§ 114. The German Mystics.335The schoolmen of the 13th century, with the exception of Bonaventura, had little sympathy with mysticism, and gave their whole attention to the development of doctrine (§99, 1).The 14th century was the Augustan age of mysticism. Germany, which had already in the previous period given Hugo of St. Victor and the two divines of Reichersberg (§102, 4,6), was its proper home. Its most distinguished representatives belonged to the preaching orders, and its recognised grand-master was the Dominican Meister Eckhart. This specifically German mysticism cast away completely the scholastic modes of thought and expression, and sought to arrive at Christian truth by entirely new paths. It appealed, not to the understanding and cultured reason of the learned, but to the hearts and spirits of the people, in order to point them the surest way to union with God. The mystics therefore wrote neither commentaries on the Lombard nor giganticsummæof their own composition, but wrought by word and writing to meet immediate pressing needs. They preached lively sermons and wrote short treatises, not in Latin, but in the homely mother tongue. This popular form however did not prevent them from conveying to their readers and hearers profound thoughts, the result of keen speculation; but that in this they did not go over the heads of the people is shown by the crowds that flocked to their preaching. The “Friends of God” proved a spiritual power over many lands (§116, 4). From the practical prophetic mysticism of the 12th and 13th centuries (§§107;108, 5) it was distinguished by avoiding the visionary apocalyptic and magnetic somnambulistic elements through a better appreciation of science; and from the scholastic mysticism of that earlier age (§§102, 3,4,6;103, 4) by abandoning allegory and the scholastic framework for the elevation of the soul to God, as well as by indulgence in a somewhat pantheistic speculation on God and the world, man and the God-Man, on the incarnation and birth of God in us, on our redemption, sanctification, and final restoration. Its younger representatives however cut off all pantheistic excrescences, and thus became more practical and edifying, though indeed with the loss of speculative power. In this way they brought themselves more into sympathy with another mystic tendency which was spreading through the Netherlands under the influence of the Flemish canon, John of Ruysbroek. In France too mysticism again made its appearance during the 15th century in the persons of d’Ailly and Gerson (§118, 4), in a form similar to that which it had assumed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Victorines and Bonaventura.
The schoolmen of the 13th century, with the exception of Bonaventura, had little sympathy with mysticism, and gave their whole attention to the development of doctrine (§99, 1).The 14th century was the Augustan age of mysticism. Germany, which had already in the previous period given Hugo of St. Victor and the two divines of Reichersberg (§102, 4,6), was its proper home. Its most distinguished representatives belonged to the preaching orders, and its recognised grand-master was the Dominican Meister Eckhart. This specifically German mysticism cast away completely the scholastic modes of thought and expression, and sought to arrive at Christian truth by entirely new paths. It appealed, not to the understanding and cultured reason of the learned, but to the hearts and spirits of the people, in order to point them the surest way to union with God. The mystics therefore wrote neither commentaries on the Lombard nor giganticsummæof their own composition, but wrought by word and writing to meet immediate pressing needs. They preached lively sermons and wrote short treatises, not in Latin, but in the homely mother tongue. This popular form however did not prevent them from conveying to their readers and hearers profound thoughts, the result of keen speculation; but that in this they did not go over the heads of the people is shown by the crowds that flocked to their preaching. The “Friends of God” proved a spiritual power over many lands (§116, 4). From the practical prophetic mysticism of the 12th and 13th centuries (§§107;108, 5) it was distinguished by avoiding the visionary apocalyptic and magnetic somnambulistic elements through a better appreciation of science; and from the scholastic mysticism of that earlier age (§§102, 3,4,6;103, 4) by abandoning allegory and the scholastic framework for the elevation of the soul to God, as well as by indulgence in a somewhat pantheistic speculation on God and the world, man and the God-Man, on the incarnation and birth of God in us, on our redemption, sanctification, and final restoration. Its younger representatives however cut off all pantheistic excrescences, and thus became more practical and edifying, though indeed with the loss of speculative power. In this way they brought themselves more into sympathy with another mystic tendency which was spreading through the Netherlands under the influence of the Flemish canon, John of Ruysbroek. In France too mysticism again made its appearance during the 15th century in the persons of d’Ailly and Gerson (§118, 4), in a form similar to that which it had assumed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Victorines and Bonaventura.
