The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises | Page 5

of divine transfiguration, in which the soul gazes upon truth without any veils of creatures, not in a mirror darkly, but in its pure simplicity. This master of the spiritual life died in 1173. Amongst the glowing souls of the great doctors and theologians in the fourth heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas bids Dante mark the ardent spirit of "Richard who in contemplation was more than man."[3]
Benjamin, for Richard, is the type of contemplation, in accordance with the Vulgate version of Psalm lxvii.: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu: "There is Benjamin, a youth, in ecstasy of mind"--where the English Bible reads: "Little Benjamin their ruler."[4] At the birth of Benjamin, his mother Rachel dies: "For, when the mind of man is rapt above itself, it surpasseth all the limits of human reasoning. Elevated above itself and rapt in ecstasy, it beholdeth things in the divine light at which all human reason succumbs. What, then, is the death of Rachel, save the failing of reason?"[5]
The treatise here printed under the title Benjamin is based upon a smaller work of Richard's, a kind of introduction to the Benjamin Major, entitled: Benjamin Minor; or: De Praeparatione animi ad Contemplationem. It is a paraphrase of certain portions of this work, with a few additions, and large omissions. Among the portions omitted are the two passages that, almost alone among Richard's writings, are known to the general reader--or, at least, to people who do not claim to be specialists in mediaeval theology. In the one, he speaks of knowledge of self as the Holy Hill, the Mountain of the Lord:--
"If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and principal study be to know itself. Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and high mountain. This mountain transcends all the peaks of all mundane sciences, and looks down upon all the philosophy and all the science of the world from on high. Could Aristotle, could Plato, could the great band of philosophers ever attain to it?"[6]
In the other, still adhering to his image of the mountain of self-knowledge, he makes his famous appeal to the Bible, as the supreme test of truth, the only sure guard that the mystic has against being deluded in his lofty speculations:--
"Even if you think that you have been taken up into that high mountain apart, even if you think that you see Christ transfigured, do not be too ready to believe anything you see in Him or hear from Him, unless Moses and Elias run to meet Him. I hold all truth in suspicion which the authority of the Scriptures does not confirm, nor do I receive Christ in His clarification unless Moses and Elias are talking with Him."[7]
On the other hand, the beautiful passage with which the version closes, so typical of the burning love of Christ, shown in devotion to the name of Jesus, which glows through all the writings of the school of the Hermit of Hampole, is an addition of the translator:--
"And therefore, what so thou be that covetest to come to contemplation of God, that is to say, to bring forth such a child that men clepen in the story Benjamin (that is to say, sight of God), then shalt thou use thee in this manner. Thou shalt call together thy thoughts and thy desires, and make thee of them a church, and learn thee therein for to love only this good word Jesu, so that all thy desires and all thy thoughts are only set for to love Jesu, and that unceasingly as it may be here; so that thou fulfil that is said in the psalm: 'Lord, I shall bless Thee in churches'; that is, in thoughts and desires of the love of Jesu. And then, in this church of thoughts and desires, and in this onehead of studies and of wills, look that all thy thoughts, and all thy desires, and all thy studies, and all thy wills be only set in the love and the praising of this Lord Jesu, without forgetting, as far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy frailty will suffer; evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel, patiently abiding the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be ravished above itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the beholding of God and ghostly things; so that it be fulfilled in thee that is written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu; that is: 'There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravishing of mind."'[8]
The text printed by Pepwell differs slightly from that of the manuscripts, of which a large number have been preserved. Among others, it is found in the Arundel MS. 286, and the Harleian MSS. 674,