J.P.H. CLARK

AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B.

Towards a Re-Assessment

Recent editorial work has opened the way to a new appreciation of a very sig- nificant figure in the English contemplative tradition, whose influence contin- ues not only through his writings, but through the living witness of the direct successors of the religious community for which in his life-time he provided guidance and inspiration. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. (1575-1641) is known above all through Holy Wis- dom (Sancta Sophia), the digest of his teaching published in 1657 by his con- frère Serenus Cressy under the authority of the General Chapter of the English Benedictine Congregation.1 The foundations for all modern studies of Fr. Baker were laid by Abbot Justin McCann, O.S.B., who not only provided editions of the biographical material, but also listed all the manuscripts of Fr. Baker’s unpublished works that were accessible to him, and is credited with being the only person in mod- ern times to have read them all through.2 Some thirty years ago Dom Placid Spearitt recognised the desirability of critical editions of Fr. Baker’s writings,3 but monastic duties prevented him from bringing this about. More recently, the nuns of have produced an edition of Fr. Baker’s Substance of

1 For the successive editions of Holy Wisdom, see Michael Woodward, ‘Bakerdata: An Anno- tated Bibliography of Published Tests and Secondary Sources’, in: M. Woodward (Ed.), That Mysterious Man: Essays on Augustine Baker, O.S.B., 1575-1641, Abergavenny-Salzburg 2001, 261 (Analecta Cartusiana 119:15). Hereafter Analecta Cartusiana will be referred to as AC. 2 Abbot McCann’s principal contributions are: The Confessions of Venerable Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B., London 1922 (autobiographical passages from Fr. Baker’s Secretum, edited and rearranged, with introduction); ‘Secretum sive Mysticum, being an exposition of certain notes upon the book called the Cloud’, in: The Cloud of Unknowing and other Treatises, London 1924 and subsequent editions; The Life of Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B. (by Fr. Peter Salvin & Fr. Serenus Cressy), London 1933; J. McCann & H. Connolly, Memorials of Father Augus- tine Baker and other documents relating to the English , London 1933 (Publications of the Catholic Record Society 33). Other material by Abbott McCann on Fr. Baker is listed in Woodward, ‘Bakerdata’, 270-271. 3 Dom Placid Spearitt, ‘The Survival of Medieval Spirituality among the Exiled English Black ’, in: American Benedictine Review 25 (1974), 287-316; reprinted in That Mysterious Man, 19-41. 210 J.P.H. CLARK the Rule of St. Benedict,4 which is part of his larger Exposition of the Rule of St. Benedict. Since 1997, Professor James Hogg of Salzburg University has printed in the series Analecta Cartusiana, a series of editions of Fr. Baker’s unpublished writings, beginning with the Secretum, Fr. Baker’s commentary on the Cloud of Unknowing which includes also fundamental material for his spiritual autobi- ography; this series includes many of Fr. Baker’s key writings on contemplative prayer and related matters, as well as his Life of Dame Gertrude More.5 In 2001 an Augustine Baker symposium was held at Abergavenny, his home town. This was inter-disciplinary and inter-denominational, and opened up a number of new perspectives. Many of the papers from this symposium break fresh ground and offer a starting-point for further research.6

The publication of many of Fr. Baker’s original treatises enables us both to appreciate Fr. Cressy’s achievement more fully, and to gain a more direct picture of Fr. Baker and his teaching in its historical context. The seventeenth-century language should not detract from Fr. Baker’s actuality for us today, and the pres- ent writer hopes that some of these editions may serve as a basis for a mod- ernised presentation of Fr. Baker’s core-teaching.7 Fr. Cressy’s work in producing Holy Wisdom is a masterpiece of distillation. It has been calculated that Fr. Baker’s manuscript treatises amount to something

