IN ORDER to free the world, prostrate in darkness and bound by numerous pagan errors, from the power of the devil who held it a wretched prisoner after the fall of our first parent, the heavenly shepherd, Christ our Lord, by his ineffable mercy, condescended to take flesh and, as a living victim, offer himself to God for us on the wood of the cross, nailing the guarantee of our redemption to the wood of the cross as a proof of his love for us. Then before returning to heaven he left on earth the Catholic Church his bride, as a new city, a holy Jerusalem, coming down from heaven without wrinkle or spot, one and holy, protected by his mighty weapons against the gates of hell. Its government he entrusted to the prince of the apostles, Peter, and his successors; they are to preserve whole and entire the teaching drawn from his lips, lest the sheep redeemed by his precious blood feed on poisonous ideas and fall back into age-old errors. This power sacred Scripture teaches us he entrusted especially to blessed Peter. For to which of the apostles but Peter did he say: “Feed my sheep.” And again: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when once you have turned, strengthen your brothers.” Therefore, we who occupy Peter’s throne and possess power equal to his, not by our own merits but because of almighty God’s inscrutable wisdom, steadfastly desire that the Christian people embrace that faith proclaimed by Christ our Lord through his apostles in a continuous and uninterrupted tradition; the faith which he promised will endure to the end of the world.
1. Recently it has been brought to the attention of our apostolic office that a certain Miguel de Molinos, under pretext of the prayer of quiet, but actually at variance with the teaching and practice of the holy fathers from the very beginnings, was teaching false doctrines by word and writings, and in practice was following them; these doctrines were leading the faithful from true religion and from the purity of Christian piety into terrible errors and every indecency. Therefore, since we have always been deeply concerned that the souls of the faithful committed to us by God will arrive safely at the hoped-for harbor of salvation by being kept free from such depraved errors, we have ordered, after legitimate investigation, the aforesaid Molinos put in prison. Then in person and in the presence of our honorable brothers, cardinals of the holy Roman Church who had been especially assigned as general inquisitors throughout Christendom, we consulted a number of masters of sacred theology and received their judgment in word and writing, and weighed it carefully. Even imploring the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we have determined to condemn, with the unanimous consent of these our brothers, the following propositions of this same Molinos. He had acknowledged these propositions as his own and had been convicted for dictating, writing, disseminating, and holding them, or had acknowledged his guilt, as is more fully explained in the judicial procedures and verdict issued by our mandate of 28 August 1687.
The Propositions:
1. It is necessary that man reduce his own powers to nothingness, and this is the interior way.
2. To wish to operate actively is to offend God, who wishes to be himself the sole agent; and therefore it is necessary to abandon oneself wholly in God and thereafter to continue in existence as an inanimate body.
3. Vows about doing something are impediments to perfection.
4. Natural activity is the enemy of grace, and impedes the operations of God and true perfection, because God wishes to operate in us without us.
5. By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself and returns to its beginning and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which it remains transformed and divinized, and God then remains in himself, because then the two things are no more united, but are one alone, and in this manner God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being.
6. The interior way is that in which neither light, nor love, nor resignation is recognized, and it is not necessary to understand God, and in this way one makes progress correctly.
7. A soul ought to consider neither the reward, nor punishment, nor paradise, nor hell, nor death, nor eternity.
8. He ought not to wish to know whether he is progressing according to the will of God, or whether or not with the same resigned will he stands still; nor is it necessary that he wish to know his own state or his own nothingness; but he ought to remain as an inanimate body.
9. The soul ought not to remember either itself, or God, or anything whatsoever, and in the interior life all reflection is harmful, even reflection upon its human actions and upon its own defects.
10. If one scandalizes others by one’s own defects, it is not necessary to reflect, as long as the will to scandalize is not present; not to be able to reflect upon one’s own defects, is a grace of God.
