[In the following essay, Knowles explains Hilton's views on contemplation, the Holy Ghost, and grace, illustrating his descriptions with numerous excerpts from The Scale of Perfection.]

The distinguished and nameless author of The Cloud was followed, within a very few years, by a spiritual writer of different temper but of equal distinction, and with a very similar outlook upon the life of the spirit. When reading The Cloud and its companion treatises we feel the impact of a strong, original, masterful and independent personality; Hilton is gentler and less aloof. Although no one without very deep and varied spiritual experience could have written The Scale of Perfection, we do not feel when we are reading it that we are listening to a record of personal striving, any more than we do when we read the Imitation of Christ or the Introduction à la vie dévote. We think rather of the wisdom and holiness of the writer's spirit, and of the care that has gone to the moulding of his work.¹The Cloud and the Book of Privy Counselling follow no ascertainable scheme or order of topics, the thought eddies and returns, and though the Book appears to be written by a man of greater spiritual maturity than is perceptible in The Cloud, it is by no means certain that the writer is treating of another and a higher degree of the contemplative life. The Scale, on the other hand, though not composed as a single treatise, and not without its share of medieval digression and disorder, is a methodical work, the outcome of deliberate planning, with a beginning and an end.

Though much useful work has been done upon Hilton's writings in the past twenty years, a critical edition of The Scale is still wanting,² and there has been no recent and comprehensive discussion of the known facts and dates of his life, and of the authenticity of the various works ascribed to him. As, however, the only one of these in which he appears as a mystical teacher is The Scale, we may, for present purposes, reserve our attention for this, his principal treatise.

Walter Hilton was long thought, on the authority of manuscript ascriptions, to have been a Carthusian, but it is now accepted that he was an Augustinian canon of the priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire, and there is considerable manuscript evidence that he died on 24 March, 1396. The events of his earlier career, however, and the dates of his writings are still uncertain. Copyists of his manuscripts give him the title of Magister, which his theological knowledge does not belie, though it is not notably wider than that of the author of The Cloud, and he does not find a place in Mr Emden's biographical dictionary of Oxford men. Moreover, Miss Helen Gardner has recently produced evidence from Hilton's works De Imagine Peccati and the Epistola Aurea to show that when he wrote these works Hilton was himself a solitary.³ As the Epistola Aurea was written to encourage one Adam Horsley to become a Carthusian, and as Horsley was Controller of the Great Roll as late as 1375, Hilton's entry into Thurgarton must have been later than that date, and his life as hermit must be placed between his career at the university and his religious profession. It is an unusual life-story, and the Austin canons at this time were not an austere, contemplative body, though it is worth remembering that a contemporary Austin canon, prior of Bridlington, was conspicuous for sanctity of life. In fact, Hilton is almost as shadowy a figure to us as is the author of The Cloud or as their two contemporaries of genius, William Langland and the author of The Pearl.⁴

The first part of The Scale of Perfection⁵ was originally written, like The Cloud and much of Rolle, for the guidance of a single friend of the author, though, as is clear enough, Hilton was aware that his words would go further. This friend was apparently an ancress, though she is called a religious and was bound to the breviary and lived within the precinct of a monastery. She may well have been a nun who had proceeded to the stricter life of a solitary within her own conventual building. The Scale consists of two parts or books of almost equal length; the second is a development from the first, though not addressed to the same person, nor indeed to any particular individual, but editors are agreed (and readers will scarcely gainsay) that the second book has a somewhat different and more advanced teaching which supposes a space of at least several years between them. If in the case of The Cloud the critical edition does little more than give a sound text amid a welter of insignificant variants, an edition of The Scale might well have great value for the student of Hilton's doctrine. Miss Underhill, now more than thirty years since, drew attention both to what she considered a significant change in expression between the two books and to traces of a later recension of a number of words and phrases. In her opinion, Hilton in Book I showed himself to be under the influence of the austere “theocentric” teaching of The Cloud, whereas in the second book a warmer, “Christocentric”, piety was visible. She also noted that many passages, especially in the second book, had been rewritten with the name of Jesus replacing the name of God. She loyally added that some of the clearest instances of devotion to the Holy Name were to all appearances original, but the matter is obviously one of interest and can only be answered when a fully critical text has been constituted. The point was taken up by Miss Helen Gardner more than twenty years ago.⁶ She showed conclusively that there was no manuscript evidence of a change of opinion or doctrinal revision on Hilton's part. The long passage on the Holy Name, omitted by numerous MSS, is unquestionably genuine, though it may have been written separately and later inserted in The Scale. As for the “Christocentric” passages noted by Miss Underhill, they are mostly words or phrases inserted later and often somewhat clumsily, possibly by Carthusian owners of The Scale influenced by the fifteenth-century pietistic writers of the order. Doubtless the matter will be treated fully by the editors of the forthcoming critical text. For the present all that can be said is that while there is no question of any doctrinal change between the two books, or between The Cloud and Hilton—for both writers at all times insist that all grace comes to men through Jesus Christ and through His Gift of the Holy Spirit, it would seem that Hilton in his last years was in the habit of using the Holy Name of Jesus more frequently, not only in place of “Christ” in references to the sacred humanity, but also as a personal name for the Divine Son, where the author of The Cloud would have used the name of God.

