The Significance of Ruusbroec's Mystical Theology

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The Significance of Ruusbroec’s Mystical Theology Bernard McGinn

Abstract. — This essay seeks to evaluate the impact of the thought of Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381) in the history of Western Christian mysticism. Like all mystics, Ruusbroec was shaped by both the long mystical tradition, as well as by the historical context in which he found himself. A survey of three important aspects of this context is followed by an analysis of four essential themes of Ruusbroec’s mystical theology: the proper understanding of mystical union; the role of the Trinity; essential love; and the “common life.” The essay concludes with a brief sketch of major moments in the reception of Ruusbroec’s writings down through the seventeenth century and some reflections on his lasting significance.

The conception of mysticism as a form of private, even solipsistic, religious experience, largely of a paranormal nature and at least implic- itly in conflict with the institutional and doctrinal aspects of established religion is now mostly a thing of the past. Recent scholarship on mysticism in Christianity and in the world religions has shown how deeply bound the mystical element is to the other strands of religion. The mystical aspect of the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerges ever more strongly as a part of these traditions, that is, what has been handed on by generations of believers through teaching and practice, both oral and written. In Christianity the special contact with the presence of God attained in mystical consciousness, while deeply per- sonal, is no less ecclesial, that is, it is mediated by the mystic’s location within the church, especially through the grace given in the liturgy and sacraments. It has its most potent effect by taking its place in the chain of tradition. Scripture and tradition are essential mediators of the mystical life as a process of attaining the deeper and transformative aware- ness of God that is the essence of Christian mysticism. Jan van Ruusbroec’s mystical teaching is a good illustration of the fundamentally ecclesial nature of mysticism, both in terms of its for- mation and its subsequent impact on the life of the church. While rich new mines of information about many of aspects of the Dutch canon’s 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 20

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influence continue to be explored, ones that will doubtless enrich subsequent research, my purpose is somewhat different.1 I will not try to present any new research on Ruusbroec’s sources, nor will I attempt a detailed presentation of his impact on later mystical teaching. Rather, I will step back from the details, important as they are, to take a long- range view of the great Flemish mystic, not unlike the kind of “history of structure” practiced so brilliantly by Fernand Braudel. Braudel described this as the temporal plane of the “history of groups or group- ings … with slow but perceptible rhythms,” that is, the history of the “long-term realities.”2 To clarify my argument about the long-term significance of Ruusbroec, I will consider his impact under three headings: first, the context of late-medieval mysticism that helped shape his thinking, directly and indirectly; second, the essential content of his mystical teaching; and third, some important consequences of his teaching. A brief consideration of these three areas may help us begin the address the question: What difference did Ruusbroec make in the history of the Western mystical tradition?

I. Context

Let us start from the fact that Ruusbroec’s teaching is found only in the vernacular. A commonplace, surely, but an instructive one, because it is only within the past few decades that investigators have begun to recognize that during the Middle Ages the intellectus fidei of theology came to expression in three large modes or families – the scholastic mode, the monastic mode, and the vernacular mode.3 For

1. The original version of this paper was prepared for the International Conference “Ruusbroec in Babel? Translation and Appropriation of Mystical Texts from the Middle Ages to the Present,” sponsored by the University of Antwerp and the Lessius Hogeschool, held in Antwerp on 22-23 September, 2006. I wish to thank the organizers of the Con- ference and the many participants, whose papers and comments have been helpful in my revisions of the original text. I especially thank Prof. Terrence Merrigan for his insightful response to the paper. Given the primarily historical nature of this essay, however, I have decided that this is not the venue to try to respond to his reflections on how aspects of Ruusbroec’s thought may be of use in contemporary theological discussion. 2. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) 1:16, 20-21. 3. For more on vernacular theology, see Bernard McGinn, “Introduction,” in Mei- ster: Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1994) 1-17. Other recent considerations of vernacular theology include Nicholas Wat- son, “Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Refor- mation England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997) 145-187; and 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 21

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about a century (ca. 1840-1940) the investigation of medieval theology recognized only one form of “real” theology, the scholastic. In the middle of the past century the pioneering work of Etienne Gilson, his stu- dent Jean Leclercq, and others revealed the distinctive character of monastic theology. The notion of a vernacular theology of the Middle Ages, hinted at by a few early investigators, such as Christopher Daw- son,4 has recently emerged as the third major mode of theology during the medieval period. Vernacular theology differs from the scholastic and the monastic modes, not only in its linguistic expression in the developing vernacular literatures of late medieval Europe, but also in terms of the educational background of its practitioners and the genres employed. It is also the first form of theology in which women were able to find their own theological voice. Aside from a few pioneering figures in the twelfth century, vernacular theology came into its own in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Much of this vernacular theological writing concentrated on mysticism, but moral theology, cos- mology, and eschatology also appeared. In terms of achievement, one may well say that the fourteenth century saw the apogee of vernacular theology. In England, this was the “Golden Age” of English mysticism, as well as of that great vernacular theological poem, “Piers Plowman.” In Germany, the first three decades of the century witnessed Meister Eckhart’s preaching, and the last seven saw a flood of mystical teaching and preaching in the vernacular, both among Eckhart’s followers and in other traditions. Italy was graced with the towering figure of Catherine of Siena. In the Low Countries the fourteenth century was the age of Ruusbroec and his followers, both in the Groenendaal community and in the early stages of the devotio moderna. During the fourteenth century the major output of mystical literature shifted away from Latin to the vernacular. Ruusbroec’s contemporary Richard Rolle, who probably received an equivalent education, was one of the last mystics to write equally in both Latin and the vernacular. By the late fourteenth century, the English clerics Walter Hilton and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, both perfectly capable of composing in Latin (Hilton did at times), had switched to English. In Germany, the scholastically-trained John Tauler never wrote in Latin; Henry Suso, a gifted stylist in both Latin and Middle High German, composed only

Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) 294-304. 4. Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957) 219. This book was based upon the Gifford Lectures that Dawson gave in 1948-49. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 22

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one Latin treatise, a revised version of a vernacular work. Although this text, the Horologium Sapientiae, was a bestseller among late medieval mystical works (second in number of manuscripts and translations only to the De imitatione Christi), Suso’s preference for the vernacular was significant. The triumph of vernacular theology was doubtless tied to the emergence of a wide audience, both in the upper and middle classes, avid for spiritual reading, but there were other factors at work too. The three modes of mediaeval theology had complex interrelation- ships, mutual conversations, that put the lie to any simple oppositional model. Bernard of Clairvaux opposed Peter Abelard, but he was also a correspondent and admirer of other early scholastic masters, such as Peter Lombard. Many of the thirteenth-century female vernacular theologians, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, were aided by learned Dominicans in setting down and disseminating their message. The conversation between men and women that characterized vernacular theology is also evident in the case of Ruusbroec, who composed four texts for the Poor Clare of Brussels, Margriet van Meerbeke. There was also a conversation between the Latin of the international clerical class and the developing vernacu- lars. This conversation began in the late twelfth century when Bernard’s Sermones super Cantica were translated into French. In the thirteenth century some vernacular mystical texts, such as Mechthild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead, were put in Latin to make them available to an international audience. Among the paradoxes of vernacular theology was the fact that its audience was both wider in the sense that it was available to those who did not have formal higher education and yet also narrower because it was limited to a particular language domain. The conversations that existed between formal scholastic theology and the new vernacular theology, however, while never eliminated, were increasingly strained during the course of the fourteenth century-another important aspect of Ruusbroec’s historical context that deserves comment. A striking fact that emerges from reading the major mystics of the fourteenth century is their sense of growing opposition between the theology of the schools and their own efforts to provide sound spiritual teaching. Modern theologians have commented on the divorce between theology (i.e., doctrinal and academic theology) and spirituality that, while not created in the fourteenth century, became increasingly evident during that period.5 Despite the efforts of individual figures to keep

