Question VI: Whether contemplation has certain degrees of its perfection, how many, and which

We suppose above certain acts of the contemplative life, by which one ascends gradually to the chiefest Gift of this life, which consists in the very act of contemplation, as it is distinguished from the others.

Now the degrees of Contemplation are certain steps of progress and advancement within the same act of intellectual thought and savorous love, by which God is apprehended under the aspect of the True and the Good. So the Holy Doctor, at the place cited.

The difficulty, however, is whether such increments of contemplation are given, by which the mind gradually arrives at another summit, or apex, of perfect contemplation; and it seems from what has already been said that they are not: because we considered contemplation above as a simple act of the intelligence viewing all things clearly at once, as far as can be done in the condition of this life.

Yet I assert here with the Seraphic Doctor that several degrees of contemplation distinct from one another are given, aiding the intellect and the affect toward perfectly contemplating God.

It is proved by the Holy Doctor from the authority of D. Gregory, book XXII. Morals, chap. XIV, where he says: Steps are called increments of virtues, distinctly handed down by the Saints; and a little below he proves the necessity of these, saying: No one, abandoning what is lowest, suddenly becomes highest, for to obtain the merit of perfection the mind must arrive at the height, as it were, by certain steps of ascent.

And although these may be understood of the comparison of virtues among themselves; yet since those are acquired better and more securely in contemplating; the higher we advance in contemplation, the more abundantly and intensely are we strengthened in the virtues; whence the degrees of the Virtues lean upon the progress of contemplation.

It is confirmed by the Seraphic Doctor in the same place, by that Psalm LXXXIII: they shall go from virtue to virtue, until the God of gods be seen in Sion, where, with respect to the vision which perfects and consummates contemplation, he describes the gradual acquisition of the virtues.

It is proved secondly by D. Bonavent. from Psalm XLVII: God is known in her degrees, when he shall receive her, namely contemplation, as D. S. explains according to the LXX.

It is proved thirdly by the Holy Doctor, from Hugh, cited here, who, speaking of the degrees of contemplation, has thus: the more the ascent grows, the more the knowledge grows, until the intellectual eye be illuminated and strengthened more and more, and the mental affection be purified and inflamed more, etc.

This the Linconiensis egregiously confirms and explains at the Seraphic Doctor's place, at the place cited, where he uses this example thus: just as the eyes of the flesh, weaker at first, receive the light of the sun as obscure, and more diffused upon colors; then, more strengthened, they receive it upon colors of middling hue, and afterward, vision fortified, they receive more of it super-fulgent upon white colors; then indeed, health further increased, they receive it poured upon shining colors, as in mirrors; finally, the eyes perfectly healed, they receive the solar ray, not diffused upon anything, but pure in itself, etc. Afterward he pursues this example, applying it thus: so also the eye of the mind, weaker, must first be accustomed to beholding the light of the sun of the intelligence in grosser things, then in subtler ones, until at last, from the very giving of the light multipliedly diffused upon it in many ways, it be extended and restored into the simple ray itself.

Where mark that the act of the intelligence is here treated of, when he says: the intelligence in grosser things, etc., so as to exclude the acts of reason or of imagination, such as thought, meditation, etc. For after meditating, the thing sought passes from reason into intelligence; first there flashes some twilight of light, which, growing in the proportion in which the keenness of the intellect is strengthened and refined, at length shines forth into the perfect day.

Nor does it stand against these that contemplation has a simple and total intuition at once and at one time of all those things which are subjected to its view: for that totality is not intensive but extensive, comprehending more or fewer objects together, though more clearly or more obscurely according to the degree of its perfection: for if such intuition had all its intension, it would follow that the Vision adds nothing to contemplation; which is false, as is evident of itself.

As to the quality and number of the degrees, they are handed down in divers ways by the Seraphic Doctor according to the various opinions of the Fathers.

