastening to bestow all his own possessions upon
the poor. And, though he had not been able to
carry out his intentions, God did great miracles
through him, and his sepulchre is held in reverence.)
While, then, I went towards the Church of St.
Francis at Assisi, praying as I went (and amongst
other things I besought Blessed Francis himself to
ask of God to make me observe well the Rule of
Blessed Francis, to which I had lately vowed myself,
and to acquire for me the grace of feeling something
of Christ, and, most particularly, to make me live and

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 1 23
end my days in poverty, for which latter end — namely,
that I might have the liberty of poverty — I went to
Rome in order to beseech Blessed Peter himself to
obtain for me this grace, which he did ; and, through
his merits and those of Blessed Francis, and through
Divine grace, I obtained, in an unmistakable way, the
gift of true poverty), I arrived at that part of the
road between Spello and the narrow way which
ascends to Assisi, and in that place the following
words were said to me : ' Thou beseechest My servant
Francis, but I will send thee another messenger.
And I am the Holy Spirit, who come to thee to give
thee consolation such as thou hast never before
tasted. And I will accompany thee, within thee, all
the way to the Church of St. Francis, and few will
think whom thou hast with thee, and the whole of
the way I will talk with thee without ceasing, and
thou shalt not be able to hear aught else but Me, for
I have bound thee, and until thou comest the second
time to the Church of St. Francis, I will not desert
thee if thou love Me.' And in order to provoke me
to love Him, He began to say the following words to
me : ' My daughter, sweet to Me, My daughter. My
temple. My daughter. My delight, love Me, for the more
thou lovest Me, the more art thou loved by Me ! ' And
He said to me most frequently : ' Daughter and spouse.

124 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
sweet to Me ! ' And he added : ' I love thee more than
any other soul in the Spoletan valley. Wherefore
since I have set Myself up in thee, and rested in
thee, set thyself up and rest in Me. I was with the
Apostles and they saw Me with their corporal eyes,
but they felt Me not as thou feelest Me. Moreover,
after thou hast returned home, I shall not speak to
thee as I do now, but thou shalt feel Me, and thou
shalt feel such sweetness as thou hast never before
experienced. Thou prayest to My servant Francis,
hoping to obtain through him that which thou
desirest, and, because My servant Francis loved Me
much, I did much for him, and if, to-day, there were
any person who loved Me more I would do more
for him.' He said moreover that there were few
good people now and little faith, and He lamented,
saying : ' So great is the love which I bear towards
a soul who loves without malice, that, were there
one now who loved Me perfectly, I would bestow
upon her greater grace than I have bestowed in
former times upon the saints of whom are related
such great things done by grace. And no one can
be excused from this love, for every person can love
God, and He requires from the soul naught else but
to love Him, and He truly loved the soul, and
is Himself the Love of the soul. And these words

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 1 25
are very profound.' And He proved to me that
God is the Love of the soul by His Advent and
His Cross, which He endured for us, so immense and
glorious was His Love ! And He explained the
Passion to me, and added : ' See if there is aught
else in Me but love ! ' And my soul comprehended
with great certainty that He was naught else but
love. And He lamented that, in these days He could
find so few persons in whom He could place His
grace, and He told me that, if He could find any
persons loving Him now. He would bestow greater
graces upon them than He had upon the saints of
former times. And He began anew to me : ' My
daughter, sweet to Me, love Me, for thou art more
greatly loved than thou lovest Me. My beloved,
love Me ; immense is My love for the soul who loves
Me without malice.' And I understood that He
desired the soul to love Him, with that same love
with which He loved the soul, according to her
power and strength, and that, according to her desire,
so would He fill her up. Again He said to me :
' My beloved. My spouse, love Me, all ' that thou
doest pleases Me — when thou eatest, when thou
drinkest, when thou sleepest — thy whole life pleases
Me completely, if thou lovest Me.' And again :
' I shall do great things in thee before the people.

126 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
SO that, in thee, I may be known and glorified
and made famous, and, through thee, shall My
Name be praised by many people.' And He said
many other things to me, but while I listened
I thought of my defects and sins, and I felt that I
was not worthy of this great love. And I began to
have great doubts about this communication, and
I said to Him who spoke to me : ' If thou wert
the Holy Spirit, thou wouldest not speak thus to
me, for it is not meet nor seemly, because I am
fragile and might be vain-glorious on account of Thy
words.' And He replied to me : ' See, if, from these
My words, thou canst be vain-glorious or self exalted,
and try, by turning thy thoughts upon other things,
to rid thyself of these words.' And I searched
myself to see whether I could find vain-glory, and
I tried to prove if that which He had said to me
were true, and if He were the Holy Spirit. And I
looked back overthe vineyard to find some distraction
from that speech, but wheresoever I turned my eyes,
He said to me : ' Now see and contemplate, this is
]\Iy creature.' And I felt an ineffable sweetness, but
all my sins and defects came back into my memory
and I could see nothing in myself but sins and faults,
and I felt more humility than I had ever felt before.
And He told me also how greatly beloved I was,

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 1 27
and how the Son of God and the Virgin Mary
bent down towards me, and came to me to speak
to me. And Christ said to me: 'If the whole
world were present with thee, thou couldst not any
more speak with them than thou doest now, for,
while I am with thee the whole world is with thee.'
And to give me security from doubt. He said : ' I am
He Who was crucified for thee, and Who, for thy sake,
hungered and thirsted, and Who loved thee so much
that I shed My blood for thee ! ' And He related
the whole Passion to me, and said : ' Pray for grace
for thyself and for thy companion and for whom
soever thou wilt, and be prepared to receive, for I am
much more ready to give than thou art to receive.'
And my soul cried out, saying : ' I will not pray, for
I am not worthy ! ' And again all my sins came
back to my memory, and my soul said : ' If thou
who hast been speaking with me from the beginning
wert the Holy Spirit, thou wouldest not say such
great things to me, and, moreover, if thou wert
within me, I should feel such great joy, that I could
not endure it and live.' And He replied to me : ' Can
anything be except according to My Will ? I do not
give thee other joy, neither more joy, than thou hast,
And of this joy I have given less to others, and they, I
tell, thee, have lain neither seeing nor feeling on account

128 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
of it. And again, I give thee this sign that I Am. Try
now, and talk to thy companions, and allow thy
mind to dwell' upon various things, good or evil, and
thou wilt find it impossible to think of aught else
but God, and thou wilt recognise Me, for it is I alone
who can bind the mind. And these things I do to
thee, not because of thy merits, but because of My
Goodness.' And while He was speaking my mind
became filled with the memorj' of my sins, and I saw
myself to be more clearly worthy of Hell than I had
ever done before.
And He made known to me that, had the com
panions with whom I was journeying been different,
the aforesaid things would not have befallen me, for
all the time that I was experiencing with every
Divine word such great sweetness they were discuss
ing among themselves my sickness. And I felt that
if, to the end of the world, there were to be no
other joy than the joy of that walk, I should not
have wished it to be otherwise. For I cannot make
known the greatness of this sweetness and joy of
God, particularly when He said : ' I, Who enter into
thee, am the Holy Spirit ! ' and likewise with all else
He said I experienced great sweetness. I say, then.
He came with me to the Church of St. Francis as He
had promised, and remained till after meal-time,

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 129
when I went for the second time to the church.
And when I entered the church, as I genuflected,
and saw St. Francis painted on the bosom of Christ,
Christ said to me : ' It is thus that I will hold thee
close, and yea much more closely than can be
presented to thy bodily eyes, but now is the hour
that I will fill thee up and leave thee, my sweet
daughter, my temple, my delight. For I tell thee
that, for this consolation, I leave thee, but if thou
lovest Me, I leave thee not.' And bitter as this word
waSj I felt with it so much sweetness that it was
most delightful. And then I looked behind me that
I might see with my corporal and mental vision,
and I saw. And if thou askest me what I saw, I
saw a real object, full of majesty, immense, and I
cannot say how, but it seemed to me to be good.
And He said to me many other sweet words, and
He took His departure most peacefully, withdrawing
with immense sweetness, not suddenly, but by
degrees. Amongst other things he said this to me :
' My daughter, much more loved by Me than I by
thee, my beloved temple, thou hast the ring of My
love, thou art pledged to Me, and for the future thou
shalt not fall away from Me, and thou and thy
companion have the blessing of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Ghost' And forthwith my soul
K

I30 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
cried out : ' Inasmuch as Thou wilt not leave me,
shall I never sin again mortally ? ' And He replied :
'That I say not to thee.' And as He retired I
implored grace for my companion, and He replied to
me : ' To thy companion I give other grace.'
With this, therefore, He withdrew. And He
desired me not to lie down as He departed, but to
remain standing. Nevertheless, after His departure
I fell into a sitting posture, and began to shout with
a loud voice and to vociferate, and I cried without
shame, saying these words : ' Love, till now I knew
Thee not ; wherefore dost Thou leave me thus ? '
And I could say no more and could only cry, for I
had no words with which to express myself, and was
limited to voice and tears, and thus I was not under
stood by those who heard me. For these things
befell me at the entrance of the door of the church
of St. Francis, where I sat after the withdrawal of
God, weeping and crying, in the presence of all the
people who were worshipping there. And I noticed
my own companions, standing some way off" from
me, blushing, for they believed another to be the
cause of my tears. And I was certain, beyond any
doubt, that He Who had spoken with me was
God, and, because of His sweetness and my grief,
I wept, wishing to die, and I grieved because He had

