ABSTRACT
Mystics abounded during the European Middle Ages; they were a natural product of the flourishing monastic life of the period. The two usual preconditions for mysticism, an ascetic life that allows one to overcome the pull of the body’s delight in things physical and a life devoted to prayer, meditation and contemplation that open one to the “still, small voice,” are more easily attained by nuns, monks, anchoresses and hermits than by lay people whose lives are dominated by the affairs of daily life and the needs of the body – food, drink, shelter, children. As in the East, monasticism was generally regarded as the highest form of Christian life precisely because only it allowed one to concentrate on God.
