What does it mean to pray? How is it that we enter God’s presence through devotion and meditation? What is the meaning of suffering? These are the kinds of questions asked by many of the sixteenth century’s great Christian mystics, scholars, and saints.

While polemical wars were waged between the Catholic Church and Protestant Reformers, many thinkers continued to focus on the internal battle waged within our own souls. This focus on interiority produced some of the greatest mystical, poetic, and devotional literature ever written. Now it’s compiled in the enormous Post-Reformation Catholic Thought and Piety Collection.

The sixteenth century was a time of incredible theological and spiritual development. Not only were substantial amounts of Protestant literature being produced; counter-reformers, poets, and mystics were also writing works that add essential context to the debates happening in and around the Protestant Reformation. Many such works are famous throughout all of Christendom, such as John of the Cross’ The Dark Night of the Soul or Teresa of Avila’s The Way of Perfection—but it’s often forgotten that these very devotional works were written during the heat of the sixteenth century’s doctrinal disputes. Continue Reading…