PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: mysticism
Italian saint
St. Francis of Assisi ; canonized July 16, 1228; feast day October 4) was the founder of the Franciscan orders of the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), the women’s Order of St. Clare (the Poor Clares),...
Jewish philosopher
Philo Judaeus was a Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher, the most important representative of Hellenistic Judaism. His writings provide the clearest view of this development of Judaism in the Diaspora. As...
Swedish philosopher
Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist, Christian mystic, philosopher, and theologian who wrote voluminously in interpreting the Scriptures as the immediate word of God. Soon after his death, devoted...
Spanish saint
St. Ignatius of Loyola ; canonized March 12, 1622; feast day July 31) was a Spanish theologian and mystic, one of the most influential figures in the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 16th century,...
French abbot
St. Bernard of Clairvaux ; canonized January 18, 1174; feast day August 20) was a Cistercian monk and mystic, founder and abbot of the abbey of Clairvaux and one of the most influential churchmen of his...
Jewish mystic
Isaac ben Solomon Luria was the eponymous founder of the Lurianic school of Kabbala (Jewish esoteric mysticism). Luria’s youth was spent in Egypt, where he became versed in rabbinic studies, engaged in...
Italian theologian
Joachim Of Fiore was an Italian mystic, theologian, biblical commentator, philosopher of history, and founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore. He developed a philosophy of history according...
German mystic
Jakob Böhme was a German philosophical mystic who had a profound influence on such later intellectual movements as idealism and Romanticism. Erklärung über das erste Buch Mosis, better known as Mysterium...
Polish rabbi
Baʿal Shem Ṭov was the charismatic founder (c. 1750) of Ḥasidism, a Jewish spiritual movement characterized by mysticism and opposition to secular studies and Jewish rationalism. He aroused controversy...
Italian theologian
Saint Bonaventure ; canonized April 14, 1482; feast day July 15) was a leading medieval theologian, minister general of the Franciscan order, and cardinal bishop of Albano. He wrote several works on the...
German theologian and mystic
Meister Eckhart was a Dominican theologian and writer who was the greatest German speculative mystic. In the transcripts of his sermons in German and Latin, he charts the course of union between the individual...
Byzantine philosopher and theologian
Saint Gregory of Nyssa ; feast day March 9) was a philosophical theologian and mystic, leader of the orthodox party in the 4th-century Christian controversies over the doctrine of the Trinity. Primarily...
Hindu religious leader
Ramakrishna was a Hindu religious leader, founder of the school of religious thought that became the Ramakrishna Order. Born into a poor Brahman (the highest-ranking social class) family, Ramakrishna had...
French mystic
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon was a French Roman Catholic mystic and writer, a central figure in the theological debates of 17th-century France through her advocacy of Quietism, an extreme passivity...
Muslim mystic
Ibn al-ʿArabī was a celebrated Muslim mystic-philosopher who gave the esoteric, mystical dimension of Islamic thought its first full-fledged philosophic expression. His major works are the monumental Al-Futūḥāt...
Indian religious leader
Meher Baba was a spiritual master in western India with a sizable following both in that country and abroad. Beginning on July 10, 1925, he observed silence for the last 44 years of his life, communicating...
Russian mystic
Grigori Rasputin was a Siberian peasant and mystic whose ability to improve the condition of Aleksey Nikolayevich, the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne, made him an influential favourite at the court...
Spanish mystic
St. Teresa of Ávila ; canonized 1622; feast day October 15) was a Spanish nun, one of the great mystics and religious women of the Roman Catholic Church, and author of spiritual classics. She was the originator...
Catalan mystic
Ramon Llull was a Catalan mystic and poet whose writings helped to develop the Romance Catalan language and widely influenced Neoplatonic mysticism throughout medieval and 17th-century Europe. He is best...
French theologian
Jean de Gerson was a theologian and Christian mystic, leader of the conciliar movement for church reform that ended the Great Schism (between the popes of Rome and Avignon). Gerson studied at the University...
Spanish mystic
St. John of the Cross ; canonized 1726; feast day December 14) was one of the greatest Christian mystics and Spanish poets, doctor of the church, reformer of Spanish monasticism, and cofounder of the contemplative...
French philosopher
Simone Weil was a French mystic, social philosopher, and activist in the French Resistance during World War II, whose posthumously published works had particular influence on French and English social...
Indian mystic and poet
Kabir was an iconoclastic Indian poet-saint revered by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. The birth of Kabir remains shrouded in mystery and legend. One tradition holds that he was born in 1398, which would have...
Spanish Kabbalist
Moses De León was a Jewish Kabbalist and presumably the author of the Sefer ha-Zohar (“Book of Splendour”), the most important work of Jewish mysticism; for a number of centuries its influence among Jews...
Italian mystic
St. Catherine of Siena ; canonized 1461; feast day April 29) was a Dominican tertiary, mystic, and one of the patron saints of Italy. She was declared a doctor of the church in 1970 and a patron saint...
