De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum

On the True Conversion of the Mind to God

Trithemius, Johannes

On the True Conversion of the Mind to God, with the author’s dedicatory letter to Johannes Engellender, Sponheim, 20 November 1500. With a poem by Gernandus Naso and an excerpt from Libanius Gallus.

An oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, on the true conversion of the mind to God.

Gernandus Naso

Whatever Abbot Trithemius has drawn forth from your shrines, learned Greece, both pleases and is read. Only preserve so great a man, because he adorns the doctrine of salvation and refers it to Christ, who is its origin.

Hain 15638 Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, to Johannes Engellender, jurisconsult and most eloquent orator, greetings.

I received your most delightful letter, bearing before it the ancient majesty and grace of eloquence, when our Mutianus delivered it; by it you affected me both with incredible pleasure and with a certain honorable reproach. For what greater pleasure could have befallen me than to be loved by you, a man by far most learned and most upright in every respect, whose learning, wisdom, and eloquence kings and princes admire, cultivate, and respect, so much so that all the more learned proclaim that most reverend prelate of Cologne Agrippina fortunate, because he has obtained you as the most worthy prefect of those who serve as his secretaries? Or what reproach ought to lie closer to my heart than to know myself far beneath your praises, and by no means to be the Trithemius whom, deceived by love for me, you proclaimed?

But I give immortal thanks for your charity and goodwill toward me, since you deigned to anticipate me, when I wished indeed, though I did not dare, to knock at the doors of your friendship, though I had hitherto deserved nothing at all with you. And so that I should not let these little letters go off to you empty, I have added an oration on the conversion of the mind to God, which I recently delivered at Erfurt in a gathering of the fathers, to be corrected by the file of your wisdom; and this same oration, cleansed of faults, I dedicate, give, and inscribe to you. And from now on, when I have been made more certain that these very small things have not displeased you, I, received under your patronage, promise in return that I shall attempt greater things in literary work.

Mutianus Rufus himself, through whose mediation your love for me became known to me, that most celebrated interpreter of nature and antiquity, who now, as I read before him, wrestles with Homer and the other Greek authors, of whom I have an abundance, and whose Attic monuments you will see in the near future, sends you very many greetings and commends himself to you.

Farewell. From Sponheim. In the year 1500, in the month of November, on the twentieth day.

An oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, on the true conversion of the mind to its own principle.

I would have greatly wished, reverend fathers, and would have desired with all my heart, that my mind had attained that splendor of the divine majesty by which I might make manifest, in a fitting, proper, and suitable oration, the one goal of our institution: the true, free conversion of the soul, released from the lowest things, to the principle of its essence, God, the best and greatest. For I believe that nothing can be said by me in this holy synod, at this most important time, when, shameful to say, nearly all of us, blinded by evil affections, wander disgracefully from the knowledge and love of the supreme, unchangeable principle, either more honorably or more usefully than concerning the conversion of the mind to God, since all that we, voluntarily bound to God by the most sacred laws and by the institutions of our elders, do in this mortal life ought to urge upon us nothing other than the return and passage of the soul to the center of its blessedness, which is God.

We know, moreover, that the soul, sweetly and freely turned through love toward its own principle, when it is separated from the body, turns joyfully to God himself as to the immovable center of its rest; remaining happy in him and blessed without end, it is thereafter pressed by no disturbances. Therefore, fathers, nothing sweeter can ever befall those who love God in this life than continually either to speak or to hear about the true conversion of the mind to its own principle, by which it is always stirred up, in greater measure, both to contempt of the lowest things and to love of the things above.

And I, fathers, although I am to be reckoned of no learning among you and of no merit before God, nevertheless, assigned to this province of speaking, am accustomed to strive for nothing more than to bring forward publicly, to the best of my powers, those things which may make you despisers of the world and cause your minds to burn more fully with the love of God. Therefore, as you yourselves, the judges of my testimony, will bear witness for me, I have never employed the brilliance of glittering eloquence in the orations delivered by me; I have omitted, even to the point of envy, the local introductions of the Scriptures, which some call interrupters of sentences, lest either by a more polished treatment I should hide from simpler people the sense of necessary admonition, or disturb the memory by taking up too many passages. For I have always desired more to move the minds of my hearers to inward compunction and divine love than either to admiration of myself or to love of secular knowledge.

Yet this is accustomed to draw me not a little away from my purpose: that I must speak in a public assembly of elders, whom both their most holy manners ought to make worthy of reverence, and their learning in the Scriptures, abundantly rich in every way, ought deservedly to make as terrible to me as an army arrayed in battle; I must speak, a sinful and unlearned man, to whom it is not unjustly often imputed as a fault by many that I have not joined together the rhapsodies, gleaming with varied beauty, by which powers are assigned to equals of most mighty Hercules, to shake the club from him, and to train recruits able to wield spears swifter than the wind. I must speak especially about those matters which, withdrawn far from the senses, are accessible only, such as they are, to those whom that divine ray, stripped of the evil passions of the flesh, has led by the ascent of inward love above the understanding and into the mystical spectacles of divine things.

Therefore, for the moment I commit the account of my name to you, who have imposed upon me, though insufficient, this burden of speaking, for your authority has always been to me in place of Apollo’s oracles. I desire in my whole life to be devoted to you as much as I can, as I remember that I have already shown myself before now, and as I shall promise for the future, wholly myself, and, if after the renunciation of all things it is still permitted to call anything my own, my will, to your commands and to those of the supreme creator of all.

But now, fathers, as we are about to say a few things on the conversion of the mind, let us humbly invoke the most excellent goodness of the supreme and unchangeable good, which alone by its mercy and compassion can convert us to itself, since it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God, whose grace is ready for those who love him. And let us say: Come, Holy Spirit.

If anyone, fathers, thinks that I am about to deliver this oration on the conversion of the mind either because I desire novelties or because I am moved by empty little glory, he is greatly mistaken. For the very profession of our religion, instituted by most holy men, is nothing other than a certain path of our own soul, which freely, tranquilly, and without restraint desires, through the exercise of holy love, so long as it lives in the flesh, to turn itself back to its own principle and to be perpetually united with it.

For this reason, moved freely according to the force of our institution, we have left behind the world and all things that are in the world. We have resigned ourselves, all that is ours, and our own very will into the hands of another, for the love of God, in the presence of all the saints, for no other cause than this: that our soul, having nothing in this world to which it may cling with delight, may always be tranquil, quiet, free, and truly released from all things seen on earth, and may be able to raise itself, without impediment from anything, to the love of the highest good by daily, and indeed most holy, exercises.

For a certain writer says in sacred matters:

Those at rest can in some measure search the law, If hearts, free from the world’s noise, are vacant.

And again, concerning the contemplation of heavenly things, which alone is the wisdom of Christians, he says:

Wisdom fills a mind tranquil and free from cares, And will be the guest of a peaceful breast.

Since these things are so, among all the matters which the consideration of our salvation is wont to bring before us, there is nothing about which we ought deservedly to be admonished more frequently and more earnestly than this: that, remembering daily as far as we can the brevity of the present life and the terrible necessity of our approaching departure, we should always carefully draw our soul away from all earthly things. For it will never be able to be united with the highest principle unless, released and free from all other things, it has first been united with itself.

But for persuading men of these things no one is fit, no one is sufficient, no one is rightly ordered, except the one whom divine love, by the singular gift of its grace, has made experienced; so much so that whoever confounds his understanding through sensible things, or disturbs his affection by the passions of the flesh, is no more disposed to the contemplation of eternal things than an owl is to the light, or a blind man to the knowledge of colors. Into the mystery of this matter, to the mountain burning with divine light, Moses, who was to become leader of the people, did not dare to approach until, after he had taken off the coverings of his feet, by which worldly affections are signified, he was admitted naked and released to the contemplation of divine things. And that great prophet Isaiah, when he had seen the mystical vision of almighty God sitting upon a lofty throne, trembled, mindful of his own frailty, and did not consent to thrust himself further into divine spectacles until one of the seraphim, flying to him, had cleansed the fearful man’s mouth with a burning coal.

And we, fathers, whenever we are about to speak or hear about the highest and unchangeable good, should lay aside the shoes of worldly affections, fearing that which God threatens against vicious men who dare to scrutinize his majesty, saying: “The beast that touches the mountain shall be overwhelmed with stones.” Let us also raise our mind upward through the desire of inward love, so that, touched by the coal of divine fervor, it may be made worthy to be filled with the mystical inspection of divine spectacles.

For I say to you, who have gathered in this lecture hall of an unlearned man, that no one can truly love God without some prior knowledge of him; and that knowledge, the maker of love, comes to no one who has not first been purged in affection from all hatred or love of those things that are in the world and that follow the movement of the flesh. Knowledge of the highest good causes love in us, and love in turn perfects knowledge. For the Son of God also said to the Father concerning believers: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Therefore from knowledge arises love, and from love arises for us the everlasting enjoyment of the highest good.

That highest and unchangeable good, which we call God, from whom every good in heaven and on earth is and is named, incomparably far transcends both our understanding and the angelic understanding, since indeed he is above every position. Toward knowledge of him our mind, aided by him, is advanced more by affection than by intellect. For our soul, duly cleansed from all these earthly passions, ascends to God ascends by loving to him whom it cannot reach by understanding, since it leaves far behind all images and likenesses, both of those things that are and of those that are not; and alone with love it enters the darkness of divine contemplation, in which no idol is admitted, no form, no mass set anywhere before the senses or the intellect. For as Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, disciple of Paul, says in the Mystical Theology: that divine majesty, existing far beyond every affirmation and negation, according to our intellect, is neither soul, nor sense, nor imagination, nor opinion, nor reason, nor understanding; nor does it have reason or understanding; nor is it spoken or understood. Nor is it number, nor order, nor greatness, nor smallness, nor equality, nor likeness, nor unlikeness. Nor does it stand, nor is it moved, nor does it enact rest. Nor does it have power, nor is it power, nor is it light, nor life, nor substance, nor age, nor time. Nor is there any spiritual touching of it; nor is it knowledge, nor truth, nor kingdom, nor wisdom. Nor is it one, nor unity, nor deity or goodness; nor is it spirit, insofar as we ourselves can know. Nor is there a denomination of Son or of Father; nor is it any other thing among those that are known to us or to anyone in the world. Nor is it anything of those things that are, nor of those that are not. Nor do those things that are know the highest good itself as it is. For there is no speech of it, nor name, nor knowledge; nor is it darkness, nor light, nor error, nor truth; nor is there any affirmation at all of it, nor any negation. But when we make affirmations or negations of those things that come after it, we neither affirm nor remove it itself. For that highest ineffable good, the perfect and singular cause of all things, is above every affirmation; and its excellence is above every negation, simply and absolutely free from all things that can be thought, understood, or spoken by us or by anyone in the world, and beyond all things. Indeed, whatever we can conceive in the mind, grasp with the intellect, or utter with the mouth is not God. But what he is, we can in no way know, understand, or say. Therefore, since that highest good, God, the immutable principle of all things, is absolutely none of those things that we understand or can understand, and since we can understand only by the service of the senses, which feed on the mass of bodily objects, while everything spiritual is farthest removed from those senses: whoever still clings to the senses, whoever, blinded by the passions of his flesh, sinks the desiring power of the soul into the chains of evil affections, cannot possibly either ever perceive this gift of mystical illumination himself or profitably persuade others about it. For only the soul of a clean heart, lifted up from the lowest things not by intellect but by affection, can now, while established in the body, sweetly see God by loving, in a mirror and in an enigma. And when at last, released from the flesh, free and absolved from every disordered affection, it has returned to its principle, then, more united to God through the grace of love, it will know him perfectly, as the Son of God promised us, saying: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” But now, proceeding to the examination of the senses, we shall see how far their consideration is from the knowledge of God.

