ABSTRACT
In his seminal study Western Mysticism, Dom Cuthbert Butler remarked that the mystics may be studied in three distinct ways: for their religious philosophy and theology; for material for psychophysiology which investigates such phenomena as auto-suggestion, auto-hypnotism, ecstasy, and trance; and as a religious experience. According to Evelyn Underhill, mystics cannot be cut out of their background and judged by spiritual standards alone: "Every mystic is profoundly influenced by his environment and cannot be understood in isolation to it. It has been said that the love of God is mysticism; or that mysticism is only the Christian life lived on a high level; or that it is Roman Catholic piety in extreme form. The works of leading female continental mystics were also translated into Middle English. The Index search will undoubtedly produce further evidence of the processes of excerption, compilation, emendation, and interpolation which mark the mystical texts throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.