4 The Substance of the Rule of St. Bennet (Ed. by Benedictines of Stanbrook Abbey), Worcester 1981. 5 Fr. Augustine Baker: Secretum. Text, Salzburg 1997 (AC 119:7); Fr. Augustine Baker: Secretum. Introduction and notes, Salzburg 2003 (AC 119:20); Fr. Augustine Baker: A Secure Stay in all Temptations, Salzburg 1998 (AC 119:8); Fr. Augustine Baker: Discretion, Salzburg 1999 (AC 119:9); Fr. Augustine Baker: Doubts and Calls, Salzburg 1999 (AC 119:10); Fr. Augustine Baker: Directions for Contemplation – Book D, Salzburg 1999 (AC 119:11); Fr. Augustine Baker: Directions for Contemplation – Book F, Salzburg 1999 (AC 119:12); Fr. Augustine Baker: Directions for Contemplation – Book G, Salzburg 2000 (AC 119:13); Fr. Augustine Baker: Directions for Contemplation – Book H, Salzburg 2000 (AC 119:14); Augustine Baker, O.S.B.: Alphabet and Order, Salzburg 2001 (AC 119:16); Augustine Baker, O.S.B.: A spiritual treatise…called A.B.C., Salzburg 2001 (AC 119:17); Augustine Baker, O.S.B.: Book E, Salzburg 2002 (AC 119:18), all works edited by J. Clark; and Augustine Baker: The Life and Death of Dame Gertrude More (Ed. Ben Wekking), Salzburg 2002 (AC 119:19). There is also a survey of some of Fr. Baker’s translations: J. Clark, ‘Father Baker’s Translations from the Works of John Tauler in the Latin Version of Laurentius Surius’, with an Appendix: ‘Fr. Baker’s Translations from Blosius’, Salzburg 2003, 49-89 (AC 201). An edition of his Col- lections is at press with Analecta Cartusiana. 6 The papers were published in That Mysterious Man. 7 Dame Teresa Rodrigues, O.S.B., has published The Essence of ‘Holy Wisdom’, Worcester 2001, a modernised and abridged version of Holy Wisdom. The Anglican Benedictine sisters of Holy Cross, Rempstone, have produced a number of prayer-booklets based on Fr. Baker’s teachings and drawing on the editions published by James Hogg at Salzburg. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 211 over a million words, and that Fr. Cressy’s book is about two hundred thou- sand.8 Fr. Baker is often repetitive, and his style and presentation are conducive to a leisurely approach, although he has a clear mind and commonly enumer- ates the points that he is making. Abbot McCann considered that it would be impossible to identify all the various sources of Holy Wisdom;9 the present writer is rather more hopeful. Fr. Cressy is faithful to Fr. Baker’s teaching, but it is of the nature of the book that it should give a more ‘rounded’ picture than the original treatises do. Some of the rough edges are removed; so also are many of the homely examples with which Fr. Baker was wont to drive home his teaching, with proverbial sayings and mnemonic rhymes – no great poetry, but useful for instilling a point. Moreover, the treatises on prayer addressed to the nuns of the English Benedictine convent at Cambrai, where he was chaplain for nine years and where his most creative writing was done, are born out of the living experience of spiritual direction, and a more generally-addressed book must necessarily lose some of this immediacy and personal application.

Augustine Baker, as he is known in religion, was baptised David Baker, the son of his Catholic mother Maud and of William Baker, steward of Lord Aber- gavenny in Monmouthshire, Wales.10 William conformed to the Anglican church but remained Catholic in sympathy. David was sent to Oxford univer- sity, but left without taking a degree. He was trained in law, and through his father’s influence succeeded his elder brother as Recorder of Abergavenny on the latter’s death. As a young man he lost any sense of religion, but following what he took to be a miraculous escape from drowning he resolved to turn to the who had delivered him, and following a period of reading and reflec- tion he was received into the in 1603. In 1605 he received the Benedictine habit at St. Justina’s, Padua, taking the name of Augustine in reli- gion from St. Augustine of Canterbury, on the eve of whose feast he was clothed. He was kindly received at Padua, but beyond a copy of the Rule of St. Bene- dict and the Jesuit de Puente’s Meditations he was not given any clear spiritual guidance. He attempted mental prayer, but in the face of aridity he gave this up after a few weeks, and limited himself to attending conventual worship and practising vocal prayer in his cell. After a period of ill-health – Augustine Baker

8 J. McCann, ‘Father Baker’s Tercentenary’, in: Downside Review 59 (1941), 359ff, cited by Gerard Sitwell in his edition of Holy Wisdom, London 1964, vi-vii. 9 Sitwell, Holy Wisdom, vii. 10 The biographical information which follows is found, with references to the primary sources, in Clark, Secretum. Introduction and notes. In this article references to primary sources for Fr. Baker’s biography are only given to highlight particular points. 212 J.P.H. CLARK had health problems intermittently throughout his life – he was given permis- sion to leave the abbey, with a testimonial from the abbot, and made his way back to . In London, he learned that his father was gravely ill; he returned home, and was in time to assist in his father’s reception into the Catholic church before his death. Having set his family affairs in order, he returned to London. His legal experience was of service to the Benedictine Order; he became involved in the revival of the English Benedictine Congregation through the aggregation (in November 1607) of two English monks of the Italian Congregation in the pres- ence of the nonagenarian Sigebert Buckley, the last survivor of the Marian Benedictines. He would join the re-established English Congregation after it was set up, but meanwhile made his formal profession in the Italian Congrega- tion.

In London, Augustine Baker made a further serious effort towards mental prayer, issuing in his departure in the spring of 1608 to live in the household of a recusant gentleman. It was here that he experienced what he himself would later call his ‘first conversion’ in the life of prayer.11 A health problem which affected his appetite and capacity to consume a normal amount of food pro- vided the occasion for severe mortification and self-denial; to this Augustine Baker attributed the rapid progress that he made at this point in prayer, culmi- nating in a single experience of what in retrospect he called a ‘passive contem- plation’, or a locution in which God addressed the soul, communicating Him- self directly without anything that was accessible to the senses, and without any conscious human effort. Soon after this, Baker willfully fell into imperfection, letting go of the mortification which he had embraced, and to this failure he ascribed the aridity which followed. Again having no-one to advise him, he gave up again the attempt to practise contemplative prayer, and remained in this state for twelve years. Baker sought remedies for his situation. He took counsel, but those whom he consulted did not understand his case. Fr. Leander Prichard, one of his biog- raphers and probably a kinsman, thought that this experience gave rise to Baker’s subsequent mistrust of frequent spiritual consultations.12 Baker thought of taking the Ignatian spiritual exercises, but did not do so; he would later say that to have done so would have been folly in his case.13 And he was ordained priest at Reims, probably in 1613, hoping that the grace of ordination would renew his spiritual life.