¶ That great prince of theologians, Saint John the Evangelist, at the beginning of his theology, beautifully concludes concerning the highest good with affirmations that seem nearer: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Come now, man, you who trust in sensible things, who have learned to exercise the mind for understanding from nowhere but through sensible things; come, I say, and question your senses themselves, so that they, who report to you countless other things, may teach what the light is that shines in the darkness and cannot be comprehended. First test your hearing.

Have you heard what light is? Show me, if you know, what material light is, so that through it an ascent may be prepared for me to the spiritual light which I have sought in all things. Hearing will answer you, saying: I am airy; be content if I report airy sounds to you. I have not heard light. But if I have ever heard anything about it, it was not light itself, but air moved by the tongue, very far removed from the truth of light, which began and passed away. Such is not the incomprehensible light.

Smell will say: I indeed am not so luminous; I am of vapor; learn vapors from me. Why do you seek from me things foreign to me? If light is not vapor, it has nothing to do with me. Taste, when questioned about light, will answer: I dwell among liquids. If the light you seek is not a liquid, either sweet or bitter, or at least mixed, judgment of it does not pertain to me. Touch will answer: Do not force from me what I cannot comprehend. I am corporeal; I report corporeal things. Seek from others; I do not know what light is.

Turn at last, finally, to the shining eyes; by the light in which, above the other senses, indeed in which alone, they delight, call them to witness. Let them indicate to reason what light is. Sight will at once answer: I am a shining spirit, and I am a spiritual splendor; when questioned, I shall gladly set forth my proper offices. Light is a certain spiritual, sudden, and very broad emanation from bodies, without detriment to their own nature: namely, an emanation of a certain brightness from transparent things, but of color from the opposites of these, and of quantity, figure, and motion from all things.

Now gather every kind of color into one genus. What will this whole be, except a certain many-colored light, or light made opaque in the more solid and darker matter of earth? Separate out the earth mixed with it. What will remain, except a certain quality, indeed the brightness and act of the transparent, just as color is the act of the opaque? Color indeed is opaque light; light, however, is clear color, indeed a certain flower and vigor of a transparent body and of colors, as if one-colored in act and many-colored in power. What is this that sight has reported to you about light? Is this the light that it described? I have never heard anything defined more obscurely. In what way can it happen that nothing is more obscure than light, than which nothing is clearer, when through it all things are clear? See what sense contributes toward the incomprehensible light, when it cannot rightly comprehend even the material light in which it is and is moved. Therefore, despising the blind tradition of the senses, let us ascend from here to the lofty watchtower of the mind, to see whether perhaps the mind itself can intimate to us what the light is which is said to shine in darkness.

O mind, you who measure all things rightly, tell me: is perhaps the light that shines in darkness God himself, than whom nothing is clearer and nothing more obscure? Nothing is clearer than that God exists, and that he is supremely powerful, wise, and good; for whatever has been made by him proclaims this to our ears, so that no one is deafer than the one who does not hear so great a sound and din of all things. On the other hand, nothing is more obscure than what God is, so that nothing is more darkened than the one who thinks this is perfectly clear to him.

But the mind, illuminated by the light of the catholic faith, and raised through the knowledge of intellect to the cognition of heavenly things, will answer: God is the Father of lights, with whom there is no change by which he might be extinguished or diminished, nor any shadow of turning by which he might in turn enter night or suffer any defect. Again it will say that God is the light in which there are no shadows, the form in which there is nothing formless, and also the beauty in which there is nothing deformed.

But what are these things to him who is above all things and transcends every affirmation infinitely far: who made those things that are out of nothing; uncreated, eternal, immovable, incomprehensible, always existing; who is none of the things that he made, he who made all things? Therefore, mind eager for heavenly things, abandon the senses, pass beyond reason, and, withdrawing even yourself into the affection of the heart, transcend yourself. And even if not for others, at least for yourself do not be slow to acquire by love a taste of the highest and immutable good, leaving behind you all images and every likeness, so that by freely, absolutely, and purely going beyond yourself and beyond all things, with all things removed and, released from all things, naked and alone, you may be able to fly up to the supersubstantial ray of the divine darkness. Meanwhile lead your intellect captive; indeed, leave it buried.

Take care to enlarge your affection as much as you can by loving, since you can by no means comprehend God by understanding, for he stands far above every intellect. Yet access to him lies open to you by loving, if you are pure, if gentle, if tranquil, if released from all things, and rightly united to your very self.

I would not have you be deceived by taste, since whatever you see, whatever you grasp, whatever you say, is not God; and what he is, you, clothed in a frail little body, cannot know, nor understand, nor in any way express, even if you were endowed with all the tongues of the world. Strive nevertheless with prudent sobriety, only as one wholly purified from the affections of the flesh, loving no one in this world except God alone, actually stripped of passions, calm and tranquil, quiet without any disturbance. The ray of the highest good has poured its goodness into you, by which God himself is shown to you to be invisible, infinite, incomprehensible light, the truth of every truth and the cause of all things. Its splendor, or rather its shadow, is that visible and finite light, the cause of visible things, whose nature is to disclose all other things to the rest. But to God, the invisible light, all things are truly and clearly visible through himself: he enlightens every man coming into this world, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made that was made.

