“One of the great figures on whom St. Simon relied for the building up of Carmel in the West is Henry de Hanna or Henry Hane, an Englishman. He was a man who achieved fame not only in England but also on the Continent. He was St. Simon’s great collaborator, and his influence was tremendous. In an ancient manuscript at Oxford, three sermons are preserved which in my opinion cannot be ascribed to anyone but Henry Hane. They are in a collection of Sermons of Eckhart and his school. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the mysticism of Eckhart was predominant in the German lands and the mysticism of Carmel, especially in these lands, came under its influence. In his works, however, Henry Hane avoids the tendency to excessive subtlety which characterizes the works of Eckhart. He ever takes a middle position between the intellectual school of the Dominicans and the school of the Franciscans emphasizing more the affective method and the importance of the will. Just as in the mysticism of St. John of the Cross, the influence of pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite, is clearly seen, so also in the system of Hane we find the six degrees of the soul’s ascent to God taken from the same source.”
Bl. Titus Brandsma
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