The Portable Medieval Reader

by James Bruce Ross

  THE MYSTERIES OF FAITH

  Our ancestors assert with one voice that faith is the beginning of understanding. For in every discipline certain things are presupposed as first principles which are apprehended by faith alone and from which springs the comprehension of the matters treated. Every man who wishes to raise himself to knowledge must necessarily believe in the things without which he cannot raise himself. As Isaiah says: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Faith, therefore, comprises in herself all that is intelligible. Understanding is the explication of faith. Understanding is, therefore, directed by faith, and faith is developed by understanding. Where there is no sound faith, there is no true understanding. It is clear to what conclusion error in principle and fragility in foundations lead. There is no faith more perfect than the truth itself, which is Jesus. Who does not understand that the most excellent gift of God is perfect faith? The apostle John says that faith in the incarnation of the Word of God leads us to truth, in order that we may become sons of God; that is what he shows simply in his exordium, and then he recounts numerous works of Christ consonant with this belief that understanding is illuminated by faith. Therefore he comes finally to this conclusion saying: “These things were written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”

  Now that sweetest faith in Christ, firmly sustained in simplicity, may by stages of ascent be extended and developed according to the aforesaid doctrine, that of ignorance. For the greatest and most profound mysteries of God, hidden from those who go about in the world, however wise they may be, have been revealed to the small and humble in the faith of Jesus, because Jesus is the one in whom all the treasures of wisdom and science are enclosed, and without whom no one can do anything. For He is the Word and the power by whom God created the very ages, alone, the highest, having power over all things in heaven and on earth. This one, since He is not knowable in this world, where reason, opinion, and knowledge lead us by symbols through the better known to the unknown, can be grasped only there where proofs cease and faith begins, by which we are ravished in simplicity so that beyond all reason and intelligence, in the third heaven of the most simple intellectuality, we may contemplate Him in His body incorporeally, because in spirit, and in the world but not of the world, but celestially and incomprehensibly in order that it may be understood that He is incomprehensible by reason of His infinite excellence.

  And this is that learned ignorance by which the most blessed Paul himself, arising, saw that Christ whom he formerly only had knowledge of, he did not know when he was raised higher up to Him. We are led, therefore, we faithful in Christ, in learned ignorance to that mountain which is Christ, which the nature of our animality prevents us from attaining, and when we try to perceive it with the intellectual eye, we fall down in the fog, knowing only that this fog hides us from the mountain, on which only those may live who flourish in understanding. If we approach this with a greater firmness in our faith we are snatched away from the eyes of those who wander in the world of the senses, so that with internal hearing we perceive the voices, the thunder, and the terrible signs of the majesty of God, easily perceiving the Lord Himself, whom all things obey, advancing by stages in the imperishable traces of His steps, like I do not know what divine creatures; and hearing the voice, not of mortal creatures but of God Himself in the holy organs and in the signs of His prophets and saints, we contemplate Him more clearly, as if through the cloud of reason. Then the believers, with more burning desire, rising continually, are carried up to intellectuality in its simplicity, passing beyond all sensible things, as if from sleep to waking, from hearing to sight, where those things are seen which cannot be revealed, because they are beyond all hearing and the teaching of the voice. For if what is revealed there had to be expressed, then the inexpressible would be expressed and the inaudible would be heard, just as the invisible is seen there. For Jesus, blessed throughout the ages, end of all intellection, since He is truth; end of all sensibility since He is life; end ultimately of all being, because He is entity; perfection of every created being as God and man, is incomprehensibly heard there as the limit of every word. For from Him proceeds, to Him returns every word; all that is true in the word comes from Him. Every word has as its goal edification, therefore Him, who is wisdom itself. All that has been written has been for our edification. The words are represented in the Scriptures, the heavens are sustained by the Word of God. Therefore, all created things are signs of the Word of God. Every corporeal word is the sign of the spiritual Word. The cause of every spiritual corruptible word is the incorruptible Word, which is reason. Christ is the incarnate reason of all reasons, because the Word was made flesh. Jesus therefore is the end of everything. Such are the verities which reveal themselves by degrees to him who raises himself to Christ by faith. The divine efficacy of this faith is inexplicable for, if it is great, it unites the believer to Jesus so that he is above all that is not in unity with Jesus Himself.

  From De docta ignorantia, P. Rotta, ed. (Bari, Italy: G. Laterza, 1913); trans. J.B.R.

  The Vision of God

  The Soul Complains to God

  JACOPONE DA TODI

  Thirteenth century

  Love, that art Charity,

  Why has thou hurt me so?

  My heart is smote in two,

  And burns with ardent love.

  Glowing and flaming, refuge finding none,

  My heart is fettered fast, it cannot flee;

  It is consumed, like wax set in the sun;

  Living, yet dying, swooning passionately,

  It prays for strength a little way to run,

  Yet in this furnace must it bide and be:

  Where am I led, ah me!

  To depths so high?

  Living I die,

  So fierce the fire of Love.

