Mysticism and Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich

Chapter Two. Social Space

Chapter Two Social Space While analyzing past ages we are too often obliged to “take each epoch at its word,” that is, to believe its official ideologists. We do not hear the voice of the people and cannot find and decipher its pure unmixed expression. All the acts of world history were performed before a chorus of laughing people. Without hearing the chorus we cannot understand the drama as a whole. (Mikhail Bakhtin) Medieval Society and Mysticism from a Contemporary Perspective Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and the Cloud author did not live and die in a vacuum. Their extant texts bear witness to lives lived in dedication to God, but these lives were firmly rooted in medieval society.1 Like the medieval physical space, the space of that society exhibited, at least on the surface, a pattern of order and conformity. Within that overarching order, however, we can assume that, as in all societies, past and present, a great variety of ideas and actions found 59 1. Some reference will also be made to contemporaneous biographical material on Rolle contained in the Officium written shortly after his death by his followers who were hoping for his canonization. As such, the material is strongly hagiographical in mode and is treated therefore with some reservations. expression. Social space refers to that space in which social ideas develop and social actions and interactions take place. It is the space where, individually and collectively, people “develop, give expression to themselves, and encounter prohibitions [and in which] they perish ” (Lefebvre 1991/1974, 34). Social space is vitally replicated in all strata of the conceptual mise en abîme of mystical space, providing a context in which Rolle’s, the Cloud author’s, and Julian’s religious beliefs were shaped, in which their mystical insights were gained, and in which their texts were produced , disseminated, and received. The acceptance of the social space as influential in the formation and expression of mystical experience does not negate the possibility of that experience being authentic. Peter Moore pertinently observes, for instance, that [w]hile it is undoubtedly the case that a mystic’s beliefs and expectations are likely to affect the nature both of his experience and his report of his experience, this influence constitutes no more of a problem in the case of mysticism than it does in the case of any other form of experience. The mystic’s doctrinal background should, therefore, be seen as a key to his experience rather than a door which shuts us off from it. (Quoted in Baker 1994, 7) Moore’s summation points to a way of viewing medieval mysticism that admits of both its posited transcendent aspects and the possibility of social influence on the expression of mysticism. Equally, Lefebvre ’s theory of space as a social production is enlightening when applied to medieval mysticism despite it obvious prohibition against the possibility of “real” spiritual experience. The theory becomes useful when its basic premise is inverted rather than dismissed. Such inversion is possible because the concept of space is malleable, and therefore it is equally valid to claim that social space is an aspect of mystical space as it is for Lefebvre to claim, for example, that spiritual experience is a product of social space. Lefebvre bases his theory on a stated awareness that, currently , space is divided conceptually into three separately apprehended 60 social space “fields”: the physical, the mental, and the social.2 His aim has been to redefine space so that those separate fields are all regarded as components of a socially produced space.3 I do not agree with this formulation in its entirety, preferring to regard space as multifaceted and accepting , in line with the mystics (and many physicists), that there is a space beyond discernible space, a space that cannot be “produced” in practice but only intimated in theory or spiritually experienced. Furthermore, the positing of spiritual space as a social production is an already biased view as it admits of God as an idea only and effaces any possibility of God as an actuality. However, by inverting the conception and placing social space “within” physical space, God as an idea and God as an actuality can be equally accommodated. Therefore , my view is the inverse of Lefebvre’s when he considers that following the physical model [of the physicists, and the theological model] would prevent a theory of societies...