But, O reason, do not trust the senses when you go on investigating, with mystical concern, the principle of all things, God, the unfailing light. For all the senses of the body are dulled, and perceive nothing of the highest truth. Sight did not sufficiently report to you about light; the others did not report at all. Everything spiritual is far removed from the senses.

¶ Ascend to that lofty watchtower of the mind, O reason, friend of truth, once the senses have been entirely lulled. Since it is a certain intellectual light and luminous understanding, indeed illuminated by the invisible light through a certain participation, whose object is intelligible light itself, it can lead you by the hand to the summit of the divine darkness, in which the highest Truth inhabits inaccessible light. For what has sight to do with invisible things, when sensory light is what only receives and gives sensory splendor? Turn to the mind itself, wholly purified from every iniquity; it will teach you, O reason, that you are a certain rational light and a shining reason, illuminated by that invisible light itself which shines in darkness. But since, by reasoning, you seek with such eagerness the principle of light as your origin, and since that principle is above all reason and admits absolutely no positive assertion of the things that are or of the things that are not, you must, with all your powers left behind, ascend even above the mind, through an affection free and released from all things, purified from every entanglement either of carnal love or of hatred of any kind, to that supreme ray of divine inspiration. Thus, in the highest truth, which is itself also the highest certainty and an utterly incomprehensible brightness, you may find the truth of light and a brightness beyond all estimation, whose brightness and truth indeed transcend every human and angelic intellect by far beyond comparison.

Its immense abundance of goodness and truth, without detriment to itself, illuminates the minds of those truly seeking it, and powerfully and sweetly drives upward with the invisible fire of its love the very soul which it has found to be purified from all evil and carnal passions. But since the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling depresses the mind that thinks many things, one must not leap so suddenly into so sublime a contemplation of divine things; rather, the mind warns that one must ascend gradually, with the inner affection first purified, and then suitable exercises observed at intervals, lest it happen that one is darkened and utterly blinded by excessive splendor.

Our spirit, however, which I would rightly have called by a more excellent kind, is not only summoned by reason to heavenly beauty, when, that is, it argues from things known to the senses that bodily beauty, as something placed in deformity, distance, and changeability, is necessarily imperfect and therefore proceeds from incorporeal beauty. Toward that beauty the spirit itself hastens with eager inquiry, as toward the principle of its own beauty, in which alone it knows that it can become blessed, just as from the beauty which is splendor in in many things, as if in stars, desiring to ascend to the simple light of the good itself, as of the sun. Although it is no form, it is nevertheless the very beauty of beauty; and since its goodness and beauty are infinite, it kindles infinite love in those who draw near.

Although, however, the supreme and unchangeable good, existing far above every affirmation and negation, can be penetrated by no comparison or likeness by any mortal, since there is plainly no proportion at all between the finite and the infinite, the creature and the creator, or man and God, nevertheless in the holy Scriptures it admits many comparisons and likenesses concerning itself, because of the slowness of our understanding, although none at all of the things said of it by our presumed license belongs to it. Not only have our princes and prophets used such things in mystical comparisons and likenesses concerning the highest principle of all things, but so too have all the wiser philosophers of the gentiles, who were able to understand that there is one God, whom they held should be worshiped invisibly by nothing other than devotion of mind.

Among these was Empedocles, who, wishing by a certain imaginable likeness to persuade men that God is infinite and immeasurable, and wholly incomprehensible, fashioned a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. When he sets the structure of this before a weak mind, he makes heaven and earth narrow, and, enclosed within the greatness of that image, at once stupefied and shaken with fear, it humbly adores the divine majesty. And another man, when he attempted to demonstrate the same thing by mathematical reasoning, proposed that one imagine, from a straight line of infinite length, a circle than which no greater or smaller can be given, while the straightness of that line itself is preserved. Although the mind utterly recoils from forming this within itself as an impossible thought, nevertheless it understands by its own nature that from that line there necessarily arises a circle than which no greater or smaller can be given, while the line remains.

For this reason, in the holy Scriptures also, various comparisons and likenesses concerning God are set down; their cause is wrapped in mystical and secret wisdom, known to few, and indeed only to clean hearts, lest the hidden things of the divine mysteries be easily seized by the unclean. These things are to be revealed only to pure lovers of holiness, who, destroying every childish phantasy in sacred contemplations entirely, are able to transcend the summit of the mind and to arrive at the utterly simple beauty of the highest goodness, without any imagination or composition.

For this reason Saint Dionysius, bishop and martyr of Christ, affirms a twofold theology. One is secret and mystical, signifying and truly perfective, because through love it sweetly carries the purified soul above mind and intellect. This theology is accessible to few and friendly to still fewer, namely only to those who, crucifying their flesh with its vices and desires, and trampling underfoot, for the love of God, all the clamor of the tumultuous age, profess that theology not in words but in deeds. The other is more familiar, apparent, and receptive, physical through letters and writings from men to men. We see that today it is held in sufficient honor among many, though it is less powerful than the first in summoning the soul to divine love. A passage from the second to the first must be prepared for us by daily labor; in the first alone is the salvation of the soul preserved.

¶ For by more diligent inquiry and by love one must pass from the created beauty of the world, which physical theology contemplates, to the ineffable beauty of the highest good, which mystical theology considers. There the mind, forgetful of all things that are in the world and released from all things, borne upward by the burning of purest love, begins sweetly, by affection, to admire the beauty of the divine light. This is your theology, cloistered men; this singular study of divine love is enjoined particularly upon you before others, and all your studies must be ordered chiefly toward it.

But alas, I am ashamed to recall the studies of cloistered men, who have turned holy theology into destructive battology: men who pursue leisure and tales, whose god is the belly, for whom in this life nothing is sweeter than eating and drinking, and being fattened with the pleasures of the flesh contrary to regular discipline. The lesser men learn these things from their superiors, when abbots and the other pastors of souls, forgetful of God and unmindful of their own salvation, under the shadow of piety most zealously pursue pride and avarice. spending all their time on transitory things and cares. As if by way of recreation after immense labors, they miserably turn themselves to the various pleasures of the body. Woe to you, and again woe, who, immersed in earthly cares or pleasures, do not rise up to the love of the highest good; who, with your heart turned away from the highest principle, are monks and Christians in name alone. I say to you: unless you are converted to repentance, you will have no share with the lovers in the kingdom of God. Wondrous, indeed astounding, is your madness, which has prevailed so far in blinding you that, although you always live rebellious and opposed to God, you nevertheless so boldly expect from him the kingdom of heaven, as though you were just.

And how can it happen that a soul joined to the body and subjected there to excessive fellow-feeling, a soul that does not admit into itself the ray of divine love, should at last, when separated, go joyfully to God, whom it did not love when it departed? O wretched and unhappy ones, how shamefully you deceive yourselves, who seek your consolations anywhere other than from God. It is impossible for a soul departing from the body to reach its own principle, which is God, joyful and blessed, if, while placed in the body, it did not love God himself above all things. For pure love, free from and detached from all else, makes union between God and the soul; and when this has been neglected by a person throughout his whole life, it must be believed that it can never, or only rarely, be grasped at the point of death. Therefore live, mortals, while you live, bound over to love, always attending to the end of life; the less it is known to you, the more it is to be feared.

Come now, soul, search out where he is who created the whole world with such great beauty, who bestowed upon us so excellent a life, who promised bright and eternal dwellings in heaven to those who love him. You see beauty itself flashing in all things and in varied forms. It is beautiful to dwell in it; yet it is more beautiful and more necessary for the mind, already present in the beautiful, to investigate where these things come from and whence they are made beautiful. It is indeed necessary that the very author of beautiful things be none of them at all; otherwise he will be some part of the things he made, which reason does not admit. Therefore the principle is God himself, above all things, who made all things, whom no intellect can comprehend, because he is above every intellect, and because he created every intellect. He is worshiped in spirit and truth; he is seen by the love of a purest affection, invisible, always remaining immutable, making not himself but us, by our affection, be changed according to the image of his goodness.

Since he has made all things and can do all things, the ineffable principle of all things is not circumscribable, but immeasurable, incomprehensible, including all things, filling all things, containing all things. And because he is immeasurable, he has no magnitude, since magnitude has place only in external things. Indeed, the author of magnitude must not be a participant in magnitude. When he is called great, there is no quantity in him; rather, his greatness is that nothing is more powerful than he, and nothing more sublime, and that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can be compared to him.

Moreover, when we say that God himself reigns through all ages of ages and everywhere throughout the universe, this does not signify measurement in him, nor again any vast immensity; otherwise, by what means would he measure the rest? Nor is it permissible to fashion in him any figure or form, since that incomprehensible divinity and immeasurable majesty of beauty far exceeds, by infinite comparisons and into immensity, everything that can be fashioned, thought, comprehended, or said; nor is he any of the things that mortal man has ever understood or could understand.

About this the prophet Isaiah rightly exclaimed: Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior, who make darkness your hiding place and dwell in inaccessible light; by whose wisdom every human being has been made foolish. O immense beauty of the divine majesty, to be tasted only by loving affection, desirable to the mind above all things, of which we can receive no figure or form, to be desired and loved by us with all our strength; whose love is immeasurable, and whom to know and love is eternal blessedness. For this love is not finite, since even the beloved himself is not finite, but his love is infinite, always in eternal happiness. the rational soul’s supreme and immutable good, always and everywhere full. Therefore his beauty too is lovable above all beauty, for he created every beauty; and since he is both its beginning and its end, he does not participate in it, but, existing beyond comparison and immeasurably above every posited thing in his own beauty, goodness, truth, and eternity, he transcends it.

¶ But now you will have to consider further how the mind itself ought to conform itself to its own principle; by what inquiry it must return to that principle after the enticements of pleasures; what necessity or what usefulness is imposed on those who return; and finally what is the manner of purging the affection from the lowest and carnal passions, as it seeks the highest and unchangeable good, so that, free and released from desires opposed to reason and to the rectitude of the mind, it may put on the upward passage of love. For our soul itself, made in the image of God, as Scripture bears witness, is always stirred by the natural love implanted in it, and desires to have recourse to the fountain of its beauty and to be united to its own principle, which reason has most excellently persuaded it must love; and the nature of loving, surpassing every appearance, consists in the single object of blessedness itself. Whatever you show it by referring it to appearance is not enough, since in that very thing it always seeks something else that formed it. For reason teaches that everything which has form, and form and appearance itself, is something measured, and for that reason is neither universal, nor self-sufficient, nor beautiful by its own nature, but rather mixed, not pure, not simple, and made by another. Therefore these things must indeed be beautiful, but measured. But the highest good itself, which is truly beautiful, or rather above beauty, is circumscribed by the limit of no measure. Certainly it is not formed; likewise it is not appearance, nor something participating in any of those things that are known to us or to anyone in the world. Therefore that which is first lovable and exists first utterly surpasses every appearance; and there the beauty of intelligible beauty, above every understanding, and its comeliness, is the highest goodness itself, free and absolute from all things that are and that are not, always existing, the living principle of all things, the highest and unchangeable good of the rational soul, everywhere and always present.