11 Described in Secretum (AC 119:7), 53-75. 12 Leander Prichard, ‘Life of Fr. Baker’, n. 115, in: Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 98. 13 Prichard, ‘Life’, n. 115. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 213

In 1619 the Pope officially restored the English Benedictine Congregation. Fr. Baker was the first in England to accept the Union of English Benedictines, and he became nominally a member of the community of St. Laurence at Dieu- louard (now Ampleforth). This was another time of significant spiritual reading for Fr. Baker, and Fr. Prichard mentions that Baker read the Speculum perfectio- nis of the Carthusian Lanspergius in Latin translation.14 In 1620, on the advice of his superior, Fr. Vincent Sadler, he went to stay at the house of another Catholic gentleman, this time in Devonshire. This was the scene of his ‘second conversion’ in the life of prayer,15 in which he would persevere until death. Again Fr. Baker gave himself to contemplative prayer; this time he per- severed through aridity as well as consolation. Describing this stage some nine years later,16 he does not now speak of any ‘passive contemplation’; indeed, he says that the grace of a further ‘passive contemplation’ has been denied him, and that he does not look for it to be repeated. Rather, his prayer from this point came to consist in ‘active mystic contemplation’, persistently reaching out in the darkness of unknowing, yet sustained by the light of faith, towards union with the God revealed in Christ, the God of whom one may have a general awareness by faith, but who is yet beyond any distinct images. Fr. Baker remained in Devonshire for rather more than a year. It was an important aspect of his ministry, based on his conversion to the Catholic Church through reading and a process of interior persuasion through the Holy Spirit, that he did not seek to win people to the faith by argument, but by good example and prayer, confident in the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. Fr. Serenus Cressy records how this approach bore fruit in the conversion of the mother-in-law of Fr. Baker’s host, a lady who had resisted all the energetic argu- ments presented by other Catholic priests visiting the house.17 Fr. Baker returned to London in 1621, and in the following year was called upon by the English Benedictine Congregation to exercise his historical and legal skills in the controversy with the Cluniac Benedictine John Barnes. Fr. Barnes had published on the Continent Examen trophaeorum, questioning whether there had ever been a true English Benedictine Congregation, and so questioning the legitimacy of the Union of 1619. Fr. Baker’s researches would provide the materials for Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, which would be compiled by Fr. Leander Jones (Leander de Sancto Martino), and published at Douai in 1626 under the name of Fr. Clement Reyner. It is worth noting that all Fr. Baker’s writing was done in response to a perceived need; it would only

14 Prichard, ‘Life’, n. 123, in: Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 101. 15 Described in Secretum, 33-53. 16 Secretum, 70, 77, 252-254. 17 Salvin & Cressy, The Life of Father Augustine Baker (Ed. McCann), 91-94, nn. 66-67. 214 J.P.H. CLARK be later, again in response to a particular demand, that he would write on specifically spiritual theology.

During all this time, when Fr. Baker was engaged both in legal activities and in historical research, he continued the practice of contemplative prayer. Political events in 1624 threatened renewed persecution of Catholics. Fearing that such persecution would make for distraction from a settled habit of prayer, and in obedience to what he took to be a particular call, Fr. Baker accepted an invita- tion from Fr. Rudesind Barlow, at that time President of the English Benedic- tine Congregation, to go to the abbey of St. Gregory at Douai. From here, Fr. Barlow asked him to go as a supernumerary priest to the English convent of Benedictine nuns of Our Lady of Consolation at Cambrai (now at Stanbrook, Worcester), which had recently been established as a daughter-house of the English Benedictine nuns at Brussels. Fr. Baker remained here for nine years, and despite his unofficial status acted as chaplain to the nuns for considerable periods. The Cambrai convent had inherited an Ignatian or Jesuit element in its spirituality from its roots at Brussels, with emphasis on structured discursive meditation and frequent confession. Fr. Baker was well aware of the important contribution made by Jesuit spirituality to the Counter-. When he came to make reading-lists for the nuns, some Jesuit books are included,18 and there are appreciative references to Jesuit books in his own writings. On matters which would become disputed – such as how one may practise con- templation in the midst of employments, and the value of the Jesuit exercises as a means to contemplation – he gives balanced quotations from Jesuit writ- ers.19 The encyclopedic works of the Jesuit Alvarez de Paz on prayer and spir- ituality – which have an important contemplative element – are often quoted by him. At the same time, the somewhat cerebral Ignatian approach to meditation as a prelude to prayer was not necessarily suited to ‘feeling’ as well as to ‘thinking’ souls. In particular, it did not necessarily meet the needs of women. Fr. Baker sees women as by nature more readily fitted to attaining to the love of God than men but not so well suited to discursive meditation.20 In this context, Fr. Baker repeatedly contrasts ‘scholastic’ theology, with its analytical processes which appeal to the intellect, and ‘mystical’ theology, which appeals to the love

