Middle Ages

The Middle Ages are presented as a formative period in Christian mysticism, when biblical interpretation, monastic writing, and devotional practice gave lasting shape to the tradition. The period’s importance lies not only in the works produced then, but also in their continuing life: later readers encountered medieval mystics as guides to inward spiritual practice and as resources for reflecting on faith.

The Song of Songs as a mystical text

In the Middle Ages, the Song of Songs was regarded as a textbook for mysticism and attracted commentary more frequently than any other book of the Bible. Its surface form—a love poem between two people—offered mystics an opening into meanings they believed a first reading might miss. They treated the text as a key to the Bible’s account of God’s love, finding spiritual significance in its lovers’ pursuit of one another, their joy in reunion, and their distress at separation. Though God is never directly named in the poem, mystics wrote commentaries and homilies that discovered God throughout it.

The lovers’ changing closeness also furnished a way to describe the spiritual life. At some times God seems present; at others, the person knows God through absence, which brings pain and longing. This alternation could encompass both the ecstasy of contemplation and the dark night of the soul. The tradition thus made an apparently intimate human poem speak to a spiritual rhythm of presence, distance, desire, and encounter.

Bernard of Clairvaux: monastic writing and public affairs

Bernard of Clairvaux’s career shows how mystical writing in the medieval period could develop alongside institutional and political responsibilities. Around 1113, he entered the austere new monastery at Cîteaux, bringing, according to the account, about thirty friends and relatives. Under Abbot Stephen Harding, he undertook novice training and was soon sent to establish Clairvaux Abbey. All four of his brothers eventually became monks.

Bernard began writing in 1125. His works included the Apology, which sought to ease disputes between Benedictines and Cistercians over monastic life; The Steps of Humility and Pride; and On Loving God. Around 1135–36, he began his best-known literary project: eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs. He reached only the opening of chapter 3, ending with the verse about seeking the one whom the soul loves, and died with Sermon 86 unfinished. His allegorical interpretation made the series a major work of devotional literature, linking the era’s sustained attention to the Song with a specific author’s unfinished but influential undertaking.

His activity was not confined to the monastery or the page. Between 1130 and 1145, Bernard wrote to European kings and princes about their responsibilities to church and kingdom and took part in disputes over church leadership. He supported Innocent II’s recognition at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and helped bring about the condemnation of Peter Abelard in 1140. Their disagreement reflected a deeper contrast: Abelard’s approach placed understanding before belief, while Bernard’s theology gave priority to contemplative faith. Bernard declined the archbishopric of Rheims in 1139; in 1145, one of his monks became Pope Eugene III, a high point in Bernard’s influence after which he began to withdraw from public affairs. His support for the Second Crusade, which ended in defeat at Damascus in 1148, was a disastrous political commitment for which many blamed him.

Henry Suso and the circulation of devotional writing

The late Middle Ages are represented through Henry Suso’s books and the complicated making of his spiritual autobiography. The Life of the Servant, often regarded as the first autobiography in Middle High German, grew from notes made by Suso’s spiritual directee Elsbeth Stagel after their conferences. When Suso discovered the notes, he took them back and began burning them. He stopped when he came to believe that God wanted him to do so. The resulting book drew on the surviving notes and material Suso added as instruction; he may have edited it further when preparing his collection of writings, The Exemplar. Its formation therefore joined another person’s record of spiritual conversations with Suso’s own selection and shaping of the account.

Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom also reveals how a medieval devotional work could travel widely. Its Latin version, Clock, was highly popular in the late Middle Ages, second only to The Imitation of Christ, usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis. More manuscripts of the Little Book survive than of any other German book, evidence of its extensive circulation. Its structure gives particular weight to Christ’s Passion: the first twenty chapters focus on it and include one hundred meditations on the crucifixion. Four further chapters address death, inward living, receiving God, and perpetual praise. Much of the book takes the form of a dialogue between Suso, called the Servitor, and Eternal Wisdom.

Medieval thought in later reception

The book’s later examples show medieval spiritual writing remaining available to readers well beyond its own period. Dag Hammarskjöld referred in Markings to Meister Eckhart, Thomas à Kempis, and John of the Cross, and carried The Imitation of Christ on his African journey. He understood the mystics as teachers of inwardness and self-surrender that could sustain active service to others, rather than as figures whose spiritual lives required withdrawal from social responsibility.

Thomas Merton’s encounter with Catholic philosophy provides another line of reception. Étienne Gilson’s account of medieval philosophy, especially its conception of God as pure Being, helped Merton value the limits of human ideas and images in describing God. Merton later explored religious traditions beyond Christianity as well: he met D. T. Suzuki, whose work compared Buddhist mysticism with Meister Eckhart’s, and wrote on Zen and Taoism. These later comparisons place a medieval Christian thinker in conversation with other traditions without making their differences disappear. Across the book, the Middle Ages thus function not as a closed historical interval, but as a source of texts and concepts repeatedly taken up in later religious reflection.