Spanish Mysticism

In total, nine articles were published electronically in this special volume of Religions. The authors were scholars from the United States (Dombrowski, Serrán-Pagán, Carrión), Spain (López-Anguita, Alonso, Beneito), Puerto Rico (López-Baralt), Israel (Bar-Asher), and Germany (Dal Bo). I am very proud of the quality of their research and their major contributions to this volume. I believe this field of Spanish mysticism will open up even more avenues and opportunities after people read these articles covering Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism in the context of the Iberian Peninsula. The primary scope of the articles collected here in this special volume serves the purpose of contextualizing Spanish mystical writings in their historical times and to examine how their legacy in the Iberian soil continues to evolve over time. The purpose of this volume is to bring together the different fields of knowledge from religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, comparative literature, philology, psychology, sociology, and the arts to address the main question: Do Spanish mystics borrow symbols and narratives from the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? This special topic on Spanish mysticism has attracted scholars from different disciplines to study the great Spanish mystics. The overall focus of this issue is to trace the mutual influences found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics and to examine their spiritual legacies in greater depth. The aim of this volume is to expand on the existing, currently available literature and to bring together the disjoint pieces of the puzzle so we can better and more holistically understand the rich legacy of the Spanish mystics and the extent to which their mystical thoughts are intertwined in the long history of Spanish mystical literature. To those of you interested in Jewish mysticism in the context of past interactions with either Muslims or Christians, I cordially invite you to read.