18 On Fr. Baker’s reading-lists, see J.T. Rhodes, ‘Dom Augustine Baker’s Reading Lists’, in: Downside Review 111 (1993), 157-173; see also Clark, Directions for Contemplation – Book H, Appendix, 82-89. 19 In Book C, in: A Spiritual Treatise…Called A.B.C., 66-97. 20 E.g. Clark, Directions for Contemplation – Book D, 48; 70-74. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 215 and the will, reaching out towards an experiential union with God, above what is accessible to intellectual processes.21

Central to Fr. Baker’s teaching on prayer are his four books of Directions for Contemplation, identified with the letters D, F, C and H among his writings. At the outset of his Book D, Fr. Baker declares that the goal of the contemplative state is perfect love of God, and that the means for attaining this are prayer and mortification.22 In this book, as repeatedly elsewhere, Fr. Baker treats the pro- gression from meditation to acts of the will, and so to aspirations and ‘eleva- tions’ as prayer becomes simpler and more spiritual, more removed from dis- tinct images, leading to ‘contemplation’.23 Fr. Baker expects the nuns to practise mental prayer twice a day, before Mass in the morning, for half an hour, and again before Compline.24 Book G begins with a section entitled ‘Intellectual Operations’,25 describing the various kinds of contemplative prayer, including the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ contemplation. ‘Active mystical contemplation’ answers to what Fr. Baker knows as ‘aspirations’, a term derived especially from Harphius, but used also by Barbanson, and corresponding to the ‘blind stirring of love’ which is the ‘work’ of the Cloud, and which is discussed especially in the Secre- tum.26 ‘Passive contemplation’ is given by God without conscious human effort, though a man may and should dispose himself, by grace, to receive it. ‘Passive contemplation’ may entail some kind of species, but Fr. Baker refers also to a further ‘passive contemplation’ without species, in the highest part of the soul, in the darkness of union. Fr. Baker touches also on the ‘great desolation’,27 in which the soul is sustained by a general and indistinct apprehension of God by faith, in ‘active contemplation’. The rest of Book G is devoted to ‘aspirations’, with many examples of aspirations, and also of acts of resignation to the will of God;28 by ‘resignation’ Fr. Baker means active self-abandonment to God’s will. Fr. Baker lays considerable emphasis on liberty of spirit in the life of prayer, on freedom to follow the interior illumination of the Holy Spirit, always within the parameters of the Catholic faith, and, for those bound to it, of religious obedience. Among the errors which he reproves in Book F is the attitude of those who, without knowledge or experience of the more directly spiritual

21 E.g. Book D, 82-83. 22 Book D, 8; 47. 23 Book D, 30-31. 24 Book D, 47-48. 25 Clark, Directions for Contemplation – Book G, 2-20. 26 Secretum, 10ff. 27 Book G, 16. 28 Book G, 20-81. 216 J.P.H. CLARK movements of love towards God which he calls ‘aspirations’, without precedent mental discourse, insist that there is no way towards perfection but by their own manner of structured discursive meditation, specifically meditation on the Passion, and who condemn other ways. Fr. Baker responds that all Christians should indeed be mindful of the Passion, but that not all can meditate discur- sively on it; all Christians should imitate the virtues of Christ, which He prac- tised above all in his Passion.29 The question of meditation on the Passion is taken up again in Book H. Referring to Benet Canfield’s teaching that meditation on the Passion should be a constant of the spiritual life, Fr. Baker elaborates on what he has said in Book F. One should always be mindful of the Passion as a means of raising affection to God, but one need not always be actually thinking of it. In the highest active prayer in this life, there should be no discursive meditation on the Passion, but acts of the will based on a previous habit of reflecting on the Passion.30 Book H goes on to discuss the custody of the heart (custodia cordis), obedience and mor- tification, and purity of intention. Fr. Baker’s own previous experience gave him a particular insight into aridity and desolation, and into the need for perseverance in faith and love towards God at this point. He wrote for the nuns Anchor of the Spirit,31 and produced a version of Pseudo-Rolle, Remedies against Temptations;32 also A Secure Stay in all Temptations,33 which includes Hilton’s famous parable of the pilgrim from the Scale of Perfection. The chapters from Barbanson’s Secrets Sentiers are translated in Book E,34 and repeated in the Secretum. On the matter of confession, Fr. Baker took it that those in the religious life were in any case seriously committed Christians, and therefore anything tend- ing to excessive scrupulosity was to be avoided. Confession is in itself good, but if it is not nourished by mental prayer and mortification it is fruitless.35 He is chary of frequent particular and general confessions, and of excessive insistence on a direct examination of conscience, preferring (after the teaching of the Flemish Franciscan Harphius (Henry Herp), to whom he explicitly refers, an ‘indirect contrition’, which looks beyond oneself to the love of God rather than focussing on oneself and on one’s own venial sins.36