GOD AS SUPREME GOODNESS 131
departed, leaving me behind, and all my bones were
out of joint
After this I left Assisi, and I proceeded on my
journey with great sweetness, talking of God as I
went. And, though it was great pain to me to be
silent, I endeavoured to be so on account of my
companions. And, on the way back from Assisi,
Christ said to me : ' I give thee a sign that I am
Christ, Who speak with thee, and Who have spoken
with thee. I give thee, within, the Cross and the
Love of God, and this sign shall be to thee for ever.'
And straightway I felt, within, that Cross and the
Love of God, and it overflowed into my body, and
that Cross I felt corporally, my soul melting in the
Love of God.
After I had returned I remained in my house,
and I felt a pacific sweetness and quiet, and so great
delight that I cannot describe them. And I had a very
great desire to die and leave the world, so that I
might not lose that sweetness and delight. And so
great was my desire to die, that life to me was a
greater grief than the death of my mother and of
my children, and greater than any pain that I can
imagine. And for eight days I lay in my house,
wearied on account of the aforesaid things, and
I cried : ' O Lord, have pity on me and do not
K2

132 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
permit me to remain in the world I ' And, besides
these things, I often perceived an indescribable
odour, and this and other experiences were such that
I cannot tell them, for the words with which I have
to relate are poor. And such love and sweetness as
I felt are utterly indescribable.
Moreover, the aforesaid experience was granted
to me many times, but not with so much sojourning,
neither with so much love nor so profoundly. And
after I had come from Assisi, and was lying down as
I said, my companion, who was wonderful for her
simplicity, purity, and virginity, heard a voice say to
her : ' The Holy Spirit is in this cell.' Then she
came to me and began to inquire, saying : ' Tell me
what thou hast, for I have been told to come to
thee.' And I replied : ' As thou hast been told thus,
I am pleased.' And then I communicated to my
companion much of the aforesaid secret.
CHAPTER II
VISION IN WHICH SHE SAW GOD INASMUCH AS
HE IS SUPREME BEAUTY, AFTER WHICH ALL
CREATED BEAUTY BECAME FILTHY TO HER
Upon a certain occasion, when I was in prayer and
elevated in spirit God spoke to me words full of

GOD AS SUPREME BEAUTY 1 33
love, and of great peace. And, looking behind me,
I saw God speaking to me ; and if thou askest me
what I saw, I say that I saw Himself, and otherwise
I know not how to say, except that I saw a Plenitude,
a Brightness, from which I felt an indescribable
repletion. I can give no similitude to what I saw,
and I saw nothing corporal ; but as He is in Heaven,
so was He, and of such great Beauty, that I cannot
say anything else, but that I saw Supreme Beauty,
containing all Good. And all the Saints stood before
that most beautiful Majesty, praising Him ; and it
seemed to me that amongst these I scarcely had a
place. And God said to me : ' Most loving daughter,
sweet to Me, all the Saints of Paradise have for thee
a special love, and My Mother likewise, and thou art
united to Me with them.' And, notwithstanding all
the things that had been told me about His Mother
and the Saints, all that I had heard seemed to me
to be poor in comparison of what I saw. But, so
greatly loved was I in Him and so great was the
sweetness that I felt from Him, that I cared not to
look at the Angels nor at the Saints. For I saw that all
their comeliness and goodness was from Him, and in
Him, and that He Himself was All and Supreme Good,
and all Beauty, and, so greatly did I delight in His

134 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
Beauty, that I cared not to look at any other creature.
And He said to me : ' I have an immense love for thee,
but I do not show Myself to thee, yea rather do I
hide Myself from thee.' And my soul said to Him :
' Wherefore dost Thou love me so, and take so much
delight in me, when I am so filthy, and have offended
Thee my whole life long ?' Verily He replied to me :
' So great is the love that I have reposed in thee, that
I scarcely remember thy defects, although Mine eyes
see them ; in thee have I reposed great treasure.'
And my soul felt this to be so certainly true that she
doubted in nothing, and she felt and saw that the
Eyes of God were looking at her, into which Eyes she
looked, and had therein so great delight that no man
could describe it, yea even were one of the Saints
of Paradise to come down in order to make it
manifest And therewith He told me that He had
concealed much love from me because I could not
bear it. And my soul replied : ' If Thou art God
Almighty, Thou canst make me able to bear it'
And He replied : ' If I were to do so, thou wouldst
have all that thou desirest, and thou wouldst no longer
hunger for Me. Therefore will I not do so, for, whilst
thou art in this life, it is even My Will that thou
shouldst hunger for Me, and desire Me, and languish
for Me.'

GOD AS INVINCIBLE OMNIPOTENCE 1 35
CHAPTER III
VISION IN WHICH SHE SAW GOD INASMUCH AS
HE IS INVINCIBLE OMNIPOTENCE, FROM WPIICH
VISION SHE OBTAINED GRACE AND POWER TO
BE PROFITABLE TO PERSONS IN THE PRESENT
AND IN THE FUTURE
Once a Divine locution was made to me, saying :
' I, Who speak with thee, am Divine Power, for I
bring thee a Divine grace ; and the grace which I
bring thee is this : I will that thou be of profit to all
men who shall see thee, and not to them alone, but
that thou help and be of profit to all those who
shall think of thee, or remember thee, or hear thee
named ; and to them who have most of Me thou
shalt be of greatest profit.' And then my soul,
although she felt great joy, said : ' I desire not that
grace, for I fear lest it injure me, and that, because of
it, I be vainglorious.' And He replied at once,
saying : ' Thou hast nothing to do with it, for it is not
thine : thou art only the guardian of it ; use it well and
give it back to Him Whose it is.' And my soul
understood that in this way that grace could not
injure her. And He said to me : ' It pleases Me
that thou hast this fear.'

136 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
After which, in church, the most sweet locution
was made to me, which, forthwith, renewed my whole
mind. He said to me : ' My daughter, sweet to Me,"
(but His words were far sweeter,) ' no creature can
give thee consolation but I alone. I will cover thee
with My Power.' And straightway the eyes of my
soul were opened and I saw a Plenitude of God, in
which I comprehended the whole world on this side of
the sea and beyond, the lakes and the depths, in all
of which I saw nothing except the Divine Power, in
an utterly indescribable manner ; and my soul, filled
with wonder, exclaimed saying : ' This world is full
of God I ' And I comprehended the whole world,
almost as though it were a small thing. And I saw
the Power of God exceeding everything and filling
everything. And He said to me : ' I have shown thee
something of My Power.' And I understood in such a
way that thereafter I was able better to understand
other things.
And He said to me : ' Thou hast seen something
of My Power ; now thou mayest see My Humility.'
And I saw God's great abasement to man, and His
great humility, and my soul, comprehending the
Divine Power and seeing such profound humility,
was filled with wonder, and counted herself to be
nothing, and saw in herself nothing but pride. And

GOD AS SUPREME WISDOM 1 37
I began to ponder with myself and to repute myself
utterly unworthy of Communion, to such a degree
that I did not want to communicate. And He said
to me, after He had shown me His Power and
Humility : ' My daughter, no creature can arrive at
the point of seeing to which thou art come, except he
be raised by a special Divine grace.' As, therefore, I
was in church, close upon the Elevation of the Body
of Christ, He said to me : ' Behold the Power is now
upon the Altar, and I am within thee, and if thou re
ceive Me, thou receivest Me Whom thou hast already
received. Communicate, therefore, in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And
I, Who am worthy, make thee worth}'.' And then
there remained in me an indescribable sweetness
and a great joy, which my whole life long have not
failed me.
CHAPTER IV
VISION IN WHICH SHE SAW GOD INASMUCH AS
HE IS SUPREME WISDOM, FROM WHICH VISION
SHE LEARNED TO JUDGE ALL THINGS WITH
OUT ERROR
On one occasion I was requested by someone to
ask certain things of God that he wished to know.

138 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
And I doubted in myself whether I should do so,
for it seemed to me that it was pride and foolishness
to ask such things. While I was standing with such
thoughts, suddenly my mind was raised and was
placed, in the first elevation, at a table without
beginning and without end. And I was not placed
so as to see this table, but what was above it And
I saw an indescribable Plenitude of God, of which I
can narrate nothing, neither say anything, except
that what I saw was plainly the Plenitude of Divine
Wisdom, and of All Good. And I saw that Plenitude
of Divine Wisdom, and, in It, I saw it was not per
mitted to seek to know those things which It
will do, for that is anticipating and dishonouring It.
And therefore when I see persons inquiring into
Divine Wisdom, I see and understand that they err.
And, from what I saw above that table, clearly
Divine Wisdom, there remained with me the power
of understanding and judging all spiritual persons
and spiritual things, when I hear them spoken of or
narrated. And I judge not, as I judged formerly, to
err and sin, but I judge with another true judgment
by which I understand, and by which I have, or can
have, the knowledge of having sinned in my former
judgment. And I know not how to relate otherwise
what I saw, but what my soul brought back from

GOD AS SUPREME JUSTICE 135
the vision to put into words was clearly the table
and my being placed at it in the first elevation. But
ofthose things, in order to see which I was placed al
that table, I can narrate nothing except what I have
said.
CHAPTER V
VISION AND CONSOLATION IN WHICH SHE SAW
GOD INASMUCH AS HE IS SUPREME JUSTICE,
AND MORE ; FROM WHICH VISION SHE
OBTAINED APPROBATION OF DIVINE JUDG
MENTS
On a certain occasion, when in prayer, I asked ol
God (not because I doubted, but because I wanted
to know more of God), saying : ' Wherefore, O Lord,
didst Thou create man, and wherefore, after Thou
hadst created him, didst Thou allow him to sin ?
And wherefore didst Thou permit so great a Passion
to be suffered as was suffered by Thy Son, when
Thou couldst, quite as well, have made us pleasing
and grateful to Thee, and have given us as much
virtue as Thou hast now done, by any other means ?
And my soul comprehended, without any doubt that
what I said — namely, that by any other means God
could have wrought our virtue and salvation — was