11. It is not necessary to reflect upon doubts as to whether one is proceeding rightly or not.
12. He who gives his own free will to God should care about nothing, neither about hell, nor about heaven; neither ought he to have a desire for his own perfection, nor for virtues, nor his own sanctity, nor his own salvation-the hope of which he ought to remove.
13. After our free will has been resigned to God, reflection and care about everything of our own must be left to that same God, and we ought to leave it to him, so that he may work his divine will in us without us.
14. It is not seemly that he who is resigned to the divine will, ask anything of God; because asking is an imperfection, since the act is of one’s own will and election, and this is wishing that the divine will be conformed to ours, and not that ours be conformed to the divine; and this from the Gospel: “Seek and you shall find,” was not said by Christ for interior souls who do not wish to have free will; nay indeed, souls of this kind reach this state, that they cannot seek anything from God.
15. Just as they ought not ask anything from God, so should they not give thanks to him for anything, because either is an act of their own will.
16. It is not proper to seek indulgences for punishment due to one’s own sins, because it is better to satisfy divine justice than to seek divine mercy, since the latter proceeds from pure love of God, and the former from an interested love of ourselves, and that is not a thing pleasing to God and meritorious, because it is a desire to shun the cross.
17. When free will has been surrendered to God, and the care and thought of our soul left to the same God, no consideration of temptations need any longer be of concern; neither should any but a negative resistance be made to them, with the application of no energy, and if nature is aroused, one must let it be aroused, because it is nature.
18. He who in his prayer uses images, figures, pretension, and his own conceptions, does not adore God “in spirit and in truth.”
19. He who loves God in the way which reason points out or the intellect comprehends, does not love the true God.
20. To assert that in prayer it is necessary to help oneself by discourse and by reflections, when God does not speak to the soul, is ignorance. God never speaks; his way of speaking is operation, and he always operates in the soul when this soul does not impede him by its discourses, reflections, and operations.
21. In prayer it is necessary to remain in obscure and universal faith, with quiet and forgetfulness of any particular and distinct thought of the attributes of God and the Trinity, and thus to remain in the presence of God for adoring and loving him and serving him, but without producing acts, because God has no pleasure in these.
22. This knowledge through faith is not an act produced by a creature, but it is a knowledge given by God to the creature, which the creature neither recognizes that he has, and neither later knows that he had it; and the same is said of love. 23. The mystics with St. Bernard in the Scala Claustralium (The Ladder of the Recluses) distinguished four steps: reading, meditation, prayer, and infused contemplation. He who always remains in the first, never passes over to the second. He who always persists in the second, never arrives at the third, which is our acquired contemplation, in which one must persist throughout all life, provided that God does not draw the soul (without the soul expecting it) to infused contemplation; and if this ceases, the soul should turn back to the third step and remain in that, without returning again to the second or first.
24. Whatever thoughts occur in prayer, even impure, or against God, the saints, faith, and the sacraments, if they are not voluntarily nourished, nor voluntarily expelled, but tolerated with indifference and resignation, do not impede the prayer of faith; indeed they make it more perfect, because the soul then remains more resigned to the divine will.
25. Even if one becomes sleepy and falls asleep, nevertheless there is prayer and actual contemplation, because prayer and resignation, resignation and prayer are the same, and while resignation endures, prayer also endures.
26. The three ways: the purgative, illuminative, and unitive, are the greatest absurdity ever spoken about in mystical (theology), since there is only one way, namely, the interior way.
27. He who desires and embraces sensible devotion does not desire nor seek God, but himself; and anyone who walks by the interior way, in holy places as well as on feast days, acts badly when he desires it and tries to possess it.
28. Weariness for spiritual matters is good, if indeed by it one’s own love is purified.
29. As long as the interior soul disdains discourses about God, disdains the virtues, and remains cold, feeling no fervor in himself, it is a good sign.
