Imitatio Christi

Intensive mysticism means a return to a pre-intellectual spiritual life. All intellectualism is lost in it, is overcome and rendered superfluous. But if, all this notwithstanding, mysticism has borne rich fruit for culture, this is the result of the fact that mysticism always proceeds through preparatory stages and only gradually discards the forms of custom and culture. Its fruits for civilization are born in its first stages below the upper limit of vegetation. This is where the orchard of ethical perfection blossoms as the required preparation for anyone who wishes to achieve the vision: peace and gentility of mind, the suppression of desire, the virtues of simplicity, moderation, industriousness, seriousness, and fervor. This was the case in India and the same thing is true here: the initial impact of mysticism is moral and practical, consisting above all in the practice of practical charity. All the great mystics have lavishly praised practicality...

In the Netherlands began that movement in which these concomitant elements of mysticism--moralism, pietism, charity, industriousness--became the main focus. This meant that from the intense mysticism of the remote moments of a few flow the extensive mysticism of the everyday life of the many, the ongoing communal fervor of modern devotees, in place of lonely and rare ecstasy. The sober mysticism, one is tempted to say...

In the Fraterhouses and the monasteries of the Windesheim Congregation, we find, constantly poured over quiet daily work, the radiance of religious fervor that was constantly present in the mind of the congregation. The flexible lyrical and the unrestrained striving elements have both been abandoned and, together with them, has evaporated the danger of faith gone wrong. The brothers and sisters are perfectly orthodox and conservative. It was mysticism en detail: one had not been struck by lightening, one had only received a little spark, and experienced in the small, quiet, unassuming circle the transport of ecstasy in the form of intimate spiritual communion, the exchange of letters and self-contemplation. Emotional and spiritual life was cultivated like a greenhouse plant; there was much narrow puritanism, much moral exercise, a stifling of laughter and of basic human drives, and much pietist simplemindedness...

But the most powerful and beautiful work of that period, the Imitatio Christi, arose in those circles. Here we meet the man, no theologian, no humanist, no philosopher, no poet, and actually also no mystic, who wrote the book destined to become for centuries a source of solace. Thomas a Kempis, quiet, introverted, full of tenderness for the miracle of the mass and with a most narrow perception of divine guidance, knew nothing about the outrage over church administration or secular life, such as inspired the preachers, or of the multifaceted ambitions of a Gerson, Denis, or Nicholas of Cusa, or of the wild fantasies of a John Brugman or of the colorful symbolism of an Alain de la Roche. He looked only for the element of quietude in all things and found it "in angello cum libello": "O quam salubre iucundum et suave est sedere in solitudine et tacere ei loqui cum Deo!" ("O how wholesome, how pleasant and sweet it is to sit in solitude and to be silent and speak with God!"). And his book, of simple wisdom for living and dying, addressed to resigned minds, became a book for all the ages. In his book all neo-Platonic mysticism has been abandoned...

There is something miraculous about the effect of the Imitatio. The thinker does not captivate us with his power or elan, as for example, Augustine, or by flowering prose, as St. Bernard, nor with the depth or fullness of his thought. Everything is even and melancholy, everything is kept in a minor key. There is only peace, calm, a quiet, resigned expectation, and solace...And yet, the words of this man, removed from the world, are able to strengthen us for life in this world as are those of no other. There is something this book for the tired of all ages shares with the expressions of intense mysticism: here too, the power of images is overcome as far as possible and the colorful garb of glittering symbols is discarded. For this very reason, the Imitatio is not limited to one cultural epoch; like ecstatic contemplations of the All-One, it departs from all culture and belongs to no culture in particular.

--Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, tr. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch, University of Chicago Press (1996), 264-267.