I40 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
true. And it seemed to me that I was forced and
urged on to question and reflect upon the aforesaid
subject, and, as I was in prayer, I wished to persevere
in it and not leave off, but to urge God upon this
subject And I passed many days, asking the afore
said things, doubting in nothing, as I said before.
And I was given to understand that God did these
things and allowed them, so that His goodness might
be made thereby more manifest and more suitable
to us. But that was not sufficient to make me fully
understand it for I still understood, most certainly,
and knew that God might have done otherwise had
He wished to save us in any other way.
Then my soul was elevated, and she saw that
what I had asked had no beginning and no end, and,
being in darkness, she wanted to return to herself,
but she could not do so. And she wanted to proceed,
but could not And she was suddenly completely
lifted up and illuminated, and she saw the inexpres
sible Power of God, and the Will, and Goodness and
Justice of God, in which vision she fully understood
all those things which she had asked. And she was
drawn out of her previous darkness ; for I had been
lying upon the ground, and, during that great
illumination, I stood on tiptoe. And I felt an agility
and refreshment of body, such as I had never before

GOD AS SUPREME JUSTICE 141
experienced. And I felt myself in such fulness of
charity, and I understood with such joy in that
Power and Will and Justice of God, that I under
stood, not only those things about which I had asked,
but I was satisfied as to the saving and salvation
offered to every creature, and about the devils and
the damned and all things. But all this I cannot
explain in words, for it is utterly beyond nature.
And although I perfectly understood that, had
He wished, God could have saved us in another way,
yet was I unable to see that He could have done
better for us, considering His power and goodness,
nor that He could better have expressed the same.
And with that I was contented, and sure that, if I
knew for certain that I was damned, I could not
reasonably grieve, nor labour less, nor be less zealous
in prayer or for the honour of God, so perfectly did
I understand His justice. And there was left a
peace and quiet and solidity in my soul, which I
never remember to have experienced before so com
pletely, and in which I continually rest.
After I had seen the Power of God and His Will
and Justice, I was raised thence higher, and then I
saw neither the Power nor the Will as before, but I
saw a stable object utterly indescribable by me,
except that it was All Good. And my soul was in an

142 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
indescribable joy. And, in that state, I saw, not love,
but that utterly indescribable object. And when
I issued from the first state into that higher indescrib
able state I know not whether I was in the body or
out of it. And all the visions I had before did not
seem to me to be so great as these states. And there
remained to me, from them, a mortification of vices,
and a security for virtue, by which I love the good
and well-doing, and even the evil and evil-doing, for
certainly these latter no longer cause me displeasure.
I am left, therefore, in great peace and with a venera
tion for the Divine judgments, so that, morning and
evening, in my prayers I say to God : ' By Thy judg
ments, O Lord, deliver me,' or, ' By Thy judgment, 0
Lord, deliver me.' And I say this with as much love
and confidence as I say : ' By Thy Advent, O Lord,
deliver me ; by Thy Nativity, O Lord, deliver me ;
by Thy Passion, O Lord, deliver me.' For I do not
recognise the goodness of God more fully in the
blessed man, or in the holy man, or in many good
and holy men, than I do in the man who is damned
or in a multitude of men who are damned.
But that depth was never shown to me but
once, but I never forget that memory nor that joy.
And if, by an impossibility, all the faithful were to
fail, there would remain nevertheless with me a

ANGELA TRANSFORMED IN LOVE 143
certitude of God and of His judgments and of the
justice of His judgments ! But oh, how great depth
is there here ! Nevertheless all things come back to
the utility of the good. For the soul who has this
knowledge of the Divine judgments and of these
depths, will have, out of this knowledge of God, fruit
from all things.
CHAPTER VI
VISION AND CONSOLATION IN WHICH SHE SAW
GOD INASMUCH AS HE IS LOVE ; FROM WHICH
VISION SHE WAS TRANSFORMED IN DIVINE
LOVE
Once, in Lent, it seemed to me that I was very
dry and without devotion. And I prayed God that
He would give me of Himself, because where all
good was concerned I was very dry ; and then the
eyes of my soul were opened, and I saw Love coming
towards me, and I saw the beginning but I did not see
the end, only Its continuation. And I know not any
similitude for Its colour. And immediately, when
Love had reached me, the eyes of my soul were opened
and I saw much more of these things than I could
have seen with the eyes of the body. And Love
came towards me, as it were, like a scythe. This

144 catholic mysticism
similitude is not to be taken as regards measurable
quantity, but Love was like a scythe, in that It
appeared and withdrew, and It had not conferred, in Its
withdrawal, as much as It had seemed to promise. And
I was straightway filled with love and an inestimable
satiety, which although it sated me generated in me a
great hunger, so inestimable that all my members were
out of joint and my soul languished and desired to at
tain to the residue. And I desired not to see nor feel
nor hear any other creature, and I spoke not. But my
soul spoke within me, imploring Love not to make her
languish through so great love, for I reckoned life to
be death. And she invoked first the Blessed Virgin
and then the Apostles, whom she implored to go with
her to the Most High, and make known to Him that
He must not allow her to suffer this death completely,
but permit her to arrive at Him whom she felt. And
she implored Blessed Francis likewise and the Evan
gelists. And when, on account of the approach to me
which I felt, I believed myself to be all love, I said :
' Many there are who think that they dwell in love
and they are in hate, and, contrariwise, there are
many who believe themselves to be in hate and are
really in love.' And my soul asked to see most
certainly, and God granted my request, and I felt it

ANGELA TRANSFORMED IN LOVE 145
clearly, so that I was quite contented. And so filled
am I with that love that I do not think that I could
ever again be without it, and were any creature to
tell me otherwise I could not believe them, and were
an angel to do so I should not believe him, but should
reply to him : ' Thou art he who fell from Heaven.'
And I saw in myself two divisions, as if a road
had been made in me ; and in one division I saw
love and every good which was God's and not mine,
and in the other I saw myself, dry, and I saw I had
nothing good belonging to me. And in that way I
saw that it was not I who loved, however much I
might see myself to be in love, but that the love was
God's alone, with which He reunited Himself, and
then conferred more and more ardent love than
before ; and I had a great desire to become one with
this love. And between the aforesaid love, which is
so great that I knew not that greater love could
be (except when that love which showed itself in
death supervened), and the other mortal love and
extreme ardour, there is a certain medium, of which
I can narrate nothing, on account of its many
depths, its great joys and delights. And I cannot
bear to hear of the Passion, nor can I hear the name
of God, for when I hear His name, I feel Him, with
so great love, that I long to be crucified for love's

146 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
sake, and anything less is, as it were, an impediment
to me. And it seems to me that nothing has been
said in the Gospel or in the Life of Christ, or in any
other locution of God, but that I have seen greater
and more incomparable things in God. And, after
that vision of love, I remain completely happy and
in an angelical state, so that I love toads, buffoons,
and even devils. And, when I am in that state, were
dogs to eat me, I should not care, and it does not
seem to me as if I could suffer any pain, either which
is, or which has been recorded, or which is in the
dolorous memories of the Passion of Christ, or in
this state of tears.
And this state is greater than that of standing at
the foot of the Cross by continual recollection, as did
the Blessed Francis, although my soul frequently
sees one or another degree of the Passion, and desires
to see that Flesh, dead for us ; but in this state is love
with great joy, without the dolour of the Passion.
Once, nevertheless, was united as it were with this
love the inestimable memory of the price, namely of
the Precious Blood, by which indulgence is given to
the world, and I marvelled, as it were, how these
things could be ; but, with all this, there was none of
the dolour of the Passion. But the Passion is the
way and the example which I must take.

GOD AS THREE PERSONS 1 47
CHAPTER VII
VISION AND CONSOLATION IN WHICH SHE SAW
GOD INASMUCH AS HE IS THREE PERSONS IN
ONE ; WHICH VISION SHE SAW WITH DARKNESS
BUT FROM WHICH SITE OBTAINED A PERFECT
AND HOLY HOPE WITH EVERY CERTAINTY.
On a certain occasion my soul was rapt, and I saw
God with greater clearness and fulness than I had
ever done before. And in that elevation I saw not
love, and I lost that love which I previously bore, and
I became not love. And then I saw Him in a dark
ness, and this because he is Great Good, who cannot
be imagined neither understood, and were all things
possible to be imagined or understood, they would
not attain to that Good. And then my soul was
given a certain faith, a sure and firm hope and a
continual security in God, which took away all fear.
And, in that Goodness, which was shown thus in dark
ness, I recollected myself completely, and I was
made so secure in God that I can never doubt this,
namely, that most certainly I have God ; and in that
most efficacious Good, seen in darkness, my hope
is now quite recollected and secure. I see God
frequently in this way and in this Good, which
L 2

148 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
cannot be outwardly narrated, and, indeed, cannot be
imagined in the heart. In that most certain and
inclusive Good, I say, which I comprehend with so
much darkness, I have all my hope, and in seeing
that which I want to have I have all things,
and in seeing what I want to know I know all
things, and therein I see all good. Nor is the soul in
her vision able to think of the departure of that Good,
or of her departure from it, nor that she should ever
be obliged to depart from it, but she delights ineffably
in that good which is every good, and yet the soul
sees nothing whatever that can be narrated by the
tongue nor even conceived by the heart and yet she
sees, at the same time, absolutely everything ; and that
Good is the more certain, and the more exceeding
all others, that it comes with darkness and is most
secret, and I afterwards see in that darkness that it
exceeds every good and all things that are; the dark
ness itself is other than it, and everything that can be
thought of falls short of it. For indeed the visions of
Divine Wisdom and of Divine Will and of Divine
Power, which the soul had, so wonderfully and inde
scribably, upon other occasions, were not so great as
this vision of most certain Good. For that Good
which I see is complete, and the other things are a
part. And the vision of the other things, although

