The Mystic Fable, vol 1: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. - book reviews

The late Michel de Certeau, a Jesuit scholar, was a respected historian and critic of early modern French spirituality. He was also closely tied to the Paris circle of Lacanian psychoanalysis. That latter fact may explain why this book (the first of a projected series cut short by his untimely death) is so infuriatingly opaque and so given to an insider vocabulary. I made the awful mistake of starting this work while on an airplane trip but gave it up for the more austere setting of my office. The translator (Michael B. Smith) deserves a heavenly crown for simply tackling his task.

Now that the above outburst is off my chest, let me hasten to add that this is a provocative work that repays the effort. De Certeau's thesis is straightforward enough. In the early seventeenth century there is a momentous shift in European religious life in which mysticism becomes a discrete genre detached from the near millennial understanding of theologia mystica as infused contemplation of God. The analogy that best serves is the modem shifts that made, say, chemistry or physics something quite distinct from natural philosophy.

The first use of the discrete noun mysticism (de Certeau traces it to 1610) was pejorative since, according to early critics, it separated mysticism from theology as traditionally understood. From then on, de Certeau argues, mysticism becomes an autonomous system detached from its traditional roots in monastic and ascetic theology. Mysticism reflects a social milieu in which confidence in the traditional structures of sacramentality, scriptural piety, and the ecclesial role of the contemplative (the older word for what we call a mystic) becomes attenuated.

Two observations are in order. First, de Certeau's careful historical work does go a long way in explaining the ambiguous manner in which the term "mysticism" gets used today and why the enormous literature produced in this century on the phenomenon finds it difficult to locate it within the traditional boundaries of religious experience. It is appalling, for instance, that mysticism often gets lumped with New Age babble, tarot cards, etc., but one can understand why this should be when we get the historical antecedents in focus. Mysticism has become a "system" and, consequently, becomes as usable as, say, a weight-loss program or a specialized form of therapy.

Secondly, however, there is a question: has de Certeau pressed his thesis of the anti-institutional bias of modem mysticism too vigorously? One can think of any number of counter examples to those which he advances in his book. Furthermore, as Steven Katz has argued in a brilliant essay (in Mvsticism and Religious Traditions), the mystics were often not only comfortable within their traditions but, indeed, were valid reformers and energizers of it. How, for instance, would de Certeau account for an Alphonsus de Liguori whose biography is reviewed above or Paul of the Cross or other such ecstatic founders/reformers of the eighteenth century who were long distant from the salons of Paris?

The Mystic Fable gives no comfort to those who expect from the French prose that honors the Cartesian desideratum for clear and distinct ideas, but in its prolix allusiveness one finds provocative pages and striking insights that may be worth the effort. The author also presumes a good deal of knowledge of religious history, languages, and theological literature. This is not a book designed for the beginner. Serious students of spirituality, however, will have to take it and its thesis into account.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Commonweal Foundation
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