When this first shines upon a soul now serene and purified from the lowest things, it kindles a wondrous love, when, that is, the soul, transcending and casting off in the mind all forms and intentions, not only imaginable but also intellectual, then through love of the infinite good despises itself and rejoices with ineffable joy in all things that either can be spoken or thought of God. This indeed the soul can sometimes attain not only after the present life, but even in this life, when, purified from the lowest things and freely restored to itself and united, it is borne upward through the desire of love, while its own affectionate movement toward God remains, so that, utterly forgetful of all things that are in the world, and even not knowing itself, it rejoices with inexpressible joy. Those who have experienced these things know them; if time permitted, their virtues could be cast in the face of those who, since they are carnal and devoted to vices, with a veil spread over their heart, dream that the mystical theology of the saints and the contemplative life have no truth in them, and judge that they are fashioned, as they themselves are accustomed to say, in the opinion of an unlearned man, according to the quality of affections. Of them the holy apostle said: The animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is examined spiritually. And holy Jude the apostle says: These are they who separate themselves, animal men, not having the Spirit. Unhappy are those who immerse themselves in earthly cares and the pleasures of the flesh, who hunt after the vain knowledge of this world together with false honors; just as their mind, always occupied with the lowest things, never knows how to shake itself free from sensible things, so it does not rise up to the sweetness of divine love. You are mistaken, O mortals, and very greatly mistaken indeed, who, whether intent on vain studies, or sunk in the cares of the world, or oppressed by pleasures of the flesh or evil passions, think that you either know or love God. For it cannot happen that a mind which loves any other thing whatever with which it is occupied can purely love the highest and unchangeable good, which is God, or ever be joined to him through desire; but there must be no other thing at all, neither good nor evil, in at hand, so that, free and released from all things, it may someday grasp, alone, the One alone. For union between God and the mind cannot come to be unless, after all things have been cast aside that are wont either to stain the affection or to confound the intellect, the mind itself is joined through love: pure to the most pure, clean to the most clean, one to the One, and alone to the Alone.

Now, man, approach the deep heart; and after such cultivation of your soul, whereby through the study of letters and the various traditions of teachers, from youth to old age and advanced age, you have labored for a little knowledge, at last cast the seed of divine sweetness into the field of your heart, so that someday you may receive the fruit of most holy love, without which no one will arrive at the enjoyment of the unchangeable good. The studies of letters are indeed beautiful; to devote labor to received theology is pleasant; to have knowledge of law, astronomy, poetry, music, rhetoric, arithmetic, philosophy, and the other arts is certainly delightful. Yet one must not grow old in them in such a way, not linger, not consume all the time of life; rather, from these one must ascend by the ladder of love to the highest beauty, in which the true blessedness of the soul infinitely transcends every created beauty.

Otherwise, O learned men, what does it profit to cultivate the field of the mind laboriously through the daily study of letters, as though by plowing, if either, barren, it is not sown with divine seed, or the slender fruit of inward love is choked among the thorns of riches and the briars of pleasures? If we believe the proverb, or rather, if with open eyes we see what experience teaches us, integrity of life is rarer among the learned: the brighter they are in intellect through acquired knowledge, the fouler they are in affection. In their person, Saint Augustine, having heard of the conversion of Saint Anthony and moved by just grief, cried out: “The unlearned rise up and seize heaven, and we, with our doctrines, serving flesh and blood, descend to hell.” Turn back to the heart, O wise men; leave vain cares; purify your souls from every carnal affection; drive out hatred together with love; cleanse your minds of all things that can impede the sweet divine influx, so that you may be able truly to love God. To his surpassing enjoyment the soul can in no way be admitted after the present life if, while set in the flesh, it has not loved him above all things. Therefore, so that a gradual ascent toward true conversion may be prepared for the mind, since no one suddenly becomes supreme, we shall erect, in a few words, a ladder distinguished by seven steps. By it the mind itself, ascending in some measure to the knowledge of the highest good and meanwhile persevering steadfastly in holy exercises of divine love, may deserve to obtain sweetness.

The first step, then, is the purification of the soul itself from every affection for corruptible things, actions, and desires, so that it may be clean, quiet, tranquil, released from cares, empty of evil desires, free from every carnal love, and united to itself as far as possible in its innate beauty. For the soul’s natural beauty, formed by the highest beauty, is made foul by mixture with the body it has assumed, just as ugliness befalls gold if it is covered over with clods of earth. If someone shakes these off, pure gold at once remains; and it is now beautiful when it has been separated from foreign matter, content, that is, in its purity, with its own beauty.

In the same way, when the soul has been separated from those desires that it conceived in itself through too much commerce with the body, and has been freed from the other disturbances, with the stains now erased that bodily familiarity had burned into it through long habit, and thus left alone to itself, it has without doubt purged away every ugliness previously absorbed from an alien nature. And when the beauty it had lost has been found again, it then ascends the first, and the more difficult, step of divine knowledge itself. For this reason the oracles of the Scriptures rightly prophesy that a soul not purified in the present life from the sins contracted in the flesh is tormented after death among the lower regions, lying in filth. For an impure soul, because of its depravity, very much like filthy swine in body, takes delight in filth and dirt.

