Religions and mystics

Arthur Mugnier, known as abbé Mugnier (1853-1944) was a French Catholic priest, vicar of various parishes in Paris. He was famous for having led a worldly and literary life in Paris as friend and confidant of many writers.

Abdallah Al Ghazouani headed the Jazouli brotherhood at the beginning of the 16th century. He was considered a great Sufi and sage of mysticism. He had played a major role in the installation of the Saadians through his agricultural projects in the south of Morocco. He died in 1527.

Ha-Mime, whose real name was Abou Mohamed Abdallah ibn Man-Allah Abou Khalaf ben Zeroual was one of the ancient Berber 'false prophets'. He created a new religion through a new Qu'ran.

Adrienne von Speyr (1902-1967) was a Swiss doctor, author of a number of works on spirituality and theology.

Agostino Gemelli (1878-1959) was an Italian Franciscan doctor and psychologist. He presided over the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1937 to 1959.

Aisha bint Ahmad al-Idrisiya (d. 1572) was a Moroccan mystic known for the Zaouia she founded in the north of Morocco.

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsī al-Ġazālī (1058-1111), latinised as Algazel, was a Muslim theologian of Persian origin, As a critic of Aristotle in the Muslim world, he condemned his philosophical errors (Tahafut al-Falasifa) and defended the dogma of Sufism.

Al Hassan bin Massud Al Hallaj was born in Tur in Persia in 875. Known for his mystical temperament displayed in his poems [Document 2], he was crucified for his ideas in Baghdad on the orders of the Sunni ulemas.

Abu I-Qasim Al Qushrayri was born in Persia in the Khorassan in 986-987 and died about 1072-74. he was famed for his treatise Al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya which provided one of the most important bases of Sunni Sufism.

Al-Bakri was an Andalucian geographer and historian who was born in 1014 in Huelva and died in 1094 at Cordoba, where he spent most of his life.

Mohamed ibn Jaafar al-Kettani was one of the great Moroccan theologians, born in 1858 and died in 1927. He is best known for his work on the saints of the town of Fez.

Al-Tadili was a Moroccan jurist and hagiographer of the 13th century.

Alfred Maury (1817-1892) took an interest in a number of disciplines such as archaeology, medicine, belief and law. He was one of the founders of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes.

Jean Baruzi (1881-1953) was a philosopher and historian of religions. His doctoral thesis related to Saint John of the Cross and the problem of mystical experience (1924).

Prospero Lambertini (1675-1758) was elected Pope under the name of Benedict XIV in 1740. His De sevorum Dei beatificatione et de beatorum canonizatione (1734-1738) makes reference to the subject of stigmatisation.

Bernard de Fontaine, abbot of Clairvaux (1093-1153) was a Cistercian monk and reformer.

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet was born in 1627 in Dijon and died in Paris in 1704. Bishop of Meaux, he was one of the most prominent preachers in the reign of Louis XIV. Tutor to the dauphin, defender of Gallicanism (Declaration of the Four Artcles of 1682), he was a ferocious opponent of Quietism and Fénelon.

Jacques Froissart (1892-1962) was a discalced Carmelite who made his vows in 1921 under the name of Bruno de Jésus-Marie. He was the director of Études carmélitaines from its re-founding in 1931. He produced a number of texts on mysticism, especially Spanish mysticism in the 16th century, and on John of the Cross.

Henri d'Artois (1820-1883), known as the Comte de Chambord, was the grandson of King Charles X and the last representative of the Bourbon dynasty and as such was pretender to the throne of France from 1844.

Charles Henri Nodet (1907-1982) was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He actively participated in the spread of psychoanalysis in the Catholic world.

Charles Odier (1886-1954) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He was one of the founders of the Psychoanalyst Society of Paris.

Charles X (1857-1836) was the last king of France of the Restoration.

Christophe Lebreton (1950-1996) was a monk in the Trappist abbey Notre-Dame l'Atlas, in Tibhirine. He was killed with six other monks in 1996. Officially, Algeria blamed the assassination on the Groupe Islamique Armée (GLA) , but since then there has been controversy over the alleged responsibility of the Algerian army.

Lebanon has experienced a great deal of confessional conflict since the 19th century. In 1840, the Maronites and the Druze confronted each other at Mount Lebanon, the first conflict in the history of contemporary Lebanon. Mount Lebanon was the site of a second conflict between the Maronites and the Druze between 1858 and 1861. Finally, between 1975 and 1990 Lebanon was the scene of a series of confessional, social, political and tribal conflicts.

Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, succeeded his uncle Theophilus in 412 and presided over the Council of Ephesus in 431 with the approval of the Pope, condemning Nestorius. Known for his brutal methods, he was deposed of his See by Emperor Theodosius, but soon re-established. As well as his commentaries on the scriptures, he bequeathed an important polemical and doctrinal body of work.

Bournville (1840-1909) was a doctor employed in a variety of fields: the creation of new medical-educational services for the young mentally disabled, nurse training, the secularisation of Parisian hospitals.

Dioscorus was Patriarch of Alexandria (444-454) and Saint Cyril's deacon, accompanying him to the Council of Ephesus in 431. He presided over the 'Robber synod' of Ephesus of 449 rejected by Pope Leo the Great.

Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre (1818-1912) was professor at the Clermont-Ferrand school of medicine from 1852to 1888. He published numerous works on hypnotism and homoeopathy.

Edith Stein, religious name Thérèse Bénédicte de la Croix (1891-1942) was a German philosopher and theologian of Jewish origin. On her conversion to Catholicism she became a Carmelite nun. She was murdered in the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II canonised her in 1998.

Esther 'Etty' Hillesum (1914-1943), Dutch Jewish mystic. In a journal and in letters (1941-43) she described her spiritual journey, in which can be seen a number of influences, including Christianity. She was deported from Amsterdam to Westerbock (transit camp),then to Auschwitz, where she was murdered at the age of 29.

Doctor F Lefebvre was professor at the University of Louvain and author of Louis Lateau de Blois d'Haine, Her life – Her ecstasies, - her stigmata. A medical study. Louvain, Ch. Peeters, ed 1870 (second edition 1872)

Name meaning: Pride of religion. Fakhreddine (1572-1635) was a Druze Ma'ani emir who sought independence for his Mount Lebanon emirate from the Ottoman Empire. Having established relations with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he went on to successfully challenge the governor of Syria but was finally defeated by the Ottomans in 1633.

According to Voltaire, Father Lacombe was a member of the Barnabite order in the Annecy region. He is considered as one of the promoters of Quietism in Europe in the 17th century, beside Miguel de Molinos. He was the author of l'Analyse de l'Oraison mental, 1686.

François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, known as Fénelon (1651-1715) was a theologian. He was close to the royal family inasmuch as he was tutor to the Duke of Burgundy; he fell into disgrace after having defended Quietism against Bossuet. His most famous work, Les Aventures de Télémaque, published in 1699, was a didactic novel which is seen as a critique of the reign of Louis XIV.

This festival is an international event held at the foot of the cedars of Mount Lebanon and was suspended in the 1970's. It has been revived since 2015.

François de Sales (1567-1622) was a French Catholic priest declared a saint from the 17th century. A theologian, he founded, with baroness Jeanne de Chantal, the Order of the Visitation. As a writer he left an important work bearing witness to intense spiritual experience.

Francis of Assisi (c 1182-1226) is often considered to be the first stigmatic in medieval Christian history: he received the marks during a retreat in Mont Alverne (La Verna) in 1224. He was canonised (recognised as a saint) in 1228.

Franz Xavier von Baader (1765-1841) was a German philosopher and theologian of mysticism. He was professor of philosophy in Munich.

Georges Parchiminey (1888-1953) was a French doctor and psychoanalyst.

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was an historian of Jewish mysticism. He was the first to hold the chair of Jewish Mysticism Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which he had helped to set up in the 1920's. His best known work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, was published in 1941 and had a major impact on subsequent developments in the discipline to which he had dedicated himself. The thrust of Scholem's work – which probably explains the notoriety of his thought even outside academic and historical circles -was to present a global vision of the history of Judaism and the major trends running through it. His work was based on the hypothesis that Jewish mysticism (an expression, for Scholem, which covered many different trends, underground and opposed to the 'rationalist' trend) had been and remained an essentially revitalising factor in rabbinic Judaism.

This medal, inaugurated in 1955, recognises a particular commitment to the transmission of the German language abroad, and to international cultural exchange.

https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1068479/emilie-nasrallah-medaille-goethe-2017.html

Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390) was a Christian theologian writing in Greek. A friend of Gregory of Nyssa – the two of them, together with Basil of Caesarea, formed the Cappadocian Fathers – he contributed to the emergence of mysticism at the heart of Christianisty.

