Anna Serra

This paper analyses the book “Puerta de la luz”(1629), by the Carmelite Agustín Núñez Delgadillo (1570-1631) from the point of view of its religious, Lullist and Kabbalist content. We present a contextualization and analysis of the work, with the exposition of eight alphabets, their combinations, litanies and deprecations, within the frame of Carmelite pedagogy, a deep influence of Lullian methods and mnemotechnic of the baroque Rhetoric.

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a theory of image based on the Mirror of Simple Souls by the French beguine Marguerite dicta Porete (ca. 1260-1310) and the poems and commentaries by the Spanish Carmelite John of the Cross (1542-1591), by making a comparative analysis focused on the way they think using images, the way they create images and how these ones relate to their texts. In particular, we will analyze the symbol of the mountain, which both authors use in a very specific way, and through which they chart a spiritual topography, both graphic and mental, in devotional and didactic contexts. The mountain is studied through its inherent structure of polarity (top and bottom) and its articulation through the gradual image of the ladder. We will study how they construct negative theologies through an apophatic meditational practice, and we will highlight analogies by discussing historical differences. This will persuade us of the possible existence of a continuum, a real underground tradition, a transmission of metaphors and apophatic discourses, which encompasses the Mirror of Simple Souls and emerges in Spain in the 16th century.