The Turn to Interiority in the Early Modern Period

The spirituality of the Early Modern Period – and especially in the Devotio Moderna and Ignatius of Loyola – is often associated with a turn to “interiority.” The question is then: to what does one turn? The Pro Theologia Mystica Clavis (1640) of Maximilianus Sandaeus offers a useful hermeneutical principle. In his explanations of the nature of interiority, he emphasized that it is fundamentally a “turning to the Other,” to God, which strips the human person of its own images and forms. This “turn inwards” is a response to the initiative of God, who is present in the “ground” of the soul, and is thus more present to the human person than the human person is to himself. This “ground” is not the “self” as such, but the fundamental relationality. Interiority concerns the encounter and the deepening relationship between the human person and God, and thus indirectly the human person as a “person” and not the “self” of the individual. This perspective has older roots, as it can be seen, e.g., in the discussion between Peter Abelard and William of Saint-Thierry in the twelfth century.