François Malaval
François Malaval (17 December 1627 – 15 May 1719) was a French Catholic spiritual writer and contemplative theologian associated with the contemplative currents of seventeenth-century French Catholic spirituality. Blind from infancy, he became known for his writings on recollection and interior prayer, especially the Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation, a widely circulated guide to contemplative practice that initially received ecclesiastical approbation and was translated into several languages. An English translation by Lucy Menzies, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill, was published in 1938 under the title A Simple Method of Raising the Soul to Contemplation in the Form of a Dialogue.
Most of Malaval’s principal writings predated both the condemnation of Miguel de Molinos and the height of the Quietist controversies. Although some of his works were later placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, modern scholarship generally distinguishes his theology from the doctrines condemned under the name of Quietism and situates his work within the broader apophatic tradition of Catholic mysticism.
Historians of spirituality regard Malaval as an important figure in the transition between the seventeenth-century flowering of French contemplative theology and the subsequent anti-Quietist reaction. Bernard McGinn describes him as a “Quietist” who was not a Quietist, arguing that later polemicists often assimilated him unfairly to Molinos and other condemned writers despite important theological differences.
Life
Malaval was born in Marseille on 17 December 1627. He was the son of Jehan Malaval, a shipowner, municipal consul, and member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament. An accident left him blind at the age of nine months. Assisted by secretaries and readers, including poor students paid to read to him, he studied humanities with the Oratorians of Marseille before undertaking theological and canonical studies with the Dominicans of the city. He later obtained a doctorate in theology at the Sorbonne.
Around the middle of the seventeenth century, Malaval entered learned and devotional circles connected with figures such as Pierre Gassendi, Pierre Puget, François Picquet, Christina, Queen of Sweden, and Cardinal Giovanni Bona. Bona admired Malaval’s writings and obtained permission from Pope Clement X for him to receive the tonsure in 1674, although his blindness prevented ordination to the priesthood.
Malaval became widely known in Marseille for his piety, theological culture, and reputation as a spiritual guide. He served as a spiritual adviser to both clergy and laity and devoted much of his life to correspondence, charitable works, and the direction of souls. He has also been associated with the intellectual milieu that later contributed to the foundation of the Academy of Marseille, of which he became one of the founders in 1715.
In 1685 Madame Guyon visited Malaval in Marseille while returning from Italy. According to Guyon’s autobiographical writings, Malaval approved her Moyen court, though modern historians emphasize that the two figures were never formally associated and that Malaval’s principal works predated Guyon’s public role in the Quietist controversy.
During the controversies over contemplative prayer in the late seventeenth century, Malaval publicly submitted to ecclesiastical authority after the condemnation of some of his writings. In later years he largely withdrew from polemics and devoted himself to charitable activity and religious poetry. He died in Marseille on 15 May 1719 after a brief illness. Contemporary accounts describe his funeral as drawing large crowds who regarded him as a holy man.
Spiritual teaching
Contemplation and the presence of God
Malaval’s spirituality belongs to the apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism associated with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the Rhineland mystics, Bonaventure, Nicholas of Cusa, and John of the Cross. His writings emphasize recollection, interior silence, simplicity of prayer, and the loving contemplation of God beyond discursive reasoning, while remaining formally committed to Catholic sacramental and ecclesial life.
The Pratique facile is structured as a dialogue between a spiritual director and a soul named Philothea, echoing the literary form of Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life. Malaval presents contemplation not primarily as an extraordinary mystical phenomenon but as a simplified and unified form of prayer grounded in faith, silence, and loving attention to the divine presence.
In the Pratique facile, Malaval distinguishes contemplative prayer from discursive meditation. Meditation proceeds through images, reflections, and successive acts of the understanding and will; contemplation, by contrast, simplifies the soul’s attention into what seventeenth-century spiritual writers often described as a “simple regard” or “simple view” of God. This simplicity is presented not as inactivity, but as a unified movement of faith and love.
A recurring theme in Malaval’s work is the deepening awareness of the presence of God. McGinn compares this aspect of his spirituality to that of Brother Lawrence, describing Malaval as a mystic of divine presence and recollection. Contemplation is repeatedly defined as silent and loving attention to God present within the soul through faith.