GOD AS TI-IREE PERSONS I49
they are indescribable, brings a great and overflowing
joy to the body, but when God is seen thus, in dark
ness, the vision brings not laughter to the lips, nor
fervour and devotion to the heart neither fervent love.
For the body trembles not and is not moved nor
changed, as in the other visions, and it sees nothing.
The soul alone sees, and the body is quiet and sleeps,
and the tongue is as it were cut off, for it can say
nothing. And so much less to me than that Good,
which I see so darkly, are all my friendships, of which
God has given me many and ineffable ones, and every
sweet word and all the other things which He has given
me, that I place no hope in them, and were it possible
that they were all unreal, my hope would not diminish
on that account, because of the certainty of the hope
which I have in that All-Good which I see so darkly.
And my mind was elevated three times, so as to
see God in this higher and ineffable way with much
darkness and marvellous grace of vision, and, though
I may have seen that All-Good many and innumer
able times as well, and with darkness too, it was only
three times, as I said, that I saw Him in the aforesaid
highest way, with so much darkness. And when,
on the one side, my body is shattered by its infirmi
ties, and the world drives me forth with its thorns
and bitternesses, and the devils afflict me with many

I50 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
temptations and infest me with almost continual
persecutions, God having given them power to afflict
me, having placed my soul in their hands (so that
indeed I see them almost corporally against me),
then, from the other, the real side, God draws me
to Himself, to that Good which I see in darkness, for I
see the Holy Trinity in darkness, and in the midst
of this Trinity, which I see so darkly, it seems as
if I were standing and resting. And it draws me
more than any other thing which I have experi
enced, and more than any other good I have seen.
For this vision cannot be compared with any others.
And so greatly does that Good which I see
exceed any words which I can use, that all I say of
it seems to be nothing, yea it seems as if I spoke
wrongly, or were blaspheming, in saying anything at
all about it For, in that vision of Good, I remember
not Christ's humanity nor God as man nor anything
which has form, and yet, notwithstanding that I see
all things, I see nothing. It is true that, when the
aforesaid separation of my soul to that Good takes
place, I see God-Man, and, with great meekness, He
draws my soul to Himself, saying now and again :
' Thou art I, and I am Thou.' And I see those eyes
and that face and they are most pacifying, and they
encompass my soul and draw her to Him with

GOD AS THREE PERSONS ISI
immense cunning. And the aforesaid Good, that I
see with darkness, proceeds from the vision of those
e}'es and of that face and emanates from within, and
it is that Good which delights me so much and so
indescribably. And my soul, dwelling in this God-
Man is alive, and I dwell much in Him, and more
continually than in that Good of which I have the
vision with darkness. But it is the latter which
draws my soul the most strongly without any com
parison. But, in this vision of the God-Man I dwell
almost constantly, and once God gave me a surety
that there was nothing separating Him and me, and
that continual joy in the Humanity has remained with
me day and night from that time. And I long always
to sing and to praise God, and I say : ' I praise Thee,
O Lord of Love, in the Cross I have made my bed.'
And for head coverings and for soft feathers have I
found poverty, and my means of rest are pain and
contempt. And in the aforesaid bed He Himself
was born, brought up, and died. And God the
Father so loved this company — namely, poverty, con
tempt, and pain — that He gave it to His Son, and, in
this bed the Son was v/illing to lie continually, and
He always loved and agreed with the Father. And
in this bed I found rest and quiet, and in it I hope
to die, and by it I believe I shall be saved. And

152 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
the joy which I expect to receive from those hands
and from those feet is indescribable, for, when I see
Him, I long never to be separated from Him, but to
go completely to Him, and in living, therefore, I die.
And when I think of Him I cannot speak, for my
tongue is as it were cut out. And if I cease from
my thought of Him, then the world and everything
about me drives me to greater longing. And this
my desire, through the weariness of expectation, is
mortal pain to me. And in these visions and con
solations my soul was most frequently elevated and
consoled by the most sweet God, to Whom be glory
and honour for ever and ever. Amen.

CHAPTER VIII
VISION AND CONSOLATION IN WHICH SHE SAW
GOD IN THE MOST PERFECT VISION POSSIBLE
IN THIS LIFE ; FROM WHICH VISION SHE ¦
OBTAINED A FIRMNESS IN GOOD PURPOSE,
AND A PERFECT LOVE FOR GOD.
Following upon the aforesaid things, I was rapt
in spirit and I found myself in God completely, in
such a way as I had never before experienced, and
it seemed to me that I was in the midst of the

MOST PERFECT VISION POSSIBLE 1 53
Trinity, in a higher and greater degree than I had
ever before been, and I felt that I was receiving
greater good than I was wont to do, and that I
remained continuall}' in this good, and that I was
filled with delights and inexpressible love. And
these things utterly surpassed all my former experi
ences. And divine operations went on in my soul
which were so ineffable that neither angel nor saint
could relate or explain them. And I know that no
angel nor any other creature is capable of under
standing those operations and that most profound
abyss. And when I speak of them it seems to me as
if I were speaking evilly or blaspheming. And I am
drawn forth out of those things which I formerly
experienced, and in which I so greatly delighted,
namely the Life and the Humanity of Christ, and
from the consideration of that most mysterious
society so pleasing to God from all eternity which He
enjoyed with His Son, and from the consideration
of the poverty, the pain, and the contempt borne by
the living Son of God, which consideration used to
be my resting place and my bed. And I am as it
were drawn beyond that way of seeing God in dark
ness which used so greatly to delight me. And out
of all those previous states I have been drawn so
gently and so quietly, that except by remembering

154 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
that I was no longer in them, I had no perception
of leaving them.
And in those ineffable benefits and divine opera
tions, which are brought about as aforesaid in my
soul, God at first presents Himself to the soul work
ing ineffable divine operations ; and He afterwards
proceeds to make Himself manifest to her, revealing
Himself to her, and giving her greater gifts with
greater certitude and ineffable clearness. And He
presents Himself to the soul in two ways, at first : by
the first way He is presented intimately to my soul,
and when I understand Him to be present, I then
understand how He is present in all nature, how
in all things He has being — in the Devil, in the
good angel, in Paradise, in Hell, in the adulterer,
in the murderer, in every good work, and in every
thing having being, in some way or another, in fair
things as well as filthy. Wherefore, when I experi
ence this truth, I do not take more pleasure in
the contemplation of a good angel or of a good work
than in the contemplation of a bad angel or of a bad
work. And God presents Himself most assiduously
to my soul in the aforesaid way, and when He does
so. He does it with great illumination and truth and
divine grace. So that the soul, seeing Him thus, can
in no way offend. And this illumination brings

MOST PERFECT VISION POSSIBLE 155
much good into the soul, and she, understanding God
to be present, is humiliated and confused on account
of her sins, whereby she receives great weight of
wisdom, and much divine consolation and great joy.
And He presents Himself in another way, more spe
cially and very differently, and in doing so He be
stows other joys upon the soul than the aforesaid, and
gathers her up completely into Himself and brings
about many divine operations in her, with greater
graces than in the first way, and with indescribable
abyss of delights and illuminations, so that that
Presence of God in the soul alone, without any other
gift, is that which the Saints have in Everlasting Life.
It is true that, of those gifts which the Saints have in
Everlasting Life, some have more and some have
less. Of which gifts, moreover, I am not worthy to
speak, for, in so doing, I blaspheme more than in not
mentioning them at all. But I say that among the
Saints there are different expansions of soul, so that
some have greater capabilities of receiving and
partaking of God. And it is likewise with the soul.
When God presents Himself to the soul, manifesting
and revealing Himself to her. He expands her and
gives her gifts and sweets in a way that He had never
before done. And then is my soul drawn out of
darkness, and a greater knowledge of God is wrought

IS6 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
in her more clearly than I could have thought possible.
And these things are brought about with so much
clearness, sweetness, and certitude, and with such depth,
that no heart could comprehend them. Wherefore,
neither can the heart understand anything of it, nor even
form any thoughts concerning it, except in so far as
is granted to the soul by God to rise to that to which
the heart, of itself, can never attain. Therefore it is
not possible to say anything at all about it, nor can
any words be found to express it, nor can thought or
intellect attaifi to it, so greatly does it exceed all
other things.
And although the Divine Scripture is so high
that no man in the world is wise enough to under
stand it completely, even though he were to possess
all the wisdom possible in this state, so greatly does
the Scripture surpass his intellect yet nevertheless,
he babbles something of it. But of these ineffable
divine operations of the manifestation of God in the
soul not one word can be spoken, and of them no
man can babble. And because my soul has been
frequently raised into the Divine secret I understand
this thing : namely, how holy and divine Scripture is,
at the same time easy and difficult, how it seems to
assert and to contradict, and how it is of no service
to those who, not observing it, are damned out of it

MOST PERFECT VISION POSSIBLE 1 57
and how, contrariwise, it is fulfilled in those persons
who, observing it, are saved out of it And these
words which I speak, returning from the secret of
God, I speak securel}-, being over and above know
ledge, but they are outside those ineffable divine
operations, in no way coming near them — yea, my
speaking of them is even as it were a blasphemy and
devastation. For, were all divine consolations and
pleasures and all spiritual joys which ever were, and
were all the Saints, from the beginning of the world,
to expound assiduously of God, and were all worldly
delights, good and bad, which ever were, to be changed
into good and spiritual ones, and to go on with me
to perfection and to lead me to that indescribable good
of Divine manifestation, I would not, I say, for all
these things, exchange the delight which I experience
in that indescribable manifestation of God which is
as swift as the opening and shutting of an eye. And
I tell thee this that thou mayest, in some measure,
have in thy heart that good which I have, and which
infinitely surpasses all the aforesaid things. And
this delight of which I speak I experience not only
for the space of the opening and the shutting of an
eye, but I have it oftentimes for a longer time, and
most efficaciously. And in the former way I have
it almost continually, but not so efficaciously.

