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THE ORCHARD BOOKS
IV; The Cloud of Unknowing
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THE
CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
And other Treatises
BY AN ENGLISH MYSTIC OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
With
A Commentary on the Cloud by
FATHER AUGUSTINE BAKER, O.S.B.
Edited by
DOM JUSTIN MCCANN
Monk of Ampleforth
New York, Cincinnati, Chicago
BENZIGER BROTHERS
PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE
¥
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NIHIL OBSTAT
Fr. Innocentius Apop, S.Th.M., O.P.,
Censor deputatus.
IMPRIMATUR
Edm. Can. Surmont,
Vicarius generalis.
Westmonasterii, die 2o» Octobris, 1934.
Made and Printed in Great Britain
TO
MY FATHER
“... And so furthermore at the last to help thee kmt the ghostly knot of burning love betwixt thee and thy God, in ghostly onehead and accordance of will,” — Cloud, c. 47.
HE Cloud of Unknowing was written in
England somewhere about the middle
•JL of that fourteenth century — Chaucer’s century — which in our own country pro¬
duced Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and
Julian of Norwich, and abroad John Tauler,
Blessed Henry Suso, Blessed John Ruysbroeck, and St Catherine of Siena. These names will suggest peace and contempla¬
tive devotion, but it was not a century that was conspicuously either peaceful or con¬
templative. Both in England and on the continent of Europe there was frequent war, and the distress and unrest that follow on war. The earlier part of the century finds
England embroile…