This volume is part of a series that takes its inspiration from the work of Pierre Gire, who has proposed looking at the phenomenon of mystical discourse in four dimensions (le carré mystique): that of language, the subject, religious institutions, and revelation. This fourth and last volume looks at the role of divine revelation in mystical discourse, bringing together the work of a number of francophone scholars, based on a series of colloquia which explored the multifaceted phenomenon of mystical discourse from the high Middle Ages to early modernity (seventeenth to early eighteenth century). This period is of particular interest, insofar as, as shown by the work of Michel de Certeau, the notion of the “mystical” gradually became a subject of inquiry in its own right during this period (the conversion of the adjective, “mystical,” to the noun, “mysticism,” will have to wait until the nineteenth century). The authors of the various contributions to this volume concentrate on how shifting understandings of both revelation and the “mystical” led to new understandings of both.
After a forward and an introduction to the nature of and the problems presented by claims to divine revelation, the volume divides into three large parts with each part subdivided into multiple chapters: I) The Divine Gesture of Revealing (Le Geste divine de révéler), which is explored by chapters on 1. “Hidden God, Manifest God,” 2. “God of the Mystics, God of the Philosophers,” 3. “Mystery and the Mystical”; II) Revelation by the Book (La Révélation par le livre), which contains chapters entitled, 4. “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 5. “Biblical Theophanies,” 6. “Revelation and Apocalypse”; and III) The Human Experience of Revelation (L’Experience humaine de la révélation), containing chapters on 7. “History and Revelation,” 8. “The Modes of Revelation,” 9. “Light and Revelation,” 10. “Poetics and Revelation,” all followed by an afterword on “Poetry and Revelation.”
The first part is perhaps the most “philosophical” insofar as it explores what is meant by “revelation” on the one hand and the “mystical” on the other. More than one author emphasizes that the substantive, “mysticism,” did not exist in the Middle Ages or Early Modern Period: the phenomenon in question was always designated by the adjective, “mystical,” which usually denoted truths or realities “hidden” by God and then revealed to us according to the divine plan. The connection, therefore, between “revelation” and the “mystical” is obvious. But particularly interesting is how the authors develop this connection: thus Axel Fourquet, in a chapter on Augustine, expounds the saint’s quite complex and sophisticated reading of Scripture and its reports of visions, dreams, and prophetic revelation, while Marc Vial examines the centrality of the “hidden God” to Martin Luther’s theology, showing how mystical writers influenced Luther’s Christocentric reading of the Bible, whereby it is claimed that natural reason is powerless to know God apart from his revelation in the cross of Christ. Sébastien Morlet looks at how Neoplatonic schemes of emanation with the One and their philosophical models of union with the One influenced Patristic thinking on the mystical sense of Scripture. Dan Arbib examines the influence of mystical language on the works of René Descartes, even if the mathematician and philosopher argues for a philosophy distinctly at odds with any notion of mystical union, having introduced a “hard dualism” not only between mind and body but also between subject and object and thus between the soul and its union with God. Alberto Frigo highlights the mystical elements in the thought of Blaise Pascal, in particular pointing to his “Memorial,” where Pascal draws a contrast between the “god of the scientists and scholars” and the God of revelation, “of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” This distinction is a natural result of the dialectic between the “hidden” and “manifest God” that is at the center of most of the Pascalian paradoxes. Part 1 concludes with two essays: one by Marielle Lamy on the importance of the Gospel of John for the origins of mystical discourse in the Middle Ages and one by Annie Noblesse-Rocher on the understanding of the mystical in twelfth-century monasticism, focusing on the sermons of Guerric d’Igny, whose development of a discourse focusing on the maternal aspect of God is quite unusual.
The second part deals with biblical hermeneutics and its role in mystical discourse. Essays by Dominique Poirel and Olivier Millet explore the role the traditional “senses” of Scripture--e.g., literal, moral, allegorical, etc.—play in developing the mystical sense of Scripture from the Middle Ages up through the Reformation. Jean-Robert Armogathe examines how the Gospel of John’s story of the Wedding at Cana became a rich vein of mystical interpretation, while Catherine Nicolas and Christophe Bourgeois explore the mutual enrichment between biblical, mystical language and the language of the stories of the Holy Grail and of the epic poem, Les Tragiques, of the sixteenth-century Huguenot poet, Agrippa d’Aubigné. Finally, Louis-Patrick Bergot, Frank Lestringant, and Thierry Victoria treat of the mystical language in theApocalypse of John, exploring, respectively, the epistemic status and value accorded to the visions in St. John by Patristic and medieval writers, of how the poet Du Bartas, in his La Sepmaine, reads the opening of Genesis (the “Seven Days of Creation”—Sepmaine) as precontaining the events to unfold in the End Times, and how the writings of the Huguenot writer, Martin Le Saulx, reads the Apocalypse and the Song of Songs together, interpreting both texts as templates on which persecuted French Calvinists of the sixteenth century could understand how their suffering repeated the sufferings of Israel, thus also holding out to his readers the hope of redemption.
The third and final part examines not so much mystical discourse itself or how texts were to be interpreted and transmitted, but the different understandings of revelation, its nature, and its authenticity held by various groups and individuals. Olivier Marin examines debates among a sect called the “Taborites,” followers of a group originating in Bohemia and most famously defended by the Czech theologian, Jan Hus, on “illuminism,” the claim that the only genuine knowledge of divine “mysteries” to be had is knowledge infused directly into believers by the Holy Spirit and that “worldly learning” was either useless or positively harmful for such “illumination.” Chrystel Bernat looks at how early modern French Protestants read the Bible as revealing the “mysteries” of their new, “reformed” church and how, through that lens, they understood themselves as the “New Israel.” Frédéric Nef examines the complicated conceptual relationship between mystical “experience” and the mystical sense of Revelation in late medieval mystical writers such as Jean Gerson, Denis the Carthusian, and Jan van Ruysbroek, noting how the very nature of “mystical union” makes such distinctions problematic. Mireille Demaules explores the role of dreams and visions as vehicles of mystical meaning in the medieval text, Estoire del Saint Graal, remarking, in particular, on the fact that the writer of the text was keen to develop criteria for the authenticity of dreams and visions. Sylviane Bokdam draws attention to the importance of prophetic illumination and its role in transmitting ancient wisdom in the Neoplatonic writings of Marsilio Ficino, while Frédéric Cousinié gives a detailed exegesis of the attempt by paintings and prints from the seventeenth century to illustrate the vision of St. Benedict. According to this essay, the various ways artists attempted to portray this vision pictorially gives us much insight into the various interpretations at the time of not only the meaning of this particular vision but what it means in general to have a “mystical vision.” (Plates are included in the volume so that the reader may refer to the paintings and engravings discussed.) An essay by Alessandro Benucci on the concept of revelation in Dante’s Paradiso explores the various ways in which the Florentine poet employs in his poem the imagery of light culminating in the beatific vision, which is at the same time a commentary on what it means to be human. Florent Libral continues this examination of the role of an interior or intelligible “light” in the discourse of St. Francis de Sales and Marie (Guyart) of the Incarnation, distinguishing in these writers the lumen or “clarity of revelation” to the lux, which is the “object of revelation”; important for both authors is that revelation, both scriptural and “mystical,” is mediated through a discursive and analytic meditation.
In the final chapter, the reader will find essays on the role of revelation and mystical discourse in late medieval and early modern French poetry and literature. Jean-Pierre Bordier examines how French literature, from the twelfth century on, particularly in the Grail legends and in mystery plays, both took its inspiration from Scripture—above all, the Apocalypse—and at the same time formed a running commentary on it, especially as related to the “end times.” Michèle Clément looks at the works of the sixteenth-century poet, Marguarite de Navarre, and how her plays portray Mary as the “bearer” of revelation as the mother of the Son of God, showing a direct link unique to women between the “conception” of our Lord and the intellectual “conception” or reception of revelation. Josiane Rieu writes on the poetry of Jean de la Ceppède, whose Théorèmes sur le Sacré Mystère de Nostre Rédemption is a masterpiece of Baroque religious poetry, an appreciation for which has only recently become current. Rieu shows how de la Ceppède attempts to make present in poetry the divine mysteries of revelation. Finally, in the afterward (or Ouverture), Jean-Yves Tilliette gives us a rather meditative essay on the oracular or vatic nature of the poet as a conduit of revelation or, at least, of an interpretation of revelation, concentrating on the figure of the primordial mythical poet, Orpheus, and the nature and use of his image in late medieval and early modern mystical writing and poetry.
As the reader of this review will no doubt note, the range of topics, genres, and concepts discussed in this volume is vast; and yet it never loses focus on the role of mystical discourse in late medieval and early modern theology, philosophy, history, and literature (it also helps that the volume focuses on French language texts). The scholarship of the contributors is uniformly high, while most of the essays are concise enough not to tax the reader’s attention. The greatest pleasure of this volumes is, of course, all the connections and correspondences it makes between the registers and uses of mystical discourse across genres, disciplines, and confessional lines: most interesting to this reader were the essays on the presence and importance of mystical discourse in the writings of such “rationalist” philosophers as Descartes and Pascal, as well as the importance of such discourse in Reformed or Calvinist theology and poetry. While it would be a rare reader who reads through this volume from cover to cover, it is an extremely useful and even essential resource for any scholar working on the role of mystical themes, ideas, or language in late medieval and early modern European philosophy, theology, literature, and visual arts.