The Spiritual Life; An Historical Approach—I

Extract

There is a department of theology known as ‘spiritual theology’ or ‘ascetical and mystical theology', or from a more historical standpoint ‘history of spirituality'. (The word ‘spirituality’ is unwelcome in English, but corresponds to, the perfectly acceptable ‘spiritualité’ in French.) This ‘discipline’ or subject within a course of theology is, from an academic point of view, something of a Cinderella among the subjects in which the clergy are trained, and indeed in the 1930s the Angelicurn in Rome claimed to be almost uniquely advanced in possessing a chair of historia spiritualitatis, the chair being first occupied by Père Paul Philippe, O.P., who subsequently became Commissary of the Holy Office (the modern title of the Inquisitor General). But the subject as an historical discipline was gaining recognition at that time, and the great Dictionnaire de Spiritualité was begun by Père Marcel Viller, S.J., in 1937 as a counterpart to the great Dictionnaires in other areas of theology.