The Mystics of Spain

By E. Allison Peers

During the sixteenth century — the golden age of Spanish mysticism — Roman Catholicism produced a thoroughly orthodox form of mysticism, a type of meditation that lay at the core of religious beliefs and was practiced to raise spiritual consciousness. In this authoritative book, a leading specialist in the field presents a comprehensive, ground-breaking study of the works and personalities of fifteen mystical authors. A brief exploration of the period serves as a background to extracts from the authors’ writings.
Included are Juan de Ávila and his “Letter to a religious, urging him to the perfect love of God”; St. Teresa of Jesus and her “An exclamation of the soul to God”; and St. John of the Cross, represented in part by his best-known work, “Dark Night of the Soul.” The text also contains “A contemplation to obtain love” by St. Ignatius of Loyola, as well as the meditations of Alonso de Orozco, Luis de Granada, Diego de Estella, Luis de León, and Pedro Malón de Chaide, among others. A list of books is provided for those who wish to make this anthology a starting point for further study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486164731

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Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2002, is an unabridged reprint of The Mystics of Spain—the work originally published in 1951 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, as No. 5 in the series Ethical and Religious Classics of the East and West.

The unusual pagination (the text begins on page 7) is correct in the present edition; it respects the numbering of the original book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peers, E. Allison (Edgar Allison), 1891—1952.

The mystics of Spain / E. Allison Peers.

p. cm.

Originally published: London: Allen & Unwin, 1951, in series: Ethical and religious classics of the East and West.

9780486164731

1. Mysticism—Spain—History. I. Title.

BV5077.S7 P38 2002

248.2’2’0946—dc21

2002031159

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

As a result of two Wars that have devastated the world men and women everywhere feel a twofold need. We need a deeper understanding and appreciation of other peoples and their civilizations, especially their moral and spiritual achievements. And we need a new vision of the Universe, a clearer insight into the fundamentals of ethics and religion. How ought men to behave? How ought nations? Does God exist? What is His Nature? How is He related to His creation? Especially, how can man approach Him? In other words, there is a general desire to know what the greatest minds, whether of East or West, have thought and said about the Truth of God and of the beings who (as most of them hold) have sprung from Him, live by Him, and return to Him.

It is the object of this Series, which originated among a group of Oxford men and their friends, to place the chief ethical and religious masterpieces of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, within easy reach of the intelligent reader who is not an expert—the undergraduate, the ex-Service man who is interested in the East, the adult student, the intelligent public generally. The Series will contain books of three kinds: translations, reproductions of ethical and religious art, and Background Books showing the surroundings in which the literature and art arose and developed. These books overlap each other. Religious art, both in East and West, often illustrates a religious text, and in suitable cases the text and pictures will be printed together to complete each other. The Background Books will often consist largely of translations. The volumes will be prepared by scholars of distinction, who will try to make them, not only scholarly, but intelligible and enjoyable.

Their contents will also be very varied—ethical and social, biographical, devotional, philosophic and mystical, whether in poetry, in pictures or in prose. There is a great wealth of material. Confucius lived in a time much like our own, when State was at war with State and the people suffering and disillusioned; and the Classics he preserved or inspired show the social virtues that may unite families, classes and States into one great family, in obedience to the Will of Heaven. Asoka and Akbar (both of them great patrons of art) ruled a vast Empire on the principles of religious faith. There are the moral anecdotes and moral maxims of the Jewish and Muslim writers of the Middle Ages. There are the beautiful tales of courage, love and fidelity in the Indian and Persian epics. Shakespeare’s plays show that he thought the true relation between man and man is love. Here and there a volume will illustrate the unethical or less ethical man and the difficulties that beset him.

Then there are the devotional and philosophic works. The lives and legends (legends often express religious truth with clarity and beauty) of the Buddha, of the parents of Mary, of Francis of Assisi, and the exquisite sculptures and paintings that illustrate them. Indian and Christian religious music, and the words of prayer and praise which the music intensifies. There are the Prophets and Apocalyptic writers, Zarathustrian and Hebrew; the Greek philosophers and the Christian thinkers—Greek, Latin, Medieval and Modern—whom they so deeply influenced. There is too the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian teaching expressed in such great monuments as the Indian temples, Barabudur (the Chartres of Asia), and Ajanta, Chartres itself and the Sistine Chapel.

fis in Islam, Plato and Plotinus, followed by ‘Dionysius,’ Dante, Eckhart, Teresa and other great mystics and mystical painters in many Christian lands.

Mankind is hungry, but the feast is there, though it is locked up and hidden away. It is the aim of this Series to put it within reach, so that, like the heroes of Homer, we may stretch out our hands to the good cheer laid before us.

No doubt the great religions differ in fundamental respects. But they are not nearly so far from one another as they seem. We think they are further off than they are largely because we so often misunderstand and misrepresent them. Those whose own religion is dogmatic have often been as ready to learn from other teachings as those who are liberals in religion. Above all there is an enormous amount of common ground in the great religions, concerning too the most fundamental matters. There is frequent agreement on the Divine Nature; God is the One, Self-Subsisting Reality, knowing Himself, and therefore loving and rejoicing in Himself. Nature and finite spirits are in some way subordinate kinds of Being, or merely appearances of the Divine, the One. The Way of man’s approach or return to God is in essence the same, in Christian and in non-Christian teaching. It has three stages: an ethical stage, then one of knowledge and love, leading to the mystical Union of the soul with God. Each stage will be illustrated in these volumes.