And first of all Dionysius, according to the expositions of the Linconiensis, of Hugh, and of the Vercellensis, teaches that in the well-ordered Human mind, as also in the Angelic, there are given middle, first, and supreme illuminations; and each of these is subdivided into three orders: so that as in the angelic Hierarchy there are nine orders, so too let there be as many degrees of Contemplation in the well-ordered mind; For since this must be ordered to three things, namely to exterior, inferior, and superior things; it is ordered to exterior things by a certain comparison to the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities: for those things are announced by simple apprehensions without any great hope of commodity or incommodity; as it is proper to messengers to announce. To inferior things the mind is well ordered according to the three orders of the middle Hierarchy, namely the Powers, Virtues, and Dominations; For this Hierarchy obtains the dominion of reconciling things as they are in themselves according to the free motions of the will, according to the exigency of the natural and gratuitous virtues, and finally according to the authoritative commands of free will, as this Seraphic Doctor says. Finally the human intelligence is ordered to superior things, and to these belong the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, who are the Angels of the supreme Hierarchy of the mind: For the Thrones are as it were the benches, or seats, of God, as this Holy Doctor says from Hugh, whence they receive God coming to them; as also the mind, carried up to this degree and order of contemplation, receives divine super-arrivals and inmissions from above: but Cherubim signifies the attraction and, as it were, the co-walking of the intellect and the affect toward the divine truth and goodness, while the intellect, attaining the apex of its whole faculty, at length surpasses the affect; and so it is consummated in this order; whence the Cherubim are named from knowledge on account of this intellectual super-excess. The Seraphim indeed, on the contrary, are borne into God by super-affectuous sighs and shining fervors, the affect holding the apex of this Order and far surpassing the intellect; while the Soul, exhausted amid the most chaste embraces of its divine spouse, is wholly hastened, kindled, and in a manner transmuted into Him.

When the contemplative mind shall have attained this degree, it will be able to exclaim well with the spouse: He set order in me Charity. For from this the inundation of the divine light is transmitted orderly into all the inferior powers and acts of the soul, and to each its portion of the supernatural light is distributed for purging, illuminating, and perfecting; just as from the supreme Order of the Angels copious light is received immediately from God; and is diffused into the others according to the capacity of each. See the Seraphic Doctor treating these things at greater length and illustrating them with beautiful opinions of the Fathers.

Otherwise indeed, and a little more lowly, the Holy Doctor gathers in art. 1. the degrees of Contemplation from Richard, book 1. chap. 6. so that it begin from the imagination, and in it constitute the first degree, and this according to the order of execution; For as the same Richard says, of Contempl. book 4. chap. 5. We must begin from the last things, and raise our knowledge's promotion little by little, and by the knowledge of exterior things ascend to the cognition of invisible things. For when you shall have apprehended the science of exterior things, and had your senses exercised in their doctrine, you must ascend to higher things, and acquire the science of spiritual creatures: This is Richard at the Seraphic Doctor, at the place cited.

Therefore the first degree according to this reckoning is the Imagination, not that bestial one by which we bear species confusedly and scamper hither and thither without any utility, ruminating and revolving those things which we have previously seen; but it is a certain rational imagination, obedient to the intellect and ordered to it, by which we inquire nothing with mental investigation, but we admire with delight, and with a certain suspension of the imagination itself, those things which we have previously seen, or now see, while we suspect them to be beautiful, lovely, and many; so the Holy Doctor, in the said art. 2.

The second degree is founded in the imagination, but formed by reason, which ransacks, ponders, and wonders at the thing conceived there according to its utility, order, and condition: this degree is distinguished from the prior one, which stands in pure imagination, though vilely, as has been said. For as the Author de spiritu et anima has it, chap. 12. the imagination does not ascend to reason, but remaining below it can somewhat draw it down, and as it were from afar shows certain things to which it cannot arrive. Hence that thought, borne up from the imagination to the intent of reason, makes the second degree of Contemplation.

The third degree is formed and founded in reason itself, though uprooted from the imagination, and it comes about when, by the similitude of visible things, we are lifted up to the speculation of invisible things, as Richard says, book 1. chap. 6. It differs from the prior one, in that here the intellect tends upward to the investigation of invisible things; there indeed it leans rather downward upon the imagination, digging out more deeply the idea conceived in it and building it up in itself; wherefore this degree is more perfect than the preceding, in which the tension toward superior things prevails over the propensity toward inferior things. See Richard at the Holy Doctor, here.

The fourth degree is segregated in every way from the imagination, and now as it were dwelling in the heights; when, temporal things removed, not to say corporeal ones, we are occupied in the contemplation of celestial spirits, and rise higher, purifying the mind by use and by the mental affectuation of eternal things; whence here for the first time the pure intelligence intervenes, which works by itself and contemplates as it were by a species, as Richard says, in the same place.