5. See, e.g., Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” Explorations in The- ology. I: The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1989; first published in French in 1948) 181-209; and “The Unity of Theology and Spirituality,” Convergences: To the Source of Christian Mystery (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1983) 17-73. Also 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 23

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sanctity and speculation together, a widening split is evident that was to have ever more unfortunate consequences in the centuries to come. Mys- tical theologians felt increasingly estranged from the kind of theology being done in the universities. Ruusbroec’s attack on the abuses found in all orders of the church, as evidenced in a long passage from the Spir- itual Tabernacle, is well known.6 At the beginning of his career, in the Kingdom of Lovers, he also condemned those who “appear to be shep- herds, but who are robbers and criminals.” These are the learned exegetes who elucidate the Scriptures “by means of an abundance of references and the cleverness of … understanding and long practice in the school,” but who lack grace and therefore cannot plumb “the fruit and sweetness hidden within it [i.e., the Scripture].”7 Ruusbroec’s contemporaries, Henry Suso and John Tauler, are also strong witnesses to the growing chasm between speculation and spirituality. Writing in the wake of the condemnation of Meister Eckhart, the last figure to bridge the worlds of scholastic and vernacular theology, both Dominicans criticized even members of their own order for their obsession with an academic theology that they considered spiritually worthless. A good example of their critique is found in the allegory of the golden sphere that Suso puts at the beginning of the second book of the Horologium Sapientiae. In this vision the disciple of Wisdom sees a large gold sphere adorned with gems and containing “countless masters and students of all arts and sciences.” The lower mansion of the sphere contains the liberal arts and applied sciences, while the upper is “the school of theological truth” where Eternal Wisdom rules. It has three divisions of students and teach- ers. First, those sitting near the door and staring out into the street, sig- nifying the students “interested in speculation about what can be known, and … utterly cold to true love.” The second group is composed of those who seek to find in academic exercises what is necessary for salvation, but who are not zealous for the higher gifts. The third group, the students of the “true and highest philosophy,” are those “who exert themselves with all the love of their hearts and with all their might to attain

François Vandenbroucke, “Le divorce entre théologie et mystique,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 72 (1950) 372-389. 6. For a survey and partial translation, see Paul Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and His Mys- ticism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994) 142-158. 7. I will cite Ruusbroec’s texts in translation from the recently completed edition and translation found in Jan van Ruusbroec: Opera Omnia, ed. Guido de Baere et al., 10 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981-2006). For the sake of convenience, I cite only the short Dutch title, section and lines of the edition, with the volume and page reference in paren- thesis. This text is Rijcke IV, 2628-2656 (Opera Omnia 4: 404-407). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 24

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the things that belong to perfection, taking care and pains that their love may be as full of divine Wisdom as their intellect is of knowledge.”8 These are the true spiritual philosophers and theologians – and they do not appear to inhabit the universities. Ruusbroec and his contemporaries, however, faced a greater danger than sterile academic theology, one that did even more to shape the form of their vernacular theology – the threat of mystical heresy, what is usu- ally referred to as the heresy of the Free Spirit.9 It does not take much reading in the mystical literature of the fourteenth century to see that the concern to distinguish between true and false understandings of the mystical life was nearly universal among the mystics of the era. Mystical heresy, unknown in the West before the late thirteenth century, was not an alien intrusion, but arose from within aspects of the new mysticism of the late Middle Ages.10 A central impulse of this new wave of mysticism was the desire to attain a union with God that on some level at least went beyond the loving union of spirits (unitas spiritus) that had been characteristic of so much earlier mysticism in order to reach a level of indistinction, or lack of difference, between God and human. In order to attain God in this deepest sense many mystics insisted that it was necessary to annihilate not just the sinful will (as Augustinian theology held), but the created will itself. Both indistinct union and annihilation were challenging teach- ings, but the history of mysticism shows that with suitable qualifications they could be made conformable with orthodox teaching on the neces- sity for a continuing distinction between God and creation. The exact discrimination between orthodox and heretical formulations of these explosive aspects of the new mysticism, however, was a delicate affair – a matter of careful distinctions, subtle theological exposition, and historical accident. Meister Eckhart’s formulations of the union of indistinction and the path of detachment and annihilation leading to it resulted in the condemnation of a number of articles drawn from his writings in the bull “In agro dominico” of Pope John XXII in 1329. The generation of Suso, Tauler, and the many other mystics of Germanic lands that came after this decisive event labored to combat the erroneous mystical teaching that

8. The vision of the gold sphere can be found in Heinrich Seuses Horologium Sa- pientiae, ed. Pius Künzle (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag, 1977), Book II, chap. 1 (pp. 519-526). 9. For an introduction to the role of mystical heresy in the late Middle Ages, see Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (New York: Crossroad- Herder, 2005), Chap. 2. 10. On the character of the new mysticism, see Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350) (New York: Crossroad- Herder, 1997), Chap. 1. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 25

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Eckhart himself had confronted, as well as to qualify the more contro- versial aspects of his thought.11 Ruusbroec was certainly familiar with aspects of Eckhart’s teaching, and he did not hesitate to attack some of them without mentioning the Dominican by name. Nevertheless, there are deep affinities between the two mystics in many areas. Ruusbroec’s struggle against improper mystical theory, both the dangerous errors of the Free Spirits, as well as some Eckhartian themes, was central to his teaching.12

II. Content13

Ruusbroec’s vernacular theology touches on almost all the major themes of late medieval Western mysticism, many of which might be singled out for a more intensive treatment to show how the canon adapted and extended the tradition. One could, for example, analyze his relational anthropology, an original development of the traditional understanding of humanity as imago et similitudo dei, or one could investigate his functional Christology and its relation to late medieval Passion piety. Alternatively, an examination could be made of the central role he gave to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, enriching a mystical theme reach- ing back to Augustine and Gregory the Great. His teaching on the role of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is also worthy of a detailed investigation. Nevertheless, I believe that Ruusbroec’s major contribution to the history of mysticism can be summarized under four headings involving issues that dominated the mysticism of his era: first, the proper understanding of mystical union to answer heretical errors; second, a dynamic doctrine of the Trinity that provides the structure for his theology; third, the erotic metaphysics implied in this view of the Trinity;

