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Theology Today

In one series, the original writings of the universally acknowledged teachers of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and Islamic traditions have been critically selected, translated and introduced by internationally recognized scholars and spiritual leaders.

Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte
translated and introduced by Dennis D. Martin
preface by John Van Engen

"The third step is the human spirit's yearning, unitive clinging in which she gently burns for God, knowing experientially that one who clings to God in this way is one spirit with him…With love growing from her own fervor she opens herself to receive and in receiving is set on fire. Then with great longing she gazes wide-mouthed at celestial things and in some wondrous way tastes what she seeks to have. This tasting, moreover, is the clinging, the union, through which the pious spirit enjoys god, in whom she blissfully reposes."
Guigo de Ponte, On Contemplation, Book Two, Chapter Ten

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, the Carthusians filled the role played in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the Cluniac network, in the twelfth century by the Cistercians, and in the thirteenth century by the Franciscans and Dominicans: Western Christendom's most outstanding professional intercessors before God's throne. Founded in the late eleventh century, a few years before the Cistercians, the Carthusians grew very slowly during their first two centuries but were highly respected from the beginning. They inspired, among others, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Aelred of Rievaulx, and Peter the Venerable.
The two authors whose writings make up this volume are situated at the end of the thirteenth century, just before the order's flourishing growth of the fourteenth century.
The mysterious author known as "Hugh of Balma" may have influenced the fourteenth-century Cloud of Unknowing and certainly had a great impact on Catholic spirituality in the sixteenth and following centuries, especially, but not exclusively, in Spain. Guigo de Ponte's writings, by indirect route, influenced Ignatius of Loyola.
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Introduction by: Dennis D. Martin