29 E.g. Clark, Directions for Contemplation – Book F, 44-45. 30 Book H, 6-25. 31 Unpublished; extant in Ampleforth Abbey, ms. 118. 32 Unpublished; extant in Ampleforth Abbey, ms. 118; Colwich Abbey, ms. 18. 33 Clark, A Secure Stay in all Temptations. 34 Clark, Book E. 35 E.g. Book D, 83-84. 36 E.g. Book F, 14. Fr. Baker’s unpublished treatise Confession is extant in Ampleforth Abbey, ms. 143. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 217

Fr. Baker repeatedly distinguishes between necessary and voluntary mortifi- cations. Necessary mortifications are those required by one’s state in life, by obedience to God’s will as expressed in binding precepts, especially as these are found for religious in the rule of the order and in the commands of a superior. Such mortifications have as their goal the re-direction of the will, disordered through the Fall, towards conformity with the will of God. Because mortifica- tion is an interior matter, Fr. Baker is in general opposed to excessive bodily mortifications. He is also chary of voluntary mortifications, because they can all too easily have something of self-will and singularity.37

Fr. Baker spent much of his time at Cambrai in his cell, engaged in prayer and spiritual reading. He gives indications of the course that his reading took following his ‘second conversion’ and during his time at Cambrai.38 For the first two years after his ‘second conversion’ – that is, from 1620-1622 – he was busy reading books that contained ‘spiritual directions’. Then for two years, while never neglecting prayer, he was busy in the affairs of the Congre- gation – the Barnes affair. After this – by which time he is at Cambrai – he says that he read ‘some scholastic points of divinity that did concern spiritu- ality’; he was giving a more strictly theological basis to his spiritual under- standing. During Lent in 1627 he was led to a deepened spiritual awareness. This led him to abbreviate his mental prayer, which had been taking up seven or eight or more hours a day, to just an hour or an hour and a half each day. Again, whereas up to now his spiritual reading had been voracious, he now came to have an aversion to reading; reading had done its work in leading him into prayer. On the other hand, he was given a great facility for writing and translating. He relates that in this period, by the end of 1629 or early 1630, he wrote forty treatises – many of them, he says, of no great size. Fif- teen of these were collections and translations from other writers (mostly out of Latin, though some works that he used were available in French but not in Latin) for the benefit of the nuns; the rest of them were his own compo- sitions.39

Fr. Baker gained many disciples among the nuns, notably Dame Catharine Gascoigne, who would succeed Dame Frances Gawen as abbess in 1629, and who would be a life-long supporter of Fr. Baker’s teaching, and Dame Gertrude More, great-great-granddaughter of St. , highspirited

37 E.g. Book D, 50-51. 38 Secretum, 255. 39 Secretum, 250. 218 J.P.H. CLARK and rebellious, but won over by Fr. Baker to contemplative prayer. Following her early death, Fr. Baker wrote an account of her Life.40 But not everyone was content with Fr. Baker’s teaching. When Fr. Francis Hull was appointed chaplain in 1529, he followed a more rigid course of direc- tion, regardless of differences in character and situation in the nuns, in contrast to Fr. Baker’s respect for the leading of each individual soul by the Holy Spirit. A situation where many of the nuns sought guidance from Fr. Baker rather than from the official chaplain will have added to the difficulties. Fr. Hull’s suspi- cions that Fr. Baker taught an anti-authoritarian doctrine of illuminism were groundless,41 but a dispute developed which was brought before the General Chapter of the Congregation in 1633. Fr. Baker’s writings had steadily received official approbation from at least 1629, the names of the distinguished theologians Fr. Leander de Sancto Mar- tino, of St. Gregory’s since 1629, and Fr. Rudesind Barlow, appearing under the approbations. After careful consideration, the General Chapter of 1633 approved all his writings. But feelings had run high, and both Fr. Baker and Fr. Hull were transferred from Cambrai. Fr. Baker returned to Douai, under obedience to have no communication with the Cambrai nuns. Here again he spent much of his time in his cell, read- ing, praying, and writing. He came to have regular visitors from other monks, from the neighbouring English Recollects, and from the English seminary at Douai, and won many disciples to his way of prayer. The books that he wrote at this time were still on prayer and related matters, but were more analytical and sometimes argumentative, written for men rather than for women. He remarked that he would not now be capable of writing the kind of books that he had written for the nuns at Cambrai.42

At Douai two elements in Fr. Baker’s teaching caused some interest, and some concern. His teaching on the fundus animae was derived from the Rhineland

