THE SUPERESSENTIAL LIFE
If, therefore, thou art become the throne of God and the Heavenly
Charioteer hath seated Himself within thee, and thy soul is wholly
become a spiritual eye and is wholly made into light; if, too, thou art
nourished with the heavenly food of that Spirit and hast drunk of the
Living Water and put on the secret vesture of light--if thine inward
man has experienced all these things and is established in abundant
faith, lo! thou livest indeed the Eternal Life and thy soul rests even
in this present time with the Lord.
St. Macarius of Egypt.
We have seen that Ruysbroeck, in common with a few other supreme mystics,
declares to us as veritably known and experienced by him, a universe of
three orders--Becoming, Being, God--and further, three ways of life
whereby the self can correspond to these three orders, and which he calls
the life of nature, the life of grace, the life of glory. 'Glory,' which
has been degraded by the usage of popular piety into a vague superlative,
and finally left in the hands of hymn-writers and religious revivalists,
is one of the most ancient technical terms of Christian mysticism. Of
Scriptural origin, from the fourth century to the fifteenth it was used
to denote a definite kind of enhanced life, a final achievement of
Reality--the unmediated radiance of God--which the gift of 'divine
sonship' made possible to the soul. In the life of grace, that soul
transcends conditions in virtue of a Divine vitality poured in from the
Absolute Sphere, and actualises its true being, (_Wesen_); in the life of
glory, it becomes a denizen of that sphere, and achieves an existence
that is 'more than being' (_Overwesen_). The note of the first state is
contemplation, awareness; the note of the second is fruition, possession.
That power of making 'swift and loving ascents' to the plane of _Onwise_
to which man attained at the end of the Interior Life, that conscious
harmony with the Divine Will which then became the controlling factor of
his active career, cannot be the end of the process of transcendence. The
soul now hungers and thirsts for a more intense Reality, a closer contact
with 'Him who is measureless'; a deeper and deeper penetration into the
burning heart of the universe. Though contemplation seems to have reached
its term, love goes on, to 'lose itself upon the heights.' Beyond both
the conditioned and unconditioned world, beyond the Trinity Itself, that
love discerns its ultimate objective--the very Godhead, the Divine Unity,
"where all lines find their end"; where "we are satisfied and
overflowing, and with Him beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled."[68] The
abiding life which is there discoverable, is not only 'without manner'
but 'above manner'--the 'deified life,' indescribable save by the oblique
methods of music or poetry, wherein, in Maeterlinck's great phrase, "the
psychology of man mingles with the psychology of God." All Ruysbroeck's
most wonderful passages are concerned with the desperate attempt to tell
us of this 'life,' this utter fruition of Reality: which seems at one
time to involve for the contemplative consciousness a self-mergence in
Deity, so complete as to give colour to that charge of pantheism which is
inevitably flung at all mystics who try to tell what they have known; at
others, to represent rather the perfect consummation of that 'union in
separateness' which is characteristic of all true love.
This is but one instance of that perpetual and inevitable resort to
paradox which torments all who try to follow him along this 'track
without shadow of trace'; for the goal towards which he is now enticing
us is one in which all the completing opposites of our fragmentary
experience find their bourne. Hence the rapid alternation of spatial and
personal symbols which confuses our industrious intellects, is the one
means whereby he can suggest its actuality to our hungry hearts.
As we observed in Ruysbroeck's earlier teaching on contemplation three
distinct forms, in which the special work that theology attributes to the
three Divine Persons seemed to him to be reflected; now, in this
Superessential Contemplation, or Fruition, we find the work of the
Absolute Godhead Itself, energising upon a plane of intensity which so
utterly transcends our power of apprehension, that it seems to the
surface consciousness--as Dionysius the Areopagite had named it--a
negation of all things, a Divine Dark.
This Fruition, says Ruysbroeck, "is wild and desolate as a desert, and
therein is to be found no way, no road, no track, no retreat, no measure,
no beginning, no end, nor any other thing that can be told in words. And
this is for all of us Simple Blessedness, the Essence of God and our
superessence, above reason and beyond reason. To know it we must be in
it, beyond the mind and above our created being; in that Eternal Point
where all our lines begin and end, that Point where they lose their name
and all distinction, and become one with the Point itself, and that very
One which the Point is, yet nevertheless ever remain in themselves nought
else but lines that come to an end."[69]
What, then, is the way by which the soul moves from that life of intense
contemplation in which the 'spreading light' of the Spirit shows her the
universe fulfilled with God, to this new transfigured state of joy and
terror? It is a way for which her previous adventures might have prepared
us. As each new ascent, new inflow of grace, was prepared by a time of
destitution and stress--as the compensating beats of love and
renunciation have governed the evolving melody of the inner life--so here
a last death of selfhood, a surrender more absolute than all that has
gone before, must be the means of her achievement of absolute life.
"Dying, and behold I live!" says Paul of his own attainment of supernal
life in Christ. Ruysbroeck, who never strays far from the vital and
heroic mysticism of the New Testament saints, can find no other language
for this last crisis of the spirit--its movement from the state of
_Wesen_ to that of _Overwesen_--than the language of death. The
ever-moving line, though its vital character of duration continues, now
seems to itself to swoon into the Point; the separate entity which has
felt the flood of grace pour into it to energise its active career, and
the ebb of homeward-tending love draw it back