Miguel de Molinos

Miguel de Molinos was a Spanish Catholic priest, spiritual director and mystical writer who lived from 1628 to 1696 and was the principal figure associated with the controversy later known as Quietism. His best known work, The Spiritual Guide, published in 1675, was one of the most widely circulated manuals of contemplative prayer in seventeenth century Europe before its author's condemnation by the Roman Inquisition. Molinos was arrested in Rome in 1685, publicly abjured in 1687, and was sentenced to life imprisonment; Pope Innocent XI ratified the condemnation in the apostolic constitution Coelestis Pastor, which condemned sixty eight propositions associated with Molinos and the Quietists. Modern scholarship has often distinguished between Molinos's published teaching in the Spiritual Guide and the more extreme propositions condemned under the name of Quietism.