40 Wekking, The Life and Death of Dame Gertrude More. 41 There is a balanced presentation of Fr. Baker’s teaching on following the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in James Gaffney, Augustine Baker’s Inner Light: A Study in English Recusant Spir- ituality, Scranton (PA) 1989. Fr. Baker’s Doubts and Calls, fundamental for this area, is now available in print (see note 5). It is in three parts, the first part setting the tone for the whole. Writing specifically for con- templative religious, Fr. Baker emphasises the importance of discerning the will of God in one’s particular vocation within the life of prayer, and in the various practical demands that are made from day to day, in the ‘ordinary calls’, as distinct from the extraordinary graces which are the subject of the two other parts. He distinguishes between the interior call by illu- mination, and the external call by the rule or by a superior. 42 Prichard, ‘Life’, n. 185, in: Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, 122. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 219 tradition, especially from Tauler through the translations of the Cologne Carthusian Laurentius Surius, and he had no difficulty in demonstrating its orthodoxy.43 More problematic was perceived to be his teaching on the nature of obedience – a matter which had already been raised at Cambrai. Fr. Baker held that internal obedience meant an inner submission or willingness when obeying commands to do external things. But internal matters, such as one’s method of prayer, should not be subject to external interference; for superiors to impose rigid directions on their subordinates here would violate the liberty which God and the Church had given them.44 Fr. Clement Reyner, at that time President of the English Benedictine Con- gregation, insisted on universal and unlimited obedience in all things, and ordered Fr. Baker, who was preparing a treatise on obedience, to silence on this issue. Fr. Baker obeyed, but the matter had aroused interest among the theo- logical students of Douai, and the debate became general, aggravating further the relations between Fr. Reyner and Fr. Baker. Fr. Rudesind Barlow, who was in charge of the students, declined to take sides. The controversy died down, but the damage to Fr. Baker had been done. Some of the superiors at Douai found his presence an irritation; permission to visit him was less freely given. The new confessor at Cambrai complained of his influence, although he had virtually no contact with the nuns. Early in 1638 Fr. Baker completed his Treatise on the English Mission (= Mission A)45 discussing the temptations and distractions which faced Bene- dictine missionaries in their separation from community life. Fr. Barlow, who was in dispute with some of the missionaries at the time, took this trea- tise as an argument for ending the English Benedictine mission completely. Fr. Baker was distressed at this use of his treatise, and wrote a sequel (= Mis- sion B), which pointed out that there were faults in community life as well as on the mission. Fr. Barlow was an eminent theologian and canonist; though not of contemplative bent, it was he who had placed Fr. Baker at Cambrai, and he had over the years given him support in his spiritual work. Very unwisely, Fr. Baker allowed himself to include in the second treatise a portrait of an ambitious and spiritually distracted , scheming and manipulative, which reflected some aspects of Fr. Barlow. Fr. Barlow was prepared at first to accept this as a private fraternal rebuke, but when it became apparent that the document was being read and discussed more widely, it was impossible for him and Fr. Baker to remain under the same roof.

43 Prichard, ‘Life’, nn. 220-224, in: Memorials, 133-135. 44 Prichard, ‘Life’, nn. 225-226, in: Memorials, 135-136. 45 The historical portion of this is printed in Memorials, 155-189. 220 J.P.H. CLARK

Fr. Baker, with Fr. Prichard and another associate who would likewise become one of his biographers, Fr. Peter Salvin, were sent on the mission to England by Fr. Reyner. Fr. Baker’s health was poor, but he accepted this order as a matter of monastic obedience. He survived for three years in England, cared for especially by the mother of a Cambrai nun. He declared that he was now ‘totus in passionibus, all in suffering’ explaining that by ‘suffering’ he did not mean persecution or want, but that his prayer was now ‘wholly passive’,46 in rest and peace after twenty years constantly spent in mental prayer, with many trials. He died in London on August 9th 1641. The Convent of Our Lady Of Good Hope in Paris (now at Colwich, Stafford- shire) was founded in 1651 as a daughter-house of Cambrai, specifically to follow Fr. Baker’s teaching. Fr. Cressy, who compiled Holy Wisdom, was for a time chap- lain of this convent. Fr. Baker has remained a living influence in the English Bene- dictine Congregation, above all with the nuns, who continued to copy some of his manuscript treatises into the nineteenth century. Holy Wisdom has continued to exert an influence in the wider church, and has been valued by many who are not Catholics, including the Anglican spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill.47

It has been remarked that ‘Baker can be said to have read himself into the Church, as would also be the case later in respect of both his understanding of the monastic life and his entry into the ways of contemplation’.48 No doubt apart from his reading there will have been some awareness of Catholicism as a living force in the Monmouthshire of his day,49 and in the lives of some of his family. But it remains true that in his subsequent spiritual development Fr. Baker remained, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, an autodidact, and that at critical points he had no living human director. He is often included among the ‘English mystics’.50 But in fact, while he is deeply appreciative of the pre-Dissolution English contemplative tradition, the key writers for his spiritual formation belong rather to mainland Europe. The remarkably wide range of his reading in the Western Christian (Catholic) tradi- tion is shown both in his reading-lists, and in the wide-ranging references to other authors in his own treatises. Among English writers, Fr. Baker had a particular regard for the author of the Cloud of Unknowing and for Walter Hilton, author of the Scale of Perfection;

