Bernard of Clairvaux, although there had been mystical writing in English since
The Dream of the Rood in the 8th century. Rolle had studied at Oxford and Paris, and
his Latin works were much read in Europe. His English writings include the Ego
Dormio (‘I sleep’), a meditation on the Old Testament Song of Songs as an allegory of
Christ’s love for the Church and the soul, and a Psalter with an allegorical commen-
tary. Poems and prose marked by a musical rhetoric poured out from his Yorkshire
hermitage. His Form of Living celebrates the solitary’s direct experience of the divine,
especially through devotion to the holy name of Jesus: ‘It shall be in thine ear joy, in
thy mouth honey, and in thy heart melody.’
Very different is the anonymous ‘book of Contemplacyon the which is clepyd the
Clowede of Unknowyng in the which a soule is onyd [united] with God’. This union
comes by self-surrender: ‘God wil thou do but loke on hym, and late [let] Him al
one.’ Looking on Him and leaving Him alone to work leads to darkness, ‘and as it
were a cloude of unknowyng, thou wost never what, savyng that thou felist in thi
wille a naked entent unto God’. God is felt in and through this necessary cloud, not
behind it. The novice asks ‘How schal I think on himself, and what is hee?’ The
master replies, ‘I wote never’ (‘I know not’). In this kind of negative theology, God is
loved but cannot be imagined.The Book of Privy Counsellingand Dionise Hid
Divinitie may be by the author ofThe Cloud.
The Scale (or Ladder)of Perfection ofWalter Hilton(d.1379) is addressed to a
contemplative, and to all who wish to live the spiritual life. The self ’s imperfection
must be known before the gift of God’s love can be perceived.
A soule that hath yyft of love thorw [through] gracious byholdynge of Jesu ... he is
naght besye [busy] forto streyne hymself over his myght .... Therfore preyeth he, and
that desyre th he, that the love of God wolde touchen hym with hys blesside lyght, that he
myghtte seen [see] a litel of hym by his gracious presence, thenne ssolde [should] he love
hym; and so by thys way cometh the yyft of love, that is God, into a soule.Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich(c.1343–c.1413/27) is the finest English spiritual writer before
George Herbert, and the first great writer of English prose. She says that she had her
Revelations during a near-fatal illness in 1373, when she was thirty; Margery Kempe
visited her in Norwich in 1413. Dame Julian(a) set down her ‘showings’, meditated
on them, and later expanded them.
She had prayed to God for three things: remembrance of his Passion; a sick-
ness to hasten her union with him; contrition, compassion and longing for him.
In May 1373 she had a ‘showing’ of the Passion. Her next ‘showing’ was of Our
Lady, ‘a simple maiden and a meek, young of age, a little waxen above a child, in
the stature as she was when she conceived’. The new-born Christ child ‘shewed a
little thing, the quantity of an hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand ... and it
was as round as a balle. I looked thereon with the eye of my understanding, and
thought, What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is
made.’ The littleness of created things must be reduced to nought if we are to
come to the creator. ‘It liketh God that we rest in him ... he hath made us only to
himself.’
Again she has a ‘b odily sight’ of the Passion: the blood falling as fast as rain-
drops fall from eaves and as round as herring scales. ‘I saw him, and sought him,
and I had him, and I wanted [lacked] him. ...’ ‘And after this I saw God in a poynt;
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 49Spiritual writersSt Bernard of Clairvaux
(1090–1153)
St Ailred of Rievaulx
(1110–1167)
St Bonaventure (1221–1274)
Richard Rolle of Hampole
(c.1300–1349)
The Cloud of Unknowing(14th
century)
Walter Hilton (d.1379)
Julian of Norwich
(c.1343–1413/29)