Drawing on the writings of St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and other theologians across centuries of Christian mystical traditions, the anonymous, fourteenth-century spiritual guide known as The Cloud of Unknowing invites Christian readers to develop a stronger, more intimate relationship with God through intense contemplation and the abandonment of all mental images or concepts that are not God. Only after abandoning the intellect and the imagination can one then encounter a “nothing and a nowhere” that leads to the mysterious and unfathomable being of God himself, beyond the capacity of mental conception and without definitive image or form. Distilling a complex mystical theology and practice into engaging and approachable prose, The Cloud of Unknowing reflects a larger trend in medieval Christianity toward a more individual, passionate religious experience of God while achieving a directness and simplicity uncharacteristic of even the most popular examples of fourteenth-century Middle English mystical literature.

Patrick Joseph Gallacher was Professor Emeritus of Medieval Language and Literature in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico. He was author or editor of several books, as well as numerous reviews and was one of the first Chaucerian scholars to combine medieval medicine and literature.