Mystical Theology, Dionysius the Areopagite, Catholic Mysticism 

Written in Chaucer's fourteenth century England, The Cloud of Unknowing reveals a spiritual writer of great force and originality, a master of singularly vigorous and eloquent English.

Here is a trumpet-call to a most definite and most difficult life of the spirit - a call addressed to everyone, for none may be excluded from the highest life that is within man's power under God's grace; but at the same time, a call that can be heard and obeyed only by the few, by those souls exceptionally endowed by nature and by grace. The author himself is fully aware of this fact and he takes pains, in his prologue and in his book, to utter two warnings: first, that he is writing for those who have devoted themselves sincerely with all due preparation and advice to "that life which is called contemplative"; and, secondly, that his book must be read and pondered as a whole.

Besides The Cloud, this volume also contains the Epistle of Privy Counsel and the translation of Denis Hid Divinity, all by the same author, together with a commentary of The Cloud by Abbot Augustine Baker, OSB.

Taken from the inside front flap.

Edited by Abbot Justin McCann, OSB.