The Dionysian Tradition and the Science That Leads to God

Jean Khoury

Summary: The customary division of medieval theology into a monastic theology and a scholastic theology is a useful heuristic and a poor map. It describes two characteristic approaches. It does not describe the full range of settings, methods and traditions through which the Middle Ages practised theology. This article argues that one of these traditions has been systematically obscured: Mystical Theology, which I hold to be a distinct school of theology and not a collection of mystical authors. Its source is the Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, received in the Latin West from the ninth century and developed through Thomas Gallus, the Victorines, the Carthusians, the Rhineland and Flemish masters, Gerson, and finally the Spanish Carmelites Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. It is defined by its end, which it pursues principaliter: union with God through Jesus Christ. From that end follow its journey of purification, illumination and union, its method, its use of Scripture and its anthropology. The article sets out the school, lists its masters in chronological order, discusses its relation to the other schools, and draws theoretical, individual and pastoral consequences.

Introduction

What distinguishes a cathedral school from a monastic school, and either from a faculty of theology? The question looks like a matter of institutional history. It is in fact a question about what theology is for.

The standard answer relies on the distinction between theologia monastica and theologia scholastica, which Jean Leclercq made familiar in his classic study of monastic culture.[1] His contribution was real. He taught historians to recognise the theological intelligence of monastic literature, which histories of theology had often neglected. But the distinction becomes misleading the moment it is promoted from a heuristic to an exhaustive classification. It then confuses two characteristic approaches with the whole variety of institutional settings, intellectual traditions and theological methods that existed in the Middle Ages.

 Pope Benedict XVI, “Monastic Theology and Scholastic Theology”, Papal Audience

Three distinct questions must be kept apart. Where was theology cultivated? By what method was it pursued? And to what end was it ordered? The monastic school, the cathedral school and the university faculty answer the first question. Lectio divina, scholastic disputation and mystical theology concern the second, though they also embody different understandings of the third. These categories overlap and are not mutually exclusive. A monastic author could reason dialectically. A cathedral master could cultivate contemplation. A university theologian could write spiritual and mystical works. A single author could move between several modes of theological reflection.

The present article takes the third question, the question of the end, as decisive. It proposes that when theology is classified by its end, a school appears that the usual classifications conceal.

1. The Diversity of Medieval Theology

Before the thesis can be stated, the field must be cleared. The medieval landscape was far richer than a succession of monastic schools, cathedral schools and universities. Recent work on Saint-Victor challenges precisely this habit of forcing medieval intellectual life into such a succession, and invites us to study the intellectual community itself: the shared practices, conversations, worship and common life through which theological ideas were formed.[2] At least the following traditions and settings must be distinguished.

  • Biblical and exegetical theology. The interpretation of Scripture was a major intellectual tradition in its own right, with its literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical senses, emphasised differently by different authors and periods. The exegesis of Bede, Anselm of Laon, Andrew of Saint-Victor and Thomas Aquinas cannot be classified merely by asking whether it was monastic or scholastic. One must ask what kind of scriptural interpretation each developed.
  • Victorine theology. Saint-Victor in Paris cultivated a distinctive synthesis of exegesis, the liberal arts, intellectual formation, moral transformation and contemplation. It is neither simply monastic nor simply scholastic. Its importance lies in the integration of these dimensions, and its intellectual culture must be understood in relation to the community’s whole way of life.
  • Theology in the studia of the religious orders. From the thirteenth century the Dominicans, Franciscans and other mendicants developed their own houses of study. These were not identical to the university faculties, even when closely linked to them, and they served the formation of the brethren for preaching, teaching and the care of souls. Their theological cultures differed: the Franciscan tradition of Bonaventure and the Dominican tradition of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas cannot be reduced to one uniform scholastic method.
  • Pastoral and preaching theology. Theology was also cultivated in relation to preaching, catechesis, the cure of souls and the instruction of the faithful. Scripture and doctrine served not only the production of academic texts but the communication of the faith and the moral and spiritual formation of Christians.
  • Mystical theology. It is neither a spiritual application of monastic theology nor an experiential counterpart to scholastic theology. It has its own sources, principles and end. This is the subject of the present article.
  • Other communities. Theology was practised in episcopal households, collegiate churches, royal and papal courts, and in forms of religious life beyond the principal monastic schools and universities. And the Latin West was not the whole of medieval Christianity. Byzantine theology developed in other settings, with its own relation between Scripture, liturgy, patristic theology and contemplation.

