This book describes the great resurgence of the Church’s mystical and spiritual life which formed part of its answer to the challenge of the Reformation. Introductory chapters discuss the survival of mediaeval mysticism and the influence exerted by Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Harphius and Blosius upon St. Ignatius Loyola, Cisneros and other leaders of the spiritual revival. Subsequent chapters describe in detail the terminology and methods of the Spanish mystics: St John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and lesser writers such as Francisco de Osuna, Bernardine de Laredo, and the Alumbrados. After an account on the less clearly-defined Italian school, which included St Catherine of Genoa and the anonymous author of the Spiritual Combat, the book describes schools of mysticism which arose in seventeenth-century France and producer the great conflicts between Jesuit, de Caussade, this period included such vastly different figures as Mme Acarie, Cardinal de Berulle, St Jane Frances de Chantal, Pascal, Saint-Cyran, St Francis de Sales, Nicole, Lalemant, Fenelon and Mme Guyon, all of whom are described and discussed.