In the present moment, one of the greatest challenges for the contemplative life is also one of its greatest opportunities. Pope Francis has been teaching, repeatedly and with increasing clarity, that Christian contemplation is by its nature a contemplation of beauty.

In the Christian tradition, there is surprisingly little framing like that which Pope Francis gives. Perhaps the reason for the focus right now is the social and ecclesial crisis about our God-given aesthetic sense.

At any rate, Pope Francis seems to regard an experience of beauty as one of simultaneous knowledge and love. This is a surprisingly rare way to talk about Christian contemplation. The tradition is not, for that, completely devoid of explicit teachings about the balance between knowing and the affective draw towards the object known, not for consumption or use, but for contemplative rest. I have previously shown Marcel Văn’s role in passing down and developing the tradition. Now I’d like to show the role of another of my favourite heavenly friends, Titus Brandsma.

Titus is of course most well-known for his death at the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. But in addition to being a Carmelite (O.Carm.) friar and priest, he was also a prominent scholar of Dutch mysticism and spirituality in the interwar period. He started a library collection of important manuscripts and books that were hard to find and illustrative of the local traditions of Christian spiritual life, from the mediaeval Low Countries (including today’s Belgium and its great star of Christian spiritual synthesis, John of Ruusbroec) down to the modern era.

Like any scholar, Titus had a lot of interests and schemes for looking at the topics he put himself to. But I’d like to draw out from his writings, both historical and synthetic, what he thinks about the harmonious workings of our thinking intellect and our affective will in the act of contemplation.

On Ruusbroec

Everything in this topic starts, for Titus Brandsma, with “Ruusbroec, the glory of Dutch mysticism.”[1] Like Titus, I am also very fond of Ruusbroec, and I came to the blessed independently of the saint. I am, to be sure, a bit biased in my own personal way, just as Titus is in his ethnic, national way. But I think what Titus has to say is right. If we want to learn about just why Christian contemplation is necessarily a harmony of intellect and will, Ruusbroec is the historical personage to start with.

Titus introduces his topic so:

If anyone deserves to be known more in the Netherlands, it is this prior of Groenendael near Brussels, who founded a school of the spiritual life there in the 14th century, which brought about a complete renewal and had the greatest influence on spiritual development in these parts. Ruusbroec is the author of De Chierheyt der geesteliker Brulocht [The Adornment of the Spiritual Espousals], which may be regarded as his main work. In him, therefore, the mysticism of marriage, the mysticism of love, which [the earlier Low Countries mystic] Hadewijch sang about in such powerful language, lives on. However, with Ruusbroec the language is less intense. A new element has entered the mystical life. Next to the pursuit of desire, an important place is given to the contemplation of the mind. Next to the working of the will, the working of the mind claims its rights. After the expression of love comes the development of knowledge. Little value is attached to the workings of our natural mind, but much to divine illumination. Just as heaven consists in the vision of God in divine light, so too on earth the glory of the mystical life must be sought in the same vision through divine illumination and grace. Certainly, the element of love is not lacking, but a more rational, intellectual mysticism prevails, albeit in Ruusbroec it was very moderate, as he was under a double influence.[2]

In this passage, we get a glimpse into Titus’ understanding of Christian prayer. Ruusbroec, “under a double influence,” takes all that is good in the affective expressions of the most intense spiritual persons. But he harmonizes it with the human intellect capacity. This is no mere moderation or attenuation of a phenomenon that is fuller and more itself in an intense, ecstatic, off-the-charts sensibility. Rather, according to Titus, “the expression of love” and “marriage” of the soul with God is coupled with “the development of knowledge” and “the workings of the mind” can “claim[… their] rights.”

In other words, Titus judges Ruusbroec to be very human. His mind and his will, his intellect and his sensibility, work in tandem. Thus is opened the conscious possibility for the Christian contemplative to become more completely enveloped in all that God seeks to give us. Of course, the possibility was always latent. Even in less balanced, less harmonized presentations, God offers himself to the whole human person. But what Ruusbroec does is hold both elements—intellect and affect, knowledge and love, mind and heart—together in one undertaking, without a preponderance of one element that would make us think that, at the end of the day, Christian contemplation could dispense with it as if it were part of the training wheels and the other element were the real deal.

