Here are the writings of the man who was the great link between the early Christian mystics and the mystical awakening in medieval Europe. Richard (?-1173) was born in Scotland and joined the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, where he became Superior and Prior.

Interdisciplinary studies on medieval mystics and their cultural background.

Called in a special way to listen to God's whispers, the mystics amplify not only what it means to be baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ 'and to having the Trinity living in them 'but also what is deepest in the human spirit. Mystics experience themselves as an infinite question to which only God is the answer; as an immense longing that only Love can quench; as a nothing in the face of the No-Thing. They are God's fools, troubadours 'the great artists and poets of the interior life whose learned ignorance" articulates the art of loving God, neighbor, self, the Church, and the world. In Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition Harvey Egan draws on fifty years of reading and teaching the mystics to sketch the varieties and passion of the mystical life across more than two millennia. Through their stories and words Egan reveals that all were conscious of the paradox of human identity 'supremely and unsurpassably manifested in the God-Man 'that the genuinely human is disclosed only through surrender to God and that the search for God cannot bypass the genuinely human.

The Mystical Science of the Soul explores the unexamined influence of medieval discourses of science and spirituality on recogimiento, the unique Spanish genre of recollection mysticism that served as the driving force behind the principal developments in Golden Age mysticism. Building on recent research in medieval optics, physiology, and memory in relation to the devotional practices of the late Middle Ages, Jessica A. Boon probes the implications of an ‘embodied soul’ for the intellectual history of Spanish mysticism. Boon proposes a fundamental rereading of the key recogimiento text Subida del Monte Sión (1535/1538), which melds the traditionally distinct spiritual techniques of moral self-examination, Passion meditation, and negative theology into one cognitively adept path towards mystical union. She is also the first English-language scholar to treat the author of this influential work – the Renaissance physician Bernardino de Laredo, a pivotal figure in the transition from medieval to early modern spirituality on the Iberian peninsula and a source for Teresa of Avila’s mystical language.

The best introduction to medieval theology from the time of St Augustine to the 14th century, in an expanded, 2nd edition. This volume invites us to think along with major theologians and spiritual authors in order to understand how pre-modern thought can enrich and challenge us in a (post-)modern context.

Medieval theology, in all its diversity, was radically theo-centric, Trinitarian, Scriptural and sacramental. It also operated with a profound view of human understanding (in terms of intellectus rather than mere ratio). In a post-modern climate, in which the modern views on 'autonomous reason' are increasingly being questioned, it may prove fruitful to re-engage with pre-modern thinkers who, obviously, did not share our modern and post-modern presuppositions. Their different perspective does not antiquate their thought, as some of the 'cultured despisers' of medieval thought might imagine. On the contrary, rather than rendering their views obsolete it makes them profoundly challenging and enriching for theology today. This book is more than a survey of key medieval thinkers (from Augustine to the late-medieval period); it is an invitation to think along with major theologians and explore how their thought can deeply challenge some of today's modern and post-modern key assumptions.

This will be the fourth in an influential series of volumes on mysticism edited by Steven T. Katz, presenting a basic revaluation of the nature of mysticism. Each presents a collection of solicited papers by noted experts in the study of religion. This new volume will explore how the great mystics and mystical traditions use, interpret, and reconstruct the sacred scriptures of their traditions.