Miguel de Molinos

Miguel de Molinos (born in 1628 with Muniesa in Spain, died in 1696 with Rome) was a Spanish, contemporary priest of Bossuet and Pascal, considered as one of the principal initiators of the Quiétisme, running mystical which knew its apogee in Europe - in particular in France, in Spain and in Germany (where it influenced even the Piétisme Lutheran) - at the end of the 17th century.

In the history of the Catholic church, Miguel de Molinos should not be confused with Molina, Jesuit Spanish of XVIème century whose theories had started a long controversy on the grace.

Formation

Molinos was born in 1628 in the province from Teruel, close to Saragossa. It leaves to Valence in 1646 where it studies with the Colegio de San Pablos of los jesuitas . Its studies carry out it - at least it suppose-T-one - to pass a doctorate in theology.

It is ordered priest the December 21st 1652, at twenty-four years. It is made conspicuous already by its gifts of preacher and takes part in the widespread spiritual exercises then within the clergy.

In 1662, it enters to the Escuela de Cristo , a brotherhood which preached the Ascèse. The ecclesiastical authorities of Valence notice it and send it to Rome to support the cause of Béatification of a priest of the diocese.

The spiritual adviser

He thus goes in the capital of Christendom in 1663. It is there that it gives the full measurement of its talent, initially in the Roman subsidiary company of the Escuela de Cristo , then in its teaching near various ecclesiastics like the simple faithful ones on the practice of the prayer of the heart, the speech which leads to the appeasing of the heart.

Its fame exceeds then the limits of the Holy City. Part of the nobility, clergy and to certain members of the pontifical curia are sensitive to its teaching and its theories. He becomes the confessor and the spiritual adviser of many priests and monk. The future pope Innocent XI was, seems it, among his disciples. He publishes various writings of which most famous, promised with a great success, was the Guia Espiritual, Defensa of Contemplacion (first edition 1675). This work will be again published ten time between 1675 and 1685, in various languages. This book is presented before just like an access method to contemplation. Molinos explains there how, to arrive at the union with the divinity, the heart must remain completely passive until finding the perfect rest as a God - Latin Quies in , which will give the substantive quietism whose its adversaries will affubleront this mystical current. It is a question above all of following a “interior way” which can be freed gradually from the “external practices. ”

This attitude of total confidence in God is opposed in particular to the ascetic and ritual practices, going until regarding them as obstacles with the intentions of God on the believer. For Molinos, no human effort can allow the complete union with God. This diving, this abandonment, this fusion with the divinity brings the faithful one to the absolute passivity, even with the absence of will of fight against temptation…

The heretic

Like all the mystical currents of the great religions monotheists, this interpretation of the faith could appear dangerous for holding of the dogma: indeed, this kind of spiritual practice inevitably brought to make superfluous, even harmful, the recitation of the institutionalized prayers, the reception of the sacraments, and consequently threatened the role and the capacity of the clergy.

The Spiritual Guide then starts to cause many conflicts within the religious houses. The Jésuites are the first adversaries of the theories of Molinos: mistaken for the works, even sanctified by the grace, uselessness of the example given by the saints, such were the principal attacks conducted against the Spanish priest.

These polemics lead logically, though after one long period of indulgence for the Aragonese doctor, with a inquisitorial lawsuit. Miguel de Molinos is stopped the July 18th 1685 and is imprisoned with Rome. Its principal work is first of all condemned by the courts of the Spanish Inquisition then sicilian. But its good relationships with influential members of the Roman Curia - of which the pope in person - its lawsuit delays.

The August 28th 1687, nevertheless, the Congrégation of the Holy Office ends up condemning several of the proposals contained in its work. Molinos is obliged to publicly abjure its errors in the church of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria will sopra Minerva the September 13rd 1687.

The defendant is declared “heretic dogmatizing” by the bubble Coelestis Pastor of the November 20th 1687. Curiously, this one is based in its judgment much more on the correspondence, even on the conversations that Molinos maintained with its faithful that on the spiritual Guide . It is true that the work had received the Imprimatur twelve years earlier and had been encensé by these even which sanction its author now…

Condemned to the perpetual prison, Molinos is found under house arrest within a convent in which it spends the eleven last years of its life, covered of a dress of penitent. It is there that he dies the December 21st 1696.

The posterity

The historians continue to wonder about the true reasons of the judgment of Miguel de Molinos. The authentic documents of the lawsuit were unfortunately destroyed at the time of the Napoleonean wars at the end of the 18th century.

This judgment seems to be at the conjunction of two repressive logics: one coming from an ecclesiastical long tradition of mistrust with respect to the Mysticism; the other much of the economic situation holding with the relations between the papacy and the kingdom of France. Indeed, the king of France Louis XIV, empêtré at the same time in the problems politico-monk of the Gallicanisme and the Jansénisme, in conflict with Rome - cf the “declaration of the four articles” in 1682 -, did he play of his influence to obtain this judgment of that which inspired the current quietist? There it is a question of an assumption not to be neglected.

Miguel de Molinos remains especially known today as leader of the Quiétisme. This current strongly inspired in France Mrs Guyon and Fénelon, and was fought by Bossuet and Madam de Maintenon.

Random links: