The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 19
Summary of Brother Patrick
Moore's "Thomas Traherne and George Herbert" talk, The London
Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 21 March 2006
Introduction
Like the author of the Cloud, Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart
Thomas Traherne had his audience hundreds of years after he wrote.
Some would say that his prose work Centuries of Meditations is the
most rhapsodic, lyrical writing of the seventeenth century.
A Detective Story
It was not until about 1897 that a manuscript of Thomas Traherne’s
writings was discovered for the first time on a street bookstall.
The collector who purchased it at first thought the manuscript was
a work of Henry Vaughan but after he died the person who subsequently
worked on the manuscript was able to identify it as Thomas Traherne
after a comparison with his works that had been published in the
seventeenth century. This manuscript was finally published in the
early years of the 20th century. Other manuscripts have gradually
come to light one at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington
DC also one in Lambeth Palace library.
Thomas Traherne
Life
Thomas Traherne was born in 1636 or 7. He was born in Hereford
and lived during the civil war, a time of tremendous civil and religious
disorder. Hereford was deeply involved in the civil war changing
hands three times. There was no Church of England, no Book of Common
Prayer, no Archbishop of Canterbury and no bishops. All clergy were
replaced by Puritans within the Presbyterian tradition. It was a
crime to celebrate the Eucharist. But at the same time there was
an incredible flowering of mysticism within the Anglican tradition.
Thomas Traherne went to Brasenose College, Oxford and then worked
as a free church minister in a village just outside Hereford. With
the restoration he became ordained and after working in a small
parish administering to the poor for a number of years he later
became private chaplain to the Lord Keeper of the Seals of Charles
II. He died in 1674 at the age of 38.
Influences
1) The Renaissance and God as Beauty
He was a very well read person. A notebook was found among his papers
where he had written out verbatim Marsilio Ficino’s Latin
translations of Plato which Ficino had undertaken at the request
of the Medicis during the Renaissance. Prior to the Renaissance
Western theology was deeply influenced by the rediscovery of the
ideas of Aristotle. These came through Aquinas directly from the
Muslim world. In the 15th century Constantinople was threatened
by the Turks. The Emperor and the Archbishop of Constantinople understood
that if Christians in the West didn’t come to their assistance
they would fall to the Turks. There was therefore a desperate need
for the East to come to an agreement with the West for a reconciliation.
An ecumenical council was held in Florence, financed by the Medici
family. When the Greek speaking theologians from the East spoke
about Plato, a whole new world was opened up to the West. This was
the idea of God as Beauty. Far more time is given by the Church
to the idea of God as Truth and God as Goodness than to the idea
of God as Beauty. Petrarch and Dante just before the Renaissance
had talked about perceiving God in art. Poetic theology was the
term they came up with. Iris Murdoch is also in this tradition.
Dostoevsky said that the world would be saved through beauty.
These ideas were brought to England by Dean Colet. He was very
impressed by the Italian Renaissance and he came back to found St.
Paul’s Boys’ School along the lines of the Renaissance
humanism he had discovered in Florence. He chose married masters
as teachers not priests and he based the curriculum on the study
of Greek and Roman classics which he saw as the way to revive Christianity.
A group called the Cambridge Platonists welcomed this Renaissance
teaching as a coming together of revelation and reason. Not only
the Old and New Testaments but all the philosophical traditions
including the Hermetic were seen as feeding into this revival and
as relevant. A witness to this is the figure of Hermes Trismegistus
as a wisdom figure incorporated into the ground at Sienna Cathedral.
Also parallels were being drawn between passages of Plato and passages
of scripture. For example for Plato all learning is remembering
and on this basis in Meno he puts a small boy in the middle of a
circle and endeavours to learn about Maths from him. A parallel
can be drawn with the picture in Luke’s gospel of Jesus as
a boy teaching in the temple. Another parallel made was the death
of Socrates as compared to the death of Jesus. (See George Steiner
essays on this reinterpretation of Platonism into Christianity.)
Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII financed Erasmus to come
to Britain. He was the first person to teach Greek in an English
university. Margaret Beaufort founded two Cambridge colleges and
in fact there is still a Lady Margaret Professor of divinity (a
chair once held by Rowan Williams).
All of this Renaissance thought fed into the work of Thomas Traherne.
He has the feel of Wordsworth or Blake. All three hold the view
that childhood is when we are closest to the divine.
2) Where he stands in relation to Original Sin
It is clear that whatever one’s view of original sin that
we live in a fallen world. A myth to explain the Fall is common
to every tradition. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition we have the
story in Genesis of Adam and Eve. Within the Western Christian tradition
there are significant differing interpretations as to the effect
of the Fall all of which claim the authority of Augustine! Augustine
spoke of the Imago Dei (image of God) being implanted within the
human being. With the Fall the Imago Dei was broken. Some theologians
like Calvin and Luther take the view that the Imago Dei has been
essentially broken by the Fall. Others like Aquinas and Traherne
take the view that the Imago Dei has been accidentally broken by
the Fall. Both interpretations are theologically valid within the
Christian tradition and across denominations. At different times
and in different situations one or the other may feel more valid
to us. Each will have different consequences for Society and Spirituality.
The Calvinistic approach would see control as essential. A good
example of this would be William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
where a group of boys quickly become savages when released from
the constraints of parents, teachers and a police force. Also those
adopting this approach would not accept that God could be revealed
through nature because nature is just as damaged as we are. Revelation
can only come through Christ. On the other hand, for those like
Aquinas, revelation may come through Christ, Reason and Nature.
3) Seventeenth Century
The Anglican tradition of John Donne, George Herbert, Hooker, the
Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version are all influences
on Traherne.
Recommended Reading:
Denise Inge Thomas Traherne Poetry & Prose (2002 SPCK:London)
A.M. Allchin, Anne Ridler, Julia Smith Aspects of Thomas Traherne
Profitable Wonders (1989 Amate Press)
Thomas Traherne Centuries of Meditations
David Scott Sacred Tongues: The Golden Age of Spiritual Writing
George Herbert
His Life and Times
George Herbert (1593-1633)
The state of the Church of England was worse in George Herbert’s
time than it had been in the 14th century. Shortly after his death
in 1633 the Church of England-ceased to exist in any external, formal
way. There was no Archbishop of Canterbury or episcopacy. The Book
of Common Prayer, its liturgy and the priesthood were all suspended.
Church building was outlawed. One man did build a gothic Anglican
Church. When Parliament saw it he was sent to the Tower. It was
said of him that he did the best of things in the worst of times
and in the most calamitous he hoped. This church at Stockton Harold
is today owned by the National Trust. Despite the Church being in
the doldrums as in the 14th century there was an enormous flowering
of spirituality in this period which is called the period of the
Caroline Divines.
During this period when no publication of “Anglican”
theology or spirituality was allowed one man held together the corporate
spirit of the Church of England and that was Isaak Walton who wrote
the Compleat Angler. Ostensibly a book about fishing it preserves
the whole tone of Anglicanism commenting on such things as the fact
that Jesus chose fisherman for his disciples because fishermen are
the great contemplatives. It is one of the best books on the contemplative
life. Up until 1900 it was the book most read by English people
after the bible. When the Church of England was re-established Walton
went on to write biographies of great Anglicans for example George
Herbert and John Donne. Walton probably wrote the life of George
Herbert in the close of Salisbury Cathedral. Walton’s son
was a canon at the cathedral.
A Musician
George Herbert was a musician. Music features heavily in his images
of the spiritual life. Today we use a lot of rather mechanical words
to describe our activities such as input, output. George Herbert
compared us to musical instruments; to delicate stringed instruments
that constantly need tuning as we keep going out of tune. We all
go out of tune with God and need to be constantly retuned to return
to harmony with ourselves, each other and God. The Christian body
is a variety of instruments which all need to harmonize. Isaak Walton
tells us that once a week Herbert took his viola and walked to Salisbury
Cathedral and sang at Choral Evensong. Apparently Herbert used to
say that he had spent the day in heaven.
A Domestic Spirituality
George Herbert was a married man with two adopted daughters. He
really only blossomed in the last three years of his life. He became
an Anglican priest and wrote The Country Parson. His spirituality
might be described as a domestic spirituality.
It is one of the intriguing elements of Christianity that healing
of the body and soul was at one time both in the hands of the curate.
(Friar Lawrence in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was also
an apothecary). The parish priest at this time was the person responsible
for growing the herbs which were used for healing and for dispensing
those herbs. George Herbert would have been a physician of body
and soul. In The Country Parson he gives wonderful directions on
how to grow plants for the people of a parish. Herbert himself was
the curate at Bemerton, three miles out of Salisbury and is buried
here.
In addition to The Country Parson Herbert wrote many prayers which
we may think of as hymns or poems but they were originally prayers
for his own use. Just before his death he sent them to a friend
Nicholas Ferrar to do as he wanted with them. Ferrar lived at Little
Gidding. He was extremely close friends with Herbert. They had been
at Cambridge together though in different colleges. Nicholas Ferrar
lived the Christian life at Little Gidding with his family. Charles
I is reputed to have visited him there. George Herbert was appointed
curate of Leighton Bromswold about five miles from Little Gidding.
He never visited Leighton Bromswold but he designed, sponsored and
paid for the alteration of the whole interior furniture of that
Church. (It is still exactly as he designed it) His friend Nicholas
Ferrar supervised the works.
Little Gidding was to be immortalised by T.S. Eliot who gave this
name to the fourth of his Four Quartets which is a summary of the
English Mystical Tradition (he quotes Julian of Norwich, Mary Queen
of Scots and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing)
George Herbert’s godfather and close friend of his mother
was John Donne. When George Herbert went to school he went to Westminster
at a time when Launcelot Andrewes (who helped to translate the authorised
version) was Dean of the Abbey.
George Herbert had therefore had a very privileged upbringing and
education and was heading for service at court. The position of
parish priest at that time was not one of a high social position
but George Herbert felt God deserved the best and he used his privilege
and his talents in the service of a few hundred parishioners in
a small village to the end of his life.
Two Examples of his Prayers
Prayer (1)
Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’Almighty, sinners’ tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days-world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices, something understood.
Love (3)
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
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