The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection Method by Jessica A. Boon (review)

The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection Method by Jessica A. Boon cannot be satisfactorily summarized in a review of a few thousand words. Boon’s research is solid, her prose succinct, her conclusions logical; one has the sense that every paragraph could be the start of its own monograph. Fundamentally, The Mystical Science of the Soul (hereafter Mystical Science) proposes nothing less than a critical reassessment of the recollection (recogimiento) texts of early Castilian mysticism, and as such is a significant development in the field of religious history. This efficiently complex yet exceptionally readable book seeks to elucidate for modern scholars the correct cultural context within which recogimiento works should be interpreted, and anchors this reconstruction in a close reading of Bernardino de Laredo’s Subida del Monte Sión (published in two distinct editions in 1535 and 1538). While Laredo’s vernacular Subida made his unique conceptualization of spiritual union available to new audiences and was particularly remarkable for his apophatic premise of no pensar nada, his unitive framework often has been dismissed as an underdeveloped conceptualization of what would become the quintessential Golden Age Castilian mysticism of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. It is this imperfect and incomplete assessment of Laredo’s importance in the development of Castilian mysticism that Boon’s Mystical Science most clearly seeks to address, and it does so with unequivocal success.

One of the principal assertions of Mystical Science is that Laredo’s Subida was markedly different from traditional bifurcated interpretations of recogimiento texts in which body and soul were separated. In fact, Boon argues that Laredo’s cognitively-based conceptualization of mystical union assumed that the body was not in fact separate from the soul, but rather required that spiritual union be internalized within a devotee, that is, a literal physical embodiment. Boon’s analysis of Laredo’s embodied mysticism counters earlier interpretations of the Subida in which Laredo was seen to advocate a purely metaphysical union with the soul. Boon concludes that any scholarly interpretation that focuses only on the metaphysical must be questioned, and argues that an embodied soul can itself only be understood within the appropriate contexts of late medieval and Renaissance physiology, optics, and memory as they related to personal devotional practices. Boon’s critical rereading of Laredo’s Subida also asserts that Laredo’s medical training must be taken into account when interpreting the text.

The introduction to Mystical Science is essential reading for all scholars of Castilian mysticism. In it Boon explores the significance of Galenic and neo-Aristotelian medieval and Renaissance scientific epistemology in which it was believed that sensory data became conceptual thought by passing through the brain, with vision playing an obviously important role in this process. Significantly, Laredo’s three-part recogimiento schema follows this same trajectory, with the abstract thought of union with God becoming reality only after attention is directed inward, allowing for the processing of abstract thought through the brain. This physiological progression by which the body processed visual images was the model for the conversion of abstract thought into knowledge, and demonstrates the importance of the visual in the creation of memory in medieval monastic meditation. The mind and soul formed a symbiotic relationship within which spiritual transformation could occur, and therefore when Laredo urged devotees to turn inward in order to find God, he was operating within a cognitive model that required the participation of both body and soul. Boon also demonstrates how Laredo’s unitive method casts the contemplation of Christ’s tortured body as paramount, making the observation of the physical an integral component of spiritual union.

Part One of Mystical Science, “Rereading the Historical Context”, is subdivided into two sections; the first, “Renaissance Castilian Spirituality: An Embodied Christianity”, assesses the role meditations...