BAKER, DAVID AUGUSTINE

Benedictine spiritual writer; b. Abergavenny, Wales, Dec. 9, 1575; d. London, Aug. 9, 1641. He was brought up a Protestant, studied law in London, and became recorder of Abergavenny (1598). In 1600 a narrow escape from drowning turned his thoughts to religion from what was apparently a practical atheism. As a result he was received into the Church in 1603. He met some English Benedictine fathers of the Cassinese congregation, and in 1605 decided to join the order. In Padua, where he entered the novitiate at St. Justina's, his health suffered and he was sent back to England before making his profession. Early in 1607 he was professed on the English mission and subsequently joined the English congregation when it was refounded in 1619, and became a member of St. Laurence's, Dieulouard, now Ampleforth.

The outstanding feature of Baker's life as a religious was his great attraction for contemplative prayer, which appears to have been innate, for he tells that he received no instruction on it in his novitiate, and it was long before he discovered books on the subject. Soon after his profession, however, while at the house of Sir Nicholas Fortescue in Worcestershire, he gave himself up to the practice of internal prayer for as much as five or six hours a day. He reached what he considered his highest experience in it, which amounted apparently to some sort of intellectual vision. But so uninstructed was he that, when this was succeeded by a period of desolation, he gave up the practice of mental prayer and fell back into relative tepidity, which lasted for 12 years, until 1620. During this time he was ordained priest in France but lived mostly in England, where he did some notable historical research, which was afterward incorporated in the volume Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia (1626). In 1620 he discovered the literature of contemplation and took up again the intensive practice of mental prayer, which he maintained for the rest of his life.

In 1624 he was recalled to France and made assistant chaplain to the English Benedictine nuns at Cambrai (now Stanbrook). There he gave spiritual conferences to the nuns and started to write his treatises on prayer. He left more than 60 treatises, though some of them were historical or were translations. He wrote without any idea of publication and in a style that is often diffuse and rambling, though sometimes attractively naïve. The treatises as a whole do not form any coherent treatment of the spiritual life; they reflect his reading, which was assiduous. His aim was always the achievement of contemplation, and he reacted against methodical meditation in favor of an affective prayer that tended to become purely contemplative. This reaction against meditation, then recently and highly developed, was resented by the official English Benedictine chaplain to the Cambrai nuns; and Baker was involved in something of a controversy over it. In the end his views were vindicated by the authorities of the congregation, but he was withdrawn to the monastery of St. Gregory at Douai (now Downside) in 1633, where he continued to write for another five years. In 1638 a difference of opinion with his superior led to his return to England.

Bibliography: Works. Sancta Sophia, ed. s. cressy (New York 1857); Holy Wisdom, ed. g. sitwell (London 1964), not authoritative on higher forms of mystical prayer, but admirable on the mortifications and on the affective prayer of acts; The Confessions of Venerable Father Augustine Baker, ed. p. j. mccann (London 1922), his spiritual autobiography extracted from Baker's treatise on The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. p. mccann (5th ed. London 1947). Studies. p. j. mccann and r. h. connolly, eds., Memorials of Father Augustine Baker (Publications of the Catholic Record Society 33; London 1933). p. salvin and s. cressy, The Life of Father Augustine Baker, ed. p. j. mccann (London 1933). d. knowles, The English Mystical Tradition (New York 1961). e. i. watkin, Poets and Mystics (New York 1953) 188–237.

[g. sitwell]