For Titus Brandsma, this characteristic of Ruusbroec—his fellow-countryman of a sort—is also a distinguishing mark of the Carmelites—the religious order that he belongs to.

On Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites

We can best appreciate the balance and harmony of Carmelite spirituality, Titus thinks, if we compare it to tendencies that it found itself surrounded by and influenced by. This is not to say that the environment and the influences are wrong. But rather that the emphasis on a natural, or supernatural, tension between the intellect and the will reaches its peak with the Carmelites. In other words, they have a good position from which to teach universally about contemplation—as we see in the Carmelites having already generated three Doctors of the Church. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a particular need for other teachers and experiences of Christian prayer.

So, when Titus puts the Carmelites in contrast to the Franciscans and the Dominicans, we shouldn’t disparage the latter two orders. I don’t think that’s his intention. What he wants us to be aware of is the teaching on the harmony of intellect and will, which is a universal teaching—and one that I think is very important in our own age, indeed promulgated by Pope Francis.

The earliest text

Titus comes to the topic of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites in various writings over a ten-year period. The earliest one dates to 1928, from the same document containing the reflections on harmonized intellect and will in Ruusbroec. He opens historically and descriptively, then moves on to some value judgments:

The Friars Minor [i.e., Franciscans] and the Order of Preachers [Dominicans] were the two largest of the mendicant orders, that is of those who preached and heard confessions all over the country, and who played an extraordinarily important role in the leadership of the spiritual life…

Between them, the Carmelites occupy a not insignificant place; although they are more inclined towards the intellectual side, the Dominican school, they adhere to it with a certain restraint, and seem to be striving, like Ruusbroec, for a golden middle way, whose resemblance to the later great mistress of Carmelite mysticism, St Teresa of Avila, is striking right down to the terminology.[3]

Here, as with Ruusbroec, the Carmelites are characterized as seeking “a golden middle way.” Titus even suggests that the Discalced Carmelites may have a direct or indirect influence from Ruusbroec himself. Historical studies, as far as I can tell, point to an indirect one (by two or three degrees). At any rate, the family connection is there, and Titus the Dutch Carmelite is happy to flaunt it.

At this point, Titus also indicates the balance between Franciscan and Dominican tendencies present in the devotional inclinations and practices of the Carmelite order:

Two particular devotions strengthened religious life at this time and also left their mark on the mysticism of this era. The first, and most general, is that to the humanity of Christ, and more particularly to his suffering. The Friars Minor were certainly at the forefront of this devotion. The second devotion is directed towards the holy Virgin Mary, in which the Dominicans certainly played a leading role with the spreading of the rosary, but the Carmelites, popularly known as the “Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, also occupy a place of honour.[4]

This seems to me a much less important harmony than the intellect–affect or mind–heart synchronization that bears a resemblance to Ruusbroec. But at any rate, Titus indicates it too.

A second text

Thoughts on Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites didn’t leave Titus. For the next important text, however, we have to jump ahead eight years. The work in question is called “Carmelite Mysticism: Historical Sketches.” One section on Elijah, a traditional founder of Carmelite thought and spirituality, identifies the “harmony of intellectual and affective prayer” as a “happy mean.”[5] Titus points to two distinct moments in prayer for the prophet:

The first vision was, in the strict sense of the term, intellectual, the second, the breathing of the spirit of God. The latter completes the former. After the first, the Prophet, even though his mind was illumined from on high, was still subject to weakness and despondency, and prayed that he might die. In the second, he is strengthened and consoled and at peace. These visions are intimately connected. So, in the school of Carmel there is harmony between the intellectual illumination of the mind and the affective love of the heart.[6]

In other words, it’s not just Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross who might be thought as harmonizers of intellect and will in the Christian contemplation experience. No, says Titus, who is a Carmelite but not a member of the Discalced order, this is a feature of the order as a whole. After all, the tendency might be legitimately tracked to the prophet Elijah, too.

