IMC 2025: Sessions

This strand explores the multiform worlds of learning in medieval mystical texts from various perspectives. The first session focuses on authoritative sources as worlds of learning and they ways in which they were received and adapted by later authors. The first paper in this session focuses on the Bible, unquestionably the most important source for Christian mystics in the Middle Ages. Certain passages from the Bible recur frequently within Christian mystical texts. The paper examines how different mystics treat the same passage and whether patterns of mystical exegesis emerge that hint at ways in which the Bible shapes mystical learning and what is means to know God mystically. 

The second paper focuses on a specific theologian, the Camaldolese John-Jerome of Prague (d. 1440), who was a major contributor to the theological and ecclesial landscape of his day. Vehemently opposing both the Hussite and Italian humanist movements, John-Jerome copied and employed theological texts to counter what he viewed as heresy and schism. Alongside conciliar documents and the works of some prominent (male) theologians including Augustine, Bonaventure and Henry Suso, John-Jerome drew from controversial female theologians, producing versions of texts by Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena who made radical claims about divine-human union and female pedagogy, citing Bridget of Sweden who opposed the priests of her days, and even copying The Mirror of Simple Souls which had been deemed heretical and its author (Marguerite Porete) executed one century earlier. This paper will tease out the ways in which these texts were interacted with and combined with or placed alongside those of male theologians.

The final paper explores the impact of Angela of Foligno's Liber on the Early Modern Spanish mystics Theresa of Avila and Balthazar Alvarez. Circulated widely shortly after her death, the Liber had a profound influence on later mystical authors and Theresa and Alvarez utilised it to shape their own interrelated mystical theologies. Indeed, Alvarez, a Jesuit, was the confessor of the Carmelite Theresa. This paper teases out some of the most influential passages and ideas from the Liber that contributed to shaping the thought and writing of two of the most prominent authors in the Spanish Golden Age of Mysticism.