Walter Hilton

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Christian mysticism

Walter Hilton (b. 1340–45, d. 24 March 1396) was an English Augustinian mystic.

Life

Hilton was born around 1340–45. It is unclear which part of the country he came from. The early-sixteenth century Carthusian James Grenehalgh, from Lancashire, referred to Hilton as coming 'from the same region', but this is a much later tradition.[1]

There is strong presumptive evidence that he was educated at the University of Cambridge,[2] which would have been from about 1360 until about 1382. There is a reference to a Walter de Hilton, Bachelor of Civil Law, clerk of Lincoln Diocese, who was granted the reservation of a canonry and prebend of Abergwili, Carmarthen, in January 1371.[3] He was recorded in January 1371 as a bachelor of law attached to the diocesan court of Ely[citation needed], and there is reference to a Walter Hilton at the Ely Consistory Court in 1375.[4] In some manuscripts, he is described as a commensor or inceptor decretorum -- that is, he may have completed the studies and examinations that would have entitled him to become a Master of canon law, but did not undertake the regency that would have given him the latter title.

It seems that in the early 1380s Hilton turned away from the world and became a solitary, as he mentions in his earliest extant work, the Latin letter De Imagine Peccati (On the Image of Sin). Not long after (perhaps in 1384?), in his Latin epistle of spiritual counsel, De Utilitate et Prerogativis Religionis (On the Usefulness and Prerogatives of Religion), for his friend Adam Horsley, a former officer of the Exchequer, who was about to enter the Carthusian Order, Hilton states that he is himself open to the possibility of joining a religious community, but is not yet certain of his vocation.[5] Given that Horsley entered the Community of Beauvale in 1386, it seems likely that this is around the date when Hilton joined a community - 1386 is often suggested as the date of his entry as an Augustinian Canon Regular into Thurgarton Priory, in Nottinghamshire.[6]

It was in the subsequent years that Hilton is believed to have written his other works. Between around 1386 and 1390 he seems to have written the Epistola de Leccione, Intencione, Oracione, Meditacione et Allis (Letter on Reading, Intention, Prayer, and Meditation), the brief treatise in English Of Angels' Song, which is a criticism of one aspect of Richard Rolle's spirituality, and The Epistle on the Mixed Life which is written to a devout layman of wealth and household responsibility, advising him not to give up his active life to become a contemplative, but to mix the two. Because of strong echoes between the Mixed Life and the first of the two books of Hilton’s major work, The Scale of Perfection, it appears that the two works were probably written around the same time: that is, in the late 1380s. It is possible that Hilton also during this time made the English translation, entitled The Prickynge of Love, of the popular Stimulus Amoris (an expanded version of a book originally by the thirteenth-century Franciscan James of Milan, which by that time was passing under the name of Bonaventure), though this remains a matter of dispute.[7][8]

In his final years, from around 1390 until around 1396, Hilton probably wrote his Latin letter Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem (To Someone Wanting to Renounce the World), and a brief piece on scruples entitled Firmissime crede. He produced the English version of Eight Chapters on Perfection, a translation of a now lost Latin work by the Franciscan Lluis de Font (or Luis de Fontibus), an Aragonese Franciscan who had a regency in theology at Cambridge in either 1391–3 or 1392–4.[9] Also in this period, Hilton produced the second book of The Scale of Perfection.

According to manuscript tradition, Hilton died on 24 March 1396 as an Augustinian Canon Regular in the priory of St Peter at Thurgarton, in Nottinghamshire. However, this manuscript was written much later than the history it reports, and it contains a number of historic mistakes.[citation needed]

Works

The first book of The Scale of Perfection (it is worth noting that the title is editorial, appearing only on half the manuscripts of Book One of the Scale)[10] is addressed to a woman recently enclosed as an anchoress, providing her with appropriate spiritual exercises; the bulk of its ninety-three chapters deal with the extirpation of the 'foul image of sin' in the soul – the perversion of the image of the Trinity in the three spiritual powers of Mind, Reason and Will (reflecting the Father, Son and Holy Spirit respectively, according to a tradition drawn from St Augustine) – through a series of meditations on the seven deadly sins. The second book, which opens by addressing itself to Hilton's former reader, who, he says, has further questions, seems from its style and content rather to be addressed to a larger, perhaps more sophisticated audience; its major themes are the reformation of the soul in faith alone and in both faith and feeling. This latter is described in an extended metaphor as a spiritual journey to Jerusalem, or 'peace' in meditation, a gift which is also its own giver, Christ. The first book of the Scale was apparently written some time before the second and was circulated independently.

The Mixed Life occasionally appears with the Scale in fifteenth-century manuscripts, and was printed by de Worde in 1494 as a 'third book' of the Scale, possibly at the desire of Lady Margaret, although the Mixed Life occurs in only half of the surviving copies of that printing. All later printings of the Scale also included the Mixed Life.