Stringing in Bernard of Clairvaux in a throwaway line also, Titus then moves back to his comparison with Franciscans and Dominicans:

While the schools of St Bernard and St Francis are schools of love, seraphic love, and the Dominican, intellectual, the school of Carmel achieves a happy mean, a harmony of both. Surely those who dwell in Carmel would have caught from the flame a spark of the love and zeal which burned in the great Prophet. Fire is the most expressive symbol of love. “I am come to cast fire on the earth.” It is this fire which enveloped Elias [read: Elijah] when, according to the witness of Scripture, he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Wrapped in that seraphic flame he is taken from earth. Carmel must ever feel that glow of its founder’s zeal. It is the mark of the true follower of Elias. It burns in all the Carmelite Saints. Especially do we see it in the soul of seraphic St Teresa of Avila. The smouldering fires that burned in the soul of “this undaunted daughter of desires” is Carmel’s greatest witness to the spirit of Elias. In these great souls have been fulfilled the Prophet’s words which encircle the Order’s escutcheon, “With zeal I have been zealous for the Lord God of Hosts.”[7]

Every Carmelite, not just a Discalced one, seeks the “happy mean,” though to be sure, it is not a mean that has a human measure, for we have now introduced Saint Bernard, famous for his claim that the only measure of love is to love without measure. The happy mean is between one infinity, that of knowledge, and another, that of love. It is a “smouldering fire” and “glow” that we seek, as we can see in a “seraphic” witness. Nothing tame in this happy mean!

Titus continues:

The school of Carmel warns us, in its leading figures, even in the Prophet Elias, that we must never forget the great importance of the intellectual foundation of the contemplative life: the enlightenment of the mind and the exercise of all mental faculties. By the imaginative and intellectual meditation and contemplation we have to climb to the affection of love and to be set afire with love. Even the Mystical Doctor [John of the Cross]… recalls the necessity of imaginative and intellectual meditation, because we cannot always soar into the higher regions of the mystical life. Also, St Teresa, insisting on the affection of love, leads her sisters on the path of imaginative and intellectual vision and meditation.[8]

So, the Carmelite school, in its best representatives and those who express its teaching and spirit best, always points to the indispensable beginning and highest fusion or harmony of both primary dimensions of the human spirit: mind and heart, intellect and will, imaginative and sensibility. It is foolhardy to try to do without one half of this duo. That only leads to ruin. Keeping the poles together, however, one can ascend to the heights.

The last bit of the historical sketch that pertains to my present topic takes us forward in time from Elijah and even from Ruusbroec, but back in time from the Spanish mystics. Titus talks about the little-known English Carmelite Henry Hane:

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the mysticism of Eckhart was predominant in the German lands and the mysticism of Carmel especially in these lands came under its influence. In his works, however, Henry Hane avoids the tendency to excessive [intellectual] subtlety which characterizes the works of Eckhart. He always takes a middle position between the intellectual school of the Dominicans and the school of the Franciscans emphasizing more the affective method and the importance of the will.[9]

Just as Ruusbroec suffers a “double influence” and Elijah points to a “happy mean,” Henry Hane avoids excess and “takes a middle position.” But this isn’t a position of weakness, afraid to commit to the rigour of one absolute. Rather, the dual commitments are to infinities of knowledge and love.

A third text

Another work from the next year contains a section titled the “intimate relationship between the sensible, intellectual and affective elements of contemplation.”[10] In it, we get a return to many of the same arguments, comparisons, and themes. Titus begins by giving a sketch of Dominican and Franciscan tendencies, then jumps into distinguishing marks of his own order:

The Dominicans have considered the intellectual as the most important element in contemplation while the Franciscans generally have placed greater importance on the affective and sensible elements. The first insist on vision; the second, especially on seraphic love of which their father was so eloquent a singer. Carmel takes the middle course between the two schools: it includes several disciples and admirers of St Bernard, but for them the affections of the heart and the sensible representation of God’s mysteries are perfectly united to the consideration of the mind and are intimately joined with intellectual contemplation. In it are also found disciples and admirers of Eckhart, but more ponderous than their master and very ready to combine the most elevated intellectual abstractions with sensible images and very tender love.[11]

Henry Hane shows up here again. He is introduced historically and identified as an example of the tendency to admire an Eckhartian bent, but “more ponderous” and affective. Titus draws a link forward to the Discalced branch:

[The writings of Henry Hane] contain more than one image found in the works of St Teresa; the Saint certainly did not know the sermons of Henry Hane, but both drew from the same tradition. Hane was influenced by Eckhart, but he was on his guard against the too daring expressions of the great Dominican mystic.[12]