Something of all this may (it is hoped) be learnt from the books and pictures in this Series. Read and pondered with a desire to learn, they will help men and women to find fullness of life, and peoples to live together in greater understanding and harmony. To-day the earth is beautiful, but men are disillusioned and afraid. But there will come a day, perhaps not a distant day, when there will be a Renaissance of man’s spirit: when men will be innocent and happy amid the beauty of the world. For their eyes will be opened to see that egoism and strife are folly, that the Universe is Spiritual, and that men are the sons of God.

They shall not hurt nor destroy

In all my holy mountain:

For all the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

As the waters cover the sea.

PREFACE

With a few outstanding exceptions, the treasures of Spanish mysticism have lain in oblivion for three centuries, their greatness unsuspected even in Spain itself. The aim of this book is to present a general survey of the Golden Age of Spanish mysticism as a background to the works and personalities of fifteen mystical authors, represented by short extracts from their writings. Particulars of relevant, and accessible, editions and studies are prefaced to the selections from each author and a list of books somewhat wider in scope is provided for those who wish to make this anthology a starting-point for further study.

All the extracts have been translated specifically for this book with the exception of two poems which are reproduced, by permission of the publishers, from my Poems of St. John of the Cross (London, Burns Oates, 1947). I owe the warmest thanks to Messrs. Methuen & Co., publishers of Spanish Mysticism: a Preliminary Survey, the earliest book I wrote on this subject, for the readiness with which they granted me permission to incorporate some passages from it in the introduction to this volume.

E. A. P.

University of Liverpool.

February 9, 1950.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION - THE MYSTICS OF SPAIN

LIST OF BOOKS

EXTRACTS FROM THE SPANISH MYSTICS

RAMÓN LULL - c. 1233—c. 1315

GARCÍA DE CISNEROS - 1455—1510

BERNARDINO DE LAREDO - 1482—1540

ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA - 1491—1556

FRANCISCO DE OSUNA - c. 1497—c. 1541

ST. PETER OF ALCÁNTARA - 1499—1562

JUAN DE ÁVILA - 1500—1569

ALONSO DE OROZCO - 1500—1591

LUIS DE GRANADA - 1504—1588

ST. TERESA OF JESUS - 1515—1582

DIEGO DE ESTELLA - 1524—1578

LUIS DE LEÓN - 1528—1591

PEDRO MALÓN DE CHAIDE - C. 1530—1589

JUAN DE LOS ÁNGELES - 1536—1609

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS - 1542—1591

INTRODUCTION

THE MYSTICS OF SPAIN

The remarkable florescence of ascetic and mystical literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain is one of the most striking phenomena in the history of Christian devotion. Using the adjective ‘mystical’ in its widest sense, the foremost Spanish critic of the nineteenth century, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, computed that the number of works—either published or still in manuscript—to which it can be applied must be in the region of three thousand; and even if we take the word in a more restricted sense it is safe to assert that mystical authors who wrote during that great age can be counted by the hundred.

I

Throughout the Middle Ages, which gave such notable mystics to Italy, Germany, the Low Countries and England, religious fervour in Spain was directed mainly to the task of expelling the Moslems and thus winning back the whole of the country for the Cross. But in the thirteenth century one figure of distinction stands out—a Majorcan, Ramón Lull. Converted, as a young man, from a life of ease and dissipation, Lull devoted fifty years of a long life to missionary work among the heathen—and, in particular, among the Moors. An indefatigable preacher, and a phenomenal traveller, he was also a voluminous writer: though legend has certainly fathered more treatises upon him than he could ever have written, the total of his genuine works—some in Latin, some in his native Catalan—can hardly be less than two hundred and fifty. A considerable proportion of these may be described as mystical in spirit—many of his poems, large parts of his vast and encyclopædic Book of Contemplation, passages from the religious romances, Felix and Blanquerna, a few short treatises, of which the best known is the Art of Contemplation, and a number of fantastic allegorical works, such as the Tree of the Philosophy of Love. But the opuscule which gives Lull’s mysticism immortality is the unforgettable little Book of the Lover and the Beloved. In writing this, he tells us, he drew upon Moslem sources: ‘certain men called Sufis’ set down ‘words of love and brief examples which give men great devotion; and these are words which demand exposition, and by the exposition thereof the understanding soars aloft, and the will likewise soars, and is increased in devotion.’ ¹ Under the essentially mystical figure of the Beloved —God—and His lover—the contemplative soul—Lull not only uses picturesque and appealing language to describe the Incarnation, the Passion and the Crucifixion of Christ, but points those who have fallen in love with God to the renunciations, the perils and the glories of the mystical life and to the sublimity of its goal. Across the centuries he still bids those who love come light