Introductory essay

Summary

For sith in the first biginnyng of holy chirche in the tyme of persecucion, dyverse soules and many weren so merveylously touchid in sodeynte of grace that sodenly, withoutyn menes of other werkes comyng before, thei kasten here instrumentes, men of craftes, of here hondes, children here tables in the scole, and ronnen withoutyn ransakyng of reson to the martirdom with seintes: whi schul men not trowe now, in the tyme of pees, that God may, kan and wile and doth – ye! touche diverse soules as sodenly with the grace of contemplacion?

(The Book of Privy Counselling, p. 90)

The later Middle Ages in England were indeed to prove such an age of contemplative saints, and ‘the medieval English mystics’ are often now grouped together. Viewed with one kind of hindsight, something new stirs with the writings of Richard Rolle (d. 1349), broadens and gathers in the later fourteenth century – with Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing – and also includes a corpus of translations into English of other mystical writings that point to contemporary interest in contemplation. Like most retrospects on ‘movements’ or ‘schools’ of writers, such a view simplifies both the continuities with earlier traditions and between the writers themselves.