Intimate relationship between the sensible, intellectual, and affective elements of contemplation.

The Dominicans have considered the intellectual as the most important element in contemplation while the Franciscans generally have placed greater importance on the affective and sensible elements. The first insist on vision; the second, especially on seraphic love of which their father was so eloquent a singer. Carmel takes the middle course between the two schools: this includes several disciples and admirers of St. Bernard, but for them the affections of the heart and the sensible representation of God's mysteries are perfectly united to the consideration of the mind and are intimately joined with intellectual contemplation. Here also are found disciples and admirers of Eckhart, but more ponderous than their master and very ready to combine the most elevated intellectual abstractions with sensible images and very tender love. We have an example of this in the sermons of Henry Hane, who is none other than the Henry de Hanna (d. 1299), who was the faithful helper of St. Simon Stock in spreading the Order in England, the Netherlands, Germany and France. They are preserved in an Oxford manuscript which bears the title Paradisus animae intelligentis, the text of which P. Strauch edited. They contain more than one image found in the works of St. Teresa; the Saint certainly did not know the sermons of Henry Hane, but both of them drew from the same tradition. Hane was influenced by Eckhart but he was on his guard against the too daring expressions of the great Dominican mystic. Sometimes the Carmelite school is called the eclectic school; it would be more correct to say that it takes the middle course between the intellectual and affective schools; this is the reason why it exercised so important an influence on popular devotion, especially in the 15th century. Great St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross were faithful to this tradition of avoiding extremes and harmonizing spiritual life, although St. Teresa leans toward the affective school and St. John of Cross toward the intellectual; the synthesis of their mysticism, which will remain the glory of Carmel, is a harmonious connecting of the different elements of contemplation we find sketched in the medieval Carmelite school.

Another authoritative witness of the school at the beginning of the 14th century is Sibert de Beka, founder of the convent at Gelderen, later provincial of Germany and doctor of Paris, who is famous for his Ordinale Ordinis and for a commentary on the rule. He sees the consummation of the contemplative life in perfect love as long as it is joined to a sweet and savorous of the Goodness of God, a knowledge, moreover; which can only be habitual or implicit. He is therefore also a witness to the harmonious combination of the intellect's action and the will's.