11. I have addressed some of the ways in which Suso and Tauler qualified Eck- hart in “The Problem of Mystical Union in Eckhart, Seuse, and Tauler,” Meister Eckhart in Erfurt, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 32, (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005) 538-553. 12. The relations between Eckhart and Ruusbroec are still unclear, despite the literature that has been devoted to the issue. On the availability of Eckhart in the Low Countries, see R. A. Ubbink, De receptie van Meister Eckhart in de Nederlanden gedurende de Middeleeuwen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1978); and Wybren Scheepsma, “Meister Eck- hart in den Niederlanden: Rezeption und Überlieferung im vierzehnten Jahrhundert” (forthcoming). On the theological issues, see Georgette Epiney-Burgard, “La critique d’Eckhart par Ruusbroec et son disciple Jan de Leeuwen,” Von Meister Dietrich zu Mei- ster Eckhart, ed. Kurt Flasch (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1984) 177-185. 13. Some parts of this section are drawn from and expanded upon in my forthcoming essay, “Jan van Ruusbroec’s Dynamic Trinitarian Mysticism.” 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 26

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and finally, his teaching on “the common life,” a new solution to the question of the relation between action and contemplation. Regarding the correct understanding of mystical union, Ruusbroec’s complex doctrine of the three forms of interpenetrating and concomi- tant union of God and the soul – union with intermediary, union without intermediary, and union without difference-is well known. Set forth throughout his writings, but especially in the Little Book of Enlighten- ment, the canon seems to have worked out this scheme in order to com- bine and correlate (consciously or unconsciously) the various understandings of union available in the fourteenth century, both the more traditional models he subsumes into union with intermediary and union without intermediary, and the newer and more radical forms, such as Meister Eckhart’s, that involved union without difference.14 Excerpts from Ruusbroec’s treatises on such issues as indistinct union, the role of annihilation, and the “yielding” of the persons of the Trinity to the divine wesen, taken in isolation, often sound much like Eckhart, and even some of the more extreme formulations found in Marguerite Porete’s condemned Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls. Thus, it was quite possible to misunderstand Ruusbroec, as Jean Gerson was to demonstrate a generation later. Nevertheless, Ruusbroec was acquainted with Porete’s treatise,15 as well as with some of Eckhart’s sermons, and he strongly criticized them both as erroneous, even heretical. Had the canon acquired a fuller knowledge of the Dominican’s teaching, he might have seen that Eckhart too made important qualifications concerning the ongoing dialectical co-existence of distinction and indistinction in our union with God, whether or not he would have judged the Eckhartian way of expressing this view of union satisfactory. The hypothetical question cannot be answered, but one thing that is clear is that Ruusbroec’s re-examination of the nature of mystical union enabled him to give a sophisticated and powerful answer to the false mystics and their doctrine of indistinct merging with God.16

14. For a sketch of the development of Western views of mystical union, see Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge, and Unio mystica in the Western Christian Tradi- tion,” Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1996) 59-86. 15. On Ruusbroec and Porete, see Paul Verdeyen, “Ruusbroec’s Opinion on Margaretha Porete’s Orthodoxy,” Studies in Spirituality 3 (1993) 121-129. 16. There is a considerable literature on Ruusbroec’s attack on false mysticism; see especially J. Feys, “Ruusbroec and His False Mystics,” Ons Geestelijk Erf 65 (1991) 108-124 (hereafter this journal will be abbreviated as OGE). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 27

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Ruusbroec’s teaching that all human beings are made to the image and likeness of God so that each person bears an internal mirror reflect- ing the divine Tri-unity helped him to see that what the Free Spirit mystics claimed about their introversion into the bare essence of the soul and the contact they made with God was not so much a diabolical delu- sion (as many of his orthodox contemporaries claimed) as it was the wrong use of a natural and good endowment of the created nature of the soul. As early as the Kingdom of Lovers he had discussed the difference between a natural elevation in which the higher faculties are “lifted up into emptiness in the simple ground of the soul’s essence,” and the super- natural elevation which actually brings us back to God.17 The problem with the false mystics is that they claim that their inner elevation is their “own” work, thus scorning the humility and charity necessary for true union. They are proud people who often live in a moral way externally, but who want to gain fame “on account of their spirituality.” They reject the advice of others and are unteachable, because their “elevated natural intelligence” leads them to claim that “contemplation is greater than the work of charity.” Ruusbroec continued his assault on false mysticism throughout his later works, sharpening his critique as he became more aware of the dangers of what often looked like authentic striving after God. In the analysis of the inner life of union without intermediary in the Spiritual Espousals he describes three fundamental errors of the Free Spirits that are the reverse image of the three proper characteristics of this state.18 False emptiness can be achieved by any human being who frees himself or herself of images and external activity. The loving person, however, does not remain in this state for long, because “charity and the inward stirring of the grace of God do not lie still” (b 2309-2310). In false emptiness a person forgets self and God and everything, whereas loving rest in God, which is a sharing in the life of the Trinity, is always dialectical: “This rest in God is always sought actively with inner yearning and is found in enjoyable inclination, and is possessed eternally in the transport of love, and still sought when it is nevertheless possessed” (b 2322-2325). The second error centers on the natural love that follows on inner emptiness without constant yearning for God (b 2336- 2410). Natural love seeks consolation, sweetness, and its own pleasure.

17. Ruusbroec’s discussion of false mysticism in his first work can be found in Rijcke IV, 509-551 (Opera Omnia 4: 204-209). 18. Ruusbroec attacked false mysticism several times in the Brulocht, notably in Brulocht b 1223-1261 (Opera Omnia 3: 426-431), and the major treatment discussed here in b 2296-2555 (Opera Omnia 3: 538-567). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 28

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Such self-centered love can lead people to perform great works of penance in order to gain a reputation for holiness. This form of “spiritual unchastity” contrasts with true charity, because “Charity is a love- bond which carries us away and in which we renounce ourselves and are united with God and God with us. But natural love turns back on itself and upon its own ease and always remains alone” (b 2387-2390). As far as exterior works are concerned, the two tendencies may be difficult or impossible to distinguish, but the third error of the Free Spirits is man- ifest. False emptiness and love of self produce “an unrighteous life, full of spiritual error and all perversity” (b 2415-2416). The false mystics, thinking of themselves as “the holiest people alive,” abandon the prac- tices of the Church, and even the commandments of God, so as not to disturb their inner passivity (b 2423-2426). Ruusbroec’s final and longest treatment of false mysticism in the Twelve Beguines summarizes the differences between true and false contemplation.19 Again, the root error is found in the familiar inward turn to “imageless bareness” without concern for the action of grace and the practice of the virtues. But in this treatise Ruusbroec expands his treatment of the “four modes of unbelief and error” on the basis of how the Free Spirits misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity. The first error sins against the Holy Spirit by claiming such a strong identity with the divine essence so that they no longer need the gifts of the Spirit and the practice of the works of love and virtue (2a 45-81). The second error is against the Father, because the heretics “imagine that they are God by nature,” so that they can do everything that God does (2a 82-119). The third mode of unbelief is contrary to Christ (2a 120-285). According to Ruus- broec, these heretics say: “Thus I am one with him, God and man, in every way: here I make no exception. For all that God has given to him, he has given to me, and no less than to him.”20 Finally, the fourth error (2a 286-330) includes all the other modes and is described as an attack on God, the holy scriptures, and “all holy Christendom,” in that it rejects both “modes and modelessness” in a form of annihilation that denies the existence of both God and the world. The fact that Ruusbroec frames this attack in terms of a misunder- standing of the divine nature and the three persons of the Trinity demonstrates the second and central aspect of the canon’s mystical teaching: its

