The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1501–1600
6 works
c. 1578–1585
Spanish
John of the Cross · 1542–1591
A systematic account of the active night, in which memory, understanding, and will are emptied of every attachment — including attachment to spiritual consolations.
c. 1578–1585
Spanish
La Noche Oscura del Alma
John of the Cross · 1542–1591
A poem and its commentary on the two nights the soul passes through — of the senses and then of the spirit — in which God withdraws every consolation precisely in order to purify love of its self-interest.
c. 1585–1587
Spanish
John of the Cross · 1542–1591
A commentary on his own short poem about the soul transformed in God, written in a fortnight for a laywoman who directed a household.
1601–1700
6 works
1605–1610
German
Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum
Johann Arndt · 1555–1621
An argument that doctrine without a changed life is worthless, drawing openly on medieval mystics to teach repentance, the indwelling Christ, and daily renewal.
written c. 1592–1608; published 1609
French
Benet of Canfield · 1562–1610
The will of God in three degrees — exterior, interior, and essential — taught by an English Capuchin who directed much of the French spiritual revival.
1612
German
Jakob Böhme · 1575–1624
A shoemaker's account of a vision of the ground of all being, in which God contains a dark principle as well as a light one, and creation arises from their conflict.
1622–1624
German
Jakob Böhme · 1575–1624
The only book of his published in his lifetime: treatises on repentance, resignation, and the new birth, considerably plainer than his speculative works.
1657
German
Der Cherubinische Wandersmann
Angelus Silesius · 1624–1677
Sixteen hundred rhymed couplets of mystical paradox — the rose is without why, and God would perish if the poet ceased to be.
1675
Spanish
Miguel de Molinos · 1628–1696
A method of interior quiet in which the soul ceases from acts and simply rests in God, leaving even meditation and petition behind.
41–49 of 49 matching · 1774 in the Library