This is the latest volume in Bernard McGinn's ambitious The presence of God series. Never has such a wide-ranging and deeply researched series on western Christian mysticism been published in the English language. The first volume, published in 1991, conceived of the project as a four-volume set. Three decades later the publication of this book, marked as ‘Volume 6, Part 3’, reveals just how much the project has, through necessity, escaped McGinn's original vision, and highlights the vast richness of the tradition explored through the series.
This book serves as the final volume within a three-part set. The first two volumes discussed mysticism in the Reformation, as well as in the ‘golden age of Spain’. Whereas those two volumes covered the period 1500 through to 1650, McGinn expands the end date in this volume to 1675. This allows his narrative to highlight events up to the emergence of Quietism, a series of religious movements which he rightly believes mark ‘a real, indeed decisive, break in the story of Western Christian mysticism’ (p. xiv) and as a result receive their own focus in the next volume in the series. The persistence of mysticism is split into two major sections entitled, ‘Mysticism in France’ and ‘Mysticism in Other Catholic Areas’, with discussions about France taking up around two-thirds of the book's length.
McGinn justifies this division due to the ‘veritable explosion of mystical piety’ (p. xiv) which emerged after the French Wars of Religion. Chapter i examines the ‘Hegemony of France’, exploring historical events and religious developments as well as sources for French mysticism, including a survey of previous mystical accounts available in print and manuscript. Chapter ii engages in a closer analysis of French mysticism, beginning with figures such as the Benedictine Louis de Blois, the wealthy laywoman Barbe Acarie and the Capuchin Benet of Canfield. The analysis of Barbe Acarie is particularly interesting. Madame Acarie was born into an affluent Parisian family in 1566, marrying another wealthy aristocrat in 1582. She began experiencing lengthy ecstasies both at home and while attending mass, but like many women who claimed to have mystical experiences, she faced mounting criticism. Despite this, Acarie influenced many key spiritual movements in Paris. As McGinn notes, ‘the introduction of Teresa's reformed Carmelites in France, the spread of the Ursulines to northern France, the reform of female Benedictine convents, and the establishment of Oratorians all had roots in or connections with the apostolic action of Madame Acarie and her friends’ (p. 44).
More well-known figures, Francis de Sales and Pierre de Bérulle, were also part of this influential circle, and these two important mystical writers are the focus of chapters iii and iv respectively. McGinn situates both figures within their historical contexts, describing their writings, the sources available to them, their impact on religious events and their extant writings. The writings and key spiritual characteristics of Francis de Sales are given a particularly in-depth treatment, with McGinn describing him as ‘the most important French-language mystic of the seventeenth century’ (p. 155). Chapter v completes part i of the volume by discussing ‘Other French mystics of Le Grand Siècle’ including Jesuit, Carmelite and Ursuline mystical writers.
As with any survey work of this size and scope, some nuances of the historiography are lost. One particular example of this can be seen in chapter vi, ‘English recusant mysticism’, where McGinn repeatedly refers to ‘the recusants’, ‘recusant colleges and religious houses’ and ‘English recusant spirituality’ (pp. 348–9). Scholars of English Catholicism in recent decades have moved away from the term ‘recusant’ as an inherently political and polemical way of describing English Catholics, defining them largely in opposition to Protestant recusancy laws. While McGinn cites key works by John Bossy and John Aveling published in 1976, the field has undergone key revisions in the decades since concerning the way scholars research and conceptualise English Catholicism. Despite this, McGinn's analysis of Augustine Baker and his disciples, as well as the poet Richard Crashaw, is solid and engages with key historiographical works in its exploration of the important themes of their writings.
Chapter vii discusses key Italian mystical writers. McGinn begins by exploring the relationship of Isabella Berinzaga and her confessor and scribe, the Jesuit theologian Achille Gagliardi. Their fruitful relationship resulted in ‘a mystical classic’ (p. 414), The brief compendium of Christian perfection, which was widely read in the period. Yet conflicts within the Jesuit order concerning mysticism and the interior life resulted in Gagliardi's access to Berinzaga being restricted, and both were commanded to ‘eternal silence’ by the papacy around the turn of the seventeenth century. McGinn devotes the rest of the chapter to discussing other Italian women with ‘paranormal mystical gifts’ (p. 429), including Caterina de'Ricci, Maria Domitilla Galluzzi and Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi.
In the final chapter McGinn turns his attention to Germany and the Low Countries. He begins with a discussion of the Jesuits who, despite not producing ‘the rich mystical literature that characterized the French followers of Ignatius’ (p. 473), still made contributions to mysticism. A larger focus is given to Angelus Silesius, whose The cherubic pilgrim is hailed as being ‘among the most original mystical texts of the seventeenth century’ (pp. 481–2). It is clear why, with Silesius harnessing the Protestant alchemical mysticism of Jacob Boehme, as well as Catholic authors such as Bonaventure, Bridget of Sweden, John Tauler and John of the Cross, to produce a work of ‘kaleidoscopic character’ (p. 490).
Overall, those following McGinn's decades-long ambition to document the western Christian mystical tradition will find much to enjoy here, and McGinn's accessible style introduces figures perhaps unknown to many in an understandable fashion. Those more specifically focused on the period the volume addresses will also find much of value, as McGinn's forensic and focused approach to mysticism brings new perspective to events and figures across western Catholicism in the period, highlighting the rich mystical heritage many figures in the early modern period inherited, adapted and responded to.