19. XII Beghinen 2a 16-355 (Opera Omnia 7A: 86-119). 20. Under the second and third errors, Ruusbroec cites passages from Eckhart’s sermons: German Sermon (Pr.) 52 under error 2 (2a 85-98) and Pr. 5a under error 3 (2a 126-133, and 190-191), a text subject to condemnation as article 11 of “In agro dominico.” 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 29

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trinitarian foundation. All Christian mysticism is by definition trinitarian. There is, however, a difference between a mysticism in which the doctrine of the Trinity is only one of the building blocks and those forms of mysticism that are systematically trinitarian in inspiration and structure. In the twelfth century, this difference is evident in comparing Bernard of Clairvaux and his friend William of Saint Thierry. Bernard, to be sure, has a few passages of importance on the role of the Trinity, but William’s Spirit-centered mysticism is trinitarian through and through.21 Among the forms of trinitarian mysticism found in the late Middle Ages the most theologically sophisticated was a dynamic dialectic view of the divine Tri-unity that emphasized how the movement out from the hidden divine ground, being, or essence that constituted the three persons was the source and the model for everything that exists, as well as for the return of all things to the divine mystery.22 This tradition of trinitarian theology was rooted in the Christian adaptation of the master paradigm of Neoplatonism distinguishing three essential moments in the activity of the ultimate One – monê, or the One considered in its hidden self-identity (unum essentiale); proodos, the One as overflowing and manifesting itself in the created universe (exitus); and epistrophê, the One’s drawing back of all things into itself (reditus). Pagan Neoplatonists, like Proclus, used this paradigm to explore the relation between the One and all that exists below it; Christians, such as Pseudo-Dionysius, transformed the paradigm by employing it not only with regard to the God-world relation, but also for gaining a deeper appropriation of belief in the mystery of the Trinity. Both Bonaventure and Meister Eckhart made this form of trinitarianism central to their theology.23 Ruusbroec demonstrates the profundity of his vernacular theology by creating his own variant of this dynamic trinitarianism. This is not the place to try to give even an abbreviated version of Ruusbroec’s view of the Trinity.24 Rather, I will only highlight a few

21. On the trinitarian character of William’s mysticism, see Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the Twelfth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1994), Chap. 6. 22. For more on this tradition of trinitarian mysticism, see my essay, “The Dynamic Trinity in Bonaventure and Eckhart” (forthcoming). 23. On Bonaventure’s trinitarian theology, see Zachary Hayes, “Bonaventure: Mys- tery of the Triune God,” The History of Franciscan Theology, ed. By Kenan B. Osbourne (St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1994) 39-125; on Eckhart, Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart (New York: Crossroad-Herder, 2001), Chap. 5. 24. On the Trinity in Ruusbroec, see especially Albert Ampe, De grondlijnen van Ruusbroec’s drieëenheidsleer als onderbouw van den zieleopgang (Tielt: Lannoo, 1950); Paul 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 30

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aspects of his thought that show his connection to Bonaventure and Eckhart, as well as the originality of his form of their shared approach to this central mystery of Chirstian faith.25 Two texts in the Twelve Beguines show Ruusbroec’s dependence on the Neoplatonic triple paradigm. Late in the treatise he speaks of the primal monê as the “Unity in love [that] is always constantly inward, unmoved, a fathomless abyss in enjoyment and blessedness.”26 Earlier in the work he analyzes the proodos and epistrophê moments of the dialectic. The unmoved Oneness, or monê, is the source of the “flux and reflux” (vloeyen ende wedervloeien) that exists in an essential way in the Trinity and then dependently in creation. He describes it as follows: “In the relations of the persons there is mutual knowledge and love, flux and reflux, between the Father and the Son by means of the Holy Spirit, who is the love of them both. But the oneness of the Holy Spirit, in whom the persons live and reign, is active in the outflowing, and fruitfully operating all things according to the free nobility, wisdom and power of the persons. But in the reflux of the persons the oneness of the Holy Spirit is enjoyably drawing inwards and containing the persons above distinction, in an enjoyment of fathomless love that God himself is in being and nature.”27 This passage contains, at least in germ, the main aspects of Ruusboec’s theology of the Trinity. First, for Ruusbroec, as for Bonaventure and Eckhart, consideration of the Trinity begins with the primacy and fecundity of the Father as the origin of the other two persons (thus putting the lie to the characteriza- tion of Western trinitarianism as always beginning from the one divine essence to move on to a treatment of the Trinity of persons). Although Ruusbroec, like Eckhart, stressed the importance of the modeless divine wesen as the ultimate goal, the hidden essence only becomes attainable through our recognition of the eternal dynamism involving both the divine essence and the divine activity that is first manifested in the Father’s primordiality as the source of the other two persons. As he put

Henry, “La mystique trinitaire de Bienheureux Jean Ruusbroec,” Recherches de science religieuse 39-40 (1951-52) 335-368, and 41 (1953) 51-75; and Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec: Mystical Theologian of the Trinity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2003). 25. On the relation of Ruusbroec to Bonaventure and Eckhart, see Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “The Franciscan Inspiration of Ruusbroec’s Mystical Theology: Ruusbroec in Dialogue with Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas,” OGE 75 (2001) 102-115; and “Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruusbroec: A Comparison,” Medieval Philosophy and The- ology 7 (1998) 157-193. 26. XII Beghinen 2b 2221-2222 (Opera Omnia 7A: 360-361). 27. XII Beghinen 2b 46-55 (Opera Omnia 7A: 156-157). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 31

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 31

it in one passage: “In the fruitful nature of the Father is an almighty God, Creator and Maker of heaven and earth and all creatures. And from his nature he bears his Son, his eternal Wisdom as one with him in nature, another in person. … And the Holy Spirit, the third person, who flows from the Father and from the Son, who is one with them in nature: that is their fathomless Love in which they are eternally embraced in love and enjoyment, and we are all with them – one life, one love, one enjoyment.”28 The primordiality of the Father, according to Ruusbroec, is always ascribed to the divine “nature” (natuere), not the divine “essence” (wesen). These terms signify the same reality, but from two different per- spectives. When he adduces various analogies or models to help in understanding the procession of the Son from the Father, Ruusbroec often makes use of a standard medieval teaching inherited from Augustine of the procession of the Son by way of Wisdom from the mutual contemplation of the “memory” that represents the Father and the “understanding” that figures the Son. Like Bonaventure and Eckhart, however, the originality of his use of this commonplace analogy rests in how it enables him to show how the emanation of divine Wisdom is the exem- plary cause of all subsequent production, especially the creation of the universe. As he puts it in the Spiritual Espousals, “For as the almighty Father has perfectly comprehended himself in the ground of his fruit- fulness, the Son, the eternal Word of the Father, has gone out as another person in the Godhead. And through the eternal birth all creatures have gone out eternally before they were created in time.”29 Ruusbroec’s emphasis on the virtual pre-existence of all things in God the Word and the trinitarian structure of created reality finds parallels in both Bonaven- ture and Eckhart, though each of these thinkers developed this aspect of dialectical trinitarianism in a different way. The final component in Ruusbroec’s doctrine of the Trinity shows even greater originality. Neither Bonaventure nor Eckhart neglected the role of the Holy Spirit as flowing forth from Father and Son and therefore as the indissoluble bond of love between the two. For Eckhart, this also meant that the Spirit is the union that links everything in the universe. In his Latin Sermon IV he puts this with typical panache: “Note that ‘All things are in him’ (Rom. 11:36) in such a way that if there is anything not in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not God.” Therefore, there can be no return to God apart from the action of the Spirit: “’All