A more precise framework treats these as analytical dimensions and not as boxes. The institutional setting never determines, by itself, the nature of the theology practised within it.

DimensionWhat we should investigate
Institutional settingMonastery, cathedral school, collegiate church, university, the studium of a religious order, court or other intellectual community
MethodScriptural exegesis, lectio divina, dialectical inquiry, quaestio, disputation, systematic synthesis, contemplative reflection
Theological orientationBiblical, patristic, doctrinal, moral, pastoral, mystical, liturgical or spiritual
Intellectual purposeUnderstanding revealed truth, teaching the faith, resolving controversies, preaching, forming Christians, contemplating God, or guiding souls towards union with God
Historical traditionBenedictine, Cistercian, Victorine, Dominican, Franciscan, Carthusian, Dionysian and others, without assuming that each is an entirely separate category

Leclercq himself saw that the meaning of “scholastic” depends on definition. He observed that scholasticism is characterised by teaching procedures, above all the quaestio applied to Scripture, and that such procedures already existed in earlier periods.[3] The scholastic method cannot therefore be identified with the university period, any more than monastic theology can be identified with everything that came before it. Classification by institution or by period fails. Classification by method alone fails as well, since methods migrate. What remains, and what no author can borrow from another without changing his purpose, is the end.

2. The Thesis: A School Defined by Its End

I hold that Mystical Theology is a school of theology, and not merely a collection of mystical authors. It has a recognisable origin, a historical trajectory, a goal, a method and a content of its own. It has its full place in the history of theology, and it cannot be diluted, reduced or confused with other forms, even where it obviously overlaps with them.

Its source is the Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Its goal is unique: to lead the human person to union with Jesus Christ. This is not the primary goal, the principaliter goal, of any other school. That alone is enough to distinguish it. The criterion is the finis, the end towards which a science is ordered. Union with God is not one topic among others within this school, nor a pious consequence that may or may not follow from study. It is the organising and immediately operative end that determines the selection, ordering and interpretation of everything else.

The qualification matters, and I state it plainly. Other theological disciplines can teach about union with God, and their proper ends may be ordered to the ultimate beatitude of the human person. Thomas Aquinas teaches explicitly that human happiness consists in the vision of the divine essence.[4] I do not say that other schools deny the end. I say that union with God does not function in them as the principaliter organising purpose of their method, whereas in Mystical Theology it does. The claim concerns the defining end of a school and not the ultimate end of theology in the widest sense. That precision allows the central claim to be made without denying the value of any other discipline.

This also changes what theology is taken to be. The famous formula fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, describes a theology whose motion terminates in the intellect.[5] Mystical Theology is not content to stop there. Its definition is different: it is faith that leads us to God. This is not a rejection of understanding. It is a different ordering of theological knowledge towards its ultimate end. The theology is practical and dynamic. We are on a journey.

3. The Entry of Dionysius into the West

The history of the school begins with the arrival of a text. The Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius presents a distinctive understanding of the knowledge of God: the purification of the intellect, the transcendence of every created concept, the entry into the divine darkness and the ascent to union with the One who is beyond all knowing.[6] It is not a general spirituality attached to a theology already complete. It is a theological vision with its own principles.

