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In the West, after the contributions of the Irish missionaries, who introduced a most austere rule--St. Columban's maxima pars regulae monachorum mortificatio est [“The largest part of the rule of monks is mortification.”]--St. Benedict's spirituality dominated. It followed the ancient tradition of St. Basil, above all, and of St. Cassian. A very well-balanced ascesis regulated and divided the monk's time among the lectio divina [spiritual reading], chanting of the office, fasting and manual labor. However, this balance did not last long. Cluny made the offices more solemn, prolonged them too, in order to lessen the manual work that was not very attractive to the monks. Citeaux was established in reaction to Cluny; it returned to the greatest severity in the rule, and was striking in the sobriety and bareness of its style of life, and by the deliberate poverty of its abbeys: cum Christo paupero pauperi [poor with Christ the Poor One].
The Camaldolesi of St. Romuald and the Carthusians of St. Bruno cultivated the state of hermits and recluses at the side of the cenobites. From the beginning of the Middle Ages, penance was introduced among the austere hermits with the extreme means of discipline, flagellation and the hairshirt. It was reminiscent of, dangerous perhaps, the ascesis of the desert, to which was added a completely new element--mortification practiced in view of an expiation for sins committed and also in view of a reparation for the sins of the world. It is sufficient here to name Peter Damian.
The 11th century saw the rise of the very popular devotion of pilgrimages to sanctuaries--Jerusalem, St. James of Compostella, Rome. A mass of pilgrims took to the road as beggars along all the routes. The Crusades led the Westerners to Palestine. This discovery was decisive for Western mysticism; it made a strong impression on the imagination of the West and aroused an ardent imitation, a conformation to the humanity of the historic Christ of the Gospel.
The 12th century turned its ascesis and spirituality toward the image of Jesus poor, humiliated and crucified. St. Francis espoused Lady Poverty and received the stigmata. Later Henry Suso gave himself to extreme mortification in imitation of Jesus scourged.
In the 13th century the Dominicans stressed study and made an ascesis of it. On the other hand, St. Bernard and St. Bonaventure accentuated the monastic vows and again took up the classical stages of the spirituality of St. Denys: purgatio, illuminatio, perfectio.
The end of the Middle Ages shows a certain lack of spirit and an impoverishment of the spiritual life. Scholastic studies were directed to the intellect and replaced the lectio divina and prayerful contemplation; prayer itself became formalistic. What is called devotio moderna widened the distance between spirituality and a more and more speculative theology. The Dutch school of Gerard Groote inspired Thomas a Kempis whose Imitation of Christ summarizes the tendencies of the recent past and makes concrete this unfortunate divorce. Union with God was accompanied by a certain anti-intellectualism, a reaction against the theology of the schools and knowledge. The 15th century, in its effort to escape the dryness and rigidity of formal rules, threw itself into the emotionalism of sorrow and suffering. Intense devotion to the suffering humanity of Christ developed into a cult of dolorism with forms of mortification that are really disquieting.
The Renaissance humanized ascesis, aligning it with its integral but still devout humanism. Spirituality broke up into a multitude of devotional practices. In the 16th century, Ignatian spirituality made ascesis a method and a technique of conversion, and St. Francis de Sales formed, in the beginning of the following century, a psychological ascesis of the interior states. They both went beyond the monastic environment and began a secular ascesis.
Ascesis became more psychological in paying attention to the states of consciousness. St. Thomas had already analyzed the ecstasy of St. Paul and had shown a lively interest in the relation between soul and body and in the modes of knowledge. Likewise, with St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, Spanish mysticism analyzed the interior and psychological aspect of the mystic ascent.
The ascesis of St. Cyran, Port Royal and Jansenism mistrusted human nature. Its soteriological and pastoral preoccupation accentuated the rigorist austerity of the penitential practices imposed upon the faithful. Besides its moral relaxation, the 18th century, in which the austerity of the 17th was in a sense prolonged, manifested a spirituality that appears intellectually impoverished and somewhat static, without the spontaneity and warmth of former times.
A very special reaction manifested itself in quietism, but it was with St. Margaret Mary Alacoque that the entirely new devotion to the Sacred Heart showed reparational ascesis. Mortification in order to satisfy divine justice and on behalf of all sinners took the place of the effort for personal perfection.
The shock of the French Revolution accentuated the practices of reparational penances and expiatory ascesis. The psychologism and rationalism of the 19th century still more completely separated spirituality from dogma and theology. At present we are witnessing a vigorous return to sources in the patristic past and original monasticism.
If we turn toward the East, we shall see that it has remained faithful to the spirituality of former times that was common to both East and West. Eastern monasticism had already been perfected in the 5th and 6th centuries. Under Justinian it was proclaimed “a sacred thing” and “a mystery”, because it expresses in a compact and exemplary form the universal vocation of the priesthood of the faithful, because each and everyone is called to interiorize and adapt it. The priesthood does not enter here except as a sacramental aid; it does not constitute a necessary element.
As an organic part of the Church, monastic spirituality synthesizes the religious ideal of a life proposed in its general outlines to all men. The dogmatic definitions on hesychasm in the 14th century only stated precisely what had existed from the beginning and showed the homogeneous character of Eastern spirituality. It is inseparable from “mystic theology”, the theology of the mystery that had been completely formed during the golden age of the Fathers.
At the present time, the two spiritualities--Eastern and Western --complement each other; we can apply the saying of Evagrius: “The gnosticos (knower) and the practicos (doer) have met, and in the middle of the two stood the Lord.”20.1 They met in a search for the essence of the experience of the past in order to establish a balanced spirituality, freed from the extreme forms that were stressed too much in the ascesis of a past age, a spirituality that has its axis in eschatology, fully conscious of the present state of the world, and preoccupied, above all, with its destiny.