IS8 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
And although I can experience sadness and joy
exteriorly, I cannot interiorily ; for in my soul is a
room into which no joy nor sadness, nor pleasure of
any kind, neither virtue nor anything else, can enter.
But into that room enters that All-Good. And in
that manifestation of God (although I blaspheme in
mentioning Christ in this way, for I cannot perfectly
name Him otherwise) is All Truth. And in Him I
understand and have the whole truth which is in
Heaven and in Hell and on earth and in every
creature, with so much truth and certitude, that in
no way, were the whole world to say the opposite,
could I believe otherwise, yea, I should ridicule them
who were to say it.
For I see Him Who is Essence, and I see how He
is the Essence of all creatures. And I see how He
made me more capable of understanding the aforesaid
better way than I was before, when I saw with that
darkness which used formerly so greatly to delight
me. And I see myself alone with God, all Purity,
all Holiness, all Truth, all Rectitude, all Certitude,
and in Him all Heavenliness. And when I am in
this state I remember nothing else. And sometimes,
when I was in this state, God said to me : ' Daughter
of Divine Wisdom, temple of delights, delight of de
lights, and daughter of peace, in thee rests the whole

1
MOST PERFECT VISION POSSIBLE 1 59
Trinit}^, the whole Truth, so that thou boldest Me
and I hold thee.' And one of the works which God
Himself wrought in my soul is a power of compre
hending, with great capacity and great delight, how it
is that God comes into the Sacrament of the Altar
with that great and noble union. It is true, when I
am out of this greatest state I see myself to be all sin
and obedient to sin, dark and impure, entirely false and
full of error. But I am quiet, and there remains continu
ally vvith me a Divine unction, which is a supreme
unction, and which I may have at all times of the day.
In the aforesaid state, in truth, I am not per
fected, but I am led by God and raised, although I
know not how to will it, nor desire it, nor pray for it,
and I am now almost continually in it, and often
times is my soul raised to God without my con.sent
being required ; for, while I neither hope for nor
imagine anything of the kind, suddenly my soul is
raised to God and the Lord. And I understand the
whole world, and I seem not to be on the eartih, but
to be in Heaven with God. And this most excellent
state, in which I am now, is above my former states.
For it has such completeness and clearness and
certitude and nobility and dilation, that I do not feel
any other state to come near it. And I have ex
perienced this manifestation of God more than a

l6o CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
thousand times, each time in a new and different
way. And once, on the Feast of Holy Mary at
Candlemas, I experienced that indescribable manifes
tation of God, and He worked in my soul in such a
way that a representation was raade to my soul of
herself And I saw her to have such nobility and
height that I could not have believed possible of her,
or, indeed, of any of the souls in Paradise, and at that
time my soul could not understand herself Where
fore if the soul, who is created finite and limited, can
not understand herself, how much less can she under
stand her Creator, immense, infinite, and unlimited .¦"
Wherefore my soul then presented herself to God
with the greatest security, so much so that she had
no fear. She presented herself to God with greater
delight than I had before experienced, and with a
new and most excellent joy, and with so much new
wonder and light that I could never have imagined
there to be such in my soul. And in that encounter
which I had at that time with God, when I understood
the aforesaid indescribable manifestation of God,
some words were said to me by the Most High God
which I do not wish to be written. And these
remained with the soul when she returned to herself,
and she found them within her, so that she was
pleased to bear every pain and injury for God, and

DIVINE ASSURANCE l6l
they prevented her from ever being able to separate
herself from God again, for anything which could be
said or done. Wherefore my soul cried out and
said : ' Oh, sweet Lord, what is there which could
separate me from Thee ? ' And I understood that I
was told that, His grace mediating, nothing could
ever separate me from God again. And I heard all
the aforesaid things told me by God, in a much more
wonderful way than I can relate them. Moreover, I
was told that the aforesaid ineffable manifestation of
God is that good which the saints enjoy in eternal
life. And that Good is not other than the aforesaid,
but there it is experienced in a different way, so
that the least saint in eternal life, who possesses least,
has more than can be given to any soul in this life
before the death of the body. And I relate what my
soul understood of these things in that indescribable
manifestation of God.
CHAPTER IX
VISION IN WHICH SHE WAS ASSURED THAT SHE
WAS NOT DECEIVED IN ANY OF HER VISIONS
AND DIVINE AND SPIRITUAL LOCUTIONS
Once, on a Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, some
time after my conversion, I besought the Blessed M

1 62 catholic MYSTICISM
Virgin to obtain for me the grace from her Son, that
I might know myself not to be deceived by the
locutions which were made to me ; and a Divine
locution was made to me, promising that it should be
done, saying as follows : ' God shows Himself to thee,
is spoken to by thee, gives to thee a feeling of
Himself ; do thou therefore avoid speaking, seeing,
and hearing everything except it be according to
Him.' And I understood this which was said to
me, with much discretion and great promptitude.
And I remained in great joy on account of the
aforesaid locutions which were made to me, and in
great hope of having that which gave me grace,
namely of having His licence for whatever I might
do. I began, therefore, to do those three things
which were told me, and my heart was raised above
all earthly things and placed in God. And whatever
I did, whether I ate or whether I talked, it did not
prevent my heart from being always in God. I
could not think of, nor see nor feel anything but
God. And if I stood in prayer, and wished to go
and eat, I asked His permission, and He Himself
gave it to me, saying : ' Go, eat, with the blessing of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost'
And He gave me permission sometimes speedily and
sometimes tardily. And this experience I had for

divine assurance 163
three days and three nights. Finally, in spirit, I saw
God at a certain Mass, in the elevation of the Body
of Christ. After which vision there remained in me
an indescribable sweetness and a great joy, which I
do not think has ever quitted me. And in the afore
said vision I received the assurance for which I had
prayed, and no further doubt was left me. And I
was completely satisfied that I was not deceived in
the aforesaid locutions.
CHAPTER X
CONSOLATION AND VISION IN WHICH SHE WAS
ASSURED THAT SHE WAS NOT DECEIVED IN
HER LOCUTIONS
Whilst I was in prayer another time, suddenly
some most peaceful words were said to me ; and He
said thus : ' My daughter, sweet to me, much more so
than I to thee, my temple, my delight, the heart of
God Almighty is over thy heart' And with these
words there came into my heart a most delightful
feeling such as I had never before experienced. I
felt it in all my members, and in this feeling I lay
down. And He said within me : ' God Almighty
reposes His love in thee, more than in any other
woman in this city. He Himself delights in thee

1 64 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
and in thy companion. And be zealous to make thy
life a light to all who see it and truly the judgment
on those who see it not will be hard and severe.'
And my soul understood from this that the judgment
of literate persons will be more cruel than that of the
laity, because they knew these divine things, through
the Scripture, and despised them.
And again He added : ' The love which God
reposes in you is so great that He is continually with
you, but not with this feeling, and His eyes are now
in you.' And it seemed to me that I saw the Divine
eyes with my mental vision. And they gave me
more delight than I can express. But it is a grief
to me that I relate these things in a way which
is laughable. Yet, notwithstanding the great joy
which I experienced, my sins were recalled to my
memory, and I felt that there was no good in me, and
that I did nothing which should please God. And I
began to doubt about those things which were said
to me, and which were so great, and I said : ' If Thou
Who speakest with me wert the Son of God Almighty,
would not my soul receive greater joy than she does ?
For that joy of feeling Thee within me I could never
endure, because I am so unworthy of it.' And He
replied to me : ' It is not My will that thou shouldst
experience greater joy now, but there is more prepared

DIVINE ASSURANCE 165
for thee, and know, that the whole world is full of
Me.' And I saw then that every creature was full of
Him. And He said to me : ' I can do all things,
and I can make thee see Me, as I was with the
Apostles, and thou shalt not feel Me.' But these
words He said not corporally, but my soul understood
them and much more, and I felt that they were true.
But, to prove them, my soul cried out : ' Since it is
thus that Thou art Almighty God, and that these
great things that Thou sayest are true, give me a
sign that I may be sure, and draw me out of doubt'
And I prayed that He would give me a bodily sign
of some kind or another, to place in my hand a
candle, or a precious stone, or some other thing that
I might see clearly, and I promised that I would not
show that sign unless He wished me to do so. And
He Himself replied : ' Such a sign as thou askest
would be a joy to thee when thou shouldst see or
touch it but it would not draw thee out of doubt, for
the sign itself might deceive thee. But I will give
thee a better sign than that which thou askest, which
shall be continually in thy soul, and which thou shalt
always feel. And this shall be the sign : Thou shalt
always be fervent in love, and in the love of God,
and illuminated by the knowledge of God within
thee. And this sign shall be to thee most certain.

