This is the theme of St Bernard's sermons on the Canticles , which is one of the classics of mediaeval religious literature , and which had an immense influence on the development of Western mysticism .sx The allegorical interpretation of Canticles as an epithalamium on the mystical marriage between the human soul and the Divine Word , has its roots deep in the tradition of the Eastern Church with Origen and Methodius of Olympus , and Gregory of Nyssa .sx But it was through St Bernard that it first became .sx completely incorporated in the Western spiritual tradition , passing on through Richard of St Victor and St Bonaventure to St John of the Cross and the mystics of the seventeenth century , both Catholic and Protestant .sx This is one of the aspects of mediaeval spirituality that is least sympathetic to the modern mind , which is apt to regard the mystical Eros as a perversion of , or a substitute for , sexual pass-ion .sx But the mediaeval Christian , whether philosopher or mystic , viewed the matter from a diametrically opposite point of view .sx To him , divine love was the reality and human love the shadow .sx The cosmic process has its origin in the overflowing of the love of God which is the act of creation and finds its motive force in the desire by which all creation seeks to return to its source .sx And hence sexual passion is but a blind and perverted form of the universal force which finds its true , conscious and normal expression in the love of God .sx This philosophy of love , which is implicit in the whole thought and life of St Bernard , had been developed in its full metaphysical implications by the Pseudo-Areopagite in his treatise on the Divine Names .sx " By all things , " he writes , " is the Beautiful and the Good , desired and loved and chosen to be loved ; and be-cause of it and for its sake those that are lower love those that are higher by attraction , and those that are of the same rank love their equals in communion , and the higher love the lower by forethought and kindness , and each loves its own by coherence ; and all things by desiring the Beautiful and Good do and will whatsoever they do and will .sx Further it may be truly said that the very Cause of all things , by reason of the overflow of His Goodness , loves all , creates all , perfects all , holds all together , turns all to Himself ; and the Divine Love is the Good and of the Good and by reason of the Good .sx For that Love itself , working the good of existing things , pre-existing overflowingly in the Good , did .sx not suffer Him to remain in Himself without Fruit , but moved Him to creation , by the overflowing which is generative of all things .sx " " And let us not be afraid of this name of Love ( Eros ) or be perturbed by what anyone may say against it .sx For the theologians seem to me to treat the words Charity and Love ( Agape and Eros ) as equivalent , and preferred to reserve love in the absolute sense for divine things , on account of the misplaced prejudice of the vulgar .sx For though Love in Itself is spoken of in the divine sense not by us only , but by the Oracles the Scriptures themselves , the multitude , not comprehending the oneness of the divine name of Love , fell away , as might be expected of them , to a divided , material , and partial conception of love , which is not true love , but a shadow of Love itself , or rather a falling away from it .sx " Thus the devotional mysticism of St Bernard and his school , especially William of St Thierry , finds its philosophical complement in the mystical metaphysics of the Pseudo-Areopagite , and it was the union of these two traditions which gave birth to the great development of speculative mysticism in the later middle ages .sx The earliest contact between the two traditions took place in the twelfth century with Hugh and Richard of St Victor .sx It is true that the works of the Pseudo-Areopagite had been accessible in the West ever since the ninth century , when they were first translated by Hilduin of St Denys .sx But apart from the outstanding exception of John Scotus Erigena , whose mystical Neoplatonism had singularly little influence either on his contemporaries or his successors the Dionysian writings had no real importance for Western thought until the sudden awakening of interest in the twelfth century which shows itself in the successive commentaries on the book of the Celestial Hierarchies , produced by Herve of Deols , 1110-130 , by Hugh of St Victor about I 137 , and by John Sarrazin who died in 1180 .sx But even in the case of Hugh of St Victor the Dionysian influence is slight , and on the whole the Victorine school belongs to the same Western Augustinian tradition as the Cistercian school with which they are so closely allied , until we come to the time of Thomas of St Vic-tor , afterwards Abbot of Vercelli , about 1225 , who fused the tradition of the school of St Victor with the teachings of the Pseudo-Dionysius , which he did so much to popularize by his translations and adaptations .sx It was , however , among the great scholastics of the thirteenth century that the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius and the Neoplatonists attains its complete development .sx Indeed , so far from scholasticism and mysticism being two hostile and contradictory forces in mediaeval thought , we may justly describe the introspective mysticism of the later middle ages , especially the school of Eckhart , Tauler and Ruysbroeck as `scholastic mysticism' , since it is as closely bound up with the scholastic development of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as is Thomism itself .sx In fact , these two movements had a common source in the teaching of St Albert the Great , who was the teacher both of St Thomas on the one hand and of Ulrich of Strasburg on the other , from whom in turn the tradition was handed on through Dietrich of Freiberg to Eckhart who was universally acknowledged as the founder and master .sx of the great school of fourteenth-century German and Flemish mysticism .sx No doubt it is possible to contrast the Neoplatonism of