§ 114.1.Meister Eckhart.—One of the profoundest thinkers of all the Christian centuries was the Dominican Meister Eckhart, the true father of German speculative mysticism. Born in Strassburg aboutA.D.1260, he studied at Cologne under Albert the Great, but took his master’s degree at Paris inA.D.1303. He had already been for some years prior at Erfurt and provincial vicar of Thuringia. InA.D.1304 he was made provincial of Saxony, and inA.D.1307 vicar-general of Bohemia. In both positions he did much for the reform of the cloisters of his order. InA.D.1311 we find him teacher in Paris; then for some years teaching and preaching in Strassburg; afterwards officiating as prior at Frankfort; and finally as private teacher at Cologne, where he died inA.D.1327. While at Frankfort inA.D.1320 he was suspected of heresy because of alleged intercourse with Beghards (§98, 12) and Brothers of the Free Spirit (§116, 5). InA.D.1325 the archbishop of Cologne renewed these charges, but Eckhart succeeded in vindicating himself. The archbishop now set up an inquisition of his own, but from its sentence Eckhart appealed to the pope, lodged a protest, and then of his own accord in the Dominican church of Cologne, before the assembled congregation, solemnly declared that the charge against him rested upon misrepresentation and misunderstanding, but that he was then and always ready to withdraw anything that might be erroneous. The papal judgment, given two years after Eckhart’s death, pronounced twenty-eight of his propositions to be pantheistic in their tendency, seventeen being heretical and eleven dangerous. He was therefore declared to be suspected of heresy. The bull, contrary to reason and truth, went on to say that Eckhart at the end of his life had retracted and submitted all his writings and doctrines to the judgment of the Holy See. But Eckhart had indignantly protested against the charge of pantheism, and certainly in his doctrine of God and the creature, of the high nobility of the human soul, of retirement and absorption into God, he has always kept within the limits of Christian knowledge and life. Attaching himself to the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrines, which are met with also in Albert and Thomas, and appealing to the acknowledged authorities of the Church, especially the Areopagite, Augustine, and Aquinas, Eckhart with great originality composed a singularly comprehensive and profound system of religious knowledge. Although in all his writings aiming primarily at quickening and edification, he always grounds his endeavours on a theoretical investigation of the nature of the thing.But knowledge is for him essentially union of the knowing subject with the object to be known, and the highest stage of knowledge is the intuition where all finite things sink into the substance of Deity.336§ 114.2.Mystics of Upper Germany after Eckhart.—A noble band of mystics arose during the 14th and 15th centuries influenced by Eckhart’s writings, who carefully avoided pantheistic extremes by giving a thoroughly practical direction to their speculation. Nearest to Eckhart stands the author of “The German Theology,” in which the master’s principles are nobly popularized and explained. Luther, who took it for a work of Tauler, and published it inA.D.1516, characterized it as “a noble little book, showing what Adam and Christ are, and how Adam should die and Christ live in us.” In the most complete MS. of this tract, found inA.D.1850, the author is described as a “Friend of God.”—The DominicanJohn Taulerwas born at Strassburg, studied at Paris, and came into connection with Eckhart, whose mysticism, without its pantheistic tendencies, he adopted. When Strassburg was visited with the Black Death, he laboured as preacher and pastor among the stricken with heroic devotion. Though the city was under an interdict (§110, 3), the Dominicans persisted for a whole year in reading mass, and were stopped only by the severe threats of the master of their order. The magistrates gave them the alternative either to discharge their official duties or leave the city. Tauler now, inA.D.1341, retired to Basel, and afterwards to Cologne. InA.D.1437 we find him again in Strassburg, where he died inA.D.1361. His thirty sermons, with some other short tracts, appeared at Leipzig inA.D.1498. The most important of all Tauler’s works is, “The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ.”It was thought to be of French authorship, but is now admitted to be Tauler’s.337—Rulman Merswin, a rich merchant of Strassburg, in his fortieth year,A.D.1347, with