The fifth degree, proceeding more intimately into the interior desert and penetrating the solitude of the divine arcana, transcends Reason: here ratiocination and every investigation, which is an act of the mind, fails: of this degree Richard, cited, says: Our contemplation then truly ascends above reason when the mind by an elevation of mind believes that which human capacity transcends its metes, and it must be judged above reason, yet not beyond reason, when human reason cannot stand against what is discerned by the keenness of the intelligence. The perfection of this degree, and its excellence before the others, consists in this, that it leaps over the limits of reason; whence D. Doctor observes here, from Richard, that some things are below reason, such as those which are perceived by corporeal sense; some indeed are alongside reason, as those which we inquire into by discourse: but above Reason are those things which either become known to us by revelation alone, or shine forth by a supernatural irradiation in such wise that neither corporeal sense nor reason can in any way reach them.

The sixth, and last, degree of Contemplation assigned here by the Holy Doctor is the total alienation of the mind, so that it seems to stand not only beyond, but even against itself, so that if it attempts to investigate anything, it is straightway believed alien and contrary to itself; and this most lofty elevation of the mind arises chiefly from the magnitude of devotion, admiration, and exultation, as the Holy Doctor teaches at the end of that art. 2.

These six degrees of Contemplation the Holy Doctor numbers otherwise in art. 3. and 4. according to the Author de spiritu et anima, and according to Origen upon the Canticle, chap. 2.; see him adducing preeminent texts of the Fathers for the elucidation of the mystical theory.

But of his own force he contrives seven degrees of contemplation in an illustrious little work inscribed on this subject, wherein he puts first Fire, second Unction, third Ecstasy, fourth Speculation, fifth Taste, sixth Quiet, seventh Glory; For as the Seraphic Doctor says there, after the soul is dispatched from the cares and anxieties of this age, first it is kindled: kindled it is anointed: anointed it is rapt: rapt it speculates, or contemplates: contemplating it tastes: tasting it rests. The seventh degree is scarcely, or scarcely even, attained in the way except by Privilege, though it be somewhat approached by those who have walked more frequently in the prior degrees; But in the fatherland all are consummated in one, namely the last.

This mystical Fire is defined by the Seraphic Doctor as a vehement ardor, or fervor of divine love, fanned from the furnace of the super-shining Jerusalem. For as he explains there exquisitely, after the Contemplative mind girds itself to speculating the glory of the Lord, it is presently kindled with a supernal heat, and all its motions, like faggots, gathered into one, are kindled more ardently; to this all the affections and acts of the soul concur, to supply material to the fire; kindled with this ardor the Prophet says: my heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall flame out: sometimes this conflagration grows to such a point that it does not stay in the soul alone, but flames in the very body with a placid inflammation, as Psalm 72 testifies: my heart is inflamed, and my reins are changed.

The Unction of this fire tempers the ardor, mollifying and strengthening the powers of the soul; and it is a rosy and celestial liquor, poured over the soul; For since the thirsty heart pants toward the things above, according to that word: my soul hath thirsted after thee; in what manner my flesh hath multiplied after thee, by the deficiency of the faculties the fire is the sooner extinguished unless the fatness of this unction be poured upon it; which the contemplative desires to have smeared upon him, crying: Let my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise with joyful lips.

Ecstasy is the total desertion of the outward man and the upward suspension of the inward man also. For this the Holy Doctor requires a twofold action: The first is the dereliction of oneself; the second is the upward action of all the faculties of the soul; these two actions lean chiefly upon humility, by which one deserts oneself, and purity, by which one is carried upward.

But for a clearer understanding of this Ecstasy it is pleasing to note that there is among the powers of the soul a symbolic concord, so that whether upward or downward one power is borne intensely, it draws the others with a certain weight along with it: Hence the mind, acted upward more vehemently by the affulgent clarity of the divine light, draws with it all the inferior faculties; But when these, according to the proportion of their strengths, shall have accomplished certain passions, they suffer a deliquium, not able to aspire further, and abstracted from their own objects they hang suspended: But the Will, running before the intellect and penetrating into the secrets of love, here enjoys a wondrous sweetness; yet the intellect is not far distant from her, being indeed the nobler power after her, and hence it shines round about with ineffable charity.