The Latin West received the Dionysian corpus first through the translation of Hilduin at Saint-Denis and then, decisively, through John Scotus Eriugena, whose translation and commentary gave the West its working text.[7] Anastasius the Librarian belongs to the same early transmission. From the twelfth century the text is no longer merely read. It is appropriated: commented, glossed, reworked and applied by a succession of authors who recognise in it the form of the science that leads to God. The first chapter of any history of this school must show how the appropriation of one work produced not the influence of an author but a sustained tradition, with its own governing end and intellectual structure.

The method of research follows from this. One must begin with the texts and their interpreters, and not with a predetermined list of authors whom modern historians classify as mystics.

4. The Marks of the School

Read the followers and commentators together, and the coherence is clear. There is a goal: union with God. There is a journey to reach it, with its stages of purification, illumination and union. The method of this science differs from that of other schools. The light under which it sees its objects is deeper. Its use of the Bible is different. Its anthropology is, in a real sense, different. Its implications are different. Six marks can be distinguished.

4.1 A proper end

The school is ordered principaliter to leading the person to God, to union with God through Jesus Christ. The end is the principle of the science.

4.2 A journey with an intelligible structure

The tradition does not merely announce an end. It articulates a way. Purification, illumination and union are not categories imposed afterwards on spiritual experiences. They express a theological understanding of the transformation required for the human person to receive the divine light and attain union. The authors do not describe the stages in identical terms, and their differences must be respected, but the recurrence and development of the structure is evidence of a shared theological vision.

4.3 A proper method of knowing

Mystical Theology is not content to clarify propositions about God. It seeks to understand how the person is purified, enlightened and transformed so as to know God by participation and union. Knowledge is inseparable from the transformation of the knower. Reasoning, conceptual clarity and doctrinal precision are not absent. Their role is governed by the end. Thomas Gallus’s teaching on the summit of love that passes beyond the intellect is the great Latin expression of this method, and Gerson’s definition of mystical theology as experiential knowledge of God through the embrace of unitive love is its mature formulation.[8][9]

4.4 A proper use of Scripture

Scripture is received not only as a body of revealed truths to be explained and systematised, but as the divine Word that illuminates, judges, purifies and transforms the one who receives it. Its interpretation is bound to the spiritual journey and to the progressive assimilation of the Word. This is not a simple opposition between mystical and scholastic exegesis. Scholastic theologians also knew Scripture as transforming, and mystical authors used exegetical and intellectual tools. The question is the function of Scripture within each enterprise, and here the functions differ.

4.5 A proper anthropology

The human person is not considered solely as a subject who must acquire correct knowledge about God. The person is called to be transformed: the faculties purified, love reordered, faith, hope and charity deepened, and the whole person united to God. The relation of intellect and love, the purification of desire, the role of grace, the transformation of the will and the meaning of participation in the divine life are central questions, and the anthropology must be reconstructed from the primary texts.

4.6 A coherent historical tradition

The school must finally be established historically. The decisive evidence is not the mere presence of similar spiritual themes in several authors. It is the combination of a common end, recognisable principles and methods, a developing account of the journey, and demonstrable relationships through the reception and interpretation of Dionysius. The historian must distinguish direct dependence, indirect influence, shared inheritance and independent convergence.

5. The Masters of the School

I do not think a heavy apparatus is needed to establish the point. The works of these authors are, in essence, a commentary on the Mystical Theology of Dionysius, and I do not wish to lose time or effort in other endeavours. It is enough to list the authors. Whoever has eyes and interest will understand. The list below gives names and not families, in chronological order, and it includes the Rhineland and Flemish masters who must not be forgotten.