his wife’s consent, retired from his business and forsook the world, gave his wealth to charities, and bought inA.D.1366 an old, abandoned convent near the city, which he restored and presented to the order of St. John. Here he spent the remainder of his days in pious contemplation, amid austerities and mortifications and favoured with visions. He died inA.D.1382. Four years after his conversion he attained to clear conceptions and inner peace. His chief work, composed inA.D.1352, “The Book of the Nine Rocks,” was long ascribed to Suso. It is full of bitter complaints against the moral and religious corruption of all classes, and earnest warnings of Divine judgment. Its starting point is a vision. From the fountains in the high mountains stream many brooks over the rocks into the valley, and thence into the sea; multitudes of fishes transport themselves from their lofty home, and are mostly taken in nets, only a few succeed in reaching their home again by springing over these nine rocks. At the request of the “Friend of God from the Uplands” he wrote the “Four Years from the Beginning of Life.” His “Banner Tract” describes the conflict with and victory over the Brothers of the Free Spirit under the banner of Lucifer (§116, 4,5).§ 114.3.The Friend of God in the Uplands.—In a book entitled “The Story of Tauler’s Conversion,” originally called “The Master’s Book,” but now assigned to Nicholas of Basel, it is told that inA.D.1346 a great “Master of Holy Scripture” preached in an unnamed city, and that soon his fame spread through the land. A layman living in the Uplands, thirty miles off, was directed in a vision thrice over to go to seek this Friend of God, companion of Rulman. He listened to his preaching, chose him as his confessor, and then sought to show him that he had not yet the true consecration. Like a child the master submitted to be taught the elements of piety of religion by the layman, and at his command abstaining from all study and preaching for two years, gave himself to meditation and penitential exercises. When he resumed his preaching his success was marvellous. After nine years’ labour, feeling his end approaching, he gave to the layman an account of his conversion. The latter arranged his materials, and added five sermons of the master, and sent the little book, inA.D.1369, to a priest of Rulman’s cloister near Strassburg. InA.D.1486 the master was identified with Tauler. This however is contradicted by its contents. The historical part is improbable and incredible, and its chronology irreconcilable with known facts of Tauler’s life. We find no trace of the original ideas or characteristic eloquence of Tauler; while the language and homiletical arrangement of the sermons are quite different from those of the great Dominican preacher.§ 114.4.Nicholas of Basel.—After long hiding from the emissaries of the Inquisition the layman Nicholas of Basel, in extreme old age, was taken with two companions, and burned at Vienna, as a heretic, betweenA.D.1393-1408. He has been identified by Schmidt of Strassburg with the “Friend of God.” This is more than doubtful, since of the sixteen heresies, for the most part of a Waldensian character, charged against Nicholas, no trace is found in the writings of the Friend of God; while it is made highly probable by Denifle’s researches that the “Friend of God” was but a name assumed by Rulman Merswin.§ 114.5.Henry Suso, bornA.D.1295, entered the Dominican cloister of Constance in his 13th year. When eighteen years old he took the vow, and till his twenty-second year unceasingly practised the strictest asceticism, in imitation of the sufferings of Christ. He completed his studies,A.D.1325-1328, under Eckhart at Cologne, and on the death of his pious mother withdrew into the cloister, where he became reader and afterwards prior. The first work which he here published, inA.D.1335, the “Book of the Truth,” is strongly influenced by the spirit of his master. Accused as a heretic, he was deposed from the priorship inA.D.1336. His “Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the favourite reading of all lovers of German mysticism. Blending the knight’s and fanatic’s idea of love with the Solomonic conception of Wisdom, which he identifies sometimes with God, sometimes with Christ, sometimes with Mary, he chose her for his beloved, and was favoured by her with frequent visions and was honoured with the title of “Amandus.”