The 14th Century English Mystics

The 14th Century was indeed a tumultuous one. France and England, beginning to emerge as nation states were embroiled in a series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years War. The Black Death arrived in the 1340s and killed somewhere between a quarter and a half of the European population. There were also peasant revolts at home in England. The Middle Ages were coming to a close, the Renaissance was beginning in Italy, and the Protestant Reformation was a little over a century away.

In the midst of all of these crises there was a flowering of contemplative Christian spirituality exemplified by the German writer and teacher Meister Eckhart. His work has been compared to various schools of Buddhist thought. This spiritual movement spread to England, where it took root and blossomed anew. In the class, we look at Meister Eckhart, the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, the Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (the earliest known female writer in the English language) and two lesser-known authors, Walter Hilton and Margery Kempe. In some ways they mark the high point, if not the beginning of the end of the Western contemplative tradition. Though separated from us by more than centuries, and repeated radical shifts in the way we think, and act, and believe, they still speak to modern readers. For the adventurous there are Middle English versions readily available, but there are accessible modern translations as well.

Richard Elliot is a retired Episcopal priest who served in Wilmington for 22 years. Elliot is a graduate of the Spiritual Direction Program of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington, DC, and a lifelong student of the Western spiritual tradition.