1 66 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
for only I can make it. And this is the sign which
I told thee is better than the one which thou askedst
of Me. And I will send thee a love of Me which
will inebriate thy soul, and will keep thee perpetually
on fire for Me, and cause thee to endure tribulation
for My love, and to be grateful when thou art
evilly spoken of or ill-treated, and to declare thyself
unworthy of such graces. For so great was this love
of Mine for thee that for you I endured all things
with humility. Know therefore that I am in thee, if,
when any speak evil of thee or ill-treat thee, thou
dost not only patiently endure, but desirest the like
again, and art grateful for it This latter is a certain
sign of the grace of God. And behold I anoint thee
with an ointment, Syrocoso, with which a holy man
called Saint Cyricus was anointed, and many other
saints as well.'
And immediately I felt that ointment so sweetly
that I longed to die, and I desired moreover to die
with great torments, but I deemed myself unworthy
to endure torments such as the saints had suffered
for Christ, but I desired much more terrible torments.
And I wanted the whole world to cry shame upon me,
and death to overthrow me with every torment
And it was a delight to me to pray for those persons
who had injured me, and I marvelled no more at

DIVINE ASSURANCE 1 67
those saints who prayed to God for their murderers
and persecutors, for, not only should they have
prayed for them, but they should have tried to obtain
special grace for them. Therefore was I not only
most ready to pray to God for those who injured me,
but to love them with great love and compassion. I
felt, with that anointing, such sweetness within and
without as I had never before experienced, and
which I cannot express by any words great or small.
And this consolation was different to previous ones
which I had experienced, in that, formerly, my only
desire was to die immediately, but now I desired a
burdensome death, prolonged by every torment, and
that every one of my limbs might be tortured. And
these things seemed to me to be but small. And my
soul comprehended how small is every torment
beside those goods which are promised in Eternal
Life, and she comprehended most certainly. And
were all the wise men in the world to tell me
otherwise I should not believe them. And I do
not believe I should be lying were I to say that
all they who follow the aforesaid way are saved. And
this sign sank down so firmly into my soul with so
clear a light and illumination, that I think I would
undergo martyrdom rather than have it otherwise.
And I feel clearly that in this sign is the way of salva-

1 68 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
tion : namely, to love and desire suffering for the love
of God. And I heard God speaking to me, saying : ' Cause
to be written at the end of these things : Give
thanks to God. And whosoever will retain grace, let
him not lift his eyes from the Cross, be he in joy or
in sadness, for it is I Who permit all things to him.'
And my soul understood all that was said about the
aforesaid sign more fully than I can say, and with
greater delight and love than can be told ; and may
it be the will of God that I sin not in relating, as I
do, thus badly, and with so many defects.

OF THE DEATH OF BLESSED ANGELA
Now when Angela was lying prostrate, in her last
sickness, her mind being more fully absorbed in the
abyss of the Divine Infinity, she used to speak to us
at long intervals, and with many interruptions. Let
us who were present briefly recall her words as far as
we were able to understand them. Once she said (it
was about the Feast of the Lord's Nativity, at which
time she herself passed to Christ) : ' The Word was
made flesh,' and after a long delay she continued,
as if returning from elsewhere : ' Every creature fails,
and the intellect of all the angels is not sufficient'

DEATH OF BLESSED ANGELA 1 69
On being asked by us how every creature failed, and
for what the angelic intellect was insufficient, she
replied : ' To comprehend.' Afterwards she said : ' Oh,
behold in truth my God, Who has kept His promise
to me, for Christ His Son has presented me to His
Father.' She had said before : ' You know how
Christ was in the ship while the tempest was so
great ? In truth it is so sometimes in the soul, when
He permits temptations to come. Himself seeming to
sleep the while.' And again she said : ' In truth,
until God permits the entire personality to be in
clined to, and filled with His will. He does not allow
temptations and storms to end ; and this He does
specially for His own legitimate children.' On
another occasion, also, she said to us : 'I would
gladly speak to you, my children, if I knew that I
should not be deceived,' referring here to the promise
of her death, for, through her desire to die, she feared
greatly that she might recover from that illness. And
she continued : ' What I say to you I only say in
order that you may follow that which I have not
followed,' adding : ' My soul is washed and cleansed
in the Blood of Christ, which is as fresh and warm as
if it had just issued from the body of the Crucified,
and it was said to my soul : "This is what has cleansed
thee," and my soul replied : " My God, shall I be

170 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
deceived in my hope ? " and the answer was, " No." '
Afterwards she said: 'Christ, the Son of God,
has just presented me to His Father, and these
words were said to me : " O spouse and fair one,
beloved of Me in truth, I will not that thou come to
Me in such grief, but with delight and clothed with
a royal garment, as befits the nuptials of the King
with His long-loved bride ; " and He showed me a
garment, as a bridegroom might his dearly loved
betrothed, which was not purple nor scarlet, nor made
of samite, but a certain wonderful light, with which
the soul is clothed. And then He showed me Him
self, the Bridegroom, the Eternal Word, so that I now
understand what the Word is, that very Word Who
became Incarnate for me, that same Word Who died
for me, and He took me in His arms, and touched
me, and said to me : " Come, my beloved, my bride,
whom I love with true love — come, for all the saints
are joyfully waiting for thee." And He said to me ;
" I will not entrust thee to the charge of angels nor
any saints to bring thee, but I will come in My own
Person for thee and will take thee to Myself, for thou
art become sweet and grateful to My Majesty." '
Now, when she was approaching her end, on the
eve that is to say of her death, she frequently
murmured : ' Father, into Thy hands I commend my

DEATH OF BLESSED ANGELA 17 1
soul and my spirit' And once, after those words, she
said to us who were present : ' It has been told me in
reply to what I just said : " It is impossible that thou
have not in death that which has been impressed on
thy heart in life." ' Then we replied : ' Thou wishest,
then, to depart and abandon us ? ' And she answered :
' I have hitherto hidden from you, but now I hide
from you no longer, that I must indeed depart.' The
same day all the pains with which she had been so
horribly afflicted, both internally and externally
through all her limbs, departed, and she lay in such
peace of body and blitheness of spirit that she
appeared to be already tasting the joy that had been
promised her. We therefore questioned her if that
predicted joy were already hers, and she replied that
it had already commenced. And, lying in this peace
of body and delight of mind, until after compline on
Saturday, in the midst of many friars who celebrated
the mysteries of the Office at the last hour ofthat day,
which was the Octave of the Innocents, as one falling
into a light sleep, she rested in peace. And her most
holy soul, freed from the flesh, absorbed into the
abyss of the Divine Infinity, being about to reign
with Christ, received from that same Christ her
bridegroom, the stole of innocency and immortality,
to which end may Christ Himself bring us also.

172 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
through the virtue of His Holy Cross, and through
the merit of His Virgin Mother, and through the
intercession of this our most holy mother Angela.
Amen. The venerable bride of Christ, Angela of Foligno,
passed from the tempest of this world to the joys of
Heaven, at the time long before predicted to her, in
the year of our Lord's Incarnation 1309, the day
before the Nones of January in the time of our Lord
Pope Clement V.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A
HARNACK ON THE CONNEXION OF MYSTICISM
AND CATHOLICISM
Professor Harnack goes so far as to say that ' a Mystic
that does not become a Catholic is a dilettante.' He has
the following remarkable passage on the essential connexion
of Catholicism and Mysticism. The italics are Harnack's.
^Mysticism is CathoUc piety in general, so far as this piety
is not merely ecclesiastical obedience — that is, fides implicita.
Just for that reason Mysticism is not one form among others
of pre-Reformation piety — perhaps the latent Evangelical —
but is the Catholic expression of individual piety in general.
The Reformation element that is ascribed to it lies here
simply in this, that Mysticism, i.e. Catholic piety, when
developed in a particular direction, is led to the discern
ment of the inherent responsibility of the soul of which no
authority can again deprive it. . . . If Mysticism is with
drawn from the Catholic Church and set down as " Protes
tant," then Catholicism is empded of its character, and
evangelical faith becomes deteriorated. Is there, then, to be

174 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
no living and individual Catholic piety ? But where should
we have to seek it, if not in Mysticism? In the three
centuries before the Reformation, where can we find even
a single manifestation of truly religious life that had not its
source in " Mysticism " ? Or is Mysticism to be denied to
Catholicism because the latter requires, above everything
else, devotion to the Church and the Sacraments, and
because the history of Mysticism is the history of continual
conflicts between it and sacramental and authoritative
ecclesiasticism ? But when did it become possible
to regard such conflicts as showing that one of the
two factors is illegitimate ? Is there not a conflict also
between the unquestionably Catholic ideal of asceticism
and the equally unquestionable Catholic ideal of world
supremacy ? Are the great Mystics not the great Saints of
the Church ? Or shall it be held, against all that appears,
that this Church cannot produce and tolerate independent
piety within its own lines ? Now, no Evangelical Christian
certainly would ever think of confounding his delight in the
warm spiritual life which Catholic Christianity exhibits in
the centuries before the Reformation with full approval of
it, if — one must unfortunately add it — he had made clear
to himself what Evangelical faith is  The fondness,
it is true, for " German " Mysticism has received a severe
shock from records that have shown that if one is
enthusiastic for Master Eckhart &c., and derives edifica
tion from him, one must be still more enthusiastic about
St. Thomas, or about the Areopagite and Augustine. But
still more powerful check will be needed if a view of
history is to be got quit of which seems the proper one to

APPENDICES 175
all fragmentary natures that deal in a dilettante way with
religion, theology and philosophy : a Mystic that does not
become a Catholic is a dilettante.' '
I append also a quotation from an exceedingly signifi
cant foot-note to p. 108 of the same volume. Professor
Harnack is replying to the criticisms of two Catholic critics
of his book. The italics are again his own.
' What I have set forth in these pages (pp. 97 ff.) has been
keenly assailed by Lasson and Raffaele Mariano . Plainly
enough they put before me the alternative of irreligious
criticism or blind faith {Kohlerglauben), when on their side
they claim for the Thomist Mysticism that it is the only
form of religion in which faith and thought, history and
religious independence, are reconciled. It must be the
endeavour of each of us to find something in his own way.
What we have ultimately to do with here is the great problem
as to what history and the person of Christ are in religion,
and then there is the other problem also as to whether
religion is contemplation or something more serious. That
the end to which our striving is directed is the same — the
seeking, finding, and keeping hold of God —may be con
fidently granted on both sides. But my opponents have
an easier position than I have : they can prove- and I
recognise this proof — that the piety that culminates in
Mysticism and the old ecclesiastical dogma hang together,
and they can at the same time let the question rest as to what
reality of fact answers to the dogma. That is to say, the
dogma renders them the best .services just when they
are at liberty to contemplate it as a mobile and elastic
' Harnack, iyzV/o;-j/o/'Z>(;^/«a, English Translation, vi. 98, 99.