HENCE you have that this ecstasy can follow connaturally from the efficacy of the grace already spoken of, without a new grace being required; for since by the force of the prior grace the Contemplative exercises himself long in mental exercises, for which actual aids suffice, which are as it were appendices of habitual grace; the affect absorbed in divine things causes an excess of cognition; whence the whole soul is alienated from external things; wherefore D. Thomas, 2. 2. quaest. 175. art. 2. with D. Bonavent. here, Abulensis, Genes. 15. q. 400. Molina first part, quaest. 12. art. 11. and Suarez book 2. cit. cap. 15. num. 5. attribute this whole effect to the affect.

NOR however must it be denied that the intellect alone can sometimes suffer this suspension, and this naturally, as is evident in Trismegistus, Socrates, and other ancient Philosophers, who in the natural contemplation of divine things often suffered ecstasy, as is evident from Gerson in the little work on the mount of contempl. chap. 31. Alph. 74. and Suarez num. 6.; nay, the very phantasy, from a sudden admiration of some thing, can be so rapt that meanwhile the external senses feel nothing; whence it is gathered that, according to the excellence of the object and the quality of the powers, ecstasy can be more or less perfect, and last longer or more briefly.

SPECULATION is defined by the Holy Doctor as a humble, pious, and intellectual, at the same time also affectual, investigation of divine goods, or riches, knowable to God alone: for each power, the intellect and the affect, the one by speculating, the other by desiring, promote each other mutually, until at length: with face revealed speculating the glory of God, we are transformed into the same image from clarity to clarity, as from the spirit of the Lord, as is said 2. Cor. 3., where to speculate with face revealed the glory of God in the way the Holy Doctor understands as nothing else than, the impurity of conscience removed, which is wont to overcloud the science of eternity and to obscure the intelligence of our mind, to search out the Divina piously, devoutly, and purely. Hence, with the spirit of the Lord leading us by the hand into it, we are transformed into what we have speculated; namely from earthly into celestial, from carnal into spiritual, and in a manner from men into Angels, as the Seraphic Doctor glosses here, where by into the same image he wills to be understood imaginated into the same; for if the intellect, actually understanding, becomes all things, according to the common dictum of Aristotle, with how much the better will the soul, contemplating unceasingly the divine things, which are more transformative, at length be in a manner transmuted into them.

TASTE is described by the Holy Doctor as a certain sweet and unusual foretaste of the divine sweetness: for the end of nature is that, the more excellent it is, the more distantly it transfuse the foretaste of its goodness into those tending toward it; wherefore the very means assumed for attaining this end are perfused with a certain savorous sweetness; which is foretasted the more abundantly, the more frequently the mind is vacant, and sees how sweet the Lord is. These foretastes, however, as the Seraphic Doctor warns, are not for refection but for allurement; wherefore they do not beget satiety but hunger; whence he who seeks them for their own sake is convicted to love the gift rather than the giver.

QUIET is a great tranquillity of the will with a wondrous serenity of mind; for since the bosom and capacity of the soul is filled from above, it has nothing further about which to be disturbed; but enjoying most sweet peace, with the Irascible rejoicing, the Concupiscible growing sweet, and the Rational shining, the whole soul most placidly is poured forth into God, and with wings dilated, yet not agitated, is most pleasantly borne upward; as birds in the now serene sun, in the middle region of the air, expand their wings, yet do not move them. This is the best part of the contemplatives, which shall not be taken away from them.

AT LENGTH the Seraphic Bonaventura concludes in chap. 7. of the Itinerary of the mind into God that the six numbered steps, as also the six considerations, which he here luminously expounds, are as it were the six degrees of the throne of the true Solomon, by which one ascends to peace: They are also as it were the six Wings of the Cherub, by which the mind of the true contemplatives, illuminated by the coruscations of supernal wisdom, is acted upward: They are finally as the six first days, in which the mind ought to be exercised unceasingly, that it may at length arrive at the Sabbath-rest of Quiet; Of which Sabbath-rest, being as it were glory, which is the seventh degree, the Holy Doctor judges it safer to be silent than to speak, as he says at the end of that little work on the seven degrees of Contempl., doubtless because there are heard arcane words, which it is not lawful for a man to speak, which to hear even is granted to very few in this life. Let therefore this last degree be the term of this tome, as also the end and reward of all my other works (by the Father of mercies propitiating).

These, and all other things, whether hitherto written, or to be written hereafter by me, let them hang upon the Judgment of the Holy Roman Church, the Mistress of unspotted truth, and the Column of unshaken faith.