QUIETISM. - A mystical-religious conception that tends toward the attainment of union, indeed of identification, with God, through an acquired state of total passivity with a diminution or renunciation of personal human responsibility. In the general meaning of the term, it is a deviation of the interior life, occurring in different places and times, including among non-Christian religions; it has, however, taken on a precise meaning in designating a vast movement that developed in the 17th century.
Quietist motifs can be discerned in Brahmanism, in its yearning to attain absorption into the great All, with the renunciation of action and existence. In Buddhist treatises the ecstatic practice to which monks apply themselves is determined with precision: meditation consists in thinking nothing; the long hours spent in such exercise often provoke a nervous excitation. In the West, there were motifs derived from the Stoic ἀνάθετα; or from Neoplatonic ecstasy, as described by Plotinus, as a "bath of light," through which the soul has the immediate vision of the One and is merged with it, stripping itself of every form.
In the history of Christian spirituality, the Quietist vein surfaces in the East with the Messalians or Euchites, condemned by the Council of Ephesus (451), with the doctrine of continuous prayer that would have the absolute efficacy of expelling the demon from man. For them, dominated by a Manichaean vision of the struggle between Satan and the Spirit, human nature remains totally corrupted, even after Baptism. Only continuous prayer would have the efficacy of tearing out the roots of evil, producing in those who pray impeccability, transforming the soul into the divine and immortal nature, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit sensibly perceived. From the concept of impeccability they drew immoral consequences (a phenomenon that later occurred also in other movements with Quietist infiltrations): « cum aliquis post imperpessionem se tradit deliciis et libidini, id caret culpa et periculo » (Presbyter Timothy, De receptione haereticorum: PG 86, 51). Quietist tendencies, with contemplative methods analogous to the Buddhists', are found in the 14th century among the Hesychast monks (v.) of Mount Athos; they tended toward the vision of the divine light through contemplation, down to the introspection of the heart, until God made one see within one's own entrails His marvelous light, bearer of celestial joy and of invulnerability to the assaults of the enemy; the perfect exempted themselves even from vocal prayer (Gregory Sinaita, De quietudine et duobus orationis modis: PG 150, 1313 ff.). Accentuated Quietist errors recur in the 13th century among the Brethren of the Free Spirit (v. LIBERO SPIRITO) and among the Beghards or Beguines, involved in one and the same condemnation of the Council of Vienne (1312). In all these the impeccability of the perfect man is emphasized, who considered himself free from every obedience, from every ascetic practice, the body and the senses being subject to the soul and to reason. In Eckhart Quietist motifs surface in the 28 propositions condemned by John XXII. On the other hand, Quietist tinges should also be sought in medieval lyrics and treatises on pure love: "O soul annihilated" in it (God) transformed "take no care for yourself"... "For you neither war nor peace — it is neither summer nor winter — paradise or hell — for you there is only love" (Giannuzzo Sacchetti).
In the Alumbrados or Spanish Illuminati of the 16th and 17th centuries the Quietism of the Beghards is justified by a special theory of the contemplation of God and of the sufficiency of mental prayer (vocal prayer, private or collective, is disdained). Only mental prayer is obligatory by divine will, to be placed before even the Mass of precept and obedience to Superiors. Prayer consists for them essentially in recollecting oneself in the divine presence, whereby "faith" ceases. In this state the acts of virtue and of the will and the very powers of the soul are suppressed, because one is guided by Grace and by the Holy Spirit, to whose inspiration one must abandon oneself. There was no lack of those among them who claimed to justify illicit sexual relations, as a communication of the Holy Spirit and a manifestation of the divine union. They were persecuted throughout the 16th century by the Inquisition. On May 9, 1623, Andrea Pacheco, archbishop of Seville, condemned 76 of their propositions. Circles of Illuminati were also formed in France, and among them are to be counted the Guerinets, who arose in Picardy in the first decade of the 17th century. Perhaps other branches, still unexplored, existed in Italy. In Rome, in 1615, Fr. Aniello Arcieri and the "bizzocca" Sister Giulia de Marchi were condemned as "Beghards"; they had had a large following in Naples and were confessed culprits of having taught and practiced a pseudo-mysticism of the senses (cf. Bibl. Vat., codd. Urb. lat., 1696 and Vat. lat., 1273).