  1. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th–early 6th century)
  2. John Scotus Eriugena (c. 810–877)
  3. Hugh of Saint-Victor (c. 1096–1141)
  4. Richard of Saint-Victor (d. 1173)
  5. Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170–1253)
  6. Thomas Gallus (c. 1200–1246)
  7. Hugh of Balma (late 13th century)
  8. Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328)
  9. Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381)
  10. Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361)
  11. The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing (14th century)
  12. Jean Gerson (1363–1429)
  13. Hendrik Herp (c. 1400–1477)
  14. Denis the Carthusian (1402–1471)
  15. Bernardino de Laredo (c. 1482–1540)
  16. Francisco de Osuna (c. 1492–1540)
  17. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582)
  18. John of the Cross (1542–1591)

Laredo and Osuna are placed according to their approximate dates of birth, though their principal works appeared after those of several authors above them. Their inclusion is of particular importance: through them the Dionysian inheritance passes into the Spain of Teresa and John.[10] Gallus, Hugh of Balma and Gerson form the Latin hinge of the tradition.[11]The author of The Cloud, who himself translated Dionysius into English, shows that the reception was not confined to the Latin schools.[12] Herp and Denis the Carthusian carry the Rhineland and Flemish developments, and with the Spanish Franciscan authors they transmit the inheritance to Carmel. Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross are among the greatest late masters of this school, and John names Dionysius explicitly when he speaks of contemplation as a ray of darkness.[13] The line continues into the seventeenth century, where Philip of the Trinity gathers it into a systematic Summa of mystical theology, and then into what came to be called Ascetico-Mystical Theology and, later still, Spiritual Theology.[14]

A historical qualification is nevertheless necessary. This is a working list of authors relevant to the tradition. It is not a claim that every author belongs to the school in precisely the same sense. Some are direct commentators on Dionysius. Others transmit, develop or exemplify elements of his vision. Not every work of these authors is literally a commentary on the Mystical Theology. The underlying point is that their tradition continues, interprets and develops its vision, whether by direct commentary or through its wider intellectual and spiritual inheritance. Establishing these relationships is part of the task of writing the history of the school.

6. Discussion

6.1 Speaking about God and leading to God

The heart of the matter is the difference between speaking about God and leading to God. Jesus did not come merely to supply information about the Father. He came to bring us to the Father. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He proclaimed the Kingdom and called people to enter it: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And he prayed: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[15] His teaching was not information about a destination. It was a call and a way. Revelation is not an end in itself. It opens the way to communion.

The question is therefore evangelical before it is methodological. We cannot betray the Gospel, and we cannot betray the message and the goal of Jesus. He came to lead us to the Kingdom and not simply to talk about it. A theology that speaks about God but does not lead the human person towards God has not fulfilled its purpose. This is the position from which the School of Mystical Theology looks at the other schools. By definition, a theological act is an act that leads directly to God. A theology that does not lead to God is, in the strict sense, a theology that has not yet become theological.

6.2 The perplexity of the mystical school

I do not mean to be harsh, but I must say how the matter appears from within. The mystical school considers itself as leading the human being to God. It looks at the other schools, and especially at the scholastic school and the university as it is today, so often given over to historical studies, with a certain perplexity. How can a school be called theological if it does not lead to God? Speaking about God is not enough. There is a proper science that leads to God, and it is not silent. It has a great deal to say.

Historical research establishes what an author taught, when a doctrine emerged and how a text was transmitted. These tasks are legitimate and at times indispensable. But from the standpoint of Mystical Theology one essential question remains: where does this knowledge lead the person who acquires it? If the answer never goes beyond further knowledge about God, the question of the end has not been asked. Such disciplines can serve the journey. Serving the journey is not the same as being the science whose proper task is to guide it. Doctrinal theology provides indispensable foundations, philosophy clarifies essential questions, history preserves the texts, and all of this is welcome. But the mountain is not described by mapping it, nor climbed by writing the history of the climbers.

6.3 Hagar and Sarah

St. Paul’s contrast between the slave woman and the free woman in Galatians 4 suggests an application that I offer with deliberate force. One may say, with no disrespect intended, that every theology which does not lead to God is a theology of slavery. It takes us into a tunnel, but the tunnel never reaches the top of the mountain, because reaching the top was never its aim. Good intentions are not enough in theology. Paul himself is speaking of the two covenants, of the promise and of the freedom of the children of God, and he does not classify theological disciplines. I make no claim to literal exegesis. The passage is applied here in a spiritual and theological sense, and it is as such that its power lies. A theology of freedom is a theology that reaches the freedom it speaks of: union with God.

