Quietism (Christian contemplation)

Quietism is the name given (especially in Catholic theology) to a set of contemplative practices that rose in popularity in France, Italy, and Spain during the late 1670s and 1680s, particularly associated with the writings of the Spanish mystic Miguel de Molinos (and subsequently François Malaval and Madame Guyon), and which were condemned as heresy by Pope Innocent XI in the papal bull Coelestis Pastor of 1687.

"Quietism" was seen by critics as holding that man's highest perfection consists in a sort of psychical self-annihilation and a consequent absorption of the soul into the Divine Essence even during the present life.

A commission in France found most of Madame Guyon's works intolerable and the government confined her, first in a convent, then in the Bastille, leading eventually to her exile to Blois in 1703.

[9] In the Eastern Orthodox Church, an analogous dispute might be located in Hesychasm in which "the supreme aim of life on earth is the contemplation of the uncreated light whereby man is intimately united with God".

[citation needed] This may be a tacit reference to the Cathars or Albigenses of southern France and Catalonia, and that they are not subject to any human authority or bound by the precepts of the Church.

Alternatively, it is likely to be a direct reference to the so-called Beguine, Margaret Porete, burned alive at the stake in Paris in 1310 formally as a relapsed heretic, but also on account of her work "The Mirror of Simple Souls", written, importantly, in the French vernacular.

Eckhart's assertions that we are totally transformed into God just as in the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of Christ (see transubstantiation) and the value of internal actions, which are wrought by the Godhead abiding within us, have often been linked to later Quietist heresies.

George Fox came to the conclusion that the only real spirituality was achieved by paying attention to the Holy Spirit (the Godhead) through silence, and founded the Quaker movement on this basis – one which shared much resemblance with "Quietist" thought.

Quietist thinking was also influential among the British Quakers of the later 19th century, when the tract A Reasonable Faith, by Three Friends (William Pollard, Francis Frith and W. E. Turner (1884 and 1886)) caused sharp controversy with evangelicals in the society.

The Capuchin friar Benet Canfield (1562–1611), an English Catholic living in Belgium, espoused quietism in a tract called Way of Perfection, on deep prayer and meditation.