Malaval insisted that contemplation did not abolish meditation but represented its fulfilment and fruit. He repeatedly described meditation as a preparatory stage leading toward a more simplified and loving awareness of God. Although critics later accused him of undervaluing ascetical preparation, his writings continue to stress mortification, devotion, meditation on Christ, and fidelity to ordinary Christian practice. McGinn emphasizes Malaval’s teaching that “contemplation is not the destruction of meditation; it is its fruit, its plenitude, its rest, its peace”.
Attrait and divine attraction
One of the central concepts in Malaval’s mystical theology is the attrait, the divine attraction or gracious drawing by which God leads the soul toward contemplation. The term, also used by Francis de Sales, refers to an inward movement of grace rather than to a merely human method or technique.
Malaval insists that contemplative prayer cannot be reduced to a mechanical system. The soul must cooperate faithfully with the divine attraction that draws it toward recollection and loving awareness of God. For this reason he advises spiritual seekers not to become excessively preoccupied with distinguishing acquired contemplation from infused contemplation, but instead to follow the movement of grace with humility and obedience.
Although Malaval’s title speaks of an “easy practice”, he did not teach that the higher contemplative life was automatically available to all in the same way. He wrote especially for souls already disposed to interior things and mortified in the exterior senses and passions. His teaching therefore made contemplation more accessible than anti-Quietist rigorists allowed, but did not present it as a universal shortcut or dispense with ascetical preparation, spiritual maturity, or divine vocation.
Apophatic theology and learned ignorance
A recurring theme in Malaval’s work is the inadequacy of conceptual language before the mystery of God. He teaches that divine reality exceeds images and discursive reasoning, and that contemplation involves a movement toward silent and loving awareness grounded in faith.
His spirituality draws extensively on the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Malaval frequently describes contemplation as a movement into divine darkness, paradoxically more luminous than ordinary intellectual knowledge. In the dedication to Cardinal Bona prefacing the expanded edition of the Pratique facile, he spoke of “a darkness more luminous than all the knowledge of the world”.
This apophatic theology was connected in Malaval’s writings to reflections on his own blindness. He interpreted physical blindness as a symbol of the contemplative darkness through which the soul comes to perceive divine reality beyond images and concepts.
His language of learned ignorance reflects the older apophatic tradition rather than a rejection of Christian doctrine. In Malaval’s account, contemplation is a higher and more obscure knowledge in which faith becomes more certain precisely because God is known as incomprehensible. Evelyn Underhill interpreted the Pratique facile as presupposing ordinary Christian devotional and sacramental practice rather than replacing it.
Malaval also describes contemplation as an experiential “taste” of God present. In this account, contemplative knowledge is not merely intellectual apprehension but a loving wisdom in which knowledge and love are joined.
Acquired and infused contemplation
Malaval devoted considerable attention to the distinction between acquired contemplation and infused contemplation, a major topic in seventeenth-century debates concerning mystical prayer.
He maintained that contemplation always depends upon grace and faith, but distinguished between acquired contemplation as a stable habit of recollection and infused contemplation as a more directly supernatural operation of God within the soul. At the same time, he cautioned against excessive concern over categorizing spiritual states, advising contemplatives to follow faithfully the action of grace rather than anxiously attempting to determine the exact nature of their prayer.
Malaval also rejected the notion that contemplation implied passivity in the moral or psychological sense. He distinguished between receptivity to divine grace and the active cooperation of the soul. According to McGinn, Malaval consistently taught that contemplation involves acts of intellect and will transformed by grace rather than their abolition. He held that grace and faith are divine principles received from God, yet the contemplative act remains genuinely the soul’s own act under supernatural assistance.
The “one act” of prayer
Malaval addressed the disputed seventeenth-century idea that advanced prayer could become a single or continuous act. His treatment differs from more radical versions associated with writers such as Juan Falconi and Molinos. For Malaval, the “one act” is not an irreversible act that abolishes ordinary prayer, moral vigilance, or renewed consent. It is better understood as a habit of recollection, gradually formed in the soul, by which the intention of turning toward God becomes stable and simple.
He distinguished a “virtual intention”, which belongs to a particular act of prayer, from a higher or “eminent intention” by which the soul remains recollected in God as far as human weakness permits. McGinn therefore interprets Malaval’s version of continuous prayer as less extreme than the doctrine condemned in some Quietist authors, because it depends upon habit, grace, and cooperation rather than a single initial act replacing subsequent spiritual practice.
