I am deeply indebted to Barbara Newman for her suggestions on a draft of this paper.

1. Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Wyon, Olive (New York: Macmillan, 1931), esp. pp. 376–78 and 738–40.Google Scholar See the summary and analysis in Drescher, Hans-Georg, Ernst Troeltsch: His Life and Work, trans. Bowden, John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp. 222–45.Google Scholar

2. Troeltsch, , The Social Teaching, pp. 963–64 n. 471, quoting Ritschl with approval.Google Scholar

3. McGinn, Bernard, The Foundations of Mysticism, vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 270–71:Google Scholar“The only mystics treated in detail [in Troeltsch] are the Protestant radicals from Thomas Münzer to Nicholas Zinzendorf. Given the way in which Troeltsch defined the inner essence of mystical religion as based on a conscious insistence on the primacy of direct religious experience achieving a sociologically distinct form, this certainly follows; but it has the disadvantage of neglecting those mystics who found their immediate relation to God in forms of objective religious life (such as liturgy and sacraments) and who were not moved to create distinctive forms of religious association.” The distinction between church and sect, which Troeltsch adapted from Max Weber, has elicited much comment;Google Scholar see Johnson, B., “On Church and Sect,” American Sociological Review 28 (1963): 539–49,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Eister, A. W., “Toward a Radical Critique of Church-Sect Typologizing: Comment on ‘Some Critical Observations on the Church-Sect Dimension,’” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 6 (1967): 85–90. But the relatively original contribution of adding mysticism to this distinction seems to have aroused less discussion.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7. TeSelle, Eugene, “The Christian Life: More Than the Church,” Quarterly Review 16 (Fall 1996): 223–39.Google Scholar The key question for TeSelle is how the Church can accommodate movements and structures that go beyond its own functions, taking its members into forms of voluntary inwardness or outwardness that are not requisite for salvation, yet contribute to the richness and diversity of the Church's life. From his Protestant perspective it is most important that these voluntary movements not claim to be required for salvation; provided they make this concession, he allows them wide scope.

8. Porete, Marguerite, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Babinsky, Ellen L. (New York: Paulist, 1993).Google Scholar

9. Whitehead, Alfred North, Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 17.Google Scholar

10. Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, trans. and introduced by Engen, John Van (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 27–29.Google Scholar

11. On the specific connection see still Lücker, Maria Alberta, Meister Eckhart und die Devotio Moderna (Leiden: Brill, 1950).Google Scholar

12. Weissman, Ronald F. E., “Sacred Eloquence: Humanist Preaching and Lay Piety in Renaissance Florence,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Verdon, Timothy and Henderson, John (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 250–71.Google Scholar Weissman surely overstates the case: “The modern, Erasmian and Protestant distinction between inner spirituality and outer action, the former always somehow more genuine and ‘religious’ than the latter, is for the study of quattrocento Italian Renaissance religion afalse and misleading dichotomy imposed on religion by those with little understanding and less sympathy for ceremonial and ritualized behavior” (p. 262).

13. See Kieckhefer, Richard, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Christian Spirituality, ed. Raitt, Jill (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 2:75–108,Google Scholar and Os, Henk van et al. , The Art of Devotion in the Late MiddleAges in Europe, 1300–1500, trans. Hoyle, Michael (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

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15. This is the argument of Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 121–23.Google Scholar

16. Kieckhefer, Richard, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 22–33 (Dorothea von Montau) and pp. 182–89 (Margery Kempe).Google Scholar On Kempe see also Hirsch, John C., The Revelations of Margery Kempe: Paramystical Practices in Late Medieval England (Leiden: Brill, 1989);Google ScholarAers, David, “The Making of Margery Kempe: Individuality and Community,” in Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430 (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 73–116;Google Scholarand Atkinson, Clarissa W., Mystic and Pilgrim: The “Book” and the World of Margery Kempe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

17. Moeller, Bernd, “Religious Life in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation,” in Pre-Reformation Germany, ed. Strauss, Gerald (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 13–42;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Duffy, Stripping of the Altars.

18. Camporesi, P., “The Consecrated Host: A Wondrous Excess,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Feher, M. et al. (New York: Zone, 1989), pp. 220–37.Google Scholar

19. Châtelet, Albert, Van Eyck, trans. Baca, Murtha (Woodbury, N.Y.: Barren's, 1979).Google Scholar

20. Winston-Allen, Anne, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

21. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 282–94;Google ScholarBynum, Caroline Walker, “Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner's Theory of Liminality,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 27–51.Google Scholar

22. For a parallel account of conversion, focusing on the twelfth century, see Morrison, Karl F., Understanding Conversion (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992). What Morrison's view shares with mine is a sense of conversion as a sustained and intricate process, not reducible to particular moments of dramatic reversal.Google Scholar

23. Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Meech, Sanford Brown and Allen, Hope Emily, Early English Text Society, o.s., 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940);Google ScholarThe Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Windeatt, B. A. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985).Google Scholar