28. Trappen VII, 1161-1172 (Opera Omnia 9: 218-220). 29. Brulocht c 127-132 (Opera Omnia 3: 586-587). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 32

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things are in’ the Holy Spirit in such a way that God is not in us nor are we in God unless in the Holy Spirit.”30 (This is why Eckhart supported the generally rejected thesis of Peter Lombard that the love given us to love God above all things is not a created gift, but is the Holy Spirit itself.) Ruusbroec went even farther. For the canon of Groenendaal the Holy Spirit is not only the bond of love between Father and Son and the gift of love that empowers our own return to the superessential Trinity, but the Spirit is also the engine of the reditus, or return, of the three persons themselves into the nameless divine essence. This regyratio or weder- boechde is summarized in the passage from the Twelve Beguines cited above where Ruusbroec says, “the oneness of the Holy Spirit, in whom the persons live and reign, is active in the outflowing, and fruitfully operating all things according to free nobility, wisdom and power of the persons. But in the reflux of the persons the oneness of the Holy Spirit is enjoyably drawing inwards and containing the persons above distinction in an enjoyment of fathomless love that God himself is in being and nature.”31 The “fathomless love that God himself is in being and nature” men- tioned in this passage from the Twelve Beguines reveals the third aspect of Ruusbroec’s contribution to mysticism: the role of what he calls “essential love” (weselijcke minne).32 The canon of Groenendaal has sometimes been described as an “essential mystic” because of the centrality of the terms wesen/overwesen and weselijcke in his vocabulary. But as the studies of Albert Deblaere, Albert Ampe, Joseph Alaerts, and Paul Mom- maers have shown, “essence” and “essential” for Ruusbroec do not indi- cate a formal scholastic ontology, but rather are meant to express the dynamism of divine love, at one and the same both a resting in perfect inner enjoyment (ghebrucken) and a ceaseless flowing out and back in the persons of the Trinity and the process of creative exitus and reditus.33 The

30. Latin Sermon (S.) IV nn. 23-25 in Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateini- schen Werke (Stuttgart/Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1936) LW 4: 24-26. 31. XII Beghinen 2b 49-55 (Opera Omnia 7A: 156-157). On the regyratio, see Van Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, 78-96. 32. Much has been written on Ruusbroec’s teaching on minne, and its relation to the erotic mysticism of Hadewijch. My own view is dependent on Barbara Gist Cook, Essential Love: The Erotic Theology of Jan van Ruusbroec (Ph.D Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000). On Ruusbroec and Hadewijch, see J. Reynaert, “Ruusbroec en Hadewijch,” OGE 55 (1981) 193-233. 33. See Albert Deblaere, “Essentiel (superessentiel, suressentiel),” Dictionnaire de spiritualité 4: 1351-1359 (hereafter DS); Albert Ampe, “Jean Ruusbroec,” DS 8: 682-690; Joseph Alaerts, “Le terminologie ‘essentielle’ dans Die gheestelike Brulocht,” OGE 49 (1975) 248-329, and 337-365; and Paul Mommaers, Mysticism Buddhist and Christian: Encounters with Jan van Ruusbroec (New York: Crossroad, 1995) 105-107. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 33

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 33

inseparability of essence and persons in God, and of activity and tran- quility, runs throughout Ruusbroec’s writings. A passage from the Seven Steps neatly summarizes his view: “Love (minne) always wants to be active, for it is an eternal work of God. Enjoyment (ghebrucken) always has to be tranquil, for it is, above willing and desiring, beloved in beloved, in bare love without images, where the Father with the Son has embraced his beloved ones in the enjoyable unity of the Holy Spirit.”34 Thus minne expresses the active aspect of divine love, while ghebrucken indicates the passive delight of the modeless loving union where the blessed “lose their spirit, melt away, flow away, and become one spirit with God in enjoyment, eternally inclined into the fathomless blessedness of his being.”35 The term weselijck minne and its equivalents express the fusion of these two moments of the dialectic into their higher synthesis. Despite Ruusbroec’s frequent use of apophatic language (often reminiscent of Eckhart), there is an important difference between the canon and the friar. God’s unknowable resting in his essence for Ruusbroec is not fundamentally the Eckhartian sense of the divine “no-thing,” but is at root a modality of ultimate love. God’s wesen certainly contains a silent resting beyond all predication, but it is enclosed, so to speak, in the total- izing nature of weselijcke minne. We can say, therefore, that Ruusbroec has a distinctive mystical metaphysics. It is not a form of “ontology” based on the primordiality of being (esse/essentia), nor an “agathology” similar to Bonaventure, who roots all reality in the overflowing of divine goodness (bonum). It also differs from Eckhart’s “henology,” which favors the transcendental term “One” (unum/ein einic ein) as “indistinct dis- tinctness” in pointing to the divine ground. Ruusbroec’s metaphysics of essential love, although it owes much to Dionysian eros and Hadewijch’s meditations on the yearning power of minne, is his own creation. Discussion of the relation between the active life of Christian love for others and the contemplative life of complete devotion to God had been a part of mystical theory since the time of Origen. Given humanity’s fallen nature and the difficulties that all activity seems to present to contemplative quiet, the main tradition in the Latin world, represented by Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux among others, held that by reason of its object the contemplative life was always higher, but that here below all Christians are called to practice both action and contemplation according to the duties of their respective vocations. The best that can be hoped for is an oscillation between action

34. Trappen VII, 1072-1076 (Opera Omnia 9: 210-211). 35. Trappen VII 1080-1083 (Opera Omnia 9: 212-213). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 34

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and contemplation in which one would feed upon and nourish the other. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, some mystics began to challenge this model, arguing for a form of life that would be able to somehow fuse action and contemplation into a higher stage. Meister Eckhart and John Tauler both advanced such arguments.36 On the basis of his theology of trinitarian love as embracing essence and activity, that is, resting in the divine wesen while being active with the minne of the persons of the Trinity, Ruusbroec worked out his own theology of how action and contemplation could be fused in what he called “the common life” (dat ghemeyne leven). The common life, which might be translated as “the generously loving life,” belongs first to God, then to the God-man as our examplar, and finally to us. A passage from the Spiritual Espousals underlines the connection between God’s “commonness” and ours. Commenting on how the “outflowing generous commonness of the divine nature” amazes a devout person, Ruusbroec says: “The commonness of God and most of all outflowing causes this person astonishment. For he sees the incomprehensible essence as a common enjoyment of God and of all the saints, and he sees the divine persons as a common outflowing and operating in grace and glory, in nature and above nature, in all places and at all times, in saints and in mor- tals…”37 In other words, the dialectical polarity of the modes of love – essential enjoyment and active loving – is rooted in God’s nature, and, for that very reason, is the goal of all our striving. Since God is “common” to all, we too must strive to be “common” in all we do.

