Walter Hilton
While The Cloud of Unknowing and Julian of Norwich have enjoyed a surge of popularity in recent years — Julian for her optimism and her maternal images of God, The Cloud for its insistence on a spiritual practice that is deeply congenial to those seeking a Christian alternative to Eastern meditation — such popularity has so far eluded Hilton, an Augustinian friar from northern England who was a contemporary of both Julian and The Cloud. Hilton’s persistent obscurity is ironic, for in the fourteenth century he was probably the most renowned of these three mystics; in our time his lack of visibility is unfortunate, for his works are arguably the most balanced and useful of the fourteenth century English mystical writings. Especially in his masterpiece, The Scale of Perfection, Hilton provides a truly systematic theology of the contemplative life, describing the dynamics of the mystical life in a manner both pastorally sensitive and psychologically astute.
Before the Protestant Reformation, The Scale of Perfection was widely read in Catholic Europe — a testament to its value as a grounded manual for spiritual development. Like so many other works of mystical genius, The Scale (also translated as the “Stairway” or the “Ladder” of Perfection) challenges its reader to enter the mystical life by embracing a life of penance and of seeking personal holiness. The book consists of two parts, which very likely were written at different times. While it is addressed to a specific nun who has chosen the contemplative life, the work provides a broad enough view of the spiritual life that it can be profitably studied by laypersons as well as by nuns, monks and clergy.
Throughout The Scale, Hilton patiently guides his readers through stages of spiritual development leading to the renewal of our divine birthright as creatures formed in the image of likeness of God. This renewal occurs in stages (hence the title), including the “reformation of faith” — using techniques such as divine reading and meditation to nuture a sense of being loved and found worthy by God — and, for the committed contemplative, the “reformation of feeling,” which is not a matter of emotional transformation so much as it is the cultivation of an on-going practice of contemplative attentiveness to God. For modern readers, the overall message is simple yet profound: for one to actually experience God, begin by making a commitment to conform both one’s faith and one’s behavior to the wisdom of the church and of the great contemplatives down the ages.
Aside from The Scale of Perfection, several shorter works are also generally regarded as having been written by Hilton, these include De Imagine Peccati (“On the Image of Sin”), The Mixed Life, Eight Chapters of Perfection, and Of Angels’ Song. As the titles suggest, Hilton wrote both in English and in Latin; The Scale appears to have been written in English although at some point it was translated into Latin.
Little is known about Walter Hilton, apart from his writings. We do know that he abandoned a promising career as a secular lawyer in order to enter the priesthood, and probably became a canon lawyer once he was ordained. He was an Augustinian friar, at the time of his death serving as Canon of the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton, near Nottingham (of Robin Hood fame). He died on March 24, 1396 — the eve of the Annunciation of Our Lady.
For further reading:
- Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, translated by Leo Sherley-Price
- Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection (Middle English Text), edited by Thomas H. Bestul
- Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection (Classics of Western Spirituality Series), translated by John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward
- Walter Hilton, The Stairway of Perfection, translated by M. L. DelMastro
- Walter Hilton, Eight Chapters on Perfection and the Angel’s Song
- Walter Hilton, The Mixed Life
- Walter Hilton, Toward a Perfect Love
- Julia Gatta, Three Spiritual Directors for Our Time: Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton
- Joseph E. Milosh, The Scale of Perfection and the English Mystical Tradition
Thanks for this site and this helpful article. I’ve linked to it on an upcoming post on my site. Here’s the URL for the post. http://chriserdman.com/?p=833
I enjoyed reading of your own personal story.
chris
October 15, 2009 at 12:35 pm
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I am interested in buying a hard cover of The Stairway of Perfection by Walter Hilton and translated with an introduction by M. L. Del Mastro. I have read it several times and renewed it several times from the library and I can no longer renew it. Please let me know if I can purchase a copy. Thank you.
July 12, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I am not aware of a hardcover edition of the Del Mastro translation. If you discover one, please let me know!
July 12, 2010 at 9:18 pm
The one I keep getting renewed is a hard cover edition fom the Mahoning County Library in Youngstown, Ohio.
July 14, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Does the book have an ISBN? Do you have its publisher and date? I’m wondering if it was just the paperback edition bound in hardcover for library circulation, which was not uncommon at the time this book was originally published.
July 14, 2010 at 9:14 pm
The ISBN is 0-385-14059-2. Image Books (a division of Doubleday & Company, Inc.) is the publisher and the date is 1979. You’re probably right, it might have been a paperback edition bound in hardcover. Anyway, I will order a paperback today. Thank you.
July 17, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Yes, I think that must have been a paperback original. It’s a lovely translation, would be nice if it got reissued in a hardcover edition.
July 18, 2010 at 12:01 am
Although commonly thought of as belonging to the genre ‘Mysticism’, Walter Hilton’s ‘The Ladder of Perfection’ is strictly speaking not a work of mysticism at all. It more accurately belongs to the Contemplative-Homiletic genre, and its ‘systematic theology’ of the contemplative life is unfortunately so emeshed in the power systems of austere Augustinian religiosity and theology (hence Hilton’s obsession with ‘pride’) that it could even be described as belonging to an anti-mystical tradition. Ultimately, Hilton wants to control his ‘hot’ feelings towards God and Jesus; indeed, as a theological control freak, he wants to control everything (this was a pre-psychological age). True mystics don’t. Moreover, mystic souls are not interested in ‘systematic theology’, and they are similarly not interested in scribbling cosy letters of instruction to others of the faith; what they are interested in is a one-on-one relationship with God, an intense – and sometimes sexually experienced (not mandatory) – relationship in which the mystic identifies with God-in-Jesus, and is emeshed only in a God-becoming process of total love which transcends the constraints of institutional religiosity and theology. They are God-destroyers as much as God-creators. They boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before, and are by no means timid when it comes to exploring the idea that the God ‘out there’ is one and the same with God ‘in here’. For them, this is the most blatantly obvious, and at the same time sublime, idea in the whole universe of human spirituality, which perhaps explains why most of us simply don’t make the grade. The ‘Ladder’ is assuredly an interesting work, not so much for its stilted, would-be mysticism, but rather for the manner in which it anticipates the central idea of the Reformation, the idea of the individual relating to God, not through the church, but through personal devotion, prayer and reading the Bible. Without knowing it, the author of the ‘Ladder’ was perhaps a nascent Luther. But more interestingly, Catholics in the 14th century had apparently set about ‘re-forming’ their own religion, without any help from later reformers. That’s a truly mind-blowing idea. Sorry for the note of bathos, but Hilton’s ‘mysticism’ isn’t. Try reading some of the works in the Italian mystical tradition. Some of the writings of the Italian mystics are the ‘real thing’.
November 16, 2010 at 8:52 am
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Philip Johnson, needless to say I pretty strongly disagree with both your assessment of Hilton and your overall definition of mysticism. Granted, your definition of mysticism leads you to your conclusions about Hilton. I’ve responded in detail to your comment on my blog, at the post called Is Mysticism Special?. Regardless of our disagreements, I do hope you’ll spell out which of the “some Italian mystics” you consider to have the “real thing,” as I’m always curious to hear which mystical writings people find most useful.
November 17, 2010 at 6:23 am