30. Everything sensible which we experience in the spiritual life, is abominable, base, and unclean.
31. No meditative person exercises true interior virtues; these should not be recognized by the senses. It is necessary to abandon the virtues.
32. Neither before nor after communion is any other preparation or act of thanksgiving required for these interior souls than continuance in a customary passive resignation, because in a more perfect way it supplies all acts of virtues, which can be practiced and are practiced in the ordinary way. And, if on this occasion of communion there arise emotions of humility, of petition, or of thanksgiving, they are to be repressed, as often as it is not discerned that they are from a special impulse of God; otherwise they are impulses of nature not yet dead.
33. That soul acts badly which proceeds by this interior way, if it wishes on feast days by any particular effort to excite some sensible devotion in itself, since for an interior soul all days are equal, all festal. And the same is said of holy places, because to souls of this kind all places are alike.
34. To give thanks to God by words and by speech is not for interior souls which ought to remain in silence, placing no obstacle before God, because he operates in them; and the more they resign themselves to God, they discover that they cannot recite the Lord’s prayer, i.e., Our Father.
35. It is not fitting for souls of this interior life to perform works, even virtuous ones, by their own choice and activity; otherwise they would not be dead. Neither should they elicit acts of love for the Blessed Virgin, saints, or the humanity of Christ, because since they are sensible objects, so, too, is their love toward them.
36. No creature, neither the Blessed Virgin nor the saints, ought to abide in our heart, because God alone wishes to occupy and possess it.
37. On occasion of temptations, even violent ones, the soul ought not to elicit explicit acts of opposite virtues, but should persevere in the above mentioned love and resignation.
38. The voluntary cross of mortifications is a heavy weight and fruitless, and therefore to be dismissed.
39. The more holy works and penances, which the saints performed, are not enough to remove from the soul even a single tie.
40. The Blessed Virgin never performed any exterior work, and nevertheless was holier than all the saints. Therefore, one can arrive at sanctity without exterior work.
41. God permits and wishes to humiliate us and to conduct us to a true transformation, because in some perfect souls, even though not inspired, the demon inflicts violence on their bodies and makes them commit carnal acts, even in wakefulness and without the bewilderment of the mind, by physically moving their hands and other members against their wills. And the same is said as far as concerns other actions sinful in themselves, in which case they are not sins, but in them (because with these) the consent is not present.
42. A case may be given, that things of this kind contrary to the will result in carnal acts at the same time on the part of two persons, for example man and woman, and on the part of both an act follows.
43. God in past ages has created saints through the ministry of tyrants; now in truth he produces saints through the ministry of demons, who, by causing the aforesaid things contrary to the will, bring it about that they despise themselves the more and annihilate and resign themselves to God . . .
44. Job blasphemed, and yet he did not sin with his lips because it was the result of the violence of the devil.
45. St. Paul suffered such violences of the devil in his body; thus he has written: “For the good that I will I do not do; but the evil which I will not, that I do.”
46. Things of this kind contrary to the will are the more proportionate medium for annihilating the soul, and for leading it to true transformation and union, nor is there any other way; and this is the easier and safer way.
47. When things of this kind contrary to the will occur, it is proper to allow Satan to operate, by applying no effort and making no real attempt, but man should persist in his own nothingness; and even if pollutions follow and obscene acts by one’s own hands, and even worse, there is no need to disquiet oneself, but scruples must be banished, as well as doubts and fears, because the mind becomes more enlightened, more confirmed, and more candid, and holy liberty is acquired. And above all there is no need to confess these matters, and one acts in a most saintly way by not confessing, because the devil is overcome by this agreement, and the treasure of peace is acquired.
48. Satan, who produces violences of this kind contrary to the will, afterwards persuades that they are grave sins, so that the mind disturbs itself, lest it progress further in the interior way; hence for weakening his powers it is better not to confess them, because they are not sins, not even venial.
49. Job from the violence of the devil polluted himself with his own hands at the same time as “he offered pure prayer to God” (thus interpreting the passage from chapter 6, Job).
