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

upward through
the six steps of contemplation--in imagination, in reason, in
understanding--gradually discarding all sensible objects of thought;
until, in the sixth stage, it contemplates what is above reason, and
seems to be beside reason, or even contrary to reason. He teaches that
there are three qualities of contemplation, according to its intensity:
mentis dilatatio, an enlargement of the soul's vision without exceeding
the bounds of human activity; mentis sublevatio, elevation of mind, in
which the intellect, divinely illumined, transcends the measure of
humanity, and beholds the things above itself, but does not entirely lose
self-consciousness; and mentis alienatio, or ecstasy, in which all
memory of the present leaves the mind, and it passes into a state 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