What else is true temperance, by which alone the monastic religion is especially adorned, than not to indulge bodily pleasures, but to flee far from them as the most impure diseases of the soul?

Fortitude, however, is to fear none of the things that are transitory, nor even death itself, which is nothing but a certain separation of the soul from the body; and the mind does not fear it when it desires to be alone and to be happily united forever with its own beginning. Moreover, what else is magnanimity than contempt for mortal things for the sake of divine love? And prudence is understanding that turns away from lower things and raises the soul to higher things. When the soul has been instructed in these teachings and already purified from the filth of vices, reason and beauty become united to it, so that thereafter it yields to no pleasures of the flesh opposed to the highest principle. Wonderfully restored to beauty and understanding, it advances, illuminated by the ray of divine splendor.

The second step is knowledge of the works of God. When the mind considers their beauty with admiration in many and diverse forms, it cannot be that it does not at some time lift itself upward, with the desire of love, to the author of so great a beauty. Hence the holy Apostle also says to the Romans that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are seen, being understood through the things that have been made. For all the beauty of the world has been formed by the supreme Beauty, and by its variety it invites us to knowledge of him, to such a degree that nothing is more foolish than one whom so great a variety of beautiful things does not kindle to contemplation of the supreme Beauty. What else, too, does the very sequence of the Scriptures suggest to us than that that highest, unchangeable good, God, in the beginning created heaven and earth, and all things contained within the compass of that heaven; and that the miracles and wonders made by him, of which there is no number, by their own cry compel us, as if by hands, to knowledge of the highest truth, unless we are harder than stones?

The third step is contemplation of the order by which lower works are brought back step by step to higher ones. For since the supercelestial world, and also the celestial world, is most ordered, the sublunary world too is necessarily ordered; and since in it things lower than man are ordered, human things are much more so. Therefore all individual things that happen to human beings are justly dispensed by God, although the cause of them may be hidden from us. For the highest providence governs the world by so beautiful and so manifest an order that no clearer proof of its goodness and wisdom need be sought by us from elsewhere than in what the ordered structure of the universe itself proclaims to us.

The fourth step is a certain proportional comparison, relating itself from the order of lower works to the divine order. For just as the beauty that is the author of all beauty must be infinite, wholly sufficient in itself, and in need of nothing, so the ineffable good, surpassing all things, by whose most peaceful will ordering all things it has clothed the universe with varied beauty, always remains in its majesty in a wondrous and incomprehensible order.

The fifth step is negation, by which you separate from the highest principle of all things everything that you conceive, just as Saint Dionysius taught in the Mystical Theology, and as we spoke in the earlier part of this discourse of ours. For since that highest and incomprehensible majesty, the cause of all things, is above every positive assertion of those things that we or anyone else in the world can know, understand, or say, it rejects every image, likeness, form, or species; and therefore our mind rises nearer to it by negation than by affirmation.

The sixth step is humble prayer to God, that he, the father of the intellectual world, may make you pure and actually intellectual. For this purpose you must remember the benefits and free gifts that the goodness of almighty God has generously granted to you, though you did not deserve them, and above all the benefit of redemption, which alone, when recalled with attentive use and familiarity, is sufficient to soften the mind to deep compunction.

The seventh and last step of this ladder is this: when, by the gift of the good itself, you have already become an intellectual world, then, further stirred by love of that good itself, you are transformed from the intellectual state into the good that is above intellect. There the quiet seat of holy contemplation unites the holy soul through love with its own beginning. Although it remains in its own essence, yet, withdrawn from all alien things, it becomes one with God by grace. not by nature: here in part, after death wholly.

We must therefore ascend, fathers, to that highest good which every soul desires, and in which alone it will obtain eternal blessedness, if, turned toward it through love, it departs from the body. Therefore let whoever can enter and advance into the inner places do so, leaving outside the sight of the eyes, and no longer looking back behind him at the customary spectacles of the senses. For one who beholds supreme beauty on the mountain of contemplation must look thereafter on absolutely nothing of bodily beauty, but, knowing bodily things to be images, traces, and shadows, must flee altogether to that of which these are works and likenesses. For created beauty ought not to hold the mind, but to lead it step by step to the uncreated; otherwise one must cry out with Ulysses, “Let us go hence, friends, fleeing to our sweet homeland.” But our homeland is there from which we came, as the holy Apostle also says: “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come.” We must not flee to it on foot, nor again prepare horses for riding, nor ships for sailing. Rather, we must let all these things go, and not even look ahead, but, with the sight of the body closed, take up and awaken in its place another sight, the inner sight of the mind, which all indeed possess, but very few use.

Yet one must not rashly burst forth toward the unfamiliar light of divine brightness, since that inward eye, suddenly awakened, can hardly look upon very bright things. Therefore the soul must be accustomed to divine spectacles and brought into them: first, indeed, by considering beautiful pursuits; then beautiful works, works, I say, not those made by the arts, but those done by upright men, by whose example, stirred to love of virtue, you may become an imitator of the goodness you have observed in them. Examine also what sort your own soul is; recall yourself into yourself and contemplate. But if you do not yet recognize yourself as beautiful and purified from every foulness of bodily familiarity, you will imitate the sculptor, who, when he desires a beautiful statue, cuts away one part.

C ij Another part he straightens, and with polishing tools he scrapes away another; another part he smooths and wipes clean, until he expresses a beautiful face in the statue. So too you: remove what is superfluous; straighten what is crooked; by cleansing, brighten what is dark; and do not cease laboring over your statue until the radiance of divine virtue shines forth for you, and until you discern holy temperance firmly seated in pure majesty. But when you have become clean, and now dwell pure with yourself, having, that is, nothing to prevent you from thus being made one, and not again having anything else mingled within you with yourself, but being wholly free, abstracted, and released from all passions of the flesh and evil affections, then your inner sight itself, now rightly ordered and purified, can in some measure lift the mind to contemplation of the uncircumscribable light.