While The Cloud and its companions are essentially monographs on a particular tract of the contemplative life, swollen with a number of digressions, long and short, The Scale is in aim a Summa of the whole spiritual life and an attempt to give in outline its degrees and duties. Hilton is in all things traditional and conservative, and ostensibly makes even more use than his predecessor of the Fathers such as Augustine and Gregory, and medieval writers such as Bonaventure and the Victorines,⁷ but he is perhaps unconsciously almost as revolutionary as the author of The Cloud in his abandonment of arbitrary divisions of the soul and of allegorical interpretations of Scripture in favour of a homely and practical analysis of the devout life and of the ascetical preparation needed for one embarking upon a life tending towards spiritual perfection. The Cloud, the work of a dynamic personality, circles round a single magnetic focus; The Scale, less urgent in tone, sees the spiritual life as a long progress with varying intensity of power. We have seen that in The Cloud we can recognize the prayers of acquired and infused recollection of later writers, and an adumbration, at least, of the night of sense. Hilton anticipates even more strikingly the Spanish mystics with his map of the route to Jerusalem, the vision of peace, and his “night of murk” through which the soul has to pass.

The book in its present form as has been said, is divided into two parts. In the first, Hilton enunciates for his ancress the end of all her strivings, union with God in contemplation, and gives in outline the degrees of progress, but the bulk of the first part is taken up with a description of the means by which the soul may prepare the way to perfection by destroying the image of sin within itself, and thus achieving a resemblance to the image of God. The book ends before the reforming of the soul has issued in the new life of contemplation. On a later occasion the writer was asked for further teaching concerning the two images, and Hilton answered by continuing his account of the soul's growth. But now the contemplative or mystical element, which had fallen into the background, comes to the fore, and Hilton clarifies the distinction between the active, ascetic life, the “reformation in faith”, and the contemplative, mystical life, the “reformation in feeling”. These two phrases may at first cause trouble to one familiar with the terms of the sixteenth-century Carmelite school of spirituality led by St John of the Cross. There, a similar distinction is made between “faith” and “feeling”, but in Carmelite language faith is the theological virtue, the only adequate means by which the soul may reach divine things with the mind, and “feeling” is the perception by senses or imagination, which must be regarded as worthless in the progress towards God. With Hilton, on the other hand, “faith” is used in the ordinary sense as the holding of some truth which one can neither see nor comprehend on the authority of God or the Church, and “feeling” is what we should call mystical or supernatural experience or perception. As Hilton puts it:

This reform may be of two kinds: one in faith only, the other in faith and in feeling. … The first may be had easily, and in a short time, the second only after a long time and with great spiritual labour. … The first kind of reform belongs only to beginners and those who are making progress in the spiritual life, and to men leading the active life. The second is for the perfect and for contemplative souls.⁸

The first reform in faith is, in fact, that accomplished by the soul in actively ridding itself of vices by the help of grace and with no perception of God other than the certainty of faith; it is the attempt of the soul using its enlightened reason and the ordinary assistance of grace to conform itself to what it believes, but sees not. The reformation in feeling is that accomplished within the soul when it has a new supernatural knowledge of God in Himself and is possessed by God who then works in and upon it, so to say, not through or by it.

