Quietism
The
term has several connotations and is often used in a broad sense to refer to
the emphasis on human inactivity and passivity that has accompanied the mystic
experience. In a more specific way it refers to a manifestation of Roman
Catholic mysticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This movement
was inspired by the teachings of Miguel de Molinos, a Spanish priest who lived
in Italy and published his views in a book entitled Spiritual Guide. According
to Molinos the goal of Christian experience is the perfect rest of the soul in
God. Such a condition is possible when a person abandons himself completely to
God and the will is totally passive. Mental prayer rather than any external
activity is the means to the state of absolute rest with God. Molinos was accused of despising Christian
virtue and of moral aberration because he believed that in a state of
contemplation the soul is unaffected by either good works or sin. The Jesuits
led the attack on his doctrine, claiming that it was an exaggerated and
unhealthy form of mysticism. Through their efforts he was arrested and
imprisoned. (He must of been OK!)
Despite
the opposition quietism spread to France, where it found an outstanding
proponent in Madame Guyon, a woman from an influential family. Forced to
abandon her desire to follow a religious vocation and instead to marry, she was
constantly seeking a deeper spiritual life. Following the death of her husband
she came under the influence of Molinos's thought and by 1680 felt herself so
close to God that she received visions and revelations. Traveling widely
through France she won many converts, calling them "spiritual
children." Her teaching, elaborated in A Short and Easy Method of Prayer,
emphasized passive prayer as the major Christian activity. Eventually, she
felt, the soul will lose all interest in its own fate, and even the truth of
the gospel would be insignificant before "the torrent of the forces of
God." On a popular level her teaching led to a disregard for the spiritual
activities and the sacraments of the church. Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, warned
her to stop propagating these ideas, but she continued to win followers. She
exchanged a series of letters with Fenelon, who admired and defended her ideas.
In 1687 Pope Innocent XI condemned quietism, and Guyon along with many of her
followers suffered imprisonment and persecution.
See also
MYSTICISM.