III. Some Consequences

Ruusbroec was widely read, as the more than two hundred and thirty manuscripts of his works testify.38 His vernacular mystical theology naturally had its most potent effect on the mysticism of the Low

36. See Dietmar Mieth, Die Einheit von Vita Activa und Vita Passiva in den deutschen Predigten und Traktaten Meister Eckharts und bei Johannes Tauler (Regensburg: Pustet, 1969). 37. Brulocht b 1083-1092 (Opera Omnia 3: 410-413). Much has been written on Ruusbroec’s theme of the common life; in English, see Louis Dupré, The Common Life: The Origins of Trinitarian Mysticism and Its Development by Jan Ruusbroec (New York: Crossroad, 1984). 38. Albert Ampe, “Ruusbroec, Jan van,” Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon 8: 436-458 (at c. 439). For remarks on “The Circulation of Ruusbroec’s Works,” see Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and His Mysticism, 86-89. Ruusbroec’s influence on later writers is briefly surveyed in Verdeyen, 92-96, and by Albert Ampe, “Jean Ruusbroec,” DS 4: 695-697. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 35

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 35

Countries in the late Middle Ages.39 Ruusbroec’s impact on the later Flemish-Dutch tradition is reminiscent of the way in which Eckhart’s thought-adopted, adapted, and variously transformed-provides a (not the) major thread in German mysticism for a century and a half. In the last decades of the fourteenth century the Groenendaal community was the home of several mystical authors influenced by Ruus- broec, notably Willem Jordeans (d. 1372), the author of the Kiss of the Mouth and translator of four of Ruusbroec’s treatises into Latin. Jan van Leeuwen (d. 1378) wrote a number of mystical treatises and a sharp critique of Eckhart. Godeverd van Wevel (d. 1396) was the author of a treatise called the Twelve Virtues, which often circulated under Ruus- broec’s name (it consisted mostly of extracts from the Spiritual Espousals and Eckhart’s Counsels of Discernment). In the early fifteenth century Jan van Schoonhoven, a canon of Groenendaal who had been educated at Paris, defended Ruusbroec against the attack of Jean Gerson, the Chan- cellor of the University of Paris.40 Geert Grote (d. 1385), the founder of the devotio moderna, met Ruusbroec and praised his piety. He even translated some of his works, but he also thought that aspects of Ruusbroec’s thought stood in need of correction or should best be passed over.41 The devotio moderna was primarily a movement of moral and ascetic reform. Ruusbroec, of course, was much concerned with the ascetical and moral foundations of the mystical life, and these aspects of his writings were of some influence on the most popular work emanating from the circles of the “devout,” Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ.42 The extent to which the movement’s more mystically inclined representatives were influenced by Ruusbroec is in need of further discussion. Gerhard Zerbolt van Zutphen (d. 1398) does

39. The history of late medieval mysticism in the Low Countries is little known outside the Dutch-speaking world; see Stephanus Axters, Geschiedenis van de vroomheid in de Nederlanden, vols. II and III (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1953, 1956); and Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländische Mystik. Band IV: Die niederländische Mystik des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck, 1999). There is also a bibliographical survey by Albert Gruijs and Guido de Baere, “Les mystiques néerlandais du 13e au 15e siècle,” Contem- porary Philosophy: A New Survey (Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1990), Vol. 6: 421-439. In 2007 the Paulist Press Series “The Classics of Western Spirituality” will publish the first general anthology of texts from this period under the title Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries. 40. These authors are treated in Ruh, Geschichte IV: 83-129. See also Francis Hermans, Ruysbroeck l’Admirable et son école (Paris: Fayard, 1958). 41. On Grote and Ruusbroec, see Ruh, Geschichte IV: 156-158; Verdeyen, Ruus- broec and His Mysticism, 75-78; and especially Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Gerard Grote (1340-1384) et les débuts de la Dévotion Moderne (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1970), Chap. VI. 42. On Thomas’s use of Ruusbroec, see Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and His Mysticism, 94-95. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 36

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not seem to show a significant strain of Ruusbroec’s mystical themes, but Hendrik Mande (d. 1431), and especially Gerlach Peters (d. 1411) do.43 The extent of Ruusbroec’s impact on the later mysticism of the Low Countries is evident from his role in the two premier authors of mystical handbooks of the late fifteenth century, Denys Ryckel, or Denys the Carthusian (d. 1471), and the Franciscan Hendrik Herp (d. 1477). The immensely productive Denys was widely read by later Catholic authors, so his extensive use of Ruusbroec, whom he referred to as the doctor divi- nus and alter Dionysius, is of considerable significance.44 Hendrik Herp’s major work, the Mirror of Perfection, which was available in both Dutch and Latin versions, is so dependent on Ruusbroec that some have characterized it as an extended gloss on the canon’s treatises. Given the pop- ularity of the work in Catholic mysticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Mirror was almost as important as the Latin translations in transmitting knowledge of Ruusbroec to the broader mystical tradition.45 Finally, the premier Dutch-language mystic of the sixteenth century, the anonymous women who wrote the Evangelical Pearl and the Temple of the Soul, also mined Ruusbroec’s works to a significant degree, though further study is needed to determine the details of the relation between the two mystics.46 The international role of Ruusbroec’s thought is complex. Despite a good deal of research, many chapters in this history have yet to be fully investigated and we lack a systematic account.47 The crucial issue in the dissemination of vernacular theology to the wider world of Western

43. Gerlach Peters is surprisingly absent from Ruh’s Geschichte IV. The recent crit- ical edition of his Soliloquium in Gerlaci Petri Opera Omnia, ed. Mikel M. Kors, CCCM, 155 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), discusses the influence of Ruusbroec on 106-111. 44. On Denys and Ruusbroec, see Kent Emery, Jr., “The Carthusians, Interme- diaries for the Teaching of John Ruysbroeck during the Period of Early Reform and in the Counter-Reformation,” Analecta Carthusiana 43 (1973) 100-129, especially 101- 116. For a general introduction to Denys’s role in spirituality and mysticism, see Anselme Stoelen, “Denys le Chartreux,” DS 3: 430-449. 45. On Herp, or Harphius as he was known in Latin, see Emery, “The Carthu- sians, Intermediaries for the Teaching,” 116-125; Ruh, Geschichte IV: 219-228; and Etta Gullick and Optat de Veghel, “Herp (Henri de; Harphius),” DS 7: 346-366. Jean Dagens, Bibliographie chronologique de la littérature de spiritualité et de ses sources (1501-1605) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1952), lists nine editions of works of Harphius during this period. 46. On this mystical author, see Ruh, Geschichte IV: 291-312; and Albert Ampe, “Perle évangélique (De evangelische peerle),” DS 12: 1159-1169. The Pearl was first printed in Dutch at Antwerp in 1537; translations into Latin, French, and German were made. 47. Many references to Ruusbroec’s role in the mysticism of early modernity can be found in Louis Cognet, La spiritualité moderne. I. L’essor: 1500-1650 (Paris: Aubier, 1966). 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 37