46 Prichard, ‘Life’, n. 280, in: Memorials, 152. 47 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, London 1930 (12th edition). 48 Daniel Rees, ‘Some Factors in the Formation of Fr. Baker’, in: That Mysterious Man, 13. 49 On the vigour of Welsh Catholicism in Monmouthshire at the time, see e.g. Aidan Bellenger, ‘Augustine Baker in his Recusant and Benedictine Context’, in: That Mysterious Man, 44-45. 50 As in David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition, London 1961. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 221 he knew something of Richard Rolle, though the latter is not a major element in his teaching. (Remedies against Temptations which Fr. Baker understood to be by Rolle, is actually by the Augustinian Friar William Flete). He makes use of two Bridgettine works: Richard Whytford’s Pipe of Perfection, and William Bonde’s Pilgrimage of Perfection. The relationship between the exiled English Bridgettine nuns and the other English religious communities in exile repayed exploration. But the overwhelming majority of his references is to mainland European writers. Among these are some seculars: the Spanish author of Desiderius; Avila, Audi Filia; Bérulle, Interior Abnegation; St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life and The Love of God; he also knew the work of Pseudo-Albert, The Paradise of the Soul. Among the Carmelites to whom he is indebted there are St. Teresa of Avila (both her own Life, and the Life of her by the Jesuit Ribera); St. John of the Cross (whom he knew in French translation); Joannes a Jesu Maria, and Thomas a Jesu. Among the : Lanspergius, Jean-Michel de Vesly; Molina, on Mental Prayer. There is also Surius, to whose editions of saints’ lives and translations into Latin of the Rhineland writers Fr. Baker is pro- foundly indebted. Among Franciscans there are Alphonsus of Madrid, The Method to Serve God; Frans Verwoot, The Mantle of the Spouse; and Bonilla, The Quiet of the Soul. Jesuit writers include especially Alvarez de Paz (whose works are a channel for various other authors, including Carson and Denis the Carthusian); Granada; Loartes de Puente; and Gagliardi (whose Abridgment of Christian Perfection derives from Isabella Bellinzaga). There is also the Theatine, Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Conflict. The list could be expanded. But in par- ticular there is a further series of authors who are central for Fr. Baker’s spiritual theology, and who may be brought into focus by reference to the Secretum, the commentary on the Cloud of Unknowing which Fr. Baker wrote at Cambrai in 1629-1630, and which pre-supposes the various fundamental treatises which he had already written for the nuns from 1627. This book is, of course, also fun- damental for Fr. Baker’s spiritual autobiography.51

In the Secretum Fr. Baker praises the Cloud as being the first book to present with particular clarity what he terms the ‘mystic’ way in theology;52 (He has a hazy idea of the Cloud’s origin, supposing that it was written about 1500; it is actually a work of the late fourteenth century, probably written by a Carthu- sian). What Fr. Baker terms the ‘mystic’ way, is that of reaching out towards union with God by love, by acts of the will, having a general awareness of God,

51 For all this, see the edition of the Secretum (AC 119:7) and the introductory volume (AC 119:20) already referred to. 52 Secretum, 6. 222 J.P.H. CLARK the God who is revealed in Christ and to whom we come in the Holy Spirit, but passing beyond particular images and mental concepts. The Cloud here is explicitly indebted to the tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius, as this had been trans- mitted and in part modified by Latin translators and commentators. In the the- ology stemming from Augustine, the apophaticism of Pseudo-Dionysius is interpreted in the context of an affective theology which sees the soul’s move- ment of love as itself explicitly inspired by grace.53 When we consider those spiritual writers who provide the background and authority for Fr. Baker’s teaching at this point, they are all, in common with the Cloud, indebted at least in part to the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition. All are men- tioned, or implied, in Fr. Baker’s reading-lists. First in time is John Tauler, whom Fr. Baker knew through the translation by Laurentius Surius – like Lanspergius, a Cologne Carthusian – who also includes some Pseudo-Taulerian works, such as the Institutions. Fr. Baker’s writings are full of references to Tauler, and he made as many as eight volumes of transla- tions from Tauler, or Pseudo-Tauler.54 Fr. Baker also drew on Surius’ transla- tions of Ruysbroeck and Suso, and knew Surius’ translation of the Flemish Nicolaus Eschius’ Exercitia Theologiae Mysticae; William Peryn’s English adapta- tion of Eschius’ book is included in Fr. Baker’s reading-lists. The Theologia Mystica of the Flemish Franciscan Henry Herp (Harphius), of which the second book was translated into Latin by the Carthusian Peter Blomevenna, is also fundamental for Fr. Baker. He made a translation of the Twelve Mortifications from this, and one book of his Collections is devoted to Harphius.55 From Harphius, and from Barbanson, Fr. Baker takes his distinc- tion between ‘scholastic’, rational, analytical theology, and ‘mystical’ theology, which is a matter of love and the will, of experiential union in will with God. Also especially from Harphius Fr. Baker derives the term ‘aspirations’ for the movement of the will in love towards God, which he identifies with the ‘work’ described in the Cloud of Unknowing. Also frequently quoted is the sixteenth-century Benedictine abbot Louis de Blois (Blosius), very many of whose works Fr. Baker translated.56 Especially important here is Blosius’ Institutio Spiritualis. Fundamental are two books by Capuchins. Fr. Benet Canfield’s The Will of God (=The Rule of Perfection) was published in France. The first two parts were published in French, English and Latin; the third part was published only in French and Latin. As well as quoting