At this point, and perhaps for the first time, Titus acknowledges that there might be a criticism to make. Maybe these Carmelites are not actually finding a natural or supernatural harmony that is right and just; maybe they are just “eclectics” without a firm resolve and foundation. He acknowledges the potential criticism and then moves on:

Sometimes the Carmelite school is called the eclectic school; it would be more correct to say that it takes the middle course between the intellectual and affective schools; this is the reason why it exercised so important an influence on popular devotion, especially in the 15th century. The great St Teresa and St John of the Cross were faithful to this tradition of avoiding extremes and harmonising the spiritual life, although St Teresa leans toward the affective school and St John of Cross toward the intellectual; the synthesis of their mysticism, which will remain the glory of Carmel, is a harmonious connecting of the different elements of contemplation we find sketched in the medieval Carmelite school.[13]

Thus, in Titus’ view, Teresa and John are both Carmelite middle-roaders, synthesizers, or harmonizers. But the former saint is more affective, while still intellectual, and the latter is more intellectual, while still affective. Each harmony is played in the key of the particular human person called by God. But it is always and deliberately and persistently a harmony. Variation exists. So does the constancy of balance.

To the Teresian and Sanjuanist harmonies, Titus adds a third from a slightly earlier chronological period—this time not Henry Hane or Ruusbroec:

Another authoritative witness of the [Carmelite] school at the beginning of the 14th century is Sibert de Beka, founder of the convent at Gelderen, later provincial of Germany and doctor of Paris, who is famous for his Ordinale Ordinis and for a commentary on the [Carmelite] Rule. He sees the consummation of the contemplative life in perfect love as long as it is joined to a sweet and savoured knowledge of the goodness of God, a knowledge, moreover, which can only be habitual or implicit. He is therefore also a witness to the harmonious combination of the action of the intellect and will (“Quodlibet I, quest. 6, art. 3” in manuscript Vat. Borgh. 39).[14]

As always, Titus is insistent on the double influence, happy mean, middle position, harmony, and synthesis.

A fourth text

In addition to the two preceding studies on Carmelite spirituality, Titus also produced in the years 1936–1937 one on the definition of mysticism. In it, we find a section detailing “intellectual and voluntaristic trends” in the subject matter.[15] Trading in the descriptive for what is more prescriptive and determinative, the professor zeroes in on his target, not without giving examples along the way:

In the nature of things, mysticism manifests itself in many ways. In the first place, however, it is a union between God and the human being, in which the higher human faculties, intellect and will, play the most important role. Here, however, there is again occasion for distinction. There is, first of all, a more intellectual trend, in which contemplation of the mysteries of God is the highest element; the foretaste of heaven, as well as the happiness of heaven itself, are seen above all in the visio beatifica, the vision of God. Describing this vision of God, when all images are set aside, is most difficult. There is, in this regard, talk of entering into the divine darkness. Besides this intellectual school, there is the more voluntaristic one, also called the school of love, of which, especially for our regions [i.e., Europe, its North, the historical Low Countries], the great masters are St Augustine, St Bernard, and St Bonaventure. In the Netherlands, Hadewijch and Beatrice of Nazareth are the outstanding representatives of this school. If, in general, the Dominicans are more attracted to the intellectual trend, the Franciscans, with their Seraphic Father, and the Cistercians with St Bernard, as leaders, are to be reckoned rather as adherents of the voluntaristic school. One often sees St Teresa, the Seraphic Virgin of Avila, counted in this school, and she most certainly lays very strong emphasis on love, but rather as a means than as a goal. With Ruusbroec and John of the Cross, Teresa and the mystical school of Carmel occupy a more moderate position, which in the case of the first two perhaps still leans somewhat toward the intellectual trend, while Teresa leans toward the voluntaristic. However, this may still count as a notable harmony between the two schools. That is why these mystics also generally count as leaders in the mystical life.[16]

This paragraph is a synthesis of all the preceding historical considerations from the earlier texts. It is worth pondering carefully. In it, we find a good reason to regard the Carmelite Doctors as universal teachers of prayer (as well as strong motivation to return to the texts of my beloved Ruusbroec, I might add). Titus is convinced that contemplation is best regarded, at least at a universal level, as a harmony of intellect and will engaged by the transcendent, all-loving God.