—Like most of his fellow monks at Constance, Suso was a supporter of the pope in his contest with Louis the Bavarian, while the city sided with the emperor. When, inA.D.1339, the monks, in obedience to the papal interdict, refused to perform public worship, they were expelled by the magistrates. In his fortieth year Suso had begun his painful career of self-discipline, which he carried so far as to endanger his life. Now driven away as an exile, he began his singularly fruitful wanderings, during which, passing from cloister to cloister as an itinerant preacher, he became either personally or through correspondence most intimately acquainted with all the most notable of the friends of mysticism, and made many new friends in all ranks, especially among women. InA.D.1346, along with eight companions, he ventured to return to Constance. There however he met with his sorest trial. An immoral woman, who pretended to him that she sorrowed over and repented of her sins, while really she continued in the practice of them, and was therefore turned away by him, took her revenge by charging him with being the father of the child she was about to bear. Probably this painful incident was the occasion of his retiring into the monastery of Ulm, where he died inA.D.1366. In him the poetic and romantic element overshadowed the speculative, and in his attachment to ecclesiastical orthodoxy he kept aloof from all reformatory movements.§ 114.6.Henry of Nördlingenis only slightly known to us by the letters which he sent to his lady friend, the Dominican nunMargaret Ebner. He was spiritually related to Tauler, as well as to Suso, and shared with the great preacher in his sorrows over the calamities of the age, which his sensitive nature felt in no ordinary degree during enforced official idleness under the interdict. His mysticism, by its sweetly sentimental character, as well as by its superstitious tendency to reverence Mary and relics, was essentially distinguished from that of Tauler. His friend Margaret, who had also a spiritual affinity to Tauler, and was highly esteemed by all the “Friends of God,” was religiously and politically, as a supporter of the anathematized emperor, much more decided. In depth of thought and power of expression however she is quite inferior to the earlier Thuringian prophetesses (§107, 2).—Hermann of Fritzlar, a rich and pious layman, is supposed to have written,A.D.1343-1349, a life of the saints in the order of the calendar, as a picture of heart purity, with mystic reflections and speculations based on the legendary matter, and all expressed in pure and simple German. Hermann, however, was only the author of the plan, and the actual writer was a Dominican of Erfurt,Giseler of Slatheim.—A Franciscan in Basel,Otto of Passau, published, inA.D.1386, “The Four-and-Twenty Elders, or the Golden Throne,” which became a very popular book of devotion, in which the twenty-four elders of Revelation iv. 4, one after another, show the loving soul how to win for himself a golden throne in heaven. Passages of an edifying and contemplative description from the Fathers and teachers of the Church down to the 13th century are selected by the author, and adapted to the use of the unlearned “Friends of God” in a German translation.§ 114.7.Mystics of the Netherlands.John of Ruysbroekwas born, inA.D.1298, in the village of Ruysbroek, near Brussels. In youth he was addicted more to pious contemplation than to scholastic studies, and in his sixtieth year he resigned his position as secular priest in Brussels, and retired into a convent of regular canons (§97, 3) near Brussels, where he died as its prior inA.D.1481, when eighty-eight years old. He was calleddoctor ecstaticus, because he regarded his mystical views, which he developed amid pious contemplation in the shades of the forest, and there wrote out in Flemish speech, as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His mysticism was essentially theistic. Theunio mysticaconsisted not in the deification of man, but was wrought only through the free grace of God in Christ without the loss of man’s own personality. His genuine practical piety led him to see in the moral depravity of the clergy, not less than of the people generally, the cause of the decay of the Church, so that even the person of the pope did not escape his reproof. Numerous pilgrims from far and near sought the pious sage for counsel and quickening. His favourite disciple was Gerhard Groot of Deventer, who impressed much of his master’s spirit upon the brotherhood of the Common Life (§112, 9).