Humanity of Christ and contemplation
One of the most controversial aspects of seventeenth-century mystical theology concerned the role of Christ’s humanity in contemplation. Malaval rejected both the abandonment of Christ’s humanity and the claim that contemplatives must maintain continual discursive reflection upon it.
In the Pratique facile, he teaches that meditation on the mysteries of Christ’s life remains valuable and necessary, especially for beginners and in times of distraction or dryness. Higher contemplation, however, gradually simplifies the soul’s attention into a loving awareness of God beyond images and discursiveness. In this state the humanity of Christ is not rejected but retained within faith and memory.
Malaval insists that contemplation must never separate Christ’s humanity from his divinity. He presents the humanity of Christ as the path leading the soul into union with God rather than as an obstacle to contemplative prayer. Some later critics nevertheless judged his treatment of the humanity of Christ insufficiently central, a criticism also noted in French scholarship on the Quietist controversy.
Prayer, silence, and annihilation
Malaval regarded silence as indispensable for contemplative prayer. He contrasted meditation, which speaks to God, with contemplation, which listens in silence and receptivity. His writings frequently describe contemplation as a loving and peaceful repose in the presence of God.
Defending himself against charges of passivism, he insisted that silence was not idleness but homage to God. McGinn interprets this teaching as part of a broader apophatic understanding of contemplation in which the soul passes beyond images and multiplicity into a simple awareness of divine presence.
His spirituality occasionally employs the language of annihilation and self-emptying common in seventeenth-century apophatic mysticism, though less radically than some later Quietist writers. McGinn notes that for Malaval annihilation did not signify passivity or moral indifference, but the emptying of self-will before the incomprehensible mystery of God.
Quietist controversy
Most of Malaval’s principal writings predated both the condemnation of Molinos and the height of the Quietist controversies. The first version of the Pratique facile appeared in 1664, more than a decade before Molinos’s Spiritual Guide.
Nevertheless, his emphasis on imageless contemplation, simple regard prayer, and the accessibility of contemplative practice later attracted criticism during the anti-Quietist campaigns of the late seventeenth century.
The Jesuit Paolo Segneri criticized aspects of Malaval’s teaching in the context of broader debates over passive prayer, acquired contemplation, and the relation between meditation and mystical prayer. In 1682 Segneri attacked forms of prayer of quiet associated with Malaval, Molinos, and Pier Matteo Petrucci, though without always naming them directly.
Following the condemnation of Molinos, the Italian translation of the Pratique facile was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1688. Malaval publicly submitted to ecclesiastical authority in letters addressed to the pope, Louis XIV, and the French bishops.
In the 1690s Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet attacked Malaval in the context of the wider anti-Quietist struggle surrounding Madame Guyon and François Fénelon. Bossuet criticized him in the Instruction sur les états d’oraison of 1697, reportedly dismissing him as un laïque sans théologie, “a layman without theology”. Pierre Nicole also criticized his teachings in the Réfutation des principales erreurs des quiétistes (1695). In response, Malaval published the Lettre de M. Malaval à M. l'abbé de Foresta-Colongue (1697), defending his theology and explicitly distancing himself from Molinos’s condemned propositions. The work itself was placed on the Index in 1697, although the news apparently became known in Marseille only later.
Modern scholarship has generally treated Malaval as a more traditional and fundamentally orthodox contemplative author than Molinos. McGinn argues that his condemnation resulted partly from “guilt by association” during the anti-Quietist reaction. Henri Bremond defended what he called the fundamental orthodoxy of Malaval’s doctrine, while Ronald Knox suggested that his writings might never have been condemned had the Molinos controversy not erupted.
Reception and legacy
Malaval’s reputation declined after the Quietist controversies, but his writings remained part of the wider history of Catholic contemplative theology and French mystical literature. McGinn argues that Malaval illustrates the marginalization of apophatic mysticism in post-seventeenth-century Catholic theology. Although largely forgotten after the anti-Quietist reaction, he has increasingly attracted scholarly attention as part of the modern retrieval of Christian mystical traditions.
