From the Introduction

This book is intended as a short introduction to the tradition of Christian mysticism over the last two thousand years. It is not aimed at theologians or other specialists but at those who have little or no knowledge of the subject matter and who wish to dip their toes into the vast ocean of mysticism. My modest hope is that readers might become sufficiently curious to read the writings of the mystics themselves, many of which are accessible and provide fascinating insights into the soul's journey toward God (the autobiography of Teresa of Ávila and the journals of Thomas Merton spring to mind). Or they might wish to turn to specialist secondary sources, such as the works of Evelyn Underhill or the volumes in Bernard McGinn's magisterial Presence of God series. The bibliography gives a selection of the works I have found most informative and engaging in the writing of this book.

The approach I have taken is a historical one. Anthologies of mystics are sometimes difficult to absorb, if only because mystics can often sound very much like one another. This is not due only to the fact that the experience of the presence of God is likely to be similar down the ages: mystics also consciously use in their writings images, symbols, and metaphors that they have borrowed from past authors in the same mystical tradition. So I have set the mystics in the context of their times and given brief outlines of their lives partly as a pragmatic strategy, a way of separating the mystics from each other and making them easier to remember. Thus, it was Catherine of Siena who helped to persuade Pope Gregory XI to move the papacy back to Rome from its "exile" in Avignon, whereas it was her namesake, Catherine of Genoa, who worked selflessly in a hospital alongside her husband. Gregory of Nyssa was a Cappadocian Father and the brother of Basil, founder of the monastic tradition in Eastern Christianity, whereas Gregory the Great was a Roman monk who became pope at a time when Rome was being threatened by the Lombards.

But context is principally important for showing how the light of mystical practice and experience was refracted into the colors of different cultures and mores. As Evelyn Underhill, a modern authority on mysticism, has written: "In reading the mystics . . . we must be careful not to cut them out of their backgrounds and try to judge them by spiritual standards alone. They are human beings immersed in the stream of human history; children of their own time, their own Church, as well as children of Eternal Love. Like other human beings, that is to say, they have their social and their individual aspects; and we shall not obtain a true idea of them unless both be kept in mind."

I have therefore broken the book up into short chapters relating approximately to different historical or cultural epochs, which I have sometimes called by conventional terms such as "The Dark Ages" or "The Age of Enlightenment." Historians never tire of pointing out—and rightly so—that such terms are merely shorthand conveniences, used for the purposes of simplification and ordering. I should like to reiterate this view: history is a river without dams at regular intervals chopping up its flow. Otherwise it would be theoretically possible, as they say, to go to bed during the Middle Ages and wake up the next morning in the Renaissance. So the brief historical introductions that preface each chapter are no more than simplified scene setters. They might be viewed as backdrops appearing as the curtain is raised on each new scene, before the players have made their entrances.

The players themselves, the Christian mystics, span two millennia, from the time of Christ to Thomas Merton and the Vietnam War era. I have concentrated on Western mystics but have included a chapter on the Orthodox tradition. It goes without saying that in an introductory work of this scope and size, much too much has had to be omitted, both in terms of the number of mystics and in the detail of the lives and teachings of those included. Nevertheless, it is my hope that I will have given enough of the flavor of the Christian mystical tradition to whet a greater appetite.