—Of this noble school of mystics the three following were the most distinguished.Hendrik Mande, who diedA.D.1430, impressed by a sermon of Groot’s, and favoured during a long illness by visions, abandoned the life of a courtier for the fellowship of the Brethren of Deventer, and inA.D.1395 entered the cloister of Windesheim, to which he bequeathed his wealth, and where he continued to enjoy visions of the Saviour and the saints. His works, written in Dutch, are characterized by spirituality and depth of feeling, copious and appropriate imagery, and great moral earnestness.Gerlach Peterswas the favourite scholar of Florentius in Deventer. He subsequently entered the monastery of Windesheim, where, after a painful illness, he died inA.D.1411, in his thirty-third year. “An ardent spirit in a body of skin and bone,” praising God for his terrible bodily sufferings as a means of grace bestowed on him, his devotion reaches the sublimest heights of enthusiasm. He wrote theSoliloquium, the voice of a man who has daily struggled in God’s presence to free his heart from worldly bonds, and by God’s grace in the cross of Christ to have Adam’s purity restored and union with the highest good secured.Thomas à Kempis, formerly Hamerken, was born inA.D.1380 at Kempen, near Cologne. He was educated at Deventer, and died as sub-prior of the convent of St. Agnes, near Zwoll, inA.D.1471. To him, and not to the chancellor Gerson, according to the now universally accepted opinion, belongs the world renowned bookDe Imitatione Christi. Reprinted about five thousand times, oftener than any other book except the Bible, it has been also translated into more languages than any other. Free from all Romish superstition, it is read by Catholics and Protestants, and holds an unrivalled position as a book of devotion.A photographic reproduction of the original edition ofA.D.1441 was published from the autograph MSS. of Thomas, by Ch. Ruelans, London, 1879.338
§ 114.1.Meister Eckhart.—One of the profoundest thinkers of all the Christian centuries was the Dominican Meister Eckhart, the true father of German speculative mysticism. Born in Strassburg aboutA.D.1260, he studied at Cologne under Albert the Great, but took his master’s degree at Paris inA.D.1303. He had already been for some years prior at Erfurt and provincial vicar of Thuringia. InA.D.1304 he was made provincial of Saxony, and inA.D.1307 vicar-general of Bohemia. In both positions he did much for the reform of the cloisters of his order. InA.D.1311 we find him teacher in Paris; then for some years teaching and preaching in Strassburg; afterwards officiating as prior at Frankfort; and finally as private teacher at Cologne, where he died inA.D.1327. While at Frankfort inA.D.1320 he was suspected of heresy because of alleged intercourse with Beghards (§98, 12) and Brothers of the Free Spirit (§116, 5). InA.D.1325 the archbishop of Cologne renewed these charges, but Eckhart succeeded in vindicating himself. The archbishop now set up an inquisition of his own, but from its sentence Eckhart appealed to the pope, lodged a protest, and then of his own accord in the Dominican church of Cologne, before the assembled congregation, solemnly declared that the charge against him rested upon misrepresentation and misunderstanding, but that he was then and always ready to withdraw anything that might be erroneous. The papal judgment, given two years after Eckhart’s death, pronounced twenty-eight of his propositions to be pantheistic in their tendency, seventeen being heretical and eleven dangerous. He was therefore declared to be suspected of heresy. The bull, contrary to reason and truth, went on to say that Eckhart at the end of his life had retracted and submitted all his writings and doctrines to the judgment of the Holy See. But Eckhart had indignantly protested against the charge of pantheism, and certainly in his doctrine of God and the creature, of the high nobility of the human soul, of retirement and absorption into God, he has always kept within the limits of Christian knowledge and life. Attaching himself to the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrines, which are met with also in Albert and Thomas, and appealing to the acknowledged authorities of the Church, especially the Areopagite, Augustine, and Aquinas, Eckhart with great originality composed a singularly comprehensive and profound system of religious knowledge. Although in all his writings aiming primarily at quickening and edification, he always grounds his endeavours on a theoretical investigation of the nature of the thing.But knowledge is for him essentially union of the knowing subject with the object to be known, and the highest stage of knowledge is the intuition where all finite things sink into the substance of Deity.336
