First published in 1938, The Doctrine of Spiritual Perfection made a significant contribution to the scholarship on mysticism by approaching the problems of mysticism from a traditional theological perspective.

Stolz began his study with an examination not of John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila, but of St. Paul’s account of his rapture. Stolz’s analysis clarified the theological foundation of mysticism and its development in the ecclesiastical tradition, with his assertion that “mysticism is built on the sacramental and therefore liturgical life, and is thus bound up intrinsically with Christian life, of which it is the conscious intensification and perfection.”

This edition has an introduction by Stephen Fields, S.J.