this school with the Aristotelian-ism of St Thomas , so as to make them appear completely opposed to one another .sx But we must remember that the Aristotelianism of St Thomas was profoundly impregnated with Neoplatonic elements , and that the Dionysian writings were themselves one of the main formative influences on St Thomas's thought , while on the other hand Eckhart and Tauler and the rest were themselves students of Aristotle and St Thomas , and regarded the latter as the great theologian of their order .sx In Eckhart the Dionysian current , reinforced by further Neoplatonic elements derived from Proclus and the Arabs , reaches its extreme development and seems to pass the utmost bounds of orthodoxy and to bring the mediaeval theological development to a conclusion not far removed from the pure monism of the Vedanta .sx Nevertheless , as Denifle pointed out long ago , Eckhart is not an oriental pantheist nor a modern idealist , he is a mediaeval Dominican and a scholastic , and in order to understand his views it is necessary to put them in their historical context and relate them to the intellectual milieu in which they originated .sx Thus when Eckhart asserts that God is all , that creatures are sheer nothing and that it is a fallacy to speak of God as good , he is merely expressing in paradoxical and unguarded language the commonplaces of the Dionysian theology which are to be found in a more balanced but no lesscomplete form in the standard works of Ulrich of Strasburg and of St Thomas himself .sx But whatever may be thought of Eckhart , there can be no question as to the fundamental and entire orthodoxy of his disciples , John Tauler , Henry Suso , Henry of Nordlingen , and John Ruysbroeck , through whom the mystical metaphysics of Pseudo-Dionysius and Eckhart became one of the great sources of spiritual life and inspiration for the later mediaeval church .sx The Friends of God , as they were called , gained adherents among every class throughout the Rhineland and Lower Germany .sx They included not only learned Dominican theologians , like Tauler , and nuns like the members of the Dominican communities at Toss and Unterlinden , but also secular priests , like Henry of Nordlingen , knights of the Teutonic Order such as Nicholas von Laufen , the Strasburg banker Rulman Merswin , and even peasants and uneducated lay people .sx Thus the via negativa of the mediaeval mystic , which seems to the outsider to lead to a pantheistic nihilism that leaves no room for any social or moral activity , actually inspired one of the great popular religious movements of the Middle Ages .sx It is a striking example perhaps the most striking instance in history of the way in which abstract theological thought may affect religious life and social action , and it is the more remarkable when we consider how unfavourable were the circumstances of the time and place for the development of such a highly intellectualized and esoteric type of religion .sx IV .sx BUT while this mystical movement represents one of the peaks of the mediaeval religious development , it was by no means the only or the most important one .sx The movement which had the greatest influence on mediaeval religion and mediaeval culture was not the speculative mysticism of the Dominicans , but the evangelical piety and the devotion to the Humanity of Jesus that found its supreme expression in the life of St Francis .sx This movement has far less connection with the scientific theology of the schools than the other , though one of its most notable representatives , St Bonaventure , was also one of the greatest of scholastic theologians .sx It was preeminently practical , emotional and human , owing nothing to learned tradition or metaphysical ideas , but springing directly from the heart and from personal experience .sx The greatest religious achievement of the Middle Ages is not to be found in the imposing edifice of its ecclesiastical organization , or in its work of intellectual synthesis , but in its deepening of the spiritual life by a new type of religious experience which had a profound influence on West-ern Christianity .sx One of the most original and suggestive of modern writers on mediaeval religion , the late Pierre Rousselot , has written of this change as follows :sx " St Augustine had considered the struggle for truth and holiness , before all , as a personal affair between the individual soul and God ; it is by that that he had so to speak `interiorized God' .sx But he had not in the same way interiorized Jesus .sx The humanity of Christ remains with him rather in the background .sx The great novelty of the Middle Ages , their incomparable religious merit , was the understanding and love , or rather one may say , the passion of the humanity of Christ .sx The Incarnate Word , homo Christus Jesus , is no longer only the model to be imitated , the guide to be followed , and on the other hand , the uncreated light that enlightens the interior of the soul ; he is interior , even in respect of His Humanity ; He is the spouse of the soul , who acts with it and in it ; He is the friend .sx " Now this new development of the religious tradition of the West , this new type of Christian sensibility , had already made its appearance in the early twelfth century with St Bernard .sx In his teaching the Humanity of Jesus acquires a new significance .sx In place of the severe figure of the Byzantine Christ , throned in awful majesty as the ruler and judge of men , St Bernard prefers to dwell on the human likeness of Jesus , the human suffering of His Passion and the human weakness of His Infancy .sx " Arbitror Jesum et Joseph , virum Mariae , super genua frequenter arrisisse , " he writes , and again :sx " 0 man , why do you dread the face of the Lord ?sx ... Say not , like Adam , `I heard His Voice and I hid me,' for behold He is a speechless infant , and the voice of a child crying is more to be pitied than feared .sx " This was a new note in Christian literature and one which was to be repeated in countless meditations and hymns , such as the famous Jesus dulcis memoria and the .sx