176 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
magnitude which hovers between the poles of an inferior
actuality and that " highest " which can never have been
actual as earthly ; out of the darkness there is a pressing
forward to the light ; luminous clouds show the path ! '

APPENDIX B
LOUISE LATEAU OF BOIS D'HAINE
' On August 13, 1869, there took place in the cottage at Bois
d'Haine a most surprising event. God willed that there
should be there, on that day, some important witnesses,
men of religion and of the world and three women, all tried
witnesses, as well as the mother of Louise and her two
sisters, This event is, in itself, quite a revelation ; the re
lation of it will, alone, rejoice Christian souls and strengthen
their faith in the real presence of our Saviour Jesus Christ
in the consecrated Host. I will now leave the story to be
told by Dr. Lefebvre, who has recounted it in his essay on
Louise Lateau. The eminent professor of the University of
Louvain insists, with reason, upon this prodigy, as measuring
the whole distance between the divine ecstasy and the mag
netic ecstasy.
' The facts alone must speak,' he says. ' I have chosen
the most extraordinary one of them all, and the one which
would be the most incredible were it not established by
absolutely reliable witnesses. I borrow it from the reports
written by two ocular witnesses of it : the one is a statesman

APPENDICES

177

who is reckoned among the most eminent men of our
country ; the other is Monseigneur d'Herbomez, bishop of
British Columbia, beyond the Rocky Mountains. This
remarkable prelate has passed twenty years of his life in
evangelising savages among the most severe and con
stantly recurring privations and perils. His scientific know
ledge is equal to his piety and apostolic devotion. As I
have already said, Mgr. d'Herbomez, authorised to see
Louise Lateau, was received in the little house at Bois
d'Haine on Friday, August 13, 1869. He was accompanied
by M. I'abbd Mortier, superior of the College of Bavay. In
a few words, first of afl, I remember that they found the
young girl occupied in working her sewing-machine. Blood
was flowing abundantly from her feet her hands, her side,
and from all round her head. The Bishop entered into
conversation with Louise ; he questioned her upon her
visions. She replied with her customary sobriety, but with
full intelligence. Soon the machine stopped suddenly, the
two hands of Louise became immovable ; she was ravished
into an ecstasy.
' Mgr. d'Herbomez and M. I'abbe Mortier, during the
whole of that day, followed the scenes of this ecstasy
which they described in their report, and which the reader
already knows. They tried different experiments with relics
and blessed objects. Towards ten o'clock they were joined
by M. le Curd, the parish priest, who had just administered
the last sacraments to a woman in the neighbourhood. The
reader knows that country priests sometimes carry the
eucharistic species and the holy oils in two silver vessels,
joined together, but which can be separated at will. The
N

178 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
one which carries the Host is known as the pyx. This
double vessel is generally carried about in a silk case.
'As M. le Cure had communicated the sick woman with
the only Host which the pyx contained, he thought— and
Mgr. d'Herbomez, as well as M. I'abbd Mortier, thought the
same — that the sacred vessels contained nothing but the
holy oils ; otherwise they could not, without infringing the
laws of the Church, have made the experiment of which I
am about to speak.
' The idea struck them of trying what effect the contact of
the vessel containing the holy oils would have upon Louise.
What followed was so extraordinary that they considered
it necessary to call a fourth witness. It was then that the
statesman, to whom I alluded just now, M.  , who in
habits a neighbouring country house, was begged to come
to the little cottage of Bois d'Haine.
'The events which I am about to relate took place
before him. I am here nothing but a simple historian, and
I copy, word for word, the report of M.  , which agrees,
in its smallest details, with that of Mgr. d'Herbomez, which
I have equally under my eyes.
' "M. I'abbd Mortier [the experiment was tried alternately
by the Bishop of Columbia and by him] wanted to place the
vessel with the holy oils near the lips of Louise. When he
was about two yards from the chair upon which she was
sitting, she exhibited an extraordinary trembling, lively
movements and a transport of joy. She rose, and fell
suddenly upon her knees in adoration, her trembling hands
joined and held out towards the sacred vessels ; her face
was truly seraphic. M. I'abbd Mortier drew back, always

APPENDICES 179
holding the blessed instrument in his hands ; she followed
the priest, who retired slowly. She was half-kneeling, half-
standing, leaning forward, her hands joined ; she looked
as if she were drawn by a magnet and as if she were
gliding rather than walking. M. I'abbd Mortier and Mgr.
d'Herbomez, made her go right round the room in this
way, and, each time that they stopped, Louise fell upon her
knees in an attitude of adoration. When they had come
back close to her chair, they removed the sacred vessels and
placed them at some distance from her ; she sat down, re
turned to her immobility, and the ordinary scenes of the
ecstasy went on again, just as upon other Fridays.
' " Mgr. d'Herbomez thought that a particle of the
Eucharist had remained in the pyx, of which M. le Cure
knew nothing, for he had not had time to make the
customary purifications. To make sure of this, he detached
the sacred vessels one from the other. He first pre
sented the vessel for holy oils to I.-ouise ; he was able to
do this without any effect being produced upon her, but
when he touched her lips with it, she smiled gently, as she
did at the contact of blessed objects. But when the pyx
was presented to her from a distance of two yards, the same
scene of kneeling adoration and of ravishment which has
just been described was renewed in every detail."
'Coming out of the cottage, after five hours, Mgr.
d'Herbomez, accompanied by the three other witnesses, went
to the parish church, and there, in their presence, he opened
the pyx. They ascertained that a considerable particle of
the consecrated species was in the sacred vessel.
' Meditating upon this remarkable event, an objecdon

l8o CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
presented itself obstinately to my mind. I know how in
clined adepts in magnetism are to believe in the reality of
the most extraordinary phenomena of lucidity. They will
not fail to say that Louise is a clairvoyante of exceptional
power ; that she recognised the sacred vessels in their silk
case ; that she even saw, thanks to her exceptional lucidity,
the blessed oil in its silver box, and the fragment of the
sacred Host in its pyx.
' In spite of the very unscientific character of this doubt,
I was determined to raise it. I demanded, therefore, a
counter-proof; this was given under the following conditions.
'On Friday, November 19, 1869, at nine o'clock in the
morning, the parish priest of Bois d'Haine, accompanied
by M. le chanOine Hallez, a distinguished professor of
the seminary at Tournai, went to the little house of the
widow Lateau. Louise was plunged in her usual ecstasy.
The parish priest had brought in the silk case, which we
have described above, a silver vessel, exactly like the
pyx. This vessel contained an unconsecrated host. It was
therefore the same instrument which Mgr. d'Herbomez
had had in his hands during the experiment which I have
just related.
' If Louise is a clairvoyante she will recognise the instru
ment which is used for the administration of the sick, the
silk case, the pyx, and the host which it encloses. She will
not fail to believe in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament,
and the spectators will see renewed the scenes of adora
tion which took place before Mgr. d'Herbomez and his
companions. The parish priest presents, therefore, the
instrument to Louise : she experiences nothing, no trans-

APPENDICES l8l
port, no act of adoration ; she remains insensible and
immovable. 'Thus, the event of August 13, verified by Mgr.
d'Herbomez and the other witnesses who verified it with
him, is not a phenomenon of somnambulistic or hypnotic
clairvoyance, nor any other kind of nervous phenomenon.
This conclusion is completely rigorous.
'After the ecstasy at which Mgr. d'Herbomez had
been present Louise owned to the parish priest that dur
ing her ravishment, she had had two kinds of illuminations :
at first a strong one, such as she had been accustomed to
every Friday, and which made her suffer ; then, four or five
times, very gentle illuminations, similar to those which she
had experienced several times during Holy Communion.
Some weeks afterwards (October 3) Father Seraphin
asked her if she had ever felt a desire to communicate
while she was in ecstasy ; she replied that she had only
once done so, upon one of the Fridays that had
recently passed. The Passionist Father was inclined to
think that she must have had this desire on the preceding
August 9. He did not push his inquiries further, in order
to leave Louise in complete ignorance of the marvellous
event which had taken place in the presence of Mgr. the
Bishop of Columbia.' *
* Les Stigmatises : Louise Lateau, par le Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre,
pp. iS8ff. (Paris : Victor Palme.)