In the 17th century Quietism presented itself as a coherent system, which arose from the debate between predestination and free will, as a reaction to religious formalism, and as a liberation from the terror of God projected into consciences by Protestantism and Jansenism, and it claimed to link itself to the Rhenish, Spanish and Italian mystics (from Ruysbroeck and Suso to St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, to St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi). It had its most famous and extremist formulation in Miguel de Molinos (v.) but was prepared and cultivated by various tendencies and currents. Like the previous analogous mystical conceptions that exasperate the voluntary annihilation of the human will in the divine transcendence, it is radically undermined by two fundamental errors, according to which pure love (v.) and abandonment to the divine will must be pushed to the point of absolute disinterestedness even as regards one's own salvation; and true prayer is only that of pure faith, the "acquired" contemplation that leads the soul to total passivity, a state in which not only the operations of the intellect but also the love of the will fall silent.
In Spain the Mercedarian Juan Falconi (v.), in his posthumous books, postulates, when meditation is impossible, the contemplative method, with total abandonment to the Divine Will. In France, the Capuchin Benedict of Canfield in his Règle de perfection (Paris 1609) teaches that perfection consists in the union of intellect and will of the creature, which is "nothing," with God, who is "all," conforming oneself to the essential will of God. This doctrine, which inspired a good part of the Capuchin mystical authors, was abusively interpreted by later Quietists: for this reason his work was placed on the Index (1689). Quietist traces are found in the teachings of Jean de Bernières, Father Mauro del Bambino Gesù, and Francesco Malaval (v.), who urged the faithful toward the nakedness of the spirit that requires the destruction of every sensible image or intelligible species. In Italy the first pre-Quietist text, dating to the end of the 16th century, is the Breve compendio intorno alla perfezione cristiana of Isabella Cristina Bellinzaga (v.), with the collaboration of the Jesuit Achille Gagliardi. But Italian Quietism takes definite shape and hinges on Cardinal Pier Matteo Petrucci (v.), who unifies the Quietist theories of the various Italian and foreign predecessors and owes more to the elaborations of Achille Gagliardi, Angelo Elli, Sisto de Cucchi, and Paolo Manassei than to Molinos. In Petrucci the mysticism of love has anti-intellectual premises (God wishes to be loved, not known); and he differs from the other Quietists in his exquisitely Christological theocentric position; he had to abjure his errors, expressed in 54 propositions, on 17 December 1687. Italian Quietism lives on middling and minor figures of exceptional driving force, and on groups and conventicles, from the Pelagini to the Casale group of Scarampi, to that of Matelica, to the Spoletan cenacle of Lambardi, to cite only the best known. Monsignor Spina, Archbishop of Vercelli, is a precursor of the initial Quietism of Fénelon (v.); the movement reaches the 18th century with the Sicilian Quietism of the Augustinian friar Romualdo and of Sister Geltrude Cordovana, who ended at the stake.
To attain quiet and immersion in God — according to G. P. Rocchi, one of the various theorists — the soul must pass beyond the first degree of pure faith, still placed on a discursive-meditative plane, and reach the second, in which one operates by judgment. Then one must set aside "all figures and images, even those by which the mysteries of the humanity of Jesus Christ are customarily meditated" (vocal prayers that are not of precept are also set aside), and one attends purely to God, with the simple gaze of the intellect. Remaining in this degree, the soul must not renew or perform distinct acts of virtue, nor must it linger over examinations, meditations, general confessions, but must listen to the inspiration of the Lord. Cardinal Caracciolo of Naples denounced, in 1682, the danger of illusions in this regard: "They live in such deception that they hold to be all lights and inspirations of God those thoughts that their mind suggests to them in that act of mute prayer."
The concept of indiamento, already expressed by Father Gagliardi, and of a consequent impeccability, allowed some unscrupulous persons, such as Pandolfo Ricasoli and Sister Maria Cristina Rovoles, to justify their own carnal pleasures. In some, Quietism received ardent chiliastic coloring, as in the Leoni brothers, condemned in Rome on the day following the abjuration of Molinos (4 September 1687). In them the sentiment of indiamento and of a radical devaluation of sacramental life was coupled with an eschatological expectation of the imminent reincarnation of Christ.
Of the Quietist little churches and groups, that of the Pelagini is the best known. Founded by Giacomo Casolo, in Milan, in the oratory of St. Pelagius, it developed above all in Val Camonica, under the direction of the priest Marcantonio Recaldini, and took root greatly "because of the coarseness of those ignorant peoples." The followers, laymen and laywomen, gathered at night to pray, devoting themselves to mental prayer. They held that without it no one could be saved and that it was to be preferred to the reception of the Sacraments and to the veneration of the Eucharist; they disdained vocal prayer. They despised marriage, fasts, penances, and other meritorious works. They asserted that only by belonging to their group did one attain eternal salvation, and they boasted of being authorized interpreters of Holy Scripture and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Pelagini were dispersed in 1656 and Recaldini was relegated. The group of Matelica, perhaps the most typical, founded and directed by the Oratorian Pier Matteo Romiti, was composed of thirty unmarried women; bound by the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they lived in their families and wore a collar that distinguished them. At Mass they kept their eyes lowered, not raising them at the Elevation, and did not move their lips. They held "congregations in the house of one of them to discuss spiritual things." Father Romiti initiated them into the prayer of quiet, at the beginning of which acts of faith and love had to be made, which it was not necessary to renew (and one of them affirmed that for many years she had no longer repeated them). They did not frequent other churches and did not confess to other confessors without the license of their director. Some said they had illuminations, revelations, and visions, and suffered anxieties and languors proceeding from the love of God. In such cases Father Romiti, in order to increase divine love, placed "a hand on their heart, pressing and telling them to love Jesus Christ."