St. John of the Cross: the journey he traces (3) leads to the top of the Mountain, Union with Jesus.

There is an irony here that is hurtful because it is true. The school that is so often dismissed as merely devotional, pious or experiential turns out to be, by the very definition of the theological act, the school that is most strictly theological.

6.4 John of the Cross and Thomas Aquinas

A particular methodological error has caused lasting confusion. In my humble view, the determination at all costs to place St. John of the Cross under St. Thomas Aquinas, as in the work of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, has created confusion.[16] The problem is not that Aquinas is irrelevant to John, or that Thomistic theology cannot illuminate aspects of his doctrine. It is that compatibility does not establish historical or methodological subordination. John must be understood first on his own terms: through his reading of Scripture, his reception of Dionysius and of the Christian contemplative tradition, his account of the spiritual journey, and his understanding of the transformation of the person in love. His theology has an internal architecture shaped by its object and its purpose, and it must not be made to fit another master’s system before that architecture has been grasped. Contemplation as he describes it is alined with Dyonisius not with the Thomistic School. The history of Mystical Theology must be reconstructed from its own primary sources and lines of transmission, and not written retrospectively as a subdivision of Thomism or of any other system.

6.5 Time

Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long and life is short. Do we want a theology that does not lead to God? We do not have the time. The knowledge of God matters profoundly, but for the school of Mystical Theology it cannot be separated from the journey to God.

7. Theoretical Consequences

First, the history of theology must be rewritten with a different principle of division. It must classify theological traditions by their finis as well as by their institution and method. Mystical Theology must receive its proper place alongside monastic, scholastic, biblical, pastoral and other forms, with its own sources, successive developments and major masters, and with its own relation to Ascetico-Mystical Theology and Spiritual Theology as its descendants.

Second, the definition of theology must be reopened. If fides quaerens intellectum names the movement of one school, then faith leading to God names the movement of another. Neither is the whole of theology, but a definition that excludes the second mutilates the discipline. The theological act is directed to God, and a theory of theology must be able to say how.

Third, Spiritual Theology acquires a lineage. It is not a modern invention, a pious supplement to dogmatics, nor a branch of moral theology. It is the heir of a school with its own genealogy running from Dionysius through Gallus, Balma, Gerson, Herp, Osuna, Teresa and John, and it must be taught with its own principles. This also frees it from the need to justify itself solely before systems devised for other ends.

Fourth, the doctrine of the Carmelite masters must be read from within their own tradition. Teresa and John are masters of a school, not exceptions to be absorbed into a system after the fact. Their language of night, darkness, purification and union has a history, and that history is Dionysian.

Fifth, the relation of the schools becomes one of service and not of rivalry. History serves the journey by preserving the texts. Doctrine serves it by providing the foundations. Philosophy serves it by clarifying concepts. Mystical Theology is the science whose task is the journey itself. Each school retains its dignity. None may claim the whole.

*Sixth, the criterion of the principaliter gives a principled way to avoid two opposite mistakes.* One is the reduction of mystical theology to a marginal appendix of scholasticism. The other is the multiplication of categories without historical or theological basis. The school is identified by a precise end, by demonstrable transmission, and by shared principles, and not by sympathy of tone.