Gregory of Nyssa (c331/341 – after 394) was a Christian theologian writing in Greek. His treatises on monachism make him one of the fathers of Christian mysticism.

All Hassan ben Massud Al Hallaj was born in Tur in Persia about 858. Known for the mysticism expressed in his poems, he was crucified for his ideas in Baghdad on the orders of the Sunni ulemas.

Henri Ey (1900-1977) was a Catholic psychiatrist, lead doctor in the hospital of Bonneval.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine nun and mystic, composer and writer. She was officially canonised in 2012.

Mohammed Abu Abdallah Ibn al-Hajj al-Abdari al-Maliki al-Fassi was an erudite Egyptian Moroccan of the Malikite school of interpretation (fiqh). Originally from Fez, he ended his life in Egypt where he died in 1336. He is famous for his book al-Madkhal.

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibnʿArabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī , born on 26 July 1165 in Murcia (in modern Spain) and died on 16 November 1240 in Damascus (in modern Syria). He was known as “Sheikh al-Akbar” (lit. 'the greatest master'). Ibn Arabi was a major Sufi thinker.

Ibn Khaldun est un grand savant et historien musulman. Né à Tunis en 1332 et mort au Caire en 1406, ses œuvres les plus connus sont Al-Muqadima (Les Prolégomènes), puis le Kitâb al-Ibar (Livre des exemples).

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was from an Andalus family expelled from Spain. He was born in Tunis during the Merinid era, and was famous fro his travels which took him to the East. His major work, the Book of Lessons (kitab Al Ibar) is a universal history. The introduction to this book is known under the title of Al-Muqaddimah (Introduction); in this he explains his theory of societies and the rise and fall of empires.

Ibn Khaldun was a great Muslim savant and historian, He was born in Tunis in 1332 and died in Cairo in 1406, and his most well known works are Al-Muqadima (the Introductions), and the Kitab al-Ibar (Book of examples).

The Imprimatur is official authorisation to publish given by the Catholic Church. It is decreed through canon law and granted by the Authority (the Bishop) in the place where it is printed.

Isaac Luria (1534-1572)was an Ashkanazy kabbalist who established himself at the end of his life in the town of Safed in Gallilee. His teaching is presented as a commentary on the zoharic tradition, however he contributed to its major redevelopment and renewal. In what he saw as a classical form, Isaac Louria introduced original and innovative ideas to the kabbalist tradition, contributing notably to its popularisation.

Israel Ben Eliezer (1698-1760) first became known for his opposition to Jacob Frank's (1726-1791) claim to be the Messiah. Later his teaching moved away from strict orthodox Judaism. Without denting the necessity of study, he called for attachment to God (devequth) through prayer and through a path in which all believers could become righteous (tsadiq).

Jean Delay (1907-1987) was a psychiatrist who held the chair of psychiatric medicine at the Hospital of Sainte-Anne in Paris.

Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, born in 1077 or 1078 and died in 1166, was a Persian teacher of Sufism. Like Ibn Arabi, he contributed to the formalisation of Sufi thought.

John of the Cross (1542-1591) was a Spanish Catholic priest. At the request of Teresa of Avila, reformer of the Carmelite order of nuns, he took on the role for the men. He then had a mystical experience which he describes in his voluminous works. Controversial in his lifetime, John of the Cross was beatified in 1675 and canonised in 1726. Two centuries later, the Papacy even named him Doctor of the Church, a mark of the influence he still exercised through his general law of mystical union in Catholicism.

Justinian, first Emperor of Constantinople from 527 to 565; he tried to reconquer the barbarian West, established the code which carries his name, and condemned the Three Chapters in 553.

Bavarian district where Therese Neumann was born.

L'Evolution psychiatrique was a study group then a published review from 1929 which covered the confrontation between psychiatric medicine and psychoanalysis.

Lalla Mymunah is one of the female mystics whose names survive in the collective memory of Moroccans today.

Doctors Henri Bourru (1840-1914) and Prosper Burot (1849-1921) were doctors at the naval medical school in Rochfort. In the 1880's they produced works on hypnosis and variations in personality.

Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939) was a French anthropologist and philosopher. He founded the Institute of Ethnography in Paris. His work on the primitive mind makes reference, notably, to Mystical experience and symbols of primitive peoples (1938).

