These papers are the proceedings of the fourth international Exeter Symposium on the medieval mystical tradition in England, the latest in a series of meetings where scholars in the field from different countries and different academic disciplines share some of their work in progress and promote enquiry into, and understanding of, the medeival mystics and the cultural contxt to which they belong. In this volume historians, literary critics, theologians, philosophers and bibliographical scholars explore ways in which the contemplative tradition was mediated and perceived in the very early and very late medieval period, and ask fundamental questions about the nature of our own understanding of this subject.