마저리 켐프와 영국남성 명상주의: 상상적 비전에 관하여

Abstract

The visio imaginativa, or the imaginative vision, was an important and complex issue in late medieval European mysticism. Layfolk, especially female mystics, often adopted the contemplation of body as a main method of nourishing their piety. They focused on the humanity of Christ, especially Christ’s body in Passion, and developed the human image of Christ in their memorative and imaginative power. This affective tendency had, in fact, been suppressed by the official mystical method of pseudo-Dionysius; and the fourteenth-century English treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing, most faithfully employing the pseudo-Dionysian via negativa, dismissed tears, bodily response, imagination as an inferior or even dangerous approach to Christ. However, another fourteenth-century male mystic, Walter Hilton, while maintaining the via negativa approach to God, permitted the imaginative vision, at least to a moderate extent, to be used for those simple souls whose cognitive ability could not reach the intellectual vision of God. On the other hand, in the early fifteenth century in England, the Wycliffite promotion of layman piety and vernacular translation was confronted with extreme opposition in Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s “Constitutions.” But, as indicated by his authorization of Nicholas Love’s translation of pseudo-Bonaventura’s treatises, Arundel to some degree admitted of vernacular religious literature and affective piety. Although in a similar vein to Hilton’s, Arundel and Love’s acceptance of them was a political—rather than a theological—move to prevent possible intellectual heresies and dissensions among unlearned people that may arise from the strict ban on affective piety and text. It is, indeed, in these theological, pedagogical, political contexts of contemporary English society that the composition of Margery’s very material and affective mysticism should be examined. Thus, it is not a surprise that Margery quotes Hilton, Rolle, pseudo-Bonaventura (involving Nicholas Love and Thomas Arundel) vis-à-vis continental female mystics, while she entirely excludes The Cloud of Unknowing. Margery’s Book is really a product that results from Arundel and Love’s negotiation between anti-Wycliffite action and partial permission of bodily vision and vernacular text, as well as the interaction between continental female mysticism and English mystical tradition. This is why Margery’s Book was allowed, or even recommended, to be written despite the contemporary censorship in England against both affective piety and vernacular text.