24. Lawley, Stephen Willoughby, ed., Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis (Durham: Andrews, 1883), 2:785–820;Google Scholar there is a translation in Frances Comper, M. M., The Life of Richard Rolle with an Edition of His English Lyrics (London: Dent, 1928), pp. 301–11.Google Scholar Of the more recent literature see especially Watson, Nicholas, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) for Rolle's life and literary career,Google Scholar but also Marzac, Nicole, Richard Rolle de Hampole (1300–1349): Vie et oeuvres, suivies du tractatus Super Apocalypsim (Paris: Vrin, 1968).Google ScholarRolle, Richard, The English Writings, trans, and ed. Allen, Rosamund S. (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1988), gives the author's vernacular texts (on the whole more devotional and didactic than strictly contemplative or mystical), with introduction.Google Scholar

25. Watson, , Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, pp. 32,40–41. Watson sees the parallel as being mainly with the later vitae of Francis and finds so close a resemblance as to challenge the reliability of Rolle's biography. While I am not committed to the historicity of the account and could be prepared to see in it a reflection of imagined events conceived as having verisimilitude, I read the text as far more sober, less stereotypical, and less consistently flattering to its subject than many hagiographies, and I am inclined to credit its historicity somewhat more than Watson does.Google Scholar

26. The shift in early representations of Francis is traced in Omer Englebert, Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography, 2nd English ed., trans. Cooper, Eve Marie (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1965), pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

27. Acta sanctorum, 03. (Paris and Rome: Victor Palmé, 1865), 1:292;Google Scholar see also Butler, Alban, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed., ed. Thurston, Herbert and Attwater, Donald (New York: Kenedy, 1956), 1:550–52;Google ScholarConiglione, Matteo Angelo, Pietro Geremia OR: santo, apostolo, scrittore, inauguratore dell'Università Catanese (Catania: Ospizio di Beneficenza, 1952).Google ScholarFor parallels see Pellegrino, C., Vita del beato Angelo Carletti (1888),Google Scholar and Varani, Battista, Le opere spirituali della beata Battista Varani, de signori di Camerino, ed. Santoni, Milziade Can. (Camerino: Savini, 1894), pp. 61–101, on Pietro da Mogliano—both discussed in Butler, 2:81–82, and 3:217–18.Google Scholar

28. Hunt, Richard, “Universities and Learning,” in The Flowering of the Middle Ages, ed. Evans, Joan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 195. I have substituted my own translation for Hunt's.Google Scholar

29. On this tradition see Erhard Dorn, Der sündige Heilige in der Legende des Mittelalters (Munich: Fink, 1967).Google Scholar

30. On this theme see Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, pp. 122–49 (esp. p. 122).Google ScholarThe motif can be traced back to Gregory the Great, as reported in Venerabilis Baedae Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, i.27 ad 8, ed. Plummer, Charles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), p. 56 (“Bonarum quippe mentium est, et ibi aliquo modo culpas suas agnoscere, ubi culpa non est”).Google Scholar

31. According to Howard, F. E. and Crossley, F. H., English Church Woodwork: A Study in Craftsmanship During the Medieval Period, A.D. 1250–1550 (London: Batsford, 1917), p. 297, “There is clear documentary evidence to prove that the practice of the appropriation of pews was in vogue from the first introduction of fixed seating, though it was never approved by ecclesiastical authority.”Google Scholar

32. Stoppard, Tom, Arcadia (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). One of the characters is a mysterious hermit, resident on the estate of the play's aristocratic family ca. 1800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Deanesly, Margaret (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1915), passim, esp. chap. 20.Google Scholar

34. Comper, , The Life of Richard Rolle, pp. 284–92;Google ScholarBiasiotto, Peter R., History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: St. Bonaventure College and Seminary, 1943);Google ScholarCabassut, A., “La Déotion au nom de Jésus dans l'Église d'occident,” La vie spirituelle 86 (1952): 46–69;Google ScholarSuso, Henry, The Life of the Servant, chap. 4, in The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans, and ed. Tobin, Frank (New York: Paulist, 1989), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar On the background for the monogram see Traube, Ludwig, Nomina sacra: Versuch einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung (Munich: Beck, 1907), pp. 156–60;Google Scholar on Bernardino of Siena's use of it see Kieckhefer, Richard, “Holiness and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Szell, Timea (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 301–02.Google Scholar

35. The lncendium amoris, chap. 21, p. 205 (interna quiete); chap. 33, p. 238 (canor interior); chap.33, p. 240 (ab interiori doctore); chap. 40, p. 270 (pro interne suauitatis magnitudine); chap. 13, p. 182(ardens … intra se caritati incomparabili atque constantissima). “Finding no delight in outward activity, one is rapt inwardly with melody and joy” (IA/22).Google Scholar For English translation, see The Fire of Love, trans. Wolters, Clifton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).Google Scholar

36. Rolle, Richard, “The Form of Living,” xii, in The English Writings, p. 181; Rolle, The Commandment, pp. 146–47.Google Scholar

37. On this point see Riehle, Wolfgang, The Middle English Mystics, trans. Standring, Bernard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar

38. To be sure, Hamburger, Jeffrey F. argues (persuasively) in The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) that the manuscript he is explicating contains imagery even for speculative and apophatic mysticism, but these are in the minority; most of the images even in this manuscript are for theoerotic motifs, and for these there are far closer analogues in the iconographic tradition.Google Scholar

39. Comper, The Life of Richard Rolle, pp. 195–98;Google ScholarHughes, Jonathan, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion andSecular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), has much to say about the posthumous reputation of Rolle and its context.Google Scholar

40. Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Birrell, Jean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 407–12.Google Scholar

41. Most of the sermons are published in Die Predigten Taulers, ed. Vetter, Ferdinand (Berlin: Weidmann, 1910).Google ScholarModern German translations are in Tauler, Johannes, Predigten, new ed., trans, and ed. Hofmann, Georg (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1979),Google Scholar which is the basis for the English version in Tauler, Johannes, Sermons, trans. Shrady, Maria (New York: Paulist, 1985).Google Scholar The sermons are discussed in Ozment, Steven E., Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969);Google ScholarKieckhefer, Richard, “John Tauler,” in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Szarmach, Paul E. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 259–72;Google Scholar and especially Gnädinger, Louise, Johannes Tauler: Lebenswelt und mystische Lehre (Munich: Beck, 1993).Google Scholar For themes relevant to this paper see also Kieckhefer, Richard, “The Role of Christ in Tauler's Spirituality,”" Downside Review 96 (1978): 176–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. The German text, with spurious attribution, is published in von Basel, Nicolaus, Benefit von der Bekehrung Taulers, ed. Schmidt, Carl (Strassburg, 1875; reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1981).Google ScholarEnglish translations are in The History and Life of John Tauler of Strasbourg, with Twenty-Five of His Sermons (1340), trans. Winkworth, Susanna (London: Allenson, 1905), pp. 40–99,Google Scholar and in The Sermons and Conferences of John Tauler, of the Order of Preachers, Surnamed “The Illuminated Doctor”; Being His Spiritual Doctrine, trans. Elliott, Walter (Washington, D.C.: Apostolic Mission House, 1910), pp. 9–49.Google ScholarSee Gnädinger, , Johannes Tauler, pp. 87–96.Google Scholar

43. For an early case, see Borgstadt, Elvira, trans., The “Sister Catherine” Treatise, in Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher, ed. McGinn, Bernard (New York: Paulist, 1986), pp. 347–87;Google Scholar on later examples see Pickering, F. P., “Notes on Late Medieval German Tales in Praise of docta ignorantia,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 24 (1940): 121–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Vetter, no. 54, p. 247 (ir minne und ir meinunge enist nut zů im gekert) (Hofmann, no. 52, p. 397).Google Scholar

45. Vetter, no. 47, p. 213 (Hofmann, no. 61, p. 474).Google Scholar

46. Vetter, no. 61, p. 335 (Hofmann, no. 44, p. 341).Google Scholar

47. Hofmann, no. 77, p. 596.Google Scholar

48. Vetter, no. 62, p. 338 (das innerste das ist alwegen das alter beste; wan das uswendige das nimet alle sine kraft von disem) (Hofmann, no. 39, p. 291).Google Scholar

49. Vetter, no. 54, p. 247 (Hofmann, no. 52, pp. 397–99).Google Scholar

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51. Vetter, no. 60e, p. 309 (Hofmann, no. 25, p. 176).Google Scholar

52. Vetter, no. 15, p. 68 (Hofmann, no. 15a, p. 101).Google Scholar

53. Vetter, no. 47, p. 211 (Hofmann, no. 61, pp. 471–72).Google Scholar

54. Hofmann, no. 60, pp. 462–64.Google Scholar

55. Hofmann, no. 60, p. 465.Google Scholar See Lewis, Gertrud Jaron, By Women, for Women, about Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), pp. 100–105,Google Scholar and Hale, Rosemary, “Imitatio Marine: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs,” in Medieval German Literature, ed. Classen, Albrecht (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), pp. 129–45;Google Scholar reprinted in Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990): 193–203.Google Scholar

56. Vetter, no. 46, pp. 206–07 (Hofmann, no. 54, pp. 422–23); see also Vetter, no. 71, p. 388 (Hofmann, no. 80, pp. 615–16), and for reflections on the harm done to Christ by use of oaths referring to the wounds see Vetter, no. 60h, p. 327 (Hofmann, no. 35, p. 258).Google Scholar

57. Saxonia, Ludolphus de, Vita Jesu Christi ex Evangelio et approbatis Ecclesia Catholica Doctoribus sedule collecta, ed. Rigollot, L. M. (Paris: Palmé; Brussels: Lebrocquy, 1878).Google Scholar

58. Vetter, no. 32, p. 118 (Hofmann, no. 32, p. 228). Cf.Google ScholarEckhart, Meister, Die rede der underscheidunge, chap. 20, Werke, ed. Largier, Niklaus (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), pp. 394–403.Google Scholar

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