53 J.P.H. Clark, The Cloud of Unknowing: An Introduction, Vol. 1, Salzburg 1995 (AC 119:4), ch. 6, 53-76, esp. 64-65. 54 Clark, ‘Father Augustine Baker’s Translations from the works of John Tauler’, 50-51. 55 An editon of Fr. Baker’s Collections is at press with Analecta Cartusiana. 56 Clark, ‘Augustine Baker’s Translations’, Appendix, 82-89. AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B. 223 frequently from Canfield, Fr. Baker translated substantial sections of the third part in his Book E. Following this is Constantin de Barbanson’s Secrets Sentiers de l’Amour Divin, published in French and Latin in 1623. This has much to say about the way of ‘aspirations’ and ‘elevations’, and also especially of the experi- ence of desolation and aridity as a prelude to the way of union with God, as well as taking up again the contrast between ‘scholastic’ and ‘mystical’ theology. Fr. Baker again constantly refers to Barbanson, and the second book of his Collec- tions is devoted to translations from it. This book might have been of consider- able help to Fr. Baker in coming to terms with spiritual aridity at the time of his ‘second conversion’ in 1620 if it had been available, but it was not yet published. In the event, Fr. Baker made considerable use of it on the question of aridity with the Cambrai nuns. In his Secretum, he sets out explicitly to show that the teaching of the Cloud on what he terms the ‘exercise of the will’ is in conformity with that of Canfield and Barbanson.57 As well as the affective and partially Pseudo-Dionysian tradition which he found in the Franciscans, Fr. Baker had a strong sympathy with the Carmelites. His respect for St. Teresa has already been mentioned. He knew the works of St. John of the Cross in the French version available at the time, and often quotes him. At the same time he has not fully assimilated the Mystical Doctor’s teach- ing, and it would be inappropriate to measure all of Fr. Baker’s teaching on prayer against a precise yardstick constructed according to a strict application of the teaching of St. John of the Cross, even less against an interpretation of the Mystical Doctor which leans heavily upon a thorough-going Neo-Thomism. Dom David Knowles, to whose insights all students of the English contem- plative tradition must remain profoundly indebted, took exception to Fr. Baker’s use of the term ‘active mystic contemplation’, on the grounds that according to St. John of the Cross contemplation is by its name essentially receptive of God’s grace, and is in that sense ‘passive’.58 But Fr. Baker does not formally employ St. Thomas’ distinction between the ‘co-operant’ and ‘operant’ modes of grace, with all that this implies. The author of the Cloud of Unknow- ing is aware of this distinction, but Fr. Baker, commenting in the Secretum on this section of the Cloud, does not draw out the distinction as the Cloud-author does.59 Fr. Baker’s use of the term ‘mystic’ derives explicitly from Pseudo- Dionysius and his tradition,60 and within this tradition the term ‘active mystic contemplation’ is acceptable.

57 Secretum, 8-9. 58 Cf. Knowles, English Mystical Tradition, 164-165. 59 Secretum, 151, commenting on Cloud, ch. 34. 60 Secretum, 2. 224 J.P.H. CLARK

Fr. Baker was indeed an autodidact, and lacked the benefits of a formation in scholastic theology. But his spiritual struggles in the progress towards contem- plation, without the benefit of a human director, gave him particular insights, and made (and make) him a very effective guide for others. We are theologically on good ground when we interpret him more especially in terms of those writ- ers who are central to his, culminating especially in Canfield and Barbanson. Fr. Baker’s approval of the ‘active mystic contemplation’ is in accord with Canfield’s reasoned preference for the ascetic ‘active annihilation’, involving sustained human effort in conjunction with grace, over the ‘passive annihilation’, which is indeed wholly God’s work, but does not in itself entail the same ‘fortitude’ and ‘continuation’ as the active annihilation.61 Fr. Baker took note of Canfield’s teaching here, and it is faithfully rendered in his Book E.62

SUMMARY

Fr. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. (1575-1641) was chaplain to the English Benedictine nuns of Cambrai from 1624 to 1633. He is best known for Holy Wisdom, distilled and printed after his death from his treatises of spiritual direction. The publication of a number of hitherto unprinted treatises opens the way to a fresh approach to him. Fr. Baker had a high regard for a number of medieval English spiritual writings, especially for the Cloud of Unknowing; but he belonged to the new world of the Counter-Refor- mation. Within this context, and nourished by a remarkably wide reading, he was con- cerned to lead the nuns in a way of prayer that was appropriate to their contemplative vocation. While respectful of the significant contribution made by the Jesuits to the Counter-Reform, he was chary of any simply mechanical application of Ignatian meth- ods in spiritual direction. His affective approach, touched with Pseudo-Dionysian apophaticism, has contact with the Carmelites, and a particularly close bond with the Capuchins Benet Canfield and Constantin de Barbanson.

Rev. Dr. J.P.H. (John) Clark, born 1937 in Horsham (England) is a retired Anglican priest and is currently engaged on editions of the Cartae of the Carthusian General Chapter, and on editions of the works of Fr. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. Address: 6 The Cottage, West Row, Greatham, Hartlepool TS25 2HW, England

61 Benoît de Canfield, La règle de perfection/ The Rule of Perfection (Ed. J. Orcibal), Paris 1982, III.11, 399-402. 62 Book E, 78-80. All this is taken up more fully in the introductory volume for the Secretum.