religions

Editorial Introduction to “Spanish ”

Cristóbal Serrán-Pagán y Fuentes

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Valdosta University, Valdosta, GA 31698, USA; [email protected]

As the Guest Editor for the special volume on “Spanish Mysticism”, my experience working with experts in this field has been excellent and very rewarding, especially in these current times, where we are dealing with COVID-19. I am very grateful to have served as the Guest Editor and to have contributed with an article on St. . It has been a great privilege to exchange ideas with scholars from all over the world. Until just recently, scholars in theology or religious studies often only associated Spanish mysticism with the great Christian mystics from St. to St. Teresa of Avila to St. John of the Cross. In the pluralistic and global world in which we live today, we must try our best to expand our knowledge and make the connections that existed in medieval and modern times among the three major mystical traditions in the West. The long history of conflicts, tensions, wars and, yes, religious coexistence is an integral part in the study of Spanish mysticism that has to be reckoned with. Spanish mysticism has become a field of study in itself due to the rich history of kabbalistic, Christian, and Sufi mystics born in the Iberian Peninsula—from Moses de Leon to Abraham Abulafia, Ignatius of Loyola to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, and Ibn ‘Abbad of Ronda to Ibn al-’Arabi. The three monotheistic religions in the West left us a major cultural, spiritual, and religious legacy in the so-called period of convivencia or   coexistence in medieval and modern . In total, nine articles were published electronically in this special volume of Religions. Citation: Serrán-Pagán y Fuentes, The authors were scholars from the United States (Dombrowski, Serrán-Pagán, Carrión), Cristóbal. 2021. Introduction to Spain (López-Anguita, Alonso, Beneito), Puerto Rico (López-Baralt), Israel (Bar-Asher), “Spanish Mysticism”. Religions 12: and Germany (Dal Bo). I am very proud of the quality of their research and their major 731. https://doi.org/10.3390/ contributions to this volume. I believe this field of Spanish mysticism will open up even rel12090731 more avenues and opportunities after people read these articles covering Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism in the context of the Iberian Peninsula. Received: 20 August 2021 The primary scope of the articles collected here in this special volume serves the Accepted: 27 August 2021 Published: 7 September 2021 purpose of contextualizing Spanish mystical writings in their historical times and to ex- amine how their legacy in the Iberian soil continues to evolve over time. The purpose of

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral this volume is to bring together the different fields of knowledge from religious studies, with regard to jurisdictional claims in theology, philosophy, history, comparative literature, philology, psychology, sociology, and published maps and institutional affil- the arts to address the main question: Do Spanish mystics borrow symbols and narratives iations. from the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? This special topic on Spanish mysticism has attracted scholars from different disci- plines to study the great Spanish mystics. The overall focus of this issue is to trace the mutual influences found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics and to examine their spiritual legacies in greater depth. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The aim of this volume is to expand on the existing, currently available literature and This article is an open access article to bring together the disjoint pieces of the puzzle so we can better and more holistically distributed under the terms and understand the rich legacy of the Spanish mystics and the extent to which their mystical conditions of the Creative Commons thoughts are intertwined in the long history of Spanish mystical literature. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// To those of you interested in Jewish mysticism in the context of past interactions creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ with either Muslims or Christians, I cordially invite you to read the articles found in this 4.0/). collection by Dombrowski, Bar-Asher, Alonso, and Dal Bo. In their articles, they cover a

Religions 2021, 12, 731. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12090731 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 731 2 of 2

range of topics, from the monopolar concept of God in the Abrahamic religions in Spain to the question of paradise in Kabbalah in the context of al-Andalus to the divine feminine in the Zohar, and in the Sufi of Murcia to the philosophical poems of Giqatilla. To those readers interested in , I recommend that you check out the articles by Dombrowski, Serrán-Pagán, and López-Baralt on St. John of the Cross, and Carrión on St. Teresa of Avila. Finally, to those of you more interested in Sufi or Islamic mysticism in al-Andalus, I refer you to the articles written by Carrión, López-Anguita, Alonso, and Beneito on Ibn al-‘Arabi. Nonetheless, each article makes comparisons to other mystical traditions found in the Spanish soil. The cultural, religious, and mystical ferment found among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim texts is undeniable. In this collection of articles, the reader will find a clear trend of comparative and interdisciplinary studies proving, once and for all, the innumerable interconnections and mutual influences exhibited by the great mystics in their classic writings. Moreover, this is just the next stage in the comparative study of Spanish mysticism that started with scholars like Asín Palacios and have flourished over the last few decades. I owe a great deal to the expertise of each contributor to this volume, and to many other scholars such as McGuinn, Perrin, Matt, Girón-Negrón, Jaoudi, Sancho Fermín, Vidal Castro, Gonzalez Costa, Gómez Aranda, Fenton, Wolfson, Idel, Garb, Dauber, Benarroech, Satz, Cócera, Feldmeir, Poveda, Beltrán Llavador, Velasco, de Pascual, and del Valle Rodríguez, among many others who were unable to submit an article to this volume but are contributing to this field of Spanish mysticism with their research and comparative studies. I am very thankful for this opportunity to have collaborated with scholars from different continents and with staff from Asia and Europe. I again want to express my deepest and sincere gratitude to each one of the authors who contributed with an article to this special volume. Their articles are invaluable in contextualizing the important roles played by each mystic in their cultural and religious milieu and in raising critical questions and opening new possibilities to go further in their research while, at the same time, urging those who are interested in this comparative field of mysticism to bring new perspectives from their respective fields of knowledge, be it in political science, economics, architecture, or any other field of expertise that can enrich us through our fuller understanding of the Spanish mystics. In closing, it is my personal hope that this collection of scholarly articles will continue the trend of conversation that currently exists among scholars coming from different reli- gious traditions, cultures, and countries in order for the public reader to better understand the deep spiritual level that was attained by the great mystics in the historical context of the Iberian Peninsula. This alone could serve as a model for more in-depth comparative studies and for greater interfaith dialogues to be held among scholars across the different academic disciplines.

Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.