Quid sit affectus, et quot sint affectus declaratur, et quod spiritalis affectus multipliciter accipiatur, ostenditur
What Affection Is and Its Kinds
Affection is defined as the soul's spontaneous and sweet inclination toward someone, and is classified into spiritual, rational, irrational, functional, natural, and carnal kinds.
An affection, then, is a certain spontaneous and sweet inclination of the soul toward someone. An affection is either spiritual, rational, irrational, functional, natural, or carnal.1
The Twofold Spiritual Affection: Divine and Diabolical
Spiritual affection has two senses: a holy stirring of the soul by the Holy Spirit into divine love and charity, and a contrary diabolical instigation that draws the soul toward shame, as illustrated by the prophet Hosea.
A spiritual affection can be understood in two ways. By a spiritual affection the soul is stirred up when, through the hidden and, as it were, unexpected visitation of the Holy Spirit, the mind, pierced with compunction, is dissolved into the sweetness of divine love or the gentleness of brotherly charity.2 The manner and causes of this visitation — as clearly as I could set them forth — I recall having described earlier. The opposite of this affection is the one produced by an instigation of the devil. By this affection, it is well known, those who have been enticed toward every shameful thing are drawn — concerning whom the prophet says: 'A spirit of fornication deceived them' (Hosea).✦ 4).
The Enemy's Twin Torment and the Example of Amnon
The devil attacks the saints' purity with a twin assault of fleshly fire and ruinous desire, as seen in Amnon's incestuous passion for his sister Tamar.
The foulest enemy hunts down the saints' purity with a twin torment: now setting the flesh ablaze with unbearable fire, now dissolving the mind through the pull of a ruinous desire. Unless I am mistaken, Amnon, the son of David, loosened by the injection of a most cunning enemy's harmful desire, burned with passion for the forbidden embraces of his own sister — and defying his father's great household with incest, he brought his brother's sword against himself (2 Kings 13).
Absalom's Parricide and the Naming of Spiritual Affection
Absalom's future rebellion against David was sown by the devil's long-term strategy, and the author defends calling such diabolical stirrings 'spiritual affections' since they arise from spiritual vices.
— and of the future parricide by which wretched Absalom, hungry for the kingship, attacked his father, he sowed certain occasions and causes beforehand (2 Kings 15). 15. Surely no one should be frightened because we call this a spiritual affection — because it arises from spiritual vices — and let no one quibble over the term, since the reality itself is plain to see.
Read the original Latin
Est igitur affectus spontanea quaedam ac dulcis ipsius animi ad aliquem inclinatio. Affectus autem aut spiritualis est, aut rationalis, aut irrationalis, aut officialis, aut naturalis, vel certe carnalis. Spiritualis affectus dupliciter potest intelligi. Nam spirituali quidem affectu animus excitatur, cum occulta et quasi improvisa Spiritus sancti visitatione in divinae dilectionis dulcedinem, vel fraternae charitatis suavitatem mens compuncta resolvitur. Cujus visitationis modum et causas, quam lucide a nobis fieri potuit, superius memini demonstratas. Huic affectui ille contrarius est, qui ex diaboli immissione generatur. Quo illos ad turpia quaeque constat illectos, de quibus propheta : Spiritus, inquit, fornicationis decepit eos (Ose. iv).
Gemino enim tormento sanctorum pudicitiam immundissimus hostis insequitur; nunc carnem intolerabili flamma succendens, nunc mentem perniciosae dulcedinis affectu dissolvens. Ni fallor, Amon filius David ex immissione callidissimi hostis noxiae suavitatis resolutus affectu, in illicitos propriae sororis exarsit amplexus, ac tanti patris domum incestu commaculans, fratris in se gladium provocavit (II Reg. xiii), ac futuri parricidii quo patrem infelix Absalon regni cupidus infestavit, occasiones quasdam praeseminavit et causas (II Reg. xv). Nemo sane exhorreat, quod hunc affectum dicimus spiritualem, pro eo quod a spiritualibus vitiis generatur, nec causetur de nomine, cum res ipsa manifesta sit.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Hos.4.12 — My people consult their wooden idol, and their divining rod declares to them; for a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have played the harlot, forsaking their God.
Notes
- 1 ↩officialis is rare and its sense here is uncertain; rendered as 'functional' to capture the idea of a capacity or office of the soul, but the precise meaning is debated.
- 2 ↩cum is ambiguous between temporal ('when') and causal ('since'); 'when' chosen as the more natural reading in context, though a causal sense ('inasmuch as') is possible.
Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity) companion
Reorder one love at a time, daily
Use the study map with the free Chosen Portion app's daily readings to work through Aelred at a sustainable pace.
Aelred wrote the Mirror as a rule for daily interior discipline in community, and Chosen Portion carries that discipline forward as a short ordered reading each day.
- All 3 books and 102 chapters mapped into 4 weekly themes with page-level pointers
- Aelred's choice-motion-fruit test, turned into a one-page self-examination worksheet
- 16 discussion questions ready for personal journaling or a 4-session small group