Later decompositions

Up until this stage, Titus has dealt with formulations of Christian prayer experience that, on the whole, keep it all together. The Franciscans may have one tendency, the Dominicans another. But they don’t decompose the whole thing of Christian prayer into one component part. Their emphasis is not an exclusivity—at least in the majority of cases.

Unfortunately, history has also shown that once you start to emphasize one aspect over another, things may eventually move towards into competition. A polarity gives way to a divergence. Titus continues straight on in his article on the definition of mysticism to note this very phenomenon:

Secondly, mysticism must be seen from the point of view of its meaning for life, that is, of its relation to the practice of virtue. Here, too, there is a considerable difference of direction; one must avoid wanting mysticism to be too uniform. The essential and general virtues are those like obedience, humility, love of God and neighbour, purity, detachment from worldly things, and conformity to the will of God. These virtues must also shine in the most withdrawn and quiet contemplation. The Church condemns a degeneration of this sort of life into Quietism, according to which a person, underestimating all human activity, based on an unsound humility, places himself in the hands of God and expects to receive only grace. After a mysticism leaning too much toward Eckhart’s intellectualism, there arose in the Netherlands under Ruusbroec, but still more under the influence of Geert Grote, a trend that we call Devotio Moderna, in which the practice of virtue took a prominent role, perhaps too prominent. While highly esteeming mystical graces, which were emphatically regarded as a gift of God, this movement stressed the need of making oneself receptive to these, not placing any obstacle to them, and, on the human part, to do God’s will, without considering an entitlement that one’s efforts result in mystical graces. The result was that mysticism was rarely spoken of, and there was regard only for asceticism. Holiness through works was the ideal. This led, though only very gradually, to the externalization of religion, against which, with Protestantism, a reaction toward interiority set in. Yet the Devotio Moderna was a mystical school, because it regarded mysticism and asceticism as a whole, of which mysticism was above all divine and asceticism above all human. Thus, especially in the early years of the Devotio Moderna, we find many of the devout with mystical gifts, and a mystical background to their works.[17]

In other words, mere asceticism and mere intellectualism can be two possible errors that ultimately result from taking the experience of Christian contemplation apart, either discarding (in theory or in practice) the dimension of knowledge in beauty or the dimension of love in it. Thus, the modern era ends up in a tangle of contradictions, from which we are still sorting our way out.

Conclusion

Each of us has to find our own way out of this mess, and my own suggestion would be to take seriously the teaching of Pope Francis, Titus Brandsma, and Marcel Văn. Christian contemplation is an experience of God’s beauty—in his own transcendent nature, in Jesus’ sacred humanity, in the members of the Body of Christ today, and in the natural world. Human experience of beauty entails a harmony of our knowledge and our love, even though either or both may appear subjectively dark to us.

If we are ourselves more affective than intellectual, Titus suggests that a Teresa of Avila may be the master for us: a synthesizer of the knowing and loving dimensions, but whose own personality leans in the direction of the will. On the other hand, Titus advises us, if our character is more intellectual than affective, we might turn instead to the great harmonizers John of the Cross and John of Ruusbroec.

That’s not to discount other guides along the way. They are indispensable, too. But with a stronger grounding in the balanced harmonies of Christian contemplation, all the other players in the orchestra will be found to say something even more profound and personal to us, for we can better situate their contributions and understand the value that they bring, without falling further into the decompositions and errors that teaching on Christian prayer has ended up in.

[1] Titus Brandsma, “Mysticism in the Netherlands” (1928), in Mysticism: Fundamentals and Characteristic Features, ed. Elisabeth Hense and Joseph Chalmers, Collected Works Vol. 4 (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2023), 83–103 (here, 94).

[2] Ibid., 94–95.

[3] Ibid., 96.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Titus Brandsma, “Carmelite Mysticism: Historical Sketches” (1936), in ibid., 245–325 (here, 254).

[6] Ibid., 255.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 255–256.

[9] Ibid., 272.

[10] Titus Brandsma, “The Spirituality of the Carmelites before the Reform of St Teresa and some Developments of the Calced Tradition Thereafter” (1937), in ibid., 326–351 (here, 340).

[11] Ibid., 340.

[12] Ibid., 340–341.

[13] Ibid., 341.

[14] Ibid..

[15] Titus Brandsma, “Mysticism” (1937), in ibid., 357–366 (here, 359).

[16] Ibid., 359–360.

[17] Ibid., 360.