Mixed Life

De: Walter Hilton

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 138

Walter Hilton (c.1343-96) offers clear and practical advice for Christians trying to balance their duty towards others with a drawing towards prayer and contemplation. He says that there is no fixed order of priority in these things, and Christ himself gives us the supreme example of the ‘mixed life’. A fresh translation into modern English. Rosemary Dorward read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. An edition of ‘The Scale of Perfection’ which she translated and edited jointly with John P. H. Clark, has been published by Paulist Press in the series ‘Classics of Western Spirituality’. Walter Hilton was born c. 1340-5. Little is known of his life, but it is believed that he studied at Cambridge, pursued a legal and administrative career, attempted the solitary life, and finally discovered his true vocation as an Augustinian Canon Regular. His spiritual writings were in English and Latin: the best known is the ‘Scale of Perfection’. He also wrote ‘Angels’ Song’, ‘Mixed Life’, commentaries on Psalm texts, and a number of letters of spiritual guidance, and translated ‘Eight Chapters on Perfection’. He died at the Priory of St Peter at Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire in 1396.