50. David, Jeremias, and many of the holy Prophets suffered violence of this kind, of these impure external operations contrary to the will.
51. In Sacred Scripture there are many examples of violence to the will unto external sinful acts, as that of Samson, who by violence killed himself with the Philistines, entered a marriage with a foreigner, and committed fornication with the harlot Dalila, which in other times were prohibited and would have been sins; that of Judith, who had lied to Holofernes; that of Elisaeus, who cursed children; that of Elias, who burned the leaders with the troops of King Achab. But whether violence was immediately executed by God, or by the ministry of the demons, as it happens in some souls, is left in doubt.
52. When such things contrary to the will, even impure, happen without confusion of the mind, then the soul can be united to God, and de facto is always the more united.
53. To recognize in practice, whether an operation has been violence in some persons, the rule which I have for this is not the protestations of those souls which protest that they have not consented to the said violences or cannot swear that they have consented, and cannot see that they are the souls who make progress in the interior life. But I would adopt a rule from a certain light which is superior to actual human and theological cognition, that makes me recognize for certain, with internal certitude, that such operation is violence; and I am certain that this light proceeds from God because it comes to me joined with certitude that it comes forth from God, and it leaves in me no shadow of doubt to the contrary, in that way by which it sometimes happens that God in revealing something reassures the soul at the same time that it is he who reveals it, and the soul cannot doubt to the contrary.
54. Persons who lead ordinary spiritual lives, in the hour of death will find themselves deluded and confused with all the passions to be purged in the other world.
55. Through this interior life one reaches the point, although with much suffering, of purging and extinguishing all passions, so that he feels nothing more, nothing, nothing; nor is any disquietude felt, just as if the body were dead, nor does the soul permit itself to be moved any more.
56. Two laws and two desires (the one of the soul, the other of self-love) endure as long as self-love endures; wherefore, when this is purged and dead, as happens through the interior way, those two laws and two desires are no longer present; nor, is any lapse incurred further, nor, is anything felt more, not even venial sin.
57. Through acquired contemplation one comes to the state of not committing any more sins, neither mortal nor venial.
58. One arrives at such a state by no longer reflecting on his own actions, because defects arise from reflection.
59. The interior way is separated from confession, from those who confess, and from cases of conscience, from theology and from philosophy.
60. For advanced souls, who begin to die from reflections, and who even arrive at the point that they are dead, God sometimes makes confession impossible, and he himself supplies it with such great preserving grace as they receive in the sacrament; and therefore for such souls it is not good in such a case to approach the sacrament of penance, because it is impossible for them.
61. The soul, upon reaching mystical death, can no longer will anything other than what God wills, because it no longer has a will, and God has taken the will away from it. (Anima, cum ad mortem mysticam pervenit, non potest amplius aliud velle, quam quod Deus vult, quia non habet amplius voluntatem, et Deus illi eam abstulit.) *
62. By the interior way it arrives at a continuous, immobile state in an imperturbable peace.
63. By the internal way one even arrives at the death of the senses; moreover, it is a sign that one remains in a state of nothingness, that is, of mystical death, if the exterior senses no longer represent sensible things (from which they are) as if they did not exist, because they do not succeed in making the intellect apply itself to them.
64. A theologian is less disposed than an ignorant man for the contemplative state; in the first place, because he does not have such pure faith; secondly, because he is not so humble; thirdly, because he does not care so much for his own salvation; fourthly, because he has a head full of phantasms, images, opinions, and speculations, and cannot enter into that true light.
65. One must obey directors in the exterior life, and the latitude of the vow of obedience of religious extends only to the external. In the interior life the matter is different, because only God and the director enter.