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 37

Christendom, as noted above, was translation into Latin, although ren- derings from one vernacular into another, or translations from a Latin version into the vernacular also played a part. Ruusbroec was fortunate to have several Latin translators. Despite the attack of Gerson, Willem Jordaens’s version of the Spiritual Espousals was printed in Paris in 1512 with a prefatory letter by Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples.48 Other versions of individual treatises also were printed over the next century.49 By far the most important translation, however, was the version of all Ruusbroec’s writings issued by the Carthusian Laurentius Surius at Cologne in 1552 as part of a conscious program of German Catholic reform and spiritual renewal prior to the triumph of the Tridentine Counter-Reformation.50 It was in large part through Surius that Ruusbroec became available to a wide audience throughout early modern Europe. Although two of Ruusbroec’s treatises were translated into Middle English, he did not play a large part in English mysticism.51 Nor was he appear to have been well known in Italy.52 Germany, however, was a important foyer of Ruusbroec’s international fame. The story of John Tauler’s journey to meet the Groenendaal mystic seems to be leg- endary, but the interest of Tauler and the Friends of God, including Rulman Merswin, in Ruusbroec’s works was real, as the translation of

48. There is a modern edition by Kees Schepers, Ioannis Rusbrochii De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum Wilhelmo Iordani interprete, CCCM, 207 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). The prefatory letter is translated in Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Related Texts (New York: Columbia, 1972) 276-280. 49. E.g., the De septem scalae divinae amoris in the translation of Grote appeared at Bologna in 1538, and a French version of the Brulocht entitled L’ornement des noces spirituelles at Toulouse in 1606 (see Dagens, Bibliographie chronologique, 86, and 182). 50. See Gérald Chaix, “L’édition de 1552 et la réception de Ruusbroec au XVIe siècle,” Jan van Ruusbroec: The Sources, Content and Sequels of His Mysticism (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1984) 142-152; and in more detail the same author’s Réforme et Contre-réforme catholiques: Recherches sur la Chartreuse de Cologne au XVIe siècle, 3 vols., Analecta Carthusiana, 80 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1982). For a sketch of Surius, see Augustin Devaux, “Surius (Sauer, Laurent),” DS 14: 1325-1329. The edition of 1552 was reprinted in 1609 and 1692, and in a modern photographic format in 1967. For a defense of Surius as a translator, see Guido de Baere, “Die neue Ruusbroec-Edition,” Studies in Spirituality 2 (1993) 269-287. 51. See The Chastising of God’s Children and the Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, Edited from the Manuscripts by Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). The former, containing excerpts from the Spiritual Espousals relating to false mysticism and the discernment of spirits, exists in fourteen manuscripts and appears to date from about 1380. The latter is a version of the Sparkling Stone made in the early fifteenth century and found in only a single manuscript. Both versions were made from Jordaens’s Latin text. 52. On Ruusbroec in Italy, see Romana Guarnieri, “Per la fortuna di Ruusbroec in Italia: Le sorprese di un codice Vaticano,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 6 (1952) 333-364. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 38

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the Spiritual Espousals and several other treatises into Middle High German shortly after 1350 testifies.53 Nevertheless, it is not clear that Ruusbroec had a strong influence on German mysticism of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though he was known to the Fran- ciscan mystical preacher Marquard of Lindau (d. 1392) and was cited by the Benedictine John of Kastl (d. ca. 1430), the author of the popular Latin treatise often ascribed to Albert the Great, the De adhaerendo Deo. In the seventeenth century, however, Ruusbroec found diligent and appreciative readers among Protestants, especially the Schwenk- felder Daniel Sudermann (d. 1631) and the Pietist Gottfried Arnold (d. 1714). Both men were responsible for a series of new translations of Ruusbroec into German.54 Catholic mystics did not totally neglect the Dutch canon’s writings, however, as the example of Angelus Silesius (d. 1677) demonstrates. The impact of Ruusbroec on the mysticism of Spain’s Golden Age in the sixteenth century remains to be fully investigated, despite contri- butions made over the past eighty years. Pierre Groult studied the reception of the Dutch mystics in Spain during the period 1475-1550, show- ing the importance of Denys the Carthusian and Harphius.55 Other scholars have investigated the relation between the German and Dutch mystics and John of the Cross.56 Helmut Hatzfeld, for example, showed how certain aspects of John’s vocabulary, such as describing God as foun- tain and speaking of the divine touches, seems to be developed from images found in Ruusbroec.57 Nevertheless, it would seem to be going

53. See Thom Mertens, “Ruusbroec onder de Godsvrienden,” Die spätmittelalter- liche Rezeption niederländischer Literatur im deutschen Sprachgebiet, ed. Rita Schlusemann and Paul Wackers (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997) 109-130. 54. See Peter C. Erb, “The Use of Ruusbroec among German Protestants,” Jan van Ruusbroec: The Sources…, 153-175. Erb shows how these Protestant authors used Ruus- broec very much for their own purposes. Daniel Sudermann’s efforts to collect and edited medieval texts form a noteworthy chapter in the history of Western mysticism; for an introduction, see Monica Pieper, “Sudermann (Daniel),” DS 14: 1290-1292. 55. Pierre Groult, Les mystiques des Pays-Bas et la litérature espagnole du seizième siè- cle (Louvain: Librairie universitaire, 1927). 56. In English, see Mediaeval Mystical Tradition and Saint John of the Cross, by A Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey (London: Burns & Oates, 1954), which treats Ruysbroeck on 124-129, arguing, “… although their works show features in common, there is really little evidence that John was more indebted to Ruysbroeck than to certain others.” See also Léonce Reypens, “Ruusbroec en Juan de la Cruz,” OGE 5 (1931) 143- 185; and Jean Orcibal, Saint Jean de la Croix et les mystiques rhéno-flamands (Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1966). 57. Helmut A. Hatzfeld, “The Influence of Ramon Lull and Jan van Ruysbroeck on the Language of the Spanish Mystics,” Traditio 4 (1946) 337-397. This study was later included in Hatzfeld’s Estudios literarios sobre mística española (Madrid: Gredos, 31976), Chap. 2. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 39

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 39

too far to speak of Ruusbroec as a major source for the Carmelite mystic. It is interesting to note, for example, that while John worked out a fully-trinitarian mystical teaching, he did so very much on his own without indebtedness to the Flemish canon’s special form of dynamic Neo- platonic trinitarianism. Even less evidence exists for any important direct link between Ruusbroec and Teresa of Avila.58 Teresa of Avila, like Ruus- broec, taught that the highest stage of the mystical life fuses action and contemplation, but she did so without making any reference to the canon’s notion of the common life. Neither Teresa or John ever men- tioned Ruusbroec by name to the best of my knowledge. Ruusbroec’s reception in France was of greater importance. The history is complicated and can only be briefly noted. The attack on Ruusbroec’s orthodoxy by Jean Gerson has been exhaustively studied in the lengthy volumes of André Combes.59 The assault continued to have echoes in the sixteenth century, when the Spanish Dominican Melchior Cano (d. 1560) and Mercurian Everard (d. 1580), the Jesuit General, both cautioned the Jesuits against reading a number of mystical authors, including Ruusbroec.60 These strictures notwithstanding, Ruusbroec’s writings in both Latin and French translation played a notable role in French mysticism of the late sixteenth and into the seventeenth century.61 A central figure was the English Capuchin, Benet Canfield (d. 1610), whose migration to the continent and subsequent role in the beginnings of French mysticism have been subject to renewed research.62

