The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises | Page 7

sayings are taken.
There is nothing in the treatise itself to enable us to fix its date. It is,
perhaps, possible that the writer or recipient of these revelations is the

"Margeria filia Johannis Kempe," who, between 1284 and 1298, gave
up to the prior and convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, all her rights
in a piece of land with buildings and appurtenances, "which falls to me
after the decease of my brother John, and lies in the parish of Blessed
Mary of Northgate outside the walls of the city of Canterbury."[13] The
revelations show that she was (or had been) a woman of some wealth
and social position, who had abandoned the world to become an
ancress, following the life prescribed in that gem of early English
devotional literature, the Ancren Riwle.14 It is clearly only a fragment
of her complete book (whatever that may have been); but it is enough
to show that she was a worthy precursor of that other great woman
mystic of East Anglia: Juliana of Norwich. For Margery, as for Juliana,
Love is the interpretation of revelation, and the key to the universal
mystery:[15]--
"Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think continually
in His love."
"If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water, and if
thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt not please
Me so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to
speak in thy soul."
"Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest
never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart."
"In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better
please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were possible that
I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the compassion that
I have of thee."
And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the simple,
poignant cry of human suffering: "Lord, for Thy great pain have mercy
on my little pain."
We are on surer ground with the treatise that follows, the Song of
Angels.16 Walter Hilton--who died on March 24, 1396--holds a
position in the religious life and spiritual literature of England in the
latter part of the fourteenth century somewhat similar to that occupied
by Richard Rolle in its earlier years. Like the Hermit of Hampole, he
was the founder of a school, and the works of his followers cannot
always be distinguished with certainty from his own. Like his great
master in the mystical way, Richard of St. Victor, Hilton was an

Augustinian, the head of a house of canons at Thurgarton, near Newark.
His great work, the Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection, "which
expoundeth many notable doctrines in Contemplation," was first
printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494, and is still widely used for
devotional reading. A shorter treatise, the Epistle to a Devout Man in
Temporal Estate, first printed by Pynson in 1506, gives practical
guidance to a religious layman of wealth and social position, for the
fulfilling of the duties of his state without hindrance to his making
profit in the spiritual life. These, with the Song of Angels, are the only
printed works that can be assigned to him with certainty, though many
others, undoubtedly from his pen, are to be found in manuscripts, and a
complete and critical edition of Walter Hilton seems still in the far
future.[17] The Song of Angels has been twice printed since the edition
of Pepwell.[18] In profoundly mystical language, tinged with the
philosophy of that mysterious Neo-Platonist whom we call the
pseudo-Dionysius, it tells of the wonderful "onehead," the union of the
soul with God in perfect charity:--
"This onehead is verily made when the mights of the soul are reformed
by grace to the dignity and the state of the first condition; that is, when
the mind is firmly established, without changing and wandering, in God
and ghostly things, and when the reason is cleared from all worldly and
fleshly beholdings, and from all bodily imaginations, figures, and
fantasies of creatures, and is illumined by grace to behold God and
ghostly things, and when the will and the affection is purified and
cleansed from all fleshly, kindly, and worldly love, and is inflamed
with burning love of the Holy Ghost."
But to this blessed condition none may attain perfectly here on earth.
The writer goes on to speak of the mystical consolations and visitations
granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguishing the feelings and
sensations that are mere delusions, from those that truly proceed from
the fire of love in the affection and the light of knowing in the reason,
and are a very anticipation of that ineffable "onehead" in