Modern historians of spirituality have reassessed his work in relation to apophatic theology, recollection, and the seventeenth-century debates concerning contemplation and interior prayer. Jean-Marc Vivenza interprets Malaval through the theme of the “divine darkness,” while Frédéric Cousinié situates him within the broader French discourse on images, imagination, and contemplation.
The English translation published by Lucy Menzies and introduced by Evelyn Underhill contributed to a modest twentieth-century revival of interest in Malaval among scholars of mysticism and contemplative spirituality. A modern French edition of the Pratique facile, introduced by Marie-Louise Gondal and published under the title La belle ténèbre, also contributed to renewed attention to his work.
Works
Malaval’s writings include manuals of contemplative prayer, devotional prose, spiritual poetry, apologetic treatises, and correspondence.
His best-known work is the Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation, first published anonymously in Paris in 1664 and expanded in 1670. The original work consisted of four dialogues; the expanded version added twelve more, making sixteen dialogues in all. The work is written as a series of dialogues between a spiritual director and a soul named Philothea, following a form also used by Francis de Sales in the Introduction to the Devout Life. Through these dialogues Malaval treats recollection, silence, acquired and infused contemplation, the prayer of simplicity, contemplation of Christ, prayer in dryness, annihilation, and the contemplative life.
The Pratique facile circulated widely during Malaval’s lifetime and passed through several editions in France and Italy. The French article also notes translations into Dutch and Italian, the latter by the Oratorian Nicola Balducci. McGinn states that a first Italian translation appeared in 1669 and that Balducci’s translation of the expanded edition appeared in 1672 and was reprinted three times by 1679. The text also circulated in abbreviated devotional compilations associated with the French interior tradition.
Malaval also published spiritual poetry and devotional works. His Poésies spirituelles, first issued in 1671, contained more than one hundred spiritual poems. The later French tradition remembered Malaval’s poetry for its Baroque themes, including the flight of time, the transience of human things, and the sweetness of the interior life.
Among his principal writings are:
- Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation (Paris, 1664; expanded edition, 1670)
- A Simple Method of Raising the Soul to Contemplation in the Form of a Dialogue (English translation by Lucy Menzies with introduction by Evelyn Underhill, 1938)
- Poésies spirituelles (1671)
- La vie de S. Philippe Benizi (1672)
- Discours contre la superstition populaire des jours heureux ou malheureux (1688)
- Avertissement à tous les fidèles d'assister à la procession du Saint-Sacrement (1690)
- Lettre de M. Malaval à M. l'abbé de Foresta-Colongue (1697)
A Latin treatise on the prayer of quiet remained unpublished and is now apparently lost. Much of Malaval’s correspondence is lost, though some letters survive in printed and manuscript collections, including the correspondence of Giovanni Bona and Bossuet and manuscripts in the Vatican Library. Lost works attributed to him include memoirs on Puget and Picquet and a letter concerning neutrality in matters of religion.
See also
- Apophatic theology
- Brother Lawrence
- Christian contemplation
- Christian mysticism
- François Fénelon
- Infused contemplation
- Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
- John of the Cross
- Madame Guyon
- Mental prayer
- Miguel de Molinos
- Pier Matteo Petrucci
- Prayer of quiet
- Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
- Quietism (Christian contemplation)
Further reading
- Bremond, Henri. “Le Quiétisme de Malaval.” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 124 (1955): 399–418.
- Cognet, Louis. Crépuscule des mystiques: Le conflit Fénelon-Bossuet.
- Derville, André. “Malaval (François), clerc tonsuré, 1627–1719.” In Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, vol. 10. Paris: Beauchesne, 1990.
- Knox, Ronald. Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.
- Malaval, François. La belle ténèbre: Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation. Preface by Marie-Louise Gondal. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1993.
- McGinn, Bernard. The Crisis of Mysticism: Quietism in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Italy, and France. New York: Herder & Herder, 2021.
- Underhill, Evelyn. Introduction to François Malaval, A Simple Method of Raising the Soul to Contemplation in the Form of a Dialogue. London: J. M. Dent, 1938.
- Vannini, Marco. “François Malaval: Pratica facile per elevare l’anima alla contemplazione.” Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica 27 (2002): 185–191.
- Vivenza, Jean-Marc. François Malaval (1627–1719) et la contemplation de la « Divine Ténèbre ». Paris: Éditions de l'Œuvre, 2004.