Louis Massignon (1883-1962): a French islamicist who held the chair of Muslim sociology at the Sorbonne between 1926 and 1954. He was a great specialist in Muslim mysticism and mysticism itself, and was notably the author of Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansour Hallaj (1975).

Louise Lateau (1850-1883), from the province of Hainaut in Belgium was received into the Franciscan Third Order in 1867. From that time until her death, every Friday she presented with stigmata on her forehead, feet and hands, regularly accompanied by contemplative ecstasy. A medical enquiry was opened in 1874 by the Royal Society of Belgium to investigate these phenomena. A request for her beatification was put forward to Rome in the 1990s but was turned down in 2009.

Voir : La mystique comme émancipation religieuse, la voie de Mme Guyon de Ghislain Waterlot (Unige)

Françoise d'Aubigné, known as Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719) was the wife of Paul Scarron until his death in 1660. At first governess to the illegitimate children of Louis XIV, she became his companion, then his secret wife in 1683 after the death of Queen Marie Thérèse.

Manana al-Bassyounia (d. 1751) was one of the saints of the town of Fez.

Marie von Mörl (1812-1868) came from the South Tyrol. Her fame attracted crowds from the 1830s. The Austrian writer Joseph von Gorres published an account of her.

Mariam Al-Semlaliyia was a female Sufi from the region of Sous in the south of Morocco who died in 1751.

Marie-Thérèse Noblet (1889-1930), originally from the Ardennes, was a paralysed woman brought on pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1905 and became a missionary in Papua, where she died. She carried stigmata from 1921.

Marie-Julie Jahenny (1850-1941) was from the Nantes region of France and was a member of the Franciscan Third Order. She presented with stigmata from 1873.

Marthe Robin (1902-1981) was one of the first stigmatics appearing in 1930 and was founder of charity homes; her dossier of beatification was presented to Rome by a priest of the community of the Emmanuel in 1996. Her heroism and virtues were recognised in 2014.

Eckhart von Hoheim called Meister Eckhart (c 1260 – c. 1328) was trained by the Dominicans and then at the universities of Cologne and the Sorbonne. His work, infused by mysticism, was denounced by the Inquisition and Meister Eckhart was condemned by the Papacy doubtlessly post mortem in 1329. Nevertheless he was the originator of the influential school of the Rhineland mystics.

Meister Eckhart (c1260-c1328) was a German Dominican theologian. He was one of the first of the Rhine mystics. He taught theology at the University of Paris and preached numerous sermons.

The principle of Quietism was the placing of the soul “plunged in God and transformed in Him, and the total passivity in which it must be maintained to allow God to act on it.” (Jacques le Brun). The Spaniard Miguel Molinos (1628-1696) is particularly associated with it. He was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687. Fénelon and Madame Guyon were considered to be Quietists; Madame Guyon was imprisoned in the Bastille (in all she spent 7 years in various prisons) and Fénelon's Explication des maximes des saints was condemned by Rome in 1699. Furthermore, Fénelon was disgraced by the King and ended his life in the diocese of Cambrai.

Moshe Idel, historian of the kabbalah born in 1947, has occupied the Chair in the study of Jewish mysticism founded by Scholem at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has profoundly renewed the perception of the kabbalah, especially through his work on the mystic Abraham Aboulafia and on messianism in the kabbalah.

Moshe or Moses de Léon (1240-1305) was a Spanish kabbalist considered to be the author of Zohar, central text of Jewish mysticism.

Muhya-e-dine Ibn' Arabi was a prestigious figure in Sufism, named by his later followers al-Shaykh al-akbar (the great master). He was born in Murcia in Spain in 1165 and died in Damascus on 16 November 1240.

Nicodemus the Hagiorite (1748-1809) was a monk from Mount Athos in Chalkidiki. Between 1777 and 1782, with the help of Macaire of Corinth he published the Philokalia, an anthology of texts from the 4th to the 15th century showcasing Christian mysticism in the Greek Orthodox tradition.

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782) was a German theosopher. He was interested in the kabbalah and is seen as the father of Swabian theosophy.

Origen (c185-c.253) was one of the Church Fathers. Born in Alexandria, he accomplished a considerable body of work on exegesis and worked as a theologian and polemicist (Against Celsus)

Francesco Forgione (1887-1968) was a Capuchin priest, canonised in 2002. He is considered to be the only stigmatised priest in history. The marks, object of many medical reports, appeared from 1911.

Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, (1493-1541) was a Swiss doctor and philosopher writing in German. He played a big role in the history of medicine at the time and practised constant experimentation to perfect his knowledge, to which he added magic in order to develop his initial intuitions.

Pierre Janet (1859-1947) was a psychologist and doctor who specialised, like Freud, in the treatment of hysteria, and was the director of a psychology laboratory in Salpetrière.

Plotinus (205-270) was a philosopher writing in Greek in late antiquity whose works were assembled by his disciple Porphyry of Tyre under the title of the Enneads. Reprising Plato, Plotinus' thought, although it was not Christian, fascinated the Church Fathers, including Augustine of Hippo. For Plotinus the world was composed of three hypostases: the soul, the intellect, and one which man must gather in order to leave the world enlightened and attain ecstatic union, characterised as an out of body experience. If Plotinus' mysticism is a result of thought relating to an immanent absolute, the description of the return of the soul in itself is found in Christian mystical experience.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, known as Cardinal Richelieu, was born in 1585 and died in 1642. He was a churchman who was Louis XIII's principal minister from 1624 until his death. He fought against the Habsburgs in foreign affairs and against the Protestants at home and was the principal artisan of the establishment of royal absolutism.

Roland Dalbiez (1893-1976) was a philosopher close to Maritain. He was one of the first to clearly present the work of Freud to the French public: La méthode psychoanalytique et la doctrine freudienne, 2 vol, Desclee de Brouwer, 1935.

Rushdi al Maalouf is a Lebanese poet, journalist and musicologist. He is the father of the Franco-Lebanese writer Amine Maalouf (elected to the Académie Française in 2011)

Saadia Gaon (882/892-942) was a rabbi writing in Arabic who notably fought to defend rabbinical tradition against karaism, which denied the authority of the Talmud. At the heart of his vast work is the commentary on the Book of Creation (Tafsir Kirab Al-Madabi), which constitutes the first theoretical examination of Jewish mysticism.

Said Akl (1912-2014) was a Lebanese poet, theologian, historian, professor, journalist and politician. Close to Mansour Rahbani, he described Fayrouz as 'our ambassador to the stars'.Many of his poems were used in Fayrouz' songs.

Saint Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, defended the doctrine of the first ecumenical council convoked by Constantine at Nicea in 325 which considered the Son as con-substantial with the Father. Exiled five times, he left an important body of work on dogma.

Saint Maron was a hermit monk who died about 410.The monks raised a monastery in his name in the valley of Oronte to the south of Antioch which became the cradle of the Maronite Church.

Marie-Françoise Thérèse Martin, religious name Thérèse de l'enfant Jésus et de la Sainte-Face was a Carmelite born in Alençon (1873-1897), canonised un 1925.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a philosopher, writer and French political militant. Of Jewish origin, she considered herself and is recognised as a Catholic mystic.

Jean Tauler (c1300-1361) was a preacher and theologian from Alsace. He was one of the disciples of Meister Eckhart and, like him, a Dominican.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was a Spanish Carmelite nun. Her reform of the Carmelite order resulted after her death in a schism and the birth of the barefoot, or reformed Carmelites, which quickly broke away from the original order. Her profoundly mystical approach makes her one of the most important reference points on the subject at the heart of Catholicism.

Teresa of Avila (religious name, Teresa de Jesus) (1515-1582) was a Spanish nun and reformer of the Carmelite Order. A profound mystic, she left a written account of her experience which made her a major figure in Christian spirituality.

Marie-Françoise Thérèse Martin (1873-1897), religious name sister Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus et de la Sainte Face, also known as Thérèse de Lisieux saint Thérèse de L'Enfant Jésus and also Little Thérèse, was a French Carmelite nun. Her posthumous work (Histoire d'une âme) was unanimously considered to be an incontrovertible witnessing of the mystical experience.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French writer who was very critical of the Church.

The Wattassids (Banou Wattas) ruled Morocco from the middle of the 15th century until 1549. This dynasty is known for its struggle with the Iberians.

William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. A part of his work was concerned with the phenomenon of belief and especially mysticism. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902).

Yvonne Beauvais (1901-1951), originally from Mayenne, was an Augustine nun who took the name Yvonne-Aimée de Jésus. She was in the resistance during the Second World War.

Zahra bint Abdullah al-Kush (d. 1610) was a Moroccan mystic known for the Zaouia she founded in Marrakech.