At a time when the whole of Western Europe was in the grip of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, there was a great flourishing of spiritual works. The Cloud of Unknowing is part of this tradition, and although the exact identity of its author remains obscure, he was probably an English country patron of the late fourteenth century. The main theme of this book is that God cannot be reached by human intellect but only by a love that can pierce the 'cloud of unknowing.'