Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350), "The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism," vol. 3 (New York: Crossroad, 1998), pp. ...xiv + 526, cloth $60, paper $29.95, ISBN 0-8245-1742-3 (cloth), 0-8245-1743-1 (paper). More than any other contemporary scholar, Bernard McGinn insures with this series that there is no longer any excuse for a lack of understanding or neglect of the Western Christian mystical tradition, a tradition that has the potential of recreating a more vibrant Christianity. McGinn calls the mysticism of the era 1200-1350 "new," and he amply demonstrates how very new it is. ...it occurs among the new forms of the vita apostolica, especially among the mendicant orders and the Beguines; this mysticism is democratic, that is, it includes women and the laity in a way not seen before; the mysticism of this era charts a new terrain with the dynamic exchanges that it cultivates between women and men; it is newly secular in that it includes not only the monastics but those whose path is not fuga mundi.
Among the women and men known as Carmelites are three doctors of the church as well as numerous saints and blesseds. ... many other members of the Carmelite family are recognized unofficially for ...their holiness.
Denis Read has a lightsome essay on the impact of Carmelite mysticism on Christian thought, especially its influence on Pope John Paul IL Salvatore Sciurba ably translates an essay on the theme of ...hope in Thérèse's writings as articulated by Charles Niqueux.The book's editor, Kevin Culligan, provides a biographical essay on Kavanaugh and a personal account of his own response during fifty years to the Carmelite challenge of the daily practice of meditation.
Frances Andrews of the University of St. Andrews, known for her book The Early Humiliati (Cambridge, UK, 1999), has taken up the daunting challenge of exploring the medieval history of the orders ...whose existence were put in jeopardy by the second Council of Lyons (1274). The Austin Friars and the Carmelites were saved from extinction by Boniface VIII in 1298; however, the existence of the other two orders in the subtitle of this book, the Pied and Sack Friars, was graduaEy terminated by the council.These two mendicant orders that the Church chose to terminate were a small but fascinating part of that extraordinary evangelical awakening that began in the late twelfth century, flourished in the thirteenth, and endures till this day.