1 82 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
APPENDIX C
THE PROBLEM OF THE MIRACULOUS
The miraculous in se is not the subject of any special
definition of the Church. From this it results that no
particular theory of the miraculous is involved in Catholic
Faith. But the definitions of Catholic dogma, on the other
hand, are undoubtedly stated in terms of the miraculous :
as, e.g., the partheno-genesis of Christ and His resurrection.
Modern science claims to have reached the results which
it has attained by acting on the assumption of the perman
ence and universality of one and the same force throughout
the whole region of phenomena observable by man. The
universality of force understood in this sense is not then,
an observed scientific truth, but is assumed as necessary for
the observation of any scientific truth whatever.
It is not that to admit a break in that universahty would
be to discredit any particular science — as, e.g., chemistry
or geology — but that to do so would be to declare all possi
bility of scientific knowledge of the universe fallacious ; for
the admission of such a break would destroy the funda
mental assumption on which all such scientific knowledge
rests. The practical truth of this assumption is guaranteed a
posteriori by the results which it enables us to achieve.
There is no need to insist on these results ; all educated
people are more or less acquainted with them, and it is
evident that so long as this fundamental assumption works

APPENDICES 183
as sucessfully as it does, it would be a retrograde and indeed
a suicidal step for scientific investigators to abandon it.
Taking the aflSrmations of the Church relative to the
miraculous element in dogma, as they sta/il. they un
doubtedly absolutely contravene this assumption of science.
The theologian and the biologist thus appear to find them
selves in an impasse which both cannot leave alive. For
the Church does not merely assert another order in asserting
the miraculous (were this so, religious and scientific
conclusions could not clash, as they would be reached under
different criteria and through different media, and would be
concerned with a different subject matter). She asserts (in
so far as she asserts a dogmatic fact involving the miraculous
element) an intersection of the two orders : i.e. the very thing
the impossibility of which is the presupposition of science.
Probably to most minds this is the most serious difficulty
in the way of Faith. There seem to be only two solutions
possible. One solution might be to say that when the
Church describes a dogmatic fact she does so only economi
cally. The real content that she is conveying to us cannot
perhaps reach us except under symbolic terms which have
to be used in the necessary default of any others.
After all, language comes to us through our senses.
Perhaps the analogy of metaphysics may hold good here.
We talk of the Absolute ' underlying ' or ' unifying ' pheno
mena, although these terms have strictly no meaning outside
the sphere of sense-perception. Yet the use of such terms
is absolutely necessary to metaphysical thought and one who
should refuse to think in such symbols would soon find
himself ceasing to think at all.

1 84 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
The other possible solution is no doubt more drastic.
It consists in the assertion that the presupposition of the
impossibility of miracles is only valid as a regulative principle
and that, as such, it is strictly relative to the point of view
implied in and the conclusions aimed at by physical science.
That point of view and those conclusions belong to the
sphere of the orderly arrangement of sense-perception — any
moral or spiritual insight being expressly excluded— and
to no other. Were sense-perception the only valid human
experience, the necessary presupposition involved in its
scientific arrangement would of course be a universal truth.
I have attempted to show that this is not the case. In so
far as it is not the case, other orders of knowledge — the
metaphysical or the sesthetic, for example — may have their
own quite different canons of truth. Why not also reli
gious knowledge ? Certainly it is no easier to ' reconcile '
Hegelianism than Catholicism with scientific axioms if these
latter are considered as anything more than purely practical
and relative assumptions.
If this be admitted (and it is difficult to see how it can be
contested), it follows that miracles (supposing miracles to be
a canon of religious knowledge) might be occurring con
stantly, though science would be none the wiser. I have no
competence to pronounce on the truth of either of these
two solutions, but it would seem that one or other must be
adopted. It has, I know, been suggested that miraculous
events may not be really outside law as conceived by
scientists, but only outside our present knowledge of the
operations of law ; on this view a resurrection from the dead,
supposing such an event to have occurred, is a natural

APPENDICES

185

occurrence, and it is merely our ignorance of the conditions
of life and death that prevents our understanding it as such
and presumably, if necessary, repeating it. Not a few
popular writers on religion in this country have fallen into
the fallacy of supposing that this position solves the question.
It solves it indeed by destroying it ; one factor of the
problem devours the other ! For in this case the miraculous
becomes nothing but a mistaken inference from an imper
fect generalisation, rectified in due time, as others have
been, through the advance of science.
Such a solution indeed is purely verbal and superficial,
and can only be acceptable to those who do not understand
the true nature of the problem.
I have said that Hegelianism contravenes the universal
truth of the scientific axiom as much as Catholicism :
perhaps the reader may be glad to see what Hegel himself
says on the subject. After some remarks on the miracles
of our Lord in the course of which he notes that the attes
tation to His Divinity was in Himself rather than in His
miracles, which conversely derive their value from His
Personality, he sums up the question as follows :
' It has further to be observed that miracles are, speaking
generally, effects produced by the power exercised by Spirit
upon the natural connexion of things — are an interference
with the course and eternal laws of Nature. But the truth
is that it is Spirit which is this miracle, this absolute inter
ference. Life is already an interference with these so-called
eternal laws of Nature ; it destroys, for instance, the eternal
laws of mechanism and chemistry. The power of Spirit and
also its weakness, have still more effect on life. Terror can
o

1 86 CATHOLIC MYSTICISM
produce death, anxiety iUness, and so in aU ages infinite faith
and trust have enabled the lame to walk and the deaf to hear
&c. Modern unbelief in occurrences of this sort is based on a
superstitious belief in the so-called force of Nature and its in
dependence relatively to Spirit' ^
The italics are my own.
It would certainly seem as difficult to harmonise the
Hegelian theory of Spirit with the presuppositions of modern
science (if these are to be considered as anything more than
relative working hypotheses) as Catholicism.
I have only to add that everything said here is submitted
to the judgment of the Theological School.
' }iegt\, Philosophy of Religion. The Absolute Religion. Vol. iii.
p. 119, English Translation.

Spottiswoode &^ Co. Printers, New-street Square, Lon

BY THE AUTHOR QF
CATHOLIC MYSTICISM.
THE DIALOGUE OF THE SERAPHIC VIRGIN,
ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
Transl.\ted from the Itali.\x by ALG.^R THOROLD.
Demy 8vo. i^s.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
' .\ translation from the Italian of " The Dialogue of St. Catherine of
Siena" affords Mr. Algar Thorold, the translator, an opportunity for an
interesting disquisition, by way of introduction, on the study of mysticism,
which he declares to be "no sickly delusion of this or that morbid indi
vidual, but as real a part of the experience of man as the nervous system."
.\ desire for ecstasy, Mr. Thorold urges, lies at the root of our nature,
and this desire can only be realised by mysticism, defined as " the habit
of the love of God "or " the reduction to the emotional modality of the
highest concept of the intellect." Mysticism, in fact, is an exact science,
and a system of life is only religious in so far as it is mystical. Mr.
Thorold's arguments may not carry conviction, but they are skilfully set
forth, and his little contribution to the literature of a subject that has a
deep and enduring interest is not without value.' — Times, 24 April, 1896.
' Mr. Thorold decidedly deserves the thanks of students of mysticism
for his fine rendering of the "Dialogue," and for his scholarly introduc
tion. The "Dialogue" is a treasure-house of devotional inspiration to
those who can read aright its messages, and the place it has held in the
Church is sufficient guarantee of its astounding intellectual merit and its
salutary efficacy. This is not the place to touch on the questions— deep
and interesting questions they are— suggested by Mr. Thorold's introduc
tion We can only recommend his work as at once able and faithful, and
trust that it will have the success it deserves. The publishers have spared
no pains to produce it in an acceptable form.'
Freeman','; Journal, i May, 1896.

OPINIONS OF THE PT^^^^— continued.

' Those who study mystical literature owe a debt of gratitude to Mr.
Algar Thorold for rendering into English one of the great classics of
mysticism. , . Mr. Thorold's translation reads easily and well. It is
probably less wildly metaphorical than the old Tuscan of the original ; but
it is sufficiently full of figures to give a faithful view of the rapturous
qualities that distinguish the " Dialogue " among books of its kind. Mr.
Thorold prefaces his translation by a short paper on the study of
mysticism — a. paper interesting from the curious way in which it traces
mysticism in modern literature in the oddest places, in the writings of
Flaubert, Zola, and Verlaine.' — Scotsman, ^o April, 1896.
'He (Mr. Thorold) is, in fact, one— and not the least able -of the
many modern theologi'ans who strain every nerve in the effort to har
monise Jbe dogma of the Christian Church with the recent discoveries of
scientific investigators. In imparting this elasticity to the strait gate and
the narrow way, Mr. Thorold reaches a conception of Christian truth
that owes as much to Plato as to Judaism, and that ascribes the heresies
which assailed the infant Church to mystical aspiration rather than to
intellectual arrogance. These theories enable Mr, Thorold to accept the
Hellenism of Clement of Alexandria as a consecration of Platonic pre
possessions to the service of Christ.' — Saturday Review, 13 fune, 1896.
' There has come but recently before the reviewers anew version of the
writings of this great mystic (St. Catherine), prefaced by an introduction
that has been written by a master-hand. Although occupying but a few
pages of a rather large volume, it contains therein an exposition of the
subject which shows that before the writer's mind have been ranged in all
their aspects the many-sided problems of human life, and the bearing that
this subject has upon them, not alone upon what we may call their senti
mental or spiritual side, but even upon the life of sense and of practical
realities.'— New York Catholic World, luly, 1896. -.^ -,
' Mr. Thorold's exceUent essay on Mysticism shows an extensive
acquaintance with leaders of modern thought outside the Catholic Church,
and their views on the supernatural. The subject is beset with dangers,
but the author has written nothing that is not in accordance with sound
theology.'— Tablet, 27 /««<?, 1896.
' We are most grateful to Mr. Thorold for the vivid exactness of his
rendering and the clearness of his style. The book will be found a most
useful and suggestive one for spiritual reading, and ought to have a place
in every convent and Catholic library.' — Month, June, 1896.

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