58. Ruusbroec does not appear in the investigation of Teresa’s sources in Gaston Etchegoyen, L’amour divin: Essai sur les sources de Sainte Thérèse (Paris: Broccard, 1923). 59. André Combes, Essai sur la critique de Ruysbroeck par Gerson, 4 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1945-72). Gerson’s two major letters criticizing Ruusbroec can be found in vol. 1. Introduction critique et dossier documentaire: “Epistola I ad Bartholomaeum” of 1402 (pp. 615-635), and “Epistola II ad Bartholomaeum” of 1408 (pp. 790-804). For the issues, see Ruh, Geschichte IV: 78-82. There is a survey of the dispute and its literature by Kees Schepers, “Introduction,” Ioannis Rusbrochii De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum, 64-85. 60. On Melchior Cano’s letter of 1556, see Groult, Les mystiques des Pays-Bays, 73. Everard’s letter decree of 1576 is discussed by Joseph de Guibert, La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus: Esquisse historique (Rome: Institutum Historicum, 1953) 204-208. It is worth noting that in the wake of the Council of Trent even some of Harphius’s works were put on the Index until corrected. 61. For a survey of the French translators of the mysticism of the Low Countries, see Jean-Pierre Van Schoote, “Les traducteurs français des mystiques rhéno-flamandes et leur contribution à l’élaboration de la langue dévote à l’aube du XVIIe siècle,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 39 (1963) 119-137; and Dom J. Huijben, “Aux sources de la spiritualité française du XVIIe siècle,” Supplément à la “Vie Spirituelle” 25 (1930) [113- 139]; 26 (1931) [17-46], and [75-111]; 27 (1931) [20-42], and [94-122]. 62. See Paul Mommaers, “Benoît de Canfield: Sa terminologie ‘essentielle’,” Revue d’histoire de spiritualité 47 (1971) 421-454; and “Benoît de Canfield et ses sources flamandes,” Revue d’histoire de spiritualité 48 (1972) 401-434, and 49 (1973) 37-66; Kent 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 40

40 BERNARD MCGINN

Canfield was a member of the group around the pious noblewoman Barbe Acarie (d. 1622), a circle at the origins of the great age of French mysticism. Another member of this circle, the Carthusian Richard Beaucousin (d. 1610), translated both Ruusbroec’s Spiritual Espousals (1606) and the Evangelical Pearl (1602) into French.63 The extent to which the major French mystics of the seventeenth century, such as Francis de Sales (d. 1622), Pierre de Bérulle (d. 1629), John of St. Samson (d. 1636), and Jean-Joseph Surin (d. 1655), read and used Ruusbroec cannot be evaluated here. Much work remains to be done, but there is no question that Ruusbroec’s writings were known and highly appreciated. To cite but one example: the English Benedictine, Dom Augustine Baker (d. 1641), long resident in the French milieu of Douai and Cambrai, wrote a massive mystical textbook in two volumes, Holy Wisdom, published in 1657. In one place, lamenting the fact that in so many religious houses active spirits prevail over those given over to the contemplation for which the religious life was primarily intended, he notes that this “has happened even since contemplative prayer has been restored by persons extraordinarily raised by God, as Ruusbroec, Tauler, St. Teresa, and the like.”64 With regard to the four areas identified above as essential to Ruus- broec’s mysticism, it is difficult to claim that any single one of these exer- cised a decisive influence on later mystical traditions. The canon’s striking theology of the Trinity, the foundation of his thought, is found among some of his followers, but was not developed in any meaningful way. Mys- tics such as Jordaens, Peters, Herp, and the Pearl author, recognized the centrality of the Trinity in the mystical life and used aspects of Ruus- broec’s teaching, they do not appear to have grasped the depth and originality of his doctrine. Ruusbroec’s sophisticated critique of the Free Spirit claims to have attained indistinct union with God were noted by his defenders at Groenendaal to rebut the claims of Gerson, but not much studied after that. The issue of the relation of the active and contemplative lives remained of moment in late medieval and early modern mysticism, and many mystics agreed with Ruusbroec that a combination of both action and contemplation was the goal toward which the mystical

Emery, Jr., Renaissance Dialectic and Renaissance Piety: Benet of Canfield’s Rule of Perfec- tion: A Translation and Study (Binghamton, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987), especially 60-68; and Daniel Vidal, Critique de la Raison mystique: Benoît de Can- field: Possession et dépossession au XVIIe siècle (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1990). 63. M. Viller, “Beaucousin (Richard),” DS 1: 1314-1315. 64. Ven. Father F. Augustin Baker, Holy Wisdom, Or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, n.d.) 174. 9770-07_LouvainStud_06-1_02 21-02-2007 09:09 Pagina 41

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RUUSBROEC’S MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 41

life was directed. A few Dutch mystics expressed this fusion using Ruus- broec’s vocabulary of the “common life,” but this approach was not developed outside the mysticism of the Low Countries, probably because Ruus- broec’s solution was so tied to his Flemish language. In short, Ruusbroec remained a substantial authority on the mystical life for the next three centuries, but his impact, outside a few figures, seems to have been sporadic and piecemeal. This uneven reception of the great mystic, however, does not provide a full answer to the question, “What difference did Ruusbroec make?” Although we cannot say that Ruusbroec was one of those figures, like Augustine, Bernard, or Bonaventure, whose thought was almost uni- versally known, he was widely read and was doubtless far more influen- tial than the explicit references in later thinkers reveal. In the case of the canon from Groenendaal, as with many other mystics, we must make the judgment of significance primarily on the basis of the individual’s thought as an ongoing resource for the contemplative life. Hence, the revival of interest in Ruusbroec over the past century, as well as the increasing recognition of his stature, form the best witness to his classic status. We should, however, resist the temptation to try to measure Ruusbroec’s thought against those of his contemporaries and followers, granting him some kind of “gold medal” for his achievement. The history of mysticism is not a matter of awarding prizes, but rather of seeking to understand how different thinkers have wrestled with the impossible but necessary task of teaching others to open themselves up to the ever-deepening pursuit of the mystery of God. Ruusbroec’s efforts in pursuit of this task were theologically sophisticated, highly-admired, but difficult to dupli- cate. His significance, therefore, is perhaps more truly realized in his inimitability than in his imitators.

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor emeritus in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He has written extensively on many areas of patristic and medieval theology, especially in the history of apoc- alypticism and of mystical traditions. His current long-range project is a five- volume history of Christian mysticism in the West under the general title The Presence of God, three volumes of which have appeared: The Origins of Mysticism; The Growth of Mysticism; and The Flowering of Mysticism. Address: The Uni- versity of Chicago Divinity School, 1025 East 58th Street, Swift Hall, Chicago, Illinois 60637, U.S.A.