The cloud of ignorance

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The Cloud of Unknowing (Engl .: The Cloud of Unknowing ) is the title of a book on the mystical way that at the end of the 14th century (around 1390) in England originated in Middle English vernacular. Because the author does not reveal his name in his work, it has become common in research to speak of the cloud author .

The central biblical image that gave Scripture its name is the cloud on the summit of the God's mountain Sinai , within which Moses was allowed to experience God ( Exodus 16:10). This also names the central content of the work: The spiritual union of man with God, in which man gets beyond the normal realm of knowledge of comprehending reason and thus experiences God in a super-rational way.

The spiritual instruction of the Cloud author contains psychological details which, although developed entirely from Christianity, show a certain structural analogy to Asian forms of contemplation , especially to Zen Buddhism . The rediscovery of the medieval script “Cloud of Not-Knowing” in the 20th century was also due to supporters or sympathizers of the Christian Zen movement. For this reason, a lively interreligious discussion has sparked both in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in Germany , in which the "cloud of ignorance" has repeatedly been disputed (in the German-speaking Catholic area especially by Willi Massa , Willigis Jäger and Hans Urs von Balthasar ).

Author and work

According to medieval custom, the cloud author did not attach any importance to handing his name down to posterity. Some details of his person can easily be deduced from the work: The Cloud author was a priest experienced in the contemplative life , who was asked in writing by various people for spiritual guidance. The writings that the Cloud author wrote testify to his great theological education: In the cloud of ignorance theological thoughts of Johannes Cassian , Augustine , Gregory the Great , Anselm of Canterbury , Bernhard von Clairvaux , the three Victorians Hugo , Richard and Thomas Gallus Vercellensis, Hugo von Balma , Bonaventura , Thomas Aquinas and many more. These biographical details, together with the handwritten tradition, have meanwhile led to a consensus in research: the cloud author is likely to have been a Carthusian priest with a probability bordering on certainty , who was available to both young members of the order and a larger circle of wanted to write spiritual instruction to educated lay readers . The cloud author presumably lived in the Beauval Charterhouse in Yorkshire .

Although the “cloud of ignorance” is the best-known work penned by the cloud author, his other writings must not be overlooked. The following are secured:

  • The Book of Privy Counsel : an instruction on the mystical path that is aimed at the advanced student and requires knowledge of the theology of prayer.
  • Epistle of Prayer : an introduction to the basics of prayer theology, which shows how the initially weak prayer impulse can grow in the heart of the human being and thus mature to the limit of mystical prayer.
  • Epistle of Discretion of Stirrings (letter about the differentiation of impulses): Instructions how a person can distinguish his drives and motives on the occasion of the choice of profession in order to find out whether he is called to the mystical path.

Also from the pen of the author, but not completely independent works, but adaptations of Latin models into Middle English, are:

  • Study of Wisdom , a shortening and tightening translation of the Benjamin Minor by Richard of St. Victor.

One last script has since been rejected by research as a fake script, but still fits the theology of the cloud author and can therefore be interpreted together with the other cloud texts:

  • A Treatise of the Discretion of Spirits is a paraphrase of two sermons by St. Bernhard von Clairvaux on the question of how one can distinguish which inner ideas and intuitions serve the growth of man and which harm him psychologically and spiritually.

Theological content

The basic idea can be summarized as follows: Only when a person radically empties himself from the world during contemplation can he be completely filled with God. In order to get to an experience of God, the prayer must empty and stop all thoughts, chains of associations, self-talk, considerations and the like, that is, cover them with a "cloud of oblivion". If the silent spirit of man, after having covered all thoughts with the “cloud of oblivion”, turns upwards in order to touch God, it becomes clear that God is not a finite object that man can understand with comprehending reason ( intellectus ) may include. Only with the ecstatic will ( affectus ) can man ascend further - and knowingly touch God above reason in the “cloud of ignorance”.

The cloud author continues this basic idea in five different considerations:

  • Psychologically: The cloud author gives the person praying tips on how to silence intrusive thoughts that bother him during contemplation, and explains in detail how he can persevere in the midst of the "cloud of forgetting" and the "cloud of ignorance" .
  • Ontological: The cloud author tries to show how the spirit can ascend to God by looking at its being. The human being flows from the divine source of being (through creatio continua ); If the prayer follows his own being with his spirit into the divine source of being, then he can spiritually (not in terms of being!) be drawn into the trinitarian life of God - and thereby be united with God.
  • Christologically: The contemplation of man is following Christ. Christ was stripped of his clothes on the way of the cross and had to enter into the darkness of the cross . The contemplative follows this emptying of Christ (as far as a person can understand it) when he "undresses" himself from his thoughts and enters the contemplative darkness of prayer.
  • Eschatological: If a person persists in the cloud of ignorance , then he is, as it were, in mystical purgatory, is cleansed of all wrong attitudes and thus immediately prepared for the mystical union.
  • Erotic: Just as the bride is married to the bridegroom in the Song of Songs , so the prayer is wedded to God on the higher levels of the mystical path and is therefore of one spirit with him.

literature

Critical Middle English text by the cloud group:

  • Phyllis Hodgson (Ed.): The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Analecta Cartusiana 3 ), Salzburg 1982.

German translations:

  • Wolfgang Riehle (Ed.): The cloud of ignorance (Christian Masters, Vol. 8) , Einsiedeln 1999.
  • Willi Massa : cloud of ignorance and letter of personal guidance. Instructions for meditation , Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1999.

Investigations:

Web links