But if by chance the eye of the mind, which is called either intellect or affection, is still stained with filth and not yet purified, or, weak through sloth, is directed toward that most brilliant spectacle, it will at once grow dim and discern nothing. For one eye of the mind is called intellect, the other affection; unless both have been lawfully cleansed, they will render the one ascending to contemplation of divine things blind rather than a participant in the divine light, and mad rather than enlightened. For whoever, still given over to the passions of the flesh, and with them not yet truly mortified in spirit according to the monastic rule, rashly approaches the contemplation of uncircumscribable beauty, will at once be struck back by the immeasurable light and go away blind, full of great errors.

For the holy prophet David says: “If I have looked upon iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” And the wise man, drawing a conclusion relevant to our purpose, says: “Wisdom will not enter a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.” Now attend to yourselves and to your profession, cloistered men, who have been called into the portion of the contemplative life and, for that reason, freed from all cares, and who eat the alms of the faithful, lest an occasion be offered you for interrupting study if you were occupied with anxiety over the body’s necessities. What are you doing? Where is that sweetest tranquillity of contemplation appointed for you? Alas, alas, we have all been called to the contemplative life, and Almost all of us are ignorant of the sweetness of contemplation. Very rare today is the monk, and much rarer the abbot, who devotes himself to the contemplative life after the example of the holy fathers. Indeed, if it is right to say so, few in this age know what contemplation is. Therefore, O monks, since you are not what, according to your institution, you ought to be, you are bad. For everyone who is not what he ought to be is in a bad state; but the recompense of the bad is hell. The good and beauty of the soul are rightly said to consist in this: that it be like God by a certain beauty of purity and love, withdrawn from all things that are accustomed to make it ugly, since union can take place only among like things. Whoever has reached that purity of soul by which he begins to taste the things we are saying will thereafter easily despise any violent passions and carnal or earthly loves, and will cast far away all things that previously seemed beautiful. Here the greatest and final struggle is set before us, for the sake of which we must labor altogether, lest perhaps we be left without this best contemplation. Whoever attains it in the present life passes into the future blessed by a happy vision; but, conversely, he who does not attain it is unhappy. For he is not wretched who lacks riches, money, vessels of gold and silver, and honors; nor he who does not obtain splendid possessions, fine horses, a noble wife, freeborn children, and beautiful bodies; nor he who falls from power, an abbacy, a prelacy, a principality, or a kingdom; nor he who is afflicted in this world by diseases, poverty, or disgrace, all of which will shortly pass away; but he who lacks possession of the highest good, for which certainly all the kingdoms and empires of the whole earth, sea, and heaven must be cast aside, if, after all these things have been abandoned and scorned, entrance to the contemplation of so great a good is granted to us.

End of the oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot, delivered in the annual chapter at Erfurt at Saint Peter’s, in the year of the Lord 1500, on the penultimate day of the month of August, by the same.

From a letter of Libanius Gallus, a Platonist and most learned man.

Indeed, I cannot fail to approve your oration on salutary conversion to God. It is certainly sweet, and yet not idle; and although it flows calmly like a most pure spring, nevertheless it is filled with weighty and carefully chosen judgments, so that the attentive reader may understand that you are a man of very wide reading, singular talent, and the highest learning. Would that those whom I should rightly call [unclear] did not defile Christian theology with that manner of speaking of yours, or at least would bear with a fair mind that theology should be vindicated, by the right of postliminy, from the barbarians who made even it barbarous, and restored to its former condition and dignity by the best men learned in Greek and Latin. Against these barbarians, namely the teachers of youth, who, though unlearned, profess themselves learned, Brother Johannes Annius, a learned and upright man, not unjustly growing indignant, cries out in the questionary prologue on Philo, saying: Alas for impiety! Sacred Scripture is plain; the testimony of God is clear, giving wisdom to little ones. The divine letters do not need folds, nor wrappings, nor refoldings, because these do not give wisdom to little ones, but leave their minds in confusion and compel the minds of men to wander through their whole life, as Diodorus writes of the Greeks in the third book. Not those who fold, not those who refold, but those who unfold and elucidate me will have eternal life, as the sacred letters testify.

As for your oration on the saving conversion to God, I cannot but approve it. It is sweet indeed, and yet not idle; and although it flows gently like a very pure spring, nevertheless it is filled with weighty and choice thoughts, so that the diligent reader may understand that you are a man of very wide reading, singular talent, and endowed with the highest learning. Would that those whom I might rightly call word-mongers did not defile Christian theology with that manner of speaking, or at least would bear with an even mind its being reclaimed, by right of return, into its former state and dignity by the best men learned in Greek and Latin, from the barbarians who have made it barbarous. Against those barbarians, namely teachers of youth who, though untaught, profess themselves learned, Brother Joannes Annius, a learned and upright man, not unjustly growing indignant, cries out in the questionary prologue on Philo, saying: “O impiety! Sacred Scripture is manifest; the testimony of God is clear, giving wisdom to little ones. The divine letters have no need of folds, nor coverings, nor refoldings, because these do not give wisdom to little ones, but leave hearts and minds in confusion, and throughout the whole of life compel the minds of men to go astray, as Diodorus writes concerning the Greeks in the third book. Not those who fold, not those who refold, but those who unfold and elucidate me shall have eternal life, as the sacred letters bear witness.”