In full agreement with The Cloud and all the great spiritual masters Hilton insists upon the need of recollection and self-knowledge:

There is one activity which is of great value and, as I think, a highway to contemplation. … It is for a man to enter into himself and come to the knowledge of his own soul and its powers, its beauty and its blemishes. … This is at first a difficult and painful spiritual labour for those who give themselves to it earnestly. For it is a striving in the soul against the root of all sins, great and small, and this root is nothing else than a false, misguided self-love. … By this labour a man must withdraw his mind from the love of all earthly creatures, from vain thoughts, and images of all sensible things, and from all self-love. Then since it cannot find rest in the love and sight of Jesus Christ, it must needs suffer pain.

We may compare the words of Julian of Norwich:

I saw full surely that it behoveth [needs to be] that we should be in longing and in penance unto the time that we be led so deep into God that we verily and truly know our own soul. … We may never come to the full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own soul.⁹

Noverim me, noverim Te. Hilton echoes The Cloud, also, in his account of the difficulties in the way, and the need to do all in the love of Christ:

This is a hard work, for useless thoughts will press on you to draw your mind down to them … you will find something, not Jesus whom you seek, … but an obscure and heavy image of your own soul.¹⁰

Whoever thinks to come to the working and the full use of contemplation and not by this way, that is to say not by steadfast mind of the precious manhood and the passion of Jesus Christ nor by fulness of virtues, he cometh not by the door, and therefore as a thief he shall be cast out. … For Christ is door and He is porter … no man may come to the contemplation of the Godhead, but he be first reformed by fulness of meekness and charity to the likeness of Jesu in His manhood.¹¹

Like The Cloud, he distinguishes between the fully supernatural prayer of contemplation on the one hand, and visions, bodily or imaginary, and sense-perceptions of pleasure on the other, and he, also, has a side-glance at Rolle:

Thou mayst understand that visions or revelations … in bodily appearing or in imagining … or else in any other feeling in bodily wits … as any sensible heat as it were fire glowing and warming the breast … are not very contemplation, nor are they but simple and secondary, though they be good, in regard of ghostly virtues, and of ghostly knowing and loving of God.¹²

And therefore

Thou shalt not suffer thine heart wilfully to rest, nor for to delight wholly, in no bodily feeling … but thou shalt hold them in thine own sight as they were right nought or little in regard of ghostly desire and of steadfast thinking on Jesus Christ, nor cleave the thought of thy heart too mickle upon them. But thou shalt seek that thou mightest come to the ghostly feeling [experience] of God, and that in that thou mightest know the wisdom of God, the endless might of our Lord Jesu Christ, the great goodness of Him in Himself and in His creatures. For this is contemplation and that other is none.¹³

Hilton clearly felt the great importance of this teaching, for he returned to it later towards the middle of his second book:

Hearing of delectable song or feeling of comfortable heat in the body or seeing of light

(the reference to Rolle is unmistakable).

These are not ghostly feelings, for ghostly feelings are felt in the powers of the soul, principally in understanding and love and little in imagination … when they [sc. sensible perceptions] are best they are but outward tokens of the inward grace that is felt in the powers of the soul.¹⁴

and he instances the wind and the tongues of fire of Pentecost. His disciple, perhaps with Rolle and his reputation in mind, was still unsatisfied. Are not those who see these visions then contemplatives?

Then askest thou, whether these souls be reformed in feeling or not. It seemeth yes, in as much as they have such great ghostly feelings, that other men that stand only in faith feel not of. Unto this I may say … that these ghostly feelings … are not the feelings which a soul shall have and feel in the grace of contemplation. I say not but that they are true and graciously given of God. But these souls that feel such are not yet reformed in feeling, nor have they not yet the gift of perfection nor the ghostly burning love in Jesu, as they may come to. And nevertheless often it seemeth otherwise that such souls feel more of the love of God than other that have the gift of perfection … so far forth that it seemeth to another man that they were aye ravished in love. And though me thinketh that it is not so, well I wot that these manner feelings and fervours of devotion … are gracious gifts of God sent into chosen souls, for to draw them out of worldly love … nevertheless, that the fervour is so much in outward showing is not only for greatness of love that they have, but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that may not bear a little touching of God … and therefore the least touching of love and the least sparkle of ghostly light … is so great and comfortable … that the soul is overtaken with it; and also it is so new and so sudden … that the soul may not suffer for to bear it, but bursteth and showeth it out in weeping, sobbing, and other bodily stirring … afterward, when love hath boiled out all the uncleanness of the soul by such great fervours, then is the love clean and standeth still … yet hath the soul much more love than it had before, though it show less outward … in the self wise falleth it of other souls that are progressing and far forth in grace. They feel oft times gracious touchings of the Holy Ghost in their souls, both in understanding and sight of ghostly things, and in affection of love, but yet they be not reformed in feeling, nor yet they are not yet perfect … nor have they not yet the full gift of contemplation.¹⁵