8. Practical Consequences

8.1 For the individual

  • Theology is a path and not only a subject. The student of theology, the priest, the religious and the lay believer are each invited to ask of every study: where is this leading me? Knowledge that does not enter the journey remains outside the house.
  • Purification, illumination and union become a practical map. The person who understands the three stages knows where he stands, accepts the darkness without panic, and does not mistake consolations for arrival or aridity for abandonment.
  • Scripture is read to be transformed. Reading is prayer. It is received as the Word that judges and purifies, and it is allowed to do its work on the reader and not merely supply material for commentary.
  • Faith, hope and charity are cultivated deliberately. The faculties are purified, desire is reordered and love is given the lead, since the school teaches that the summit of the soul is reached by love beyond the concept.
  • Time is taken seriously. Vita brevis. The believer must refuse to spend a life in the preliminaries. This does not mean despising study. It means ordering study to the end for which it exists.
  • The goal is Jesus. Union is not the absorption of the person into an abstraction. It is union with Jesus Christ, who leads us to the Father.

8.2 For pastoral work

  • Preaching and catechesis must lead somewhere. The pastor’s question after each homily and each lesson is whether the people have been brought a step nearer to God, and not only whether they have been informed.
  • Spiritual direction recovers its proper place. If the end of the Christian life is union, then the guidance of souls along the way of purification, illumination and union is a central ministry, not an optional extra. The director needs to know the stages and the masters.
  • Seminaries and houses of formation must restore the mystical school. Formation must include the reading of Dionysius, Gallus, Balma, Gerson, Herp, Teresa and John, taught as a living tradition for those who must lead others, and not as a historical curiosity. Historical studies remain, in service to the journey.
  • Faculties of theology are invited to examine their end. A faculty that produces learned historians and no one who leads others to God has not completed its task. This is a call to conversion and not a call to abolish rigour.
  • The faithful must not be left in the tunnel. Parishes, schools of prayer and communities of formation should offer the way and not only the doctrine, with simple and demanding teaching on contemplative prayer, on the night, and on the transformation of life by love.
  • The Church’s mission is a mission of leading. Evangelisation is not the transmission of a message about the Kingdom. It is the invitation to enter it.

Conclusion

The question of the difference between the cathedral school, the monastic school and the faculty of theology opens onto a larger question: what is theology for? The distinction between monastic and scholastic theology is valuable as a heuristic, but insufficient as a historiography, and it has hidden a school that is distinct from both: Mystical Theology.

That school is defined by its end. It is ordered principaliter to union with God through Jesus Christ. It takes its origin from the Mystical Theology of Dionysius, and it develops through Eriugena, the Victorines, Grosseteste and Gallus, Balma, Eckhart, Ruusbroec, Tauler, the author of The Cloud, Gerson, Herp, Denis the Carthusian, Laredo and Osuna, and arrives in Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, whence it flows into Ascetico-Mystical and Spiritual Theology. It has a journey of purification, illumination and union. It has its own method, its own light, its own use of Scripture and its own anthropology. It is practical and dynamic. It is faith that leads to God.

Its claim is not arrogant, and it is not hostile to the other schools. It asks that theology fulfil its deepest vocation, and it reminds us of the point from which we began. Jesus came to lead us to the Kingdom and not just to talk about it. We cannot betray the Gospel, and we cannot betray the goal of Jesus. Life is short. The theology we need is the one that brings us to God.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Anselm of Canterbury. Proslogion. Various editions.

Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-). Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Dionysiaca: recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage. Edited by Philippe Chevallier. 2 vols. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937–1950.

Denis the Carthusian. Opera omnia. 42 vols. Montreuil and Tournai: Cartusia S. M. de Pratis, 1896–1935.

Gerson, Jean. De mystica theologia. Edited by André Combes. Lugano: Thesaurus Mundi, 1958.

Hugh of Balma. Théologie mystique. Edited by Francis Ruello and Jeanne Barbet. Sources Chrétiennes 408–409. Paris: Cerf, 1995–1996.

John of the Cross. The Collected Works of St John of the Cross. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Revised edition. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991.

Laredo, Bernardino de. Subida del Monte Sión. Seville, 1535.

Osuna, Francisco de. Tercer abecedario espiritual. Toledo, 1527.