§ 114.2.Mystics of Upper Germany after Eckhart.—A noble band of mystics arose during the 14th and 15th centuries influenced by Eckhart’s writings, who carefully avoided pantheistic extremes by giving a thoroughly practical direction to their speculation. Nearest to Eckhart stands the author of “The German Theology,” in which the master’s principles are nobly popularized and explained. Luther, who took it for a work of Tauler, and published it inA.D.1516, characterized it as “a noble little book, showing what Adam and Christ are, and how Adam should die and Christ live in us.” In the most complete MS. of this tract, found inA.D.1850, the author is described as a “Friend of God.”—The DominicanJohn Taulerwas born at Strassburg, studied at Paris, and came into connection with Eckhart, whose mysticism, without its pantheistic tendencies, he adopted. When Strassburg was visited with the Black Death, he laboured as preacher and pastor among the stricken with heroic devotion. Though the city was under an interdict (§110, 3), the Dominicans persisted for a whole year in reading mass, and were stopped only by the severe threats of the master of their order. The magistrates gave them the alternative either to discharge their official duties or leave the city. Tauler now, inA.D.1341, retired to Basel, and afterwards to Cologne. InA.D.1437 we find him again in Strassburg, where he died inA.D.1361. His thirty sermons, with some other short tracts, appeared at Leipzig inA.D.1498. The most important of all Tauler’s works is, “The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ.”It was thought to be of French authorship, but is now admitted to be Tauler’s.337—Rulman Merswin, a rich merchant of Strassburg, in his fortieth year,A.D.1347, with his wife’s consent, retired from his business and forsook the world, gave his wealth to charities, and bought inA.D.1366 an old, abandoned convent near the city, which he restored and presented to the order of St. John. Here he spent the remainder of his days in pious contemplation, amid austerities and mortifications and favoured with visions. He died inA.D.1382. Four years after his conversion he attained to clear conceptions and inner peace. His chief work, composed inA.D.1352, “The Book of the Nine Rocks,” was long ascribed to Suso. It is full of bitter complaints against the moral and religious corruption of all classes, and earnest warnings of Divine judgment. Its starting point is a vision. From the fountains in the high mountains stream many brooks over the rocks into the valley, and thence into the sea; multitudes of fishes transport themselves from their lofty home, and are mostly taken in nets, only a few succeed in reaching their home again by springing over these nine rocks. At the request of the “Friend of God from the Uplands” he wrote the “Four Years from the Beginning of Life.” His “Banner Tract” describes the conflict with and victory over the Brothers of the Free Spirit under the banner of Lucifer (§116, 4,5).
§ 114.3.The Friend of God in the Uplands.—In a book entitled “The Story of Tauler’s Conversion,” originally called “The Master’s Book,” but now assigned to Nicholas of Basel, it is told that inA.D.1346 a great “Master of Holy Scripture” preached in an unnamed city, and that soon his fame spread through the land. A layman living in the Uplands, thirty miles off, was directed in a vision thrice over to go to seek this Friend of God, companion of Rulman. He listened to his preaching, chose him as his confessor, and then sought to show him that he had not yet the true consecration. Like a child the master submitted to be taught the elements of piety of religion by the layman, and at his command abstaining from all study and preaching for two years, gave himself to meditation and penitential exercises. When he resumed his preaching his success was marvellous. After nine years’ labour, feeling his end approaching, he gave to the layman an account of his conversion. The latter arranged his materials, and added five sermons of the master, and sent the little book, inA.D.1369, to a priest of Rulman’s cloister near Strassburg. InA.D.1486 the master was identified with Tauler. This however is contradicted by its contents. The historical part is improbable and incredible, and its chronology irreconcilable with known facts of Tauler’s life. We find no trace of the original ideas or characteristic eloquence of Tauler; while the language and homiletical arrangement of the sermons are quite different from those of the great Dominican preacher.
