ABSTRACT
In this chapter McGinn explores how images of darkness have been employed within medieval Christian mysticism from the ninth to the fifteenth century. McGinn draws attention to how Medieval Christian Mysticism confronts us with the sense that in order to see God, it needs to grow dark, an idea that stems from the anonymous author known as Pseudo-Dionysius. McGinn traces the image from Eriugena’s reading of Pseudo-Dionysius’ sixth-century Mystical Theology, into the Franciscan tradition, focusing on Angela of Foligno, who speaks of spiritual abandonment as ‘a most horrible darkness’, but for whom a dark vision of God is also spiritual sight. Turning to a little-known Pseudo-Eckhartian treatise, Von der Übervart der Gotheit (The Ecstatic Journey into God), McGinn examines how the author likewise has the soul make a journey into the divine darkness. Finally, McGinn turns to images from The Rothschild’s Canticles arguing that these conceal even as they illustrate imagistically – not only through their profound abstract nature but also through their detail. McGinn’s chapter offers a profound insight into medieval understandings of image, particularly as it pertains to the Dionysian tradition, and what it means to pass into the darkness to find God.
