Miguel de Molinos
Encyclopedia
Miguel de Molinos Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 divine, the chief apostle of the religious revival known as Quietism
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection...

, was born about 1628 near Muniesa (Teruel
Teruel
Teruel is a town in Aragon, eastern Spain, and the capital of Teruel Province. It has a population of 34,240 in 2006 making it one of the least populated provincial capitals in the country...

).

He entered the priesthood and settled in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 about 1670. There he became well known as a director of consciences, being on specially friendly terms with Cardinal Odescalchi, who in 1676 became Pope Innocent XI
Pope Innocent XI
Blessed Pope Innocent XI , born Benedetto Odescalchi, was Pope from 1676 to 1689.-Early life:Benedetto Odescalchi was born at Como in 1611 , the son of a Como nobleman, Livio Odescalchi, and Paola Castelli Giovanelli from Gandino...

. In the previous year Molinos had published a volume, Guida spirituale, the disinvolge l'anima e la conduce per l'interior camino all' acquisito della perfetta contemplazione e del ricco tesoro della pace interiore. This was shortly followed by a brief Traltato della cotidiana communione.

No breath of suspicion arose against Molinos until 1681, when the Jesuit preacher Paolo Segneri
Paolo Segneri
Paolo Segneri was an Italian Jesuit preacher, missionary, and ascetical writer.-Life:Segneri was born at Nettuno. He studied at the Roman College, and in 1637 entered the Society of Jesus, not without opposition from his father. Oliva was his first master in the religious life; Sforza...

, attacked his views, though without mentioning his name, in his Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell' orazione. The matter was referred to the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...

. It pronounced that the Guida spirituale was perfectly orthodox, and censured the intemperate zeal of Segneri.

But the Jesuits set Father La Chaise
François de la Chaise
François de la Chaise was a French Jesuit priest, the father confessor of King Louis XIV of France.-Biography:...

 to work on his royal penitent, Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

. Louis prided himself on being a pillar of orthodoxy; but he was on very bad terms with Innocent XI, and soon yielded to the pleasure of discovering heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

 in an intimate friend of the pope. Following on official representations by the French ambassador in Rome, who happened to be a cardinal, Molinos was arrested in May 1685. At first his friends were confident of an acquittal, but in the beginning of 1687 a number of his penitents of both sexes were examined by the Inquisition, and several were arrested. A report got abroad that Molinos had been convicted of moral enormities, as well as of heretical doctrines; and it was seen that he was doomed. On September 3, 1687 he made public profession of his errors, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. In the following November, Innocent signed a bull, Coelestis Pastor
Coelestis Pastor
Coelestis Pastor was a papal encyclical issued on November 19, 1687 by Pope Innocent XI in which he condemns the practices of the Quiestists, a group of religious separatists led by Miguel de Molinos.-External Links: at Papal Encyclicals Online...

, condemning sixty-eight propositions from the Guida spirituale and other unpublished writings of its author. At some date unknown in 1696 or 1697 Molinos died in prison.

Contemporary Protestants saw in the fate of Molinos nothing more than a persecution by the Jesuits of a wise and enlightened man, who had dared to withstand the petty ceremonialism of the Italian piety of the day. But Molinos was much more than the enlightened semi-Protestant that his English admirers took him to be; and his Quietism, had it been suffered to run its course would have swept aside beliefs and practices more important than the rosaries of nuns, though it is most unlikely that he realized the consequence of his own theories. Segneri and La Chaise were not so easily deceived. They were Jesuits; and the Jesuit Order was principally built upon the Catholic dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...

 that God reveals Himself wholly and only through Jesus Christ, and that Christ reveals Himself wholly and only through the Catholic Church. Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

 had already broken through one link in this chain, when he taught the Protestant world to come directly to Jesus, without troubling about the Church; but Luther still assumed that God could be reached only through the intermediacy of Jesus. Molinos wished to find a royal road to God without any intermediaries at all. The Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 maintained that the Church, so far from being a help, was a hindrance, to union with Jesus; whereas Molinos welcomed both Church and Jesus as helps to union with God, always provided that the believer treated both as means to an end beyond themselves. In other words, he held that there was a triple stage in piety. Beginners gave themselves wholly to the Church. At the second step came devotion to Jesus. At the third and highest stage both Church and Jesus were left behind as deiformes, sed non Deus, and God remained alone.

But how could a finite being bring himself into direct relation with Infinity? Following very ancient precedents, Molinos fell back on those phenomena of our consciousness which seem least within our own power. The less sense of proprietorship we had in a thought or action—the less it was the fruit of our deliberate will—the more certain might we be that it was divinely inspired. But what state of mind is most likely to be visited by these spontaneous illuminations? Plainly the state that Molinos calls the "soft and savoury sleep of nothingness;" where the soul is content to fold its hands, and wait in dreamy musing till the message comes; meanwhile it will think, do, will as little as it can. For this reason disinterested love became the great hallmark of Quietist sanctity. Why it is unfitted to be a test of sanctity in general has been explained at length by Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist....

 in a remarkable Instruction sur les etats d'oraison, published while the Quietist controversy was at its height. But, although Molinos's system did not long survive him, he had at least the double merit of courage and tenacity. Few writers have struggled so long and so hard to disengage the essence of religion from its transitionary embodiment in an historical creed.

The Guida spirituale was published in Italian in 1675, and has been reprinted. An English translation appeared in 1688; it has been re-edited by Mrs Arthur Lyttelton. French, Spanish and Latin translations have also appeared. Modern English versions include The Spiritual Guide (SeedSowers, 1972) and Miguel de Molinos: The Spiritual Guide (Paulist Press, 2010). Also, of note is The Unabridged Collected Works of Michael Molinos and Francois Fenelon (Kahley House, 2006).

For the history of its author see Carl Emil Scharling, Michael de Molinos (Ger. trans. from Danish; Gotha, 1855), and Heinrich Heppe
Heinrich Heppe
Heinrich Ludwig Julius Heppe was a German Calvinist theologian and church historian....

, Geschichte der quietistischen Mystik (Berlin, 1875). On the whole subject of Quietism see H Delacroix, Etudes d'histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme (Paris, 1908). There is a brilliant, but very fanciful, account of Molinos and his doctrines in JH Shorthouse
Joseph Henry Shorthouse
-Biography:He was born at Birmingham, educated at Grove School , and became a chemical manufacturer. Originally a Quaker, he joined the Church of England. His first book, John Inglesant, appeared in 1881, and at once made him famous...

's romance, John Inglesant.
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