§ 114.4.Nicholas of Basel.—After long hiding from the emissaries of the Inquisition the layman Nicholas of Basel, in extreme old age, was taken with two companions, and burned at Vienna, as a heretic, betweenA.D.1393-1408. He has been identified by Schmidt of Strassburg with the “Friend of God.” This is more than doubtful, since of the sixteen heresies, for the most part of a Waldensian character, charged against Nicholas, no trace is found in the writings of the Friend of God; while it is made highly probable by Denifle’s researches that the “Friend of God” was but a name assumed by Rulman Merswin.
§ 114.5.Henry Suso, bornA.D.1295, entered the Dominican cloister of Constance in his 13th year. When eighteen years old he took the vow, and till his twenty-second year unceasingly practised the strictest asceticism, in imitation of the sufferings of Christ. He completed his studies,A.D.1325-1328, under Eckhart at Cologne, and on the death of his pious mother withdrew into the cloister, where he became reader and afterwards prior. The first work which he here published, inA.D.1335, the “Book of the Truth,” is strongly influenced by the spirit of his master. Accused as a heretic, he was deposed from the priorship inA.D.1336. His “Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the favourite reading of all lovers of German mysticism. Blending the knight’s and fanatic’s idea of love with the Solomonic conception of Wisdom, which he identifies sometimes with God, sometimes with Christ, sometimes with Mary, he chose her for his beloved, and was favoured by her with frequent visions and was honoured with the title of “Amandus.”—Like most of his fellow monks at Constance, Suso was a supporter of the pope in his contest with Louis the Bavarian, while the city sided with the emperor. When, inA.D.1339, the monks, in obedience to the papal interdict, refused to perform public worship, they were expelled by the magistrates. In his fortieth year Suso had begun his painful career of self-discipline, which he carried so far as to endanger his life. Now driven away as an exile, he began his singularly fruitful wanderings, during which, passing from cloister to cloister as an itinerant preacher, he became either personally or through correspondence most intimately acquainted with all the most notable of the friends of mysticism, and made many new friends in all ranks, especially among women. InA.D.1346, along with eight companions, he ventured to return to Constance. There however he met with his sorest trial. An immoral woman, who pretended to him that she sorrowed over and repented of her sins, while really she continued in the practice of them, and was therefore turned away by him, took her revenge by charging him with being the father of the child she was about to bear. Probably this painful incident was the occasion of his retiring into the monastery of Ulm, where he died inA.D.1366. In him the poetic and romantic element overshadowed the speculative, and in his attachment to ecclesiastical orthodoxy he kept aloof from all reformatory movements.
§ 114.6.Henry of Nördlingenis only slightly known to us by the letters which he sent to his lady friend, the Dominican nunMargaret Ebner. He was spiritually related to Tauler, as well as to Suso, and shared with the great preacher in his sorrows over the calamities of the age, which his sensitive nature felt in no ordinary degree during enforced official idleness under the interdict. His mysticism, by its sweetly sentimental character, as well as by its superstitious tendency to reverence Mary and relics, was essentially distinguished from that of Tauler. His friend Margaret, who had also a spiritual affinity to Tauler, and was highly esteemed by all the “Friends of God,” was religiously and politically, as a supporter of the anathematized emperor, much more decided. In depth of thought and power of expression however she is quite inferior to the earlier Thuringian prophetesses (§107, 2).—Hermann of Fritzlar, a rich and pious layman, is supposed to have written,A.D.1343-1349, a life of the saints in the order of the calendar, as a picture of heart purity, with mystic reflections and speculations based on the legendary matter, and all expressed in pure and simple German. Hermann, however, was only the author of the plan, and the actual writer was a Dominican of Erfurt,Giseler of Slatheim.—A Franciscan in Basel,Otto of Passau, published, inA.D.1386, “The Four-and-Twenty Elders, or the Golden Throne,” which became a very popular book of devotion, in which the twenty-four elders of Revelation iv. 4, one after another, show the loving soul how to win for himself a golden throne in heaven. Passages of an edifying and contemplative description from the Fathers and teachers of the Church down to the 13th century are selected by the author, and adapted to the use of the unlearned “Friends of God” in a German translation.
§ 114.7.Mystics of the Netherlands.