Contemplative and Mystical Theology

Primary and historical Christian writings on contemplation, mystical theology, prayer, divine union, visions, and spiritual practice.

Folders

  • Medieval English MysticismMedieval English contemplative and visionary writings, together with historically significant editions, translations, and manuscript studies. (2)
  • Practice of Divine PresenceChristian devotional writings on recollection, ordinary work, continual prayer, and sustained awareness of the divine presence. (1)

Pages

  • The Interior Castle — St. Teresa of AvilaSt. Teresa of Avila's 1577 guide to the soul's contemplative ascent to God, figured as seven concentric 'mansions' within an interior castle, in an early twentieth-century English translation.
  • The Love Letters of Abelard and HeloiseThe medieval Latin love letters exchanged between the philosopher-monk Peter Abelard and his student and secret wife Heloise, in an anonymous English translation edited by Israel Gollancz and Honnor Morten, 1901.
  • The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite — tr. John ParkerJohn Parker's 1897 two-volume translation of the complete Corpus Areopagiticum -- On the Divine Names, Mystic Theology, the Letters, the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, and the pseudo-Aristotelian Liturgy -- attributed since antiquity to Dionysius the Areopagite.