  Before I knew its power, I asked in prayer

  For love of Christ, believing it was sweet;

  I thought to breathe a calm and tranquil air,

  On peaceful heights, where tempests never beat.

  Torment I find, instead of sweetness there!

  My heart is riven by the dreadful heat:

  Of these strange things to treat

  All words are vain;

  By bliss I am slain,

  And yet I live and move.

  For I have lost my heart, my will, my wit,

  My hopes, desires, my pleasures and my taste;

  Beauty seems vile, corruption crawls on it,

  Riches, delights, and honours all are waste:

  —A Tree of Love, with fruits both fair and fit

  To feed me, in my heart is rooted fast,

  It flings away in haste

  All it can find,

  Will, strength, and mind:

  With Love in vain I strove.

  More would I love, if more were possible;

  Yet can I give no more than all my heart;

  I give my all—my life, my soul, my will,

  Nor needs it proof that all is more than part.

  I give Thee all, O Lover Terrible—

  Take all, fresh life for ever to impart;

  So old, so new, Thou art;

  Yea, I have found Thee,

  Soft light around Thee,

  And whiter than the Dove.

  Gazing on Thee, Thou Bright and Morning Star,

  I am led far, I know not where I be;

  My heart is melted like a waxen bar,

  That moulded in Christ’s likeness it may be;

  O Christ, Thy barters keen and wondrous are!

  I am stript naked, to be drest in Thee:

  My heart transformed in me,

  My mind lies dumb,

  To see Thee come,

  In sweetness and in Love.

  So linkèd with that sweetness is my mind,

  It leans and strains, its Lover to embrace:

  And all in Him, and naught in self to find,

  It learns, by gazing ever on His face.

  Riches, and pow
ers, and memories strong to bind,

  It casts away, as burdens in the race;

  It hath no resting-place,

  No will, no care;

  It mounts the stair,

  Towards which its being strove.

  In Christ transformed, almost my soul is Christ;

  Conjoined with God, all, all is now divine,

  So great, so high, its marvellous acquist—

  —Possessing, Jesu, all that once was Thine:

  Nor need I now, set free from mortal mist,

  Ask medicine for the guilt that once was mine;

  No more in grief I pine,

  My sinful soul

  Is purged and whole,

  Yea, it is cleansed and shrove.

  Now, a new creature, I in Christ am born,

  The old man stripped away;—I am new-made;

  And mounting in me, like the sun at morn,

  Love breaks my heart, even as a broken blade:

  Christ, First and Only Fair, from me hath shorn

  My will, my wits, and all that in me stayed,

  I in His arms am laid,

  I cry and call—

  “O Thou my All,

  O let me die of Love!”

  For Thee, O Love, my heart consumes away,

  I cry, I call, I yearn for Thy caress;

  Living, I perish when Thou dost not stay,

  Sighing and mourning for my Blessedness:

  Dost Thou return, I strain and strive and pray,

  To lose amidst Thine All my Nothingness:

  Then tarry not to bless,

  Love, think on me;

  Bind me to Thee,

  Consume my heart with Love!

  From Lauda XC, trans. Mrs. T. Beck, in E. Underhill, Jacopone da Todi.

  A Crying Mystic

  MARGERY KEMPE

  Fourteenth century

  SO THEY went forth into the Holy Land till they could see Jerusalem. And when this creature saw Jerusalem, riding on an ass, she thanked God with all her heart, praying Him for His mercy that, as He had brought her to see His earthly city of Jerusalem, He would grant her grace to see the blissful city of Jerusalem above, the city of Heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ, answering her thought, granted her to have her desire.

  Then for the joy she had, and the sweetness she felt in the dalliance with our Lord, she was on the point of falling off her ass, for she could not bear the sweetness and grace that God wrought in her soul. Then two pilgrims, Duchemen, went to her, and kept her from falling; one of whom was a priest, and he put spices in her mouth to comfort her, thinking she had been sick. And so they helped her on to Jerusalem, and when she came there, she said:

  “Sirs, I pray you be not displeased though I weep sore in this holy place where our Lord Jesus Christ was quick and dead.”

  Then went they to the temple in Jerusalem and they were let in on the same day at evensong time, and abode there till the next day at evensong time. Then the friars lifted up a cross and led the pilgrims about from one place to another where our Lord suffered . . . His passion, every man and woman bearing a wax candle in one hand. And the friars always, as they went about, told them what our Lord suffered in every place. The aforesaid creature wept and sobbed as plenteously as though she had seen our Lord with her bodily eye, suffering His passion at that time. Before her in her soul she saw Him verily by contemplation, and that caused her to have compassion. And when they came up on to the Mount of Calvary, she fell down because she could not stand or kneel, and rolled and wrested with her body, spreading her arms abroad, and cried with a loud voice as though her heart would have burst asunder; for, in the city of her soul, she saw verily and clearly how our Lord was crucified. Before her face, she heard and saw, in her ghostly sight, the mourning of our Lady, of Saint John, and Mary Magdalene and of many others that loved our Lord.