The Spaniard Miguel de Molinos (v.), the most famous representative of Quietism, worked in the Roman milieu. The extreme consequences formed part of an esoteric teaching, imparted in spiritual direction and in epistolary correspondence, which came to light during the trial against him (1685-87) and which was set out in 68 propositions condemned by Innocent XI (bull Coelestis Pastor, 20 November 1687). With Father La Combe, and with Mme Guyon, of whom the former was at once director and directed, the sensualistic excesses of Molinos are rejected; Mme Guyon develops and refines the themes of the pure love of God and places perfection in the passive life of faith in which the soul, having re-entered into its interior, "with the impetuosity of Alpine torrents," is reunited with God, its center; and, annihilating itself, is lost in God. The soul, through spiritual trials, arrives at mystical death and resurrection in God: God little by little loses it in Himself and communicates His qualities to it, taking it away from all that is its own. While Father Nicole (v.) was among the principal adversaries of Quietism in France, Fénelon always proved a strenuous defender of the person and doctrine of Mme Guyon, while nonetheless rejecting certain excesses of it; in 1695 he induced her to submit her doctrine to the examination of Bossuet, Mme de Noailles, and M. Tronson (v. AMORE PURO). After two years of impassioned discussions between Fénelon and Bossuet (not always serene on the latter's part), there came the pontifical condemnation (12 March 1699) of the book L'explication des maximes des saints (Paris, 1 February 1697): the brief Cum alias of Innocent XI noted in 23 propositions of the Maximes various errors, phrases of ill sound or close to heresy, clarified by Fénelon, who submitted fully in the Instruction pastorale (15 September 1697) and in other writings. The principal errors can be reduced to four: 1) the love of pure charity is the love of God considered in Himself, without mixture of interested motive, nor fear of punishments nor desire of rewards. 2) In the supreme trials of the interior life, a soul can be persuaded with an invincible and reflected persuasion that it is justly reprobated by God; and with this persuasion make to God the absolute sacrifice of its eternal happiness. 3) In the state of pure love the soul is indifferent as to its perfection in the practice of the virtues (a proposition that Fénelon explained: the perfect seek solely the glory of God). 4) The affirmation, finally, that contemplative souls lose, in certain states, the distinct and reflected sight of Jesus Christ, was explained in the sense that such privation is limited to the period of vision. It is undeniable that this and other affirmations lent themselves to quietist exaggerations.
In the history of Christian spirituality, Quietism was a negative experience that demonstrated the absurdity of a mystical ascent not based on daily asceticism.
BIBL: documenti pontifici in Denz-U, 50-130, 1221-89, e in J. de Guibert, Docum ecclesiast. christ. perfectionis spectantia, Roma 1931, pp. 42-54, 115-27, 153-66, 228-40, 252-327. V. FENELON e MOLINOS e bibl. ivi citata; inoltre: C. Gennari, De falso mysticismo, Roma 1907; P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne, II, Parigi 1923, p. 323 sg.; III, ivi 1925, pp. 121 sgg.; IV, ivi 1928, capp. 5-9; P. Dudon, Le quiétisme au XVIIe siècle, in DFC, IV (1928), coll. 527-42; P. Pourrat, Le faux abandon, in DSP, I (1932), coll. 25-49; Melchior a Pobladura, Hist. generalis Ord. Fr. Minorum Capuccin., I, Roma 1947, pp. 197-200; I-II, ivi 1948, pp. 262-68; M. Petrocchi, Il q. italiano del Seicento, ivi 1948; S. Mottironi, Un nuovo documento per la storia del q. italiano, in Riv. d. st. d. Chiesa in Italia, 3 (1949), pp. 409-15; R. Guarnieri, Il q. in otto manoscritti digiani, ibid., 5 (1951), pp. 381-412; C. Truhlar, De experientia mystica, Roma 1951, pp. 93-112; P. Pirri, Il «Breve Compendio» di Achille Gagliardi al vaglio di teologi genuiti, in Arch. histor. S. J., 20 (1951), pp. 231-33 (con bibl. precedente).