Philip of the Trinity. Summa theologiae mysticae. Lyon, 1656.

Teresa of Ávila. The Collected Works of St Teresa of Ávila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. 3 vols. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1976–1985.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. Various editions.

Thomas Gallus. Commentaires du Cantique des Cantiques. Edited by Jeanne Barbet. Paris: Vrin, 1967.

The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises. Edited by Phyllis Hodgson. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1982.

Tauler, Johannes; Ruusbroec, Jan van; Eckhart, Meister; Herp, Hendrik; Eriugena, John Scotus; Hugh and Richard of Saint-Victor; Grosseteste, Robert. Standard critical editions and translations, to be specified in the final version.

Secondary literature

Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald. Christian Perfection and Contemplation according to St Thomas Aquinas and St John of the Cross. St Louis: Herder, 1937.

Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald. The Three Ages of the Interior Life. Translated by M. Timothea Doyle. 2 vols. St Louis: Herder, 1947–1948.

Hopper, Joseph. Study of Saint-Victor. Historical Research (2025). To be verified.

Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. Translated by Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1961.

Louth, Andrew. Denys the Areopagite. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989.

McGinn, Bernard. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vols. 1–5. New York: Crossroad, 1991–2012.

Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

[1]Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961; French original 1957).

[2]Joseph Hopper, study of the community of Saint-Victor, Historical Research (2025). This reference was taken from the preparatory dialogue and its full details should be verified before publication.

[3]Leclercq, The Love of Learning, in his comparison of monastic and scholastic methods, where he notes that the quaestio applied to Scripture belongs to teaching procedures already present before the university period.

[4]Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 3, a. 8: the ultimate happiness of the human person consists in the vision of the divine essence.

[5]Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, the original title of which was Fides quaerens intellectum.

[6]Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology, esp. chs. 1–3, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987).

[7]Hilduin of Saint-Denis produced the first Latin version of the Dionysian corpus c. 832; John Scotus Eriugena retranslated it c. 860–862 and commented on part of it. See Dionysiaca: recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage, ed. Philippe Chevallier, 2 vols. (Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937–1950).

[8]Thomas Gallus, Extractio and Explanatio on the Dionysian corpus, and his commentaries on the Song of Songs, ed. Jeanne Barbet, Thomas Gallus: Commentaires du Cantique des Cantiques (Paris: Vrin, 1967). Gallus’s doctrine of the apex affectus, the summit of love that touches God beyond the intellect, is the decisive Latin development of Dionysius.

[9]Jean Gerson, De mystica theologia, ed. André Combes (Lugano: Thesaurus Mundi, 1958). Gerson defines mystical theology as experiential knowledge of God obtained through the embrace of unitive love.

[10]Francisco de Osuna, Tercer abecedario espiritual (Toledo, 1527); Bernardino de Laredo, Subida del Monte Sión (Seville, 1535). Teresa names Osuna as her master in Life 4 and Laredo in Life 23: Teresa of Ávila, The Collected Works of St Teresa of Ávila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1976–1985).

[11]Hugh of Balma, Theologia mystica, ed. Francis Ruello and Jeanne Barbet, Sources Chrétiennes 408–409 (Paris: Cerf, 1995–1996).

[12]The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1982). The same author translated the Mystical Theology into English as Dionise Hid Divinite.

[13]John of the Cross, Dark Night II, 5, 3, where contemplation is called a ray of darkness in the Dionysian sense. See The Collected Works of St John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991).

[14]Philip of the Trinity OCD, Summa theologiae mysticae (Lyon, 1656), a systematic exposition of mystical theology in the Carmelite school.

[15]Gal 4:21–31 (Hagar and Sarah, the two covenants); Matt 4:17; John 14:6; John 17:3.

[16]Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation according to St Thomas Aquinas and St John of the Cross (St Louis: Herder, 1937; French original 1923); The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, 2 vols. (St Louis: Herder, 1947–1948).