The Cloud of Unknowing - a 14th c. Christian Meditation Manual
The Cloud of Unknowing is a fourteenth-century Middle English manual for Christian silent meditation, a practice that dates back to the beginning of Christianity.
By the third century, and probably earlier, there were Christians who sought to put the teachings of Jesus into practice by relinquishing what they owned, going to live alone in caves in the desert, seeking inner stillness and silence (hesychía) through meditative prayer techniques, developing lovingkindness and hospitality, chanting and meditating on scripture, and practicing some form of mendicancy, production, or craft to support themselves. It is worth noting that this could describe the consecrated life and practice of a Buddhist or a Hindu. These Christians in Egypt are known collectively as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Scriptural underpinning for their way of life can be found in the lives of Elijah and John the Baptist, in Jesus’ praying alone in seclusion, and in his temptation in the wilderness. Practices similar to monastics in Egypt were also recorded to have appeared quite early in the Judean desert.
Some of these desert dwellers had pioneered an apophatic, wordless spirituality that brought them into a state of hesychía. Apophatic theology holds that since God cannot be described, the descriptive terms we use fall short, and we are left with everything God is not. The influential theologian and gifted writer Evagrius of Pontus (345-8–99) taught his monastics yogic techniques of stillness and concentration. The purpose was so that instead of limiting the divine within human rational categories, they might cultivate an attentive, listening silence through which to connect with the more intuitive, transcendent realm that is the object of religion in general. See my post, Christianity Was a Religion of Silent Meditation from the Start.
Anthony of Egypt (251–353) was an early and notable practitioner of these techniques. Athanasius of Alexandria (296-8–393) wrote an influential biography of Anthony. Its widely read Latin translation would help spread the concepts and practices of meditation westward. Desert monasticism was replicated in Italia, Gallia, and Britannia.
An anonymous Neoplatonist author in the late fifth and early sixth centuries wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite—the name of Paul’s convert in Athens (see Acts 17). He is now known as Pseudo-Dionysius, and sometimes in English as Denys. He was an early proponent of apophatic theology. (His work On the Divine Names is mentioned in my post A Spirituality of Silence in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Today.) An anonymous author from fourteenth-century England—using no pseudonym—translated Denys’ work, On Mystical Theology (Perì Mystikȇs Theologías), into Middle English. The same author wrote a book called The Cloud of Unknowing.
The Cloud of Unknowing is a technique and spiritual guide for contemplative prayer written during the latter half of the fourteenth century. Its underlying message is that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God’s particular activities and attributes and to be courageous enough to surrender the mind and ego, casting them beneath a thick “cloud of unknowing,” at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God. It continues the apophatic tradition, seeing it as fundamental to religious life. It also critiques an understanding of its guidance as being about “sham spirituality” that seeks external, physical sensations in the body rather than the interior, spiritual work accomplished through a discipline of “forgetting,” of placing the self “nowhere.”
The prologue to The Cloud of Unknowing is a remarkable prayer translated by the author into Middle English. It comes from the eleventh-century Leofric Missal for the Sarum rite of Christianity, which was still practiced in Britain then. It was originally a centering prayer intoned in Latin by a priest before exiting the vesting room. It was translated in this way:
God, unto whome alle hertes bene opene, and unto whome alle wylle spekeþ, and unto whome no prive þing is hyd, I beseche þe for to clence [cleanse] þe entent of myne hert wiþ the unspekabille gift of þe holy goste þat I may parfytely [perfectly] love þe, and wortþyliche prayse þe. Amen.
The cleansing spoken of is not a cleansing from sin or unworthiness, nor is it a cleansing of some particular content of thoughts; rather, it is a cleansing away of thoughts themselves, a divestment from objects of mind that creates an opening and entry into a place of unknowing where one’s love and adoration can be perfectly complete, and thus worthy, free from the distraction and constriction of the heart that identification with thoughts and emotions can bring.
What is remarkable about this ancient prayer, is that English reformer Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) would see fit to include it in the Book of Common Prayer, the complete vernacular liturgy he compiled for the Church of England used to this day throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church in the USA. It is a collect prayed by the congregation or presider near the beginning of many Eucharistic services—the Collect for Purity. What is missed by worshipers today is that its inclusion and prescription for use amounts to an endorsement of public mysticism, part of an individually and collectively useful meditation practice meant to train the mind in spiritually transformative ways. Also often forgotten is that Cranmer paid for his work with his life; he was burned at the stake under the reign of Mary I.
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Self-emptying or kenosis is at the heart of The Cloud of Unknowing, but when it was written, the discipline of self-emptying was on the wane. In some respects, it coincides with a final split between the theoretical, intellectual theology of Late Medieval Scholasticism and a mystical theology grounded in liturgy, common life, and practices of charity and social justice that could still include ordinary, unlettered people. Without apophatic disciplines, theology began to border on idolatry. Europe would enter the modern world amid social, cultural, political, and intellectual changes when such spirituality was at a low ebb. To some extent, the coming Renaissance and Reformation would revive interest in and dedication to Christian spirituality, however, the loss of contemplative practices by Christians of all kinds would contribute to the spiritual impoverishment of Christianity in the modern era.
Half a millennium later, we are at a new juncture in Christian history. Christianity has, in many ways, become a form of supremacist idolatry, thoroughly disconnected from the actual teachings and ancient spiritual practices of Jesus and his apostles, and people know it. That is why they are walking away. Christianity still has a chance to regain relevance by reconnecting with the teaching and practice of Jesus, his apostles, and early Christians; this includes the highly relevant and developmentally useful practice of silent meditation found throughout Christianity’s written legacy, including The Cloud of Unknowing.