robert p. baird

[T]he Church’s reac­tion to Qui­etism sup­pressed a range of mys­ti­cal prac­tices that…had had a place within Chris­tian­ity from its ear­li­est days....

Molinos’s dis­ap­pear­ance from our his­tor­i­cal view was, of course, no mere acci­dent of his­tory, the normal attri­tion of col­lec­tive memory. It was, as far as the Inqui­si­tion was con­cerned, exactly the point. In the minds of his ene­mies, he was an arch- heretic, a seducer of both mind and body, and his doc­trines were thought to encour­age scan­dal among the devout.

Though it seems clear that Moli­nos was inno­cent of the worst of the charges lev­eled against him, our inten­tion here is not to relit­i­gate his case on either moral or the­o­log­i­cal grounds. Rather, we hope that this new Eng­lish edi­tion of the Spir­i­tual Guide will intro­duce read­ers to a moment of Catholic his­tory whose after­ef­fects con­tin­ued to be felt long after its memory had fallen into obscurity.

In his own day, Moli­nos was any­thing but invis­i­ble. In fact he was a celebrity cleric, a kind of tel­e­van­ge­list avant la télévision. Revered by his fol­low­ers, feted by politi­cians and prelates, and admired by roy­alty and the pope, he was also a magnet for con­tro­versy and the sub­ject of fierce sus­pi­cions and accu­sa­tions (includ­ing those of the sexual vari­ety). His reli­gious rep­u­ta­tion made him the talk of Rome, and the pub­li­ca­tion of his Spir­i­tual Guide brought him inter­na­tional fame, but when his fall came, at the hands of the Inqui­si­tion, it was quick and com­plete....

Molinos’s impor­tance to Catholic his­tory owes not to his fame but to his cen­tral role in the Qui­etist con­tro­versy, which was, with Jansenism, one of the two major the­o­log­i­cal debates to trou­ble the Catholic Church in the wake of the Counter-Reformation.... The Qui­etist con­tro­versy prob­a­bly mat­tered more—though it is cer­tainly remem­bered less—than the con­tro­versy over Jansenism….