Francisco de Osuna (c. 1492-c. 1540) Spanish Franciscan and mystic, wrote a series of maxims as a practical guide for recollection. These were arranged into a series of Spiritual Alphabets, this being the third.

Athanasius (c. 295-373) Bishop of Alexandria, spiritual master and theologian, was a major figure of 4th-century Christendom.

John Climacus (c. 579-649) was abbot of the monastery of Catherine on Mount Sinai. His Ladder was the most widely used handbook of the ascetical life in the ancient Greek Church.

This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Len, a Spanish scholar.

This volume contains carefully chosen texts that give a picture of the "essential" St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Spanish Carmelite. Included are selections from The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, and Spiritual Canticle.

The most in-depth and scholarly panorama of Western spirituality ever attempted!

In one series, the original writings of the universally acknowledged teachers of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic and Native American traditions have been critically selected, translated and introduced by internationally recognized scholars and spiritual leaders.

The texts are first-rate, and the introductions are informative and reliable. The books will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of every literate religious persons". -- The Christian Century

Blessed Angela of Foligno (c.1248-1309), while not widely known, is one of the most outstanding, most brilliant representatives of 13th-century Italian mysticism. In this excellent translation, Lachance provides an comprehensive introduction that summarizes Angela's inner journey, spirituality, and influence that will reach readers of medieval and women's visionary literature, feminists, and historians, as well as its usual devotional reading audience.

Margaret (?-1310) was a beguine from Hainaut who was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic. Here is the first modern English translation of the complete text of The Mirror, written between 1296 and 1306, a theological treatise that analyzes how love in humans is related to divine love and how the soul may experience a lasting union with God in this life.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, the Carthusians filled the role played in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the Cluniac network, in the Twelfth century by the Cistercians, and in the thirteenth century by the Franciscans and Dominicans: Western Christendom's most outstanding professional intercessors before God's throne. Founded in the late eleventh century, a few years before the Cistercians, the Carthusians grew very slowly during their first two centuries but were highly respected from the beginning.