MOLINOS, MIGUEL de. - Quietist, b. at Muniesa (Spain) on 29 June 1628, d. at Rome on Innocent XI (20 Nov. 1687) condemned M. himself as a formal heretic.
M. published Guía espiritual que desembaraza al alma y la conduce por el interior camino para alcanzar la perfecta contemplación y el rico tesoro de la interior paz, (Rome 1675); Breve tratado de la comunión cotidiana, (ibid. 1675); Cartas escritas a un caballero español desengañado para animarle a tener oración mental dandole modo para ejercitarla (ibid. 1676).
The condemned mystical theories of M. represent the most precise and conscious formulation of the Quietist movement (v. QUIETISM): the nuances of his mysticism are extremely subtle, the expressions are of the most exquisite and evanescent literary psychology: this explains the infatuation with M. that prevailed in Rome before his imprisonment, but whoever goes beneath a superficial reading finds a lucid and cutting theological substructure. M. maintained that willing to act actively is an offense to God and that one must instead abandon oneself to him and remain thereafter like a dead body; that natural activity is the enemy of Grace and impedes true perfection; that without acting the soul annihilates itself, thus returning to its principle, which is God, and becoming divine, so that God and the soul are no longer two beings united but only one; that in contemplation every reflection is harmful even if directed at one's own actions and one's own defects; that whoever has given his free will to God must no longer take care of his own perfection, nor of virtue, nor of his own sanctity, nor of his own salvation, and must not worry about temptations; he must make no act of resistance to them except a negative one, and if nature stirs, let it stir because it is nature (sometimes carnal acts are performed directly by the devil without consent); that in acquired contemplation one can no longer commit sins.
The condemnation of the Holy Office also bore upon M.'s practical life; it is not possible to know to what extent and how far he stained himself, under the justification of contemplation, with carnal sins; contemporary testimonies accuse M. of various turpitudes. As for M.'s importance in the framework of the history of Italian Quietism, one must be cautious: the M. affair was certainly the most sensational, but it was neither the only one nor the first, because Quietism in Italy was already flourishing before M.'s arrival.
Bibliography4 works
Massimo Petrocchi