  And she had such great compassion and such great pain, at seeing our Lord’s pain, that she could not keep herself from crying and roaring though she should have died for it. And this was the first cry that ever she cried in any contemplation. And this manner of crying endured many years after this time, for aught any man might do, and therefore, suffered she much despite and much reproof. The crying was so loud and so wonderful that it made the people astounded unless they had heard it before, or unless they knew the cause of the crying. And she had them so often that they made her right weak in her bodily might, and especially if she heard of our Lord’s passion.

  And sometimes, when she saw the crucifix, or if she saw a man with a wound, or a beast, whichever it were, or if a man beat a child before her, or smote a horse or other beast with a whip, if she saw it or heard it, she thought she saw our Lord being beaten or wounded, just as she saw it in the man or the beast either in the field or the town, and by herself alone as well as amongst the people.

  First when she had her cryings in Jerusalem, she had them often, and in Rome also. And when she came home to England, first at her coming home, it came but seldom, as it were once a month, then once a week, afterwards daily, and once she had fourteen in one day, and another day she had seven, and so on, as God would visit her, sometimes in church, sometimes in the street, sometimes in her chamber, sometimes in the fields, whenever God would send them, for she never knew the time nor the hour when they would come. And they never came without passing great sweetness of devotion and high contemplation. And as soon as she perceived that she would cry, she would keep it in as much as she might that the people should not hear it, to their annoyance. For some said that a wicked spirit vexed her; some said it was a sickness; some said she had drunk too much wine; some banned her; some wished she was in the harbour; some wished she was on the sea in a bottomless boat; and thus each man as he thought. Other ghostly men loved her and favoured her the more. Some great clerks said our Lady cried never so, nor any saint in Heaven, but they knew full little what she felt, nor would they believe that she could not stop crying if she wished.

  And therefore when she knew that she would cry, she kept it in as long as she might, and did all she could to withstand it or put it away, till she waxed as livid as any lead, and ever it would labour in her mind more and more till the time it broke out. And when the body might no longer endure the ghostly labour, but was overcome with the unspeakable love that wrought so fervently in her soul, then she fell down and cried wondrous loud, and the more she laboured to keep it in or put it away, so much the more would she cry, and the louder. Thus she did on the Mount of Calvary, as is written before.

  From The Book of Margery Kempe, W. Butler-Bowdon, cd. (Lon. don: Cape, 1936; New York: Devin-Adair, 1944).

  The Vision of God

  NICHOLAS OF CUSA

  Fifteenth century

  I WILL now show you, dearest brethren, as I promised you, an easy path unto mystical theology. For, knowing you to be led by zeal for God, I think you worthy of the opening up of this treasure, as assuredly very precious and most fruitful. And first I pray the Almighty to give me utterance, and the heavenly Word who alone can express Himself, that I may be able, as ye can receive it, to relate the marvels of revelation, which are beyond all sight of our eyes, our reason, and our understanding. I will endeavour by a very simple and commonplace method to lead you by experience into the divine darkness; wherein while ye abide ye shall perceive present with you the light inaccessible, and shall each endeavour, in the measure that God shall grant him, to draw ever nearer thereunto, and to partake here, by a sweetest foretaste, of that feast of everlasting bliss, whereunto we are called in the word of life, through the gospel of Christ, who is blessed for ever.

  If I strive in human fashion to transport you to things divine, I must needs use a comparison of some kind. Now among men’s works I have found no image better suited to our purpose than that of an image which is omnivoyant—its face, by the painter’s cunning art, being made to appear as though looking on all around it. There are many excellent pictures of such faces—for example, that of the archeress in the market-place of Nu
remberg; that by the eminent painter, Roger, in his priceless picture in the governor’s house at Brussels; the Veronica in my chapel at Coblenz, and, in the castle of Brixen, the angel holding the arms of the Church, and many others elsewhere. Yet, lest ye should fail in the exercise, which requireth a figure of this description to be looked upon, I send for your indulgence such a picture as I have been able to procure, setting forth the figure of an omnivoyant, and this I call the icon of God.

  This picture, brethren, ye shall set up in some place, let us say, on a north wall, and shall stand round it, a little way off, and look upon it. And each of you shall find that, from whatsoever quarter he regardeth it, it looketh upon him as if it looked on none other. And it shall seem to a brother standing to eastward as if that face looketh toward the east, while one to southward shall think it looketh toward the south, and one to westward, toward the west. First, then, ye will marvel how it can be that the face should look on all and each at the same time. For the imagination of him standing to eastward cannot conceive the gaze of the icon to be turned unto any other quarter, such as west or south. Then let the brother who stood to eastward place himself to westward and he will find its gaze fastened on him in the west just as it was afore in the east. And, as he knoweth the icon to be fixed and unmoved, he will marvel at the motion of its immovable gaze....

  And while he observeth how that gaze never quitteth any, he seeth that it taketh such diligent care of each one who findeth himself observed as though it cared only for him, and for no other, and this to such a degree that one on whom it resteth cannot even conceive that it should take care of any other. He will also see that it taketh the same most diligent care of the least of creatures as of the greatest, and of the whole universe.