The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century

In the 14th century, England produced mystical writers to rival those of India, the Sufis and the great European luminaries such as Meister Eckhart. In Richard Rolle of Hampole we see his experience of the joy of the love of God, and learn from his classic "The Fire of Love" his step-by-step approach to God. The author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" rejects the intellect as a means to God, preferring rather that devout thought and belief be cast under a "thick cloud of forgetting". Dame Julian of Norwich is perhaps the best-loved English mystic; in her "Revelations of Divine Love" her meditations on the mysteries of divine providence, the nature and purpose of evil and the love of God are couched in gentle imagery. Walter Hilton shows how to find a clear path through the nebulous and tortuous complexities of inner man. This is a collection of some of the most lyrical and inspired of these religious writings.