Abstract

Abstract A Welsh convert to Catholicism, Augustine Baker (1575–1641) joined the Benedictines in Padua (1605) and produced (with others) Apostalatus Benedictinorum in Anglia (1626), a scholarly history of the order in Great Britain. Baker spent nine years (1624–33) in Cambrai (NE France) as spiritual adviser to Benedictine nuns, including Gertrude More (see poetry). There he wrote over forty spiritual treatises, later digested and published by Father Serenus Cressy as Sancta Sophia, ‘Holy Wisdom ‘ (1657), a guidebook to prayer now recognized as a classic of mystical theology. Drawing upon many previous writers, Sancta Sophia teaches the prayer of mystic contemplation. In this sublime prayer, the soul, without thoughts or images, experiences God directly as inWnite and incomprehensible truth and goodness (cf. Crashaw’s ‘The Flaming Heart ‘ and ‘Ode ‘, poetry).

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