66. A certain new doctrine in the Church of God is worthy of ridicule, that the soul should be governed as far as its interior is concerned by a bishop; but if the bishop is not capable, the soul should go to him with his director. I speak a new doctrine; because neither Sacred Scripture, nor councils, nor bulls, nor saints, nor authors have ever transmitted it, nor can transmit it, because the Church does not judge about hidden matters, and the soul has its faculty of choosing whatsoever shall seem good to it.
67. To say that the interior must be manifested to the exterior tribunal of directors, and that it is a sin not to do so, is a manifest deception, because the Church does not pass judgment on hidden matters, and they prejudge their own souls by these deceptions and hypocrisies.
68. In the world there is neither faculty nor jurisdiction for commanding that the letters of a director, as far as the interior direction of a soul is concerned, should be made manifest; therefore, it is necessary to assert that it is an insult of Satan, etc.
With the approval of our brothers the eminent cardinals and the inquisitors general, we have condemned, banished, and denounced these propositions and every like word, writing, or publication as heretical, suspect, erroneous, scandalous, blasphemous, offensive to pious ears, rash, either undermining, relaxing, or overturning Christian discipline. We have deprived everyone hereafter of permission to speak or write or dispute about these propositions and about any or similar propositions, and to believe, hold, or practice them. We have deprived all offenders ipso facto and perpetually of all titles, degrees, honors, benefices, and offices, and have pronounced them incapable of attaining to any of these. We have bound them also by our supreme anathema reserved to ourselves and the Roman pontiffs who succeed us. Moreover by this same degree of ours we have prohibited and condemned all books, and all works by Miguel de Molinos published anywhere and in any language; and all manuscripts; and we have forbidden anyone regardless of his degree, condition, or status even worthy of any mention, to presume under any pretext to publish in any language, anonymously or with a fictitious or assumed name, or have published the same works or their equivalents. We have forbidden anyone to do this or read or keep such works whether published or in manuscript. Rather under pain of incurring the same penalties listed above they must immediately give them up and consign them to their local ordinaries or to the inquisitors of heretical depravity who will burn or have them burned at once.
Finally, in order that the aforementioned Molinos might be punished with suitable penalties for his heresies, errors, and shameful actions—both as an example to others and to effect his own amendment, we have condemned him to undergo the punishment of harsh and perpetual confinement and to perform other salutary penances preceded by his formal personal abjuration in the form prescribed by law.
We have reached this decision after having the whole judicial procedure read in our assembly, and after having heard the opinions of our beloved sons, the doctors of sacred theology and pontifical law, and after having received the unanimous approval of our venerable brothers the eminent cardinals. Hence we have condemned the said Miguel de Molinos as a convicted or confessed criminal, and as a formal heretic, though a repentant one.
We further ordered that a résumé of the procedure and the sentence which followed were to be read from the pulpit at the determined day and hour in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in the presence of all our venerable brothers the eminent cardinals, and the prelates of our Roman curia, and of all the people gathered there even by the grant of indulgences, with Molinos standing on a platform. We had given our beloved son, the commissary of the Holy Office, the faculties to absolve him in the Church’s usual form from whatever censures bound him after he publicly abjured his errors and heresies garbed in penitential dress. All these directions were solemnly carried out on last September 3 in execution of our ordinance.
This decree passed at our mandate has been printed and affixed in public places as a further safeguard for the faithful. Lest, however, the passage of years may cause the memory of this condemnation to become erased from the minds of the Christian people, and in order that they may be even more securely grounded in Catholic truth, we again, as our predecessors the sovereign pontiffs have also done, confirm, approve, and order into execution our condemnation through this Constitution which shall have force perpetually. We again definitively condemn and reprobate the above propositions prohibiting and interdicting the books and manuscripts of Miguel de Molinos with similar penalties and censures to be incurred ipso facto by all who attempt to contravene this decree. . . . *
*Webmaster comment: This text in italics was obtained from a secondary source in the Latin book “Bullarium Romanum” , 1870, by Aloysio Bilio. Latin text translated by Google Translate.
