The Work
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of English mystical theology composed around 1375, probably in the East Midlands of England. Its author, who also wrote six other spiritual treatises including The Book of Privy Counselling and A Letter of Private Direction, addressed the work to a young contemplative who has asked for guidance in the practice of interior prayer. The work comprises seventy-five short chapters that guide the reader from basic dispositions of the contemplative life through an increasingly refined account of apophatic prayer - prayer that transcends images, concepts, and discursive thought - toward an intimacy with God that can be approached only in loving darkness.
The text survives in seventeen medieval manuscripts, suggesting a limited but devoted circulation among English contemplatives. It was unknown to the wider English-speaking world until Evelyn Underhill's edition (1912) brought it to modern readers; Clifton Wolters's Penguin translation (1961) made it widely accessible. The standard modern scholarly edition is by Patrick J. Gallacher in the TEAMS Middle English Texts series (1997). Its prose style - spare, practical, occasionally humorous, and remarkably direct - is one of the glories of Middle English writing.
Biblical Engagement
The central biblical text for the entire work is Exodus 24:15-18, where Moses enters the cloud on Mount Sinai: 'And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.' The author reads this theologically, through the lens of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Mystical Theology (c. 500 AD), as an image of the soul's entry into apophatic prayer: the 'cloud of unknowing' that separates the soul from God is not an obstacle but the proper medium of contemplative encounter, because God's nature transcends all human concepts and images.
1 John 4:8 ('He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love') is the theological ground of the work's central claim: that the cloud of unknowing can be 'pierced' not by intellectual effort but only by 'a sharp dart of longing love.' The author insists repeatedly that love, not knowledge, is the proper faculty for the contemplative approach to God. This is a consistent emphasis of the apophatic tradition: since God transcends all concepts, the intellect reaches its proper limit and can go no further, but love can press beyond the limits of conceptual thought into the darkness where God dwells.
Psalm 46:10 ('Be still, and know that I am God') provides the disposition that the author seeks to cultivate: a radical interior stillness in which the practitioner releases not only sinful thoughts and images but even virtuous ones, committing everything - past sins, present concerns, future anxieties - beneath what the author calls a 'cloud of forgetting.' Only when the mind is cleared of all other content can the naked intent of the will be directed toward God alone.
John 4:24 ('God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth') is the Johannine grounding of the author's insistence that God can be approached only by the spirit, not by bodily sensation or imaginative representation. The author is sharply critical of those who mistake bodily or sensory experiences - warmth, light, visions, sounds - for genuine contemplative union, arguing that the true work of contemplation is interior and imperceptible.
Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha) is the typological framework for the work's understanding of the contemplative life. Mary, who 'sat at Jesus's feet, and heard his word,' is the figure of the contemplative soul whose chosen part 'shall not be taken away from her'; Martha, who is 'cumbered about much serving,' represents the active life of good works. The author does not denigrate the active life but insists that contemplation is the 'higher part' - the direct orientation toward God that supports and transcends all activity.
Author and Context
The author's identity has never been established. Attempts to identify him with the Dominican Richard Misyn, the Augustinian canon Walter Hilton, and various other fourteenth-century figures have all been inconclusive. What is clear from internal evidence is that the author was a priest or religious (he uses liturgical references with the fluency of a cleric), was deeply versed in the Latin mystical tradition (particularly Pseudo-Dionysius, the Victorines, and Bernard of Clairvaux), and had experience of the contemplative practice he describes.
The work was written during the period of extraordinary creativity in English mysticism that produced Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. This 'golden age' of English mysticism coincided with the upheavals of the Black Death (1348-1350), the Peasants' Revolt (1381), and the beginning of the Lollard controversy - a period of social, ecclesial, and spiritual crisis that may have intensified interest in contemplative practice as a direct approach to God that bypassed institutional mediation.
The author's engagement with Pseudo-Dionysius (a fifth-century Syrian monk who was mistakenly identified throughout the Middle Ages as the Athenian convert of Acts 17) gave him access to the Eastern Christian tradition of apophatic theology - the insistence that God transcends all positive description and can be approached only through negation. This Eastern influence, mediated through the Latin translations of John Scotus Eriugena, gave the Cloud a theological sophistication that distinguishes it from the more affective mysticism of Rolle and the autobiographical mysticism of Julian.
Method and Practice
The author's method is striking in its practicality. Against the elaborate systems of meditation prescribed by the Ignatian and Cistercian traditions, he prescribes a single practice: the use of a 'word,' a single monosyllable (he suggests 'God' or 'love'), to clear the mind of all other content and maintain the naked intent of the will toward God. This single-word practice anticipates by six centuries the 'sacred word' used in the contemporary practice of Centering Prayer developed by Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Meninger in the 1970s - a development that drew directly on the Cloud as its primary source.
Critical Reception and Revival
The work's modern reception began with Evelyn Underhill's edition (1912), which placed it in the context of the broad international mystical tradition she had analyzed in her Mysticism (1911). The mid-twentieth-century revival of interest in contemplative prayer brought the Cloud to the attention of a much wider audience: Thomas Merton cited it in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), and the development of Centering Prayer by Trappist monks in the 1970s brought it into the practice of millions of contemporary Christians.
Theological Significance
The work's theological significance lies in its articulation of the apophatic tradition in the English vernacular - making available to non-Latin-reading English Christians the depth of the Eastern apophatic theology transmitted through Pseudo-Dionysius. Its insistence that love, not knowledge, is the primary contemplative faculty distinguishes it from the intellectualist strands of mysticism and places it in the tradition of affective theology associated with Bernard of Clairvaux and Bonaventure.
Legacy
The Cloud's influence on the English mystical tradition was foundational: Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection and Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love both show its influence, and it remained a touchstone for English Catholic spirituality through the Reformation and beyond. Its twentieth-century revival through Underhill, Merton, and the Centering Prayer movement has given it a readership vastly larger than it ever enjoyed in the Middle Ages.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with Exodus 24:12-18 (Moses in the cloud), 1 Kings 19:11-13 (Elijah and the still small voice), Psalm 46:10 (be still), Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha), John 4:19-24 (worshipping in spirit), and 1 John 4:7-12 (God is love). The opening chapters of Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology provide the philosophical framework.
Further Reading
- William Johnston, The Mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing (1967) - the most thorough theological study of the work. - Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (1911) - the broader context within which she placed the Cloud in her landmark survey. - Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart (1986) - the contemporary practice of Centering Prayer that draws directly on the Cloud's method.