From Late Medieval to Early Modern

Pierre de Bérulle, the Parisian cardinal and mystical writer of the early seventeenth century, was lauded by Henri Bremond as possessing the ‘original purity and breadth’ of the ‘French School’. ¹ Bérulle founded the Congregation of the Oratory in 1611, a society for priests, as part of wider reforms in the French church inspired by the Council of Trent and in response to the perceived threats of Protestantism. He sought to deepen the spirituality of the French clergy, with an emphasis on personal faith and piety, and thus to renew the devotional and sacramental life of the Roman Catholic Church. In later life he became a cardinal and served a role in French diplomacy within both Spain and England. Bérulle’s immediate followers in the Oratory, some of whom founded similar congregations of priests, together make up Bremond’s ‘French School’. Whether they merit the title of ‘school’ has been much discussed, ² but it is Bérulle’s contribution to the history of mystical theology that I would like to examine here. Bremond, in his great Literary History of Religious Thought in France, now approaching 100 years old, has done more than anyone to draw attention to Bérulle as the originator of mystical developments in the seventeenth century, suggesting that the ‘association of piety with dogma seems to have been de Bérulle’s especial gift’. ³ Bérulle’s mystical theology belongs to a particularly French and seventeenth-century development, a strong Christ and Virgin Mary-centred piety, which also involves a mystical reading of Christological doctrine for personal transformation. Considering the joining of piety with dogma as the distinctive feature of Bérulle’s mystical theology remains important today because it indicates a change in the place of mystical theology as compared with the late medieval period. What is new in this move, and how should it be assessed in the development of Western mystical theology?