Hilton also wrote three other Latin letters of spiritual guidance, the Epistola de Leccione, Intencione, Oracione, Meditacione et Allis, the Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem and Firmissime crede, as well as a scholastic quodlibet on the appropriateness of reverence shown to images in churches, a practice criticised by Lollards. He also wrote commentaries on the Psalm texts Qui Habitat and Bonum Est (Psalms 90.1 and 91.2), and perhaps on the Canticle Benedictus (Luke 1.68) as well.

Later influence

Hilton's spiritual writings were influential during the fifteenth century in England. The most famous was the Scale of Perfection, which survives in some sixty-two manuscripts, including fourteen of a Latin translation (the Liber de Nobilitate Anime) made around 1400 by Hilton's contemporary in Cambridge and Ely, the Carmelite friar Thomas Fishlake (or Fyslake). In Fishlake's translation, the Scale became the first work written in English to circulate on the European continent. The Scale and Mixed Life were printed by Wynkyn de Worde in Westminster in 1494, at the request of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the mother of King Henry VII, and five more times before the English Reformation of the 1530s.

With the revival of the Roman Catholic Church in England in the nineteenth century, a modernised version of a 1659 edition was issued by Fr JB Dalgairns in 1870. Evelyn Underhill published an edition of the Scale in 1923.[11]

Veneration

Hilton is honoured in the Church of England on 24 March and in the Episcopal Church (USA) together with Richard Rolle and Margery Kempe on 28 September.

References

  1. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p14.
  2. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p13.
  3. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p14.
  4. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p13.
  5. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p15.
  6. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p15.
  7. ↑ J. P. H. Clark, ‘Hilton, Walter (c.1343–1396)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, believes this work to be by Hilton.
  8. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p17.
  9. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p17.
  10. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p19.
  11. ↑ Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p34.

Modern Editions

  • Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, edited by Thomas H. Bestul, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series, (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000) [The only modern edition of the original Middle English text. The book's introduction is available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/hilintro.htm, and the text is available at http://tigger.uic.edu/~tbestul/Intro.htm].
  • The Scale of perfection, edited by Halcyon Backhouse, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992) [A translation based on Underhill's 1923 text]
  • Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, translated by John PH Clark and Rosemary Dorward, (New York: Paulist Press, 1991) [The most recent modern translation]
  • Walter Hilton's Latin Writings, Ed. J. P. H. Clark and C. Taylor. (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1987)
  • Walter Hilton's Mixed Life: edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472, Ed. S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson. (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1986).
  • The Prickynge of Love, Ed. Harold Kane. 2 vols. (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1983). [Middle English edition of The Goad of Love.]
  • Two Minor Works of Walter Hilton, Ed. Fumio Kuriyagawa and Toshiyuki Takamiya, (Tokyo: T. Takamiya, 1980). [Editions of Of Angels' Song and Eight Chapters on Perfection.]
  • The Scale of Perfection, abridged and presented by Illtyd Trethowan (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975) [A translation based on Underhill's 1923 text]
  • The Ladder of Perfection, translated & introduced by Leo Sherley-Price. (Penguin Classics, 1957) [A translation based on Underhill's 1923 text]
  • An Exposition of "Qui habitat" and "Bonum est" in English, Ed. Björn Wallner. (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1954).
  • Walter Hilton, The Goad of Love: An Unpublished Translation [by] Walter Hilton, of the Stimulus Amoris formerly Attributed to St. Bonaventura, Ed. and trans. Clare Kirchberger, (London: Faber and Faber, 1952). [A work previously attributed to Hilton]
  • The Scale of Perfection, ed Evelyn Underhill, (London: JM Watkins, 1923)
  • Horstman, C., ed, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church and His Followers. 2 vols, (London: S. Sonnenschein & Co.), 1895-96. [Includes editions of Hilton's Of Angels' Song (1:175-82) and On the Mixed Life (1:264-92).]

Further reading

  • Hopf, Margarethe, Der Weg zur christlichen Vollkommenheit. Eine Studie zu Walter Hilton auf dem Hintergrund der romanischen Mystik (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, 95).
  • Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, (New York: Herder & Herder, 2012)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Walter Hilton
  • The Ladder of Perfection
  • Walter Hilton & his Ladder of Perfection - Essay on Hilton's spirituality; treatment of his pastoral approach and contribution to English theological approaches; links to his works available online.
  •  "Walter Hilton". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
  • - Introduction to the Bestul edition of the Scale. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series
  • - Scale I text in the original Middle English. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series
  • -- Scale II text in the original Middle English. TEAMS Middle English Text Series

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 

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