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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Molinos

No llegarás jamás al monte de la perfección ni al alto trono de la interior paz si te gobiernas por tu voluntad propia. Esta cruel fiera enemiga de Dios y de tu alma se ha de vencer. Tu propia dirección y juicio, como a rebeldes, los has de avasallar, disponer y quemar en el fuego de la obediencia. Allí se descubrirá, como en piedra de toque, si es amor propio o divino el que sigues. Allí en aquel holocausto ha de aniquilarse hasta la última sustancia tu juicio y tu voluntad propia.  


Molinos has very few rhetorical moves. He begins many chapters with a contrast:  there are two types of x, and this one is superior to that, so recogimiento is better than meditación. He cites other authors in support of his points.  He uses similes. Writing at the end of the seventeenth century, he is largely innocent of any baroque flourishes.  There is some tedium in reading him. I was surprised by this because of Valente's admiration, but I realized at some point that the attraction for Valente was triple: the persecution he experienced at the hands of the Inquisition made him a perfect example of the dichotomy between official religion and heterodoxy. Then the mysticism itself.  And finally this limpid prose style.  I've bolded some rhetorical figures here, simile, epithet, and metaphor. 

Under torture, he confessed to eating meat on Fridays, using the fish only the whet his appetite, and to letting himself be sodomized numerous times. He was imprisoned for many years and died there.  The Inquisition continued to persecute his follower in France into the 18th Century.    



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