German theologian
Kaspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig was a German theologian, writer, and preacher who led the Protestant Reformation in Silesia. He was a representative of a phenomenon called Reformation by the Middle Way,...
Egyptian monk
Macarius the Egyptian ; feast day January 15) was a monk and ascetic who, as one of the Desert Fathers, advanced the ideal of monasticism in Egypt and influenced its development throughout Christendom....
German rabbi
Eleazar ben Judah Of Worms was a Jewish rabbi, mystic, Talmudist, and codifier. Along with the Sefer Ḥasidim (1538; “Book of the Pious”), of which he was a coauthor, his voluminous works are the major...
German nun
Blessed Anna Katharina Emmerick ; beatified October 3, 2004) was a German nun and mystic whose visions were recorded in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1833) and The Life of the Blessed...
German mystic
St. Hildegard ; canonized May 10, 2012; feast day September 17) was a German abbess, visionary mystic, and composer. Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of...
Hindu mystic
Mira Bai was a Hindu mystic and poet whose lyrical songs of devotion to the god Krishna are widely popular in northern India. Mira Bai was a Rajput princess, the only child of Ratan Singh, younger brother...
Indian mystic and theologian
Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī was an Indian mystic and theologian who was largely responsible for the reassertion and revival in India of orthodox Sunnite Islam as a reaction against the syncretistic religious...
Indian spiritual leader
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian spiritual leader who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and sexual freedom. As a young intellectual, Rajneesh visited with and...
German Jewish mystic
Judah ben Samuel was a Jewish mystic and semilegendary pietist, a founder of the fervent, ultrapious movement of German Ḥasidism. He was also the principal author of the ethical treatise Sefer Ḥasidim...
German theologian
Sebastian Franck was a German Protestant Reformer and theologian who converted from Roman Catholicism to Lutheranism but departed from Martin Luther’s views, emphasizing a mystical attitude in place of...
Greek Orthodox monk
Gregory of Sinai was a Greek Orthodox monk, theologian, and mystic, the most prominent medieval advocate of Hesychasm, a Byzantine form of contemplative prayer directed toward ecstatic mystical experience....
Swedish saint
St. Bridget of Sweden ; canonized October 8, 1391; feast day July 23, formerly October 8) was the patron saint of Sweden, founder of the Bridgittines (Order of the Most Holy Savior), and a mystic whose...
German mystic
Heinrich Suso was one of the chief German mystics and leaders of the Friends of God (Gottesfreunde), a circle of devout ascetic Rhinelanders who opposed contemporary evils and aimed for a close association...
Hindu mystic
Chaitanya was a Hindu mystic whose mode of worshipping the god Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. The son of a Brahman, he grew up in an atmosphere of...
chief rabbi of Palestine
Abraham Isaac Kook was a Jewish mystic, fervent Zionist, and the first chief rabbi of Palestine under the League of Nations mandate to Great Britain to administer Palestine. After serving as rabbi in a...
Christian mystic
Evagrius Ponticus was a Christian mystic and writer whose development of a theology of contemplative prayer and asceticism laid the groundwork for a tradition of spiritual life in both Eastern and Western...
Palestinian monk
Saint Hilarion ; feast day October 21) was a monk and mystic who founded Christian monasticism in Palestine modeled after the Egyptian tradition. Most knowledge about Hilarion derives from a semi-legendary...
Roman Catholic saint
Saint Philip Neri ; canonized 1622; feast day May 26) was an Italian priest and one of the outstanding mystics during the Counter-Reformation and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory (now the Institute...
Persian mystic
As-Suhrawardī was a mystic theologian and philosopher who was a leading figure of the illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy, attempting to create a synthesis between philosophy and mysticism. After...
American religious leader and author
Rufus Matthew Jones was one of the most respected U.S. Quakers of his time, who wrote extensively on Christian mysticism and helped found the American Friends Service Committee. In 1893 Jones became editor...
German mystic
Melchior Hofmann was a German mystic and lay preacher noted for contributing a zealous eschatology (doctrine of the end times) to the religious doctrine of the Anabaptists, a Reformation movement that...
Byzantine theologian
St. Maximus the Confessor ; Eastern feast day January 21; Western feast day August 13) was the most important Byzantine theologian of the 7th century whose commentaries on the early 6th-century Christian...
French theologian
Hugh of Saint-Victor was an eminent scholastic theologian who began the tradition of mysticism that made the school of Saint-Victor, Paris, famous throughout the 12th century. Of noble birth, Hugh joined...
English monk
Augustine Baker was an English Benedictine monk who was an important writer on ascetic and mystical theology. Educated at Broadgate’s Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, Baker was a Roman Catholic convert...
Italian poet
Jacopone Da Todi was an Italian religious poet, author of more than 100 mystical poems of great power and originality, and probable author of the Latin poem Stabat mater dolorosa. Born of a noble family...
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