Another reference shows how pervasive the example of Rolle had been:

All men that speak of the fire of love know not well what it is … it is neither bodily, nor is it not bodily felt. A soul may feel it in prayer … but he feeleth it by no bodily wit. For though it be so, that if it work in a soul the body may turn into a heat … nevertheless the fire of love is not bodily, for it is only in the ghostly desire of the soul.¹⁶

For Hilton, the goal of all endeavour is the abiding spiritual silence of the contemplative:

the third manner of prayer is only in the heart without speech, by great rest and quietness of the body and of the soul … and of such men and women that by long travail bodily and ghostly, or else by such sharp smitings of love as I have before said, come into a rest of spirit so … that they may ever continually pray in their heart.¹⁷

In the first book Hilton is concerned almost entirely with the preparatory ascetic life, and in the second book he gives, more clearly than any previous writer, an account of the beginning of the active night of sense:

When a man perceive the love of this world false and failing … he may not at once feel the love of God, but he must abide a while in the night for he may not suddenly come from that one light to that other, that is, from the love of the world to the perfect love of God. This night is nought else but a forbearing and a withdrawing of the thought of the soul from earthly things, by great desire and yearning for to love and see and feel Jesu and ghostly things. This is the night: for right as the night is dark and a hiding of all bodily creatures and a resting from bodily deeds, right so a man that setteth him fully for to think on Jesu and for to desire only the love of Him, is busy for to hide his thought from vain beholding and his affection from fleshly liking of all bodily creatures. … But this is a good night and a light darkness, for it is a stopping out of the false love of this world, and it is a nighing to the true day.¹⁸

His description merges into that of the passive night:

If it be painful to thee … abide grace … and know thou well … thy darkness is not restful because of … uncleanness of thyself … but it shall by process through feeling of grace be more easy … and that is when thy soul through grace is made so free … and so gathered into itself, that it desire not to think of right nought. This is a rich nought … for though the soul think not of any earthly thing nevertheless it is full busy to think on Him. What thing then maketh this darkness? Soothly nought else but a gracious desire for to have the love of Jesus. For that desire … draweth out of the heart all worldly vanities. … Unless the conscience be made clean through fire of burning desire to Jesu in this darkness, the which wasteth and burneth all wicked stirrings of pride, [the soul cannot receive infused knowledge]. … This is then a good darkness and a rich nought … the grace of our Lord Jesu sent into my heart hath slain in me and brought to nought all love of the world and I wist not how … Thus biddeth the prophet: he who hath walked in darkness and hath no light, let him hope in the Lord, and rest himself upon his God … and then shall He with beams of ghostly light fulfil all the powers of the soul.¹⁹

The similarity between this passage and the poem “On a dark night” with its commentary by St John of the Cross will have been apparent to all readers. Hilton adds:

I say not that thou mayest do thus of thyself, for I know well that our Lord Jesu bringeth all this to end, whereso He will. For He only through His grace stirreth a soul, and bringeth it into this darkness first, and then into light … For He doth all: He formeth and reformeth. My child, if thou pass through fire, dread not, for the flame shall not hurt thee. It shall cleanse thee from all fleshly filth, and make thee able for to receive ghostly fire of the love of God.²⁰

As the soul advances a deeper form of recollection is necessary:

It needeth a soul that would have knowing of ghostly things, for to have first knowledge of itself … and that is when a soul is so gathered into itself, and departed from all beholding of all earthly things, and from the use of bodily wits, that it feeleth itself as it is in its own kind without a body. … Thy soul shall not rest still in this knowing, but it shall by this seek higher knowing above itself, and that is, the being of God.²¹

The chapter from which this last extract is taken and its neighbours are some of the weightiest and most penetrating in The Scale. Like the author of The Cloud, Hilton preaches the primacy of love, and while he rests upon a basis of Thomist thought, he rises to the teaching of the Rhineland school on the infused virtues:

For [= since] love cometh out of knowing, and not knowing out of love, therefore it is said that in knowing and in sight principally of God with love is the bliss of a soul, and the more He is known the better He is loved … but love is the cause why a soul cometh to this sight and to this knowing … not the love that a soul hath in itself to God, but the love that our Lord hath to a sinful soul.²²

And he goes on to define, even more accurately than The Cloud, the distinction between what theologians know as “operant” and “co-operant” grace:

We do right nought but suffer Him [sc. the Holy Spirit] and assent to Him; for that is the most we do, that we assent wilfully to His gracious working in us. And yet is that will not of us, but of His making; so that me thinketh that He doth in us all that is well done, and yet we see it not. …²³

And again, still more clearly:

He is all, and He doth all … thou art nought else but a reasonable instrument wherein that he worketh²⁴ … then is the soul more suffering than doing, and that is clear love. Thus St Paul meant when he said: Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God … who work not of themselves, but suffer the Holy Ghost to stir them and work in them the feelings of love with a full sweet accord to his stirrings. … Other souls cannot love thus, but travail themselves by their own affections and stir themselves through thinking of God … They do well and needfully, so be that they will know meekly that their working is not kindly the gracious feeling [i.e. the infused experience] of love, but it is a manly doing by a soul at the bidding of reason.²⁵ The gift of prophecy, the gift of miracle-working … are great gifts of the Holy Ghost, but they are not the Holy Ghost, for a reproved soul might have all those gifts [i.e. the gratiae gratis datae] … But the gift of love is the Holy Ghost, God Himself … love unformed … the bringeth love into the soul the fullhead of virtues … through the gift of love that is the Holy Ghost.²⁶

As the Holy Ghost is sent by Christ, His works are those of Christ:

I Jesu … am God. … I do all your good deeds, and all your good thoughts and all your good loves in you, and ye do right nought. And yet nevertheless be these deeds called yours, not because thou workest there principally, for I give them to you for love that I have to you.²⁷ … For God worketh in us all, both good will and good work.²⁸

He is clear that contemplation is a development, in higher degree and in fuller measure, of the sanctifying grace common to all baptized Christians who are not averted from God by grave sin:

And this grace is not another grace than a chosen soul feeleth in beginning of his conversion; but it is the same and the self grace … for grace waxeth with the soul and the soul waxeth with grace, and the more clean that a soul is … the more mighty is the grace, more inward and more ghostly showing the presence of our Lord Jesu.²⁹

Infused love has also a purifying effect; by its touch the soul

is clean from all the filth of sin … all unordained affection of any creature is suddenly washed and wiped away, that there is no mean letting atwixt Jesu and the soul, but only the bodily life.³⁰

Hilton nowhere explicitly poses the question that has so much exercised mystical theologians since the sixteenth century, whether the contemplative life is, under God, attainable by all. Implicitly, however, he equates it with perfection, blames those who make no attempt to progress in virtue and certainly suggests that “reform in feeling” is the end of a soul's endeavour. He realizes that few arrive thither and, like St John of the Cross, seeks to explain this. Many, when “reformed in faith” decide to go no further, which inevitably implies at least a relative deterioration, for “a soul may not stand still alway in one state”.³¹ Others, he thinks, become wedded to a certain round of religious exercises and will not change; they become petrified; they lack freedom of spirit. He can only repeat his conviction that

reforming in faith is the lowest state of all chosen souls, for beneath that might they not well be; but reforming in feeling is the highest state in this life that the soul may come to. … No man is made suddenly sovereign in grace, but through long exercise and silent working a soul may come thereto, namely when He helpeth and teacheth a wretched soul … for without special help and inwardly teaching of Him may no soul come thereto.³²

The later chapters of the second book contain many descriptions of the effects of the grace of contemplation in the soul. Hilton, again like The Cloud, does not touch upon the highest point to which the soul made perfect may attain; there is nothing to set against the many chapters in The Living Flame and The Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross that describe the spiritual marriage and the life of the soul on ever higher levels. The reader can scarcely doubt that Hilton himself had experience of the earlier stages, at least, which in the scheme of later mystical theologians would be called the preparation of the soul for the spiritual betrothal. He also describes what in St John's terminology would be known as “formal words” and “substantial words” and “touches of union”. Hilton is always sober in his language and without a trace of introspection or self-advertisement, but it is difficult not to see in the passages that follow an account of his own experience:

For God openeth the eyes of the soul and showeth to the soul the sight of Jesus wonderfully, and the knowing of Him, as the soul may suffer it thus by little and by little; and by that sight He raiseth all the affection of the soul to Him. … And then beginneth the soul to know Him ghostly … then seeth the soul somewhat of the kind [= nature] of the blessed Godhead of Jesu … this love is nought else but Jesu himself, that for love worketh all this in a man's soul and reformeth it in feeling to his likeness. This love may not be had by man's own travail, as some think. It is freely had of the gracious gift of Jesu.³³

For know thou well that all the business that Jesu maketh about a soul is for to make it a true perfect spouse to Him in the fullness and highness of love. Because that may not be done suddenly, therefore Jesu, that is love and of all lovers wisest, assayeth by many wiles and by many wonderful means or it may come about.³⁴

And then beginneth the soul to perceive a little of the privities of the blessed Trinity … then is it opened soothfastly to the eyes of the soul the onehead in substance and distinction of persons in the blessed Trinity, as it may be seen here … wonder great love feeleth the soul with heavenly delight in beholding of this soothfastness, when it is made through special grace; for love and light go both together in a clean soul.³⁵

Hilton throughout The Scale so clearly presupposes a background and daily life of Catholic piety and practice that it is unnecessary to labour the point. It has been suggested, and may well be the case, that appearance of active “heresy” and criticism of traditional devotion in the neighbourhood of his home led him to retreat from the colder and more abstract phrases of The Cloud to an explicit and frequent mention of the humanity of Christ. Certainly many pages of Hilton are as evangelical in their piety as any of Wyclif's, and far more deeply tender in their expressions of the personal love of Jesus. But his doctrine is the same throughout, and is in full agreement with that of The Cloud on the one hand, and that of Julian of Norwich on the other.

No final judgment can be given on Hilton's prose style until a critical edition of his works has been published, but the reader of the modernized versions has the impression that it is less distinctive, if perhaps smoother, than either that of The Cloud or that of Julian. He is not, as they are in their different ways, the master of the arresting phrase and the short, lapidary sentence. An example of his style at its best is the well-known series of chapters, so excellently paraphrased in Father Baker's Sancta Sophia, comparing the spiritual life to a pilgrimage to Sion. Another passage may be quoted to show his peculiarly vivid way of commenting on a piece of Scripture:

“Make mirth with me and melody, for I have found my groat which I had lost.” This groat is Jesus which thou hast lost, and if thou wilt find him, light up a lanthorn, that is God's Word, as David saith; “Thy Word is as a lanthorn to my feet.” … If thou do so, thou shalt see all the dust, all the filth and small motes in thy house (for he is light itself)—that is to say, all fleshly loves and fears in thy soul. I mean not perfectly all; for as David saith; “Who knoweth all his trespasses?” As who should say, no man. Thou shalt cast out of thy heart all such sins, and sweep thy soul clear with the besom of the fear of God, and wash it with thy tears, and so shalt thou find thy groat, Jesus; he is thy groat, thy penny, thy heritage. This groat will not be found so easily as it is thought, for this work is not of one hour, nor of one day, but many days and years, with much sweat and swink of body and travail of soul. If thou cease not, but seek busily, sigh and sorrow deeply, mourn stilly, and stoop low, till thine eyes water for anguish and for pain, for that thou hast lost thy treasure Jesus, at the last (when his will is) well shalt thou find thy groat Jesus. When thou hast found him, as I have said—that is, when in purity of conscience thou feelest the familiar and peaceful presence of that blessed man Jesus Christ, at least a shadow or a glimmering of him—thou mayest, if thou wilt, call all thy friends to thee, to make mirth with thee, for that thou hast found thy groat Jesus.³⁶

In spite of the original destination of the first part of The Scale for an ancress, and of the deep mystical appeal of the whole work, Hilton's book became, more than any other spiritual writing, a well-known and widely read manual, and his teaching helped to form many of the most religious souls in the restless and materialistic century that followed his death. Owing, no doubt, to his sane and methodical presentation of the ascetic life, he was a devotional classic when printing was first introduced into England, and as such was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494. It is from the dedication to this edition that we learn that The Scale was often in the hands of that masterful but gentle lady, the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry Tudor and friend and penitent of Bishop Fisher, felix opportunitate mortis, whose benefactions to learning have made her name and character known to many generations of those who have lived upon her foundations.

Notes

1. The most sensitive appreciation of Hilton is perhaps that of Miss Helen Gardner, “Walter Hilton and the mystical tradition in England”, in Essays and Studies (English Association), XXII (1937), 103-27; see also Professor R. M. Wilson, “Three Middle English Mystics”, in Essays and Studies, new series ix (1956); Dom G. Sitwell in Downside Review, LXVII-LXVIII (1949-50) and Clergy Review, June, 1959, and Miss J. Russell-Smith in The Month, no. 208 (Sept., 1959), 133-48, and “Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Images”, in Dominican Studies, VII (1954).

2. Several scholars (Mr S. S. Hussey, Fr T. P. Dunning, Miss C. Kirchberger, Miss J. Russell-Smith) are at present engaged in the heavy task of preparing a critical edition of The Scale, for which Miss R. Birts has done some preparatory work in an unpublished B.Litt. thesis. The only textual discussion in print is Miss H. Gardner's “The Text of The Scale of Perfection,” in Medium Aevum, V (1936), 11-30. There are two good practical editions available, that of E. Underhill (1923, reprinted 1950) based upon selected MSS and slightly modernized, and that of Dom G. Sitwell (1953) based on the Underhill text but rewritten in current English. References above are given by page to this latter, as being probably easier to come by, but most of the extracts follow Miss Underhill's text (which has the same division of chapters) as giving somewhat more precisely the theological nuances of Hilton's thought, and page references are given to this text in brackets. The French translation by Dom M. Noetinger (Paris, 1923) has valuable notes and indications of the source-literature.

3. H. Gardner, Essays and Studies, XXII, 108-13.

4. There is no contemporary authority for the statement sometimes made that Hilton was prior of Thurgarton, and the dates of the known priors, if correctly transmitted, would eliminate the possibility. He is, however, referred to in a fifteenth-century MS as “canon and governor” of Thurgarton.

5. The title seems to have been given after Hilton's death. The two parts have no direct connection with one another, and several MSS add a third part, sc. the Mixed Life, now printed among the minor works.

6. In her article mentioned above, note 2, in Medium Aevum, V.

7. Dom Noetinger in the French edition (above, note 2) notes also references to the Vitae Patrum, John Cassian, St Bernard (especially Sermons on the Canticle and De gradibus humilitatis), Anselm (Cur Deus Homo) and St Thomas. Dr Benedict Hackett, O.E.S.A., in an article shortly to be published, demonstrates clearly that Hilton used William Flete's De emendatione vitae. This may have bearing on the dates of Hilton's work.

8. II v 153-4; (238).

9. I xlii 61-2; (96); Julian, Long version lvi p. 135.

10. I lii 83; (126).

11. I xcii 137-80 (221).

12. I x 14-15; (19).

13. I xii-xiii 18-19; (25-6).

14. II xxx 236-7; (364).

15. II xxix 226-8; (351-5).

16. I xxvi 38; (59).

17. I xxxii 44; (71).

18. II xxiv 205; (321).

19. II xxiv 206-xxvii 221; (323-45).

20. II xxviii 222-5; (346-50).

21. II xxx 229; (356-8).

22. II xxxiv 247; (380-1). Cf. Bonum Est (Minor Works, ed. D. Jones, 1927, p. 186): “Where knowing faileth, there love hitteth. That I know not, I love best. … My love and my troth may touch thee and pass above all thy works even to thee, but my knowing is too little and may not go so far.”

23. II xxxiv 251-2; (385).

24. II xxiv 203; (318).

25. II xxxv 254; (389).

26. II xxxvi 256-8; (342-5).

27. Ibid., 257-8; (394).

28. II xxxv 255; (390).

29. II xl 278; (423).

30. II xl 273; (417). Cf. St John of the Cross, Living Flame, §29 (Peers, III, 134): “The webs which can hinder this union of the soul with God are three … the third is only the union of the soul in the body, which is sensual and animal life.”

31. II xviii 185; (291).

32. II xvii 182-3; (288-9). Cf. Rolle (above, p. 60 note 24).

33. II xxxiv 252; (385-6).

34. II xliv 301; (453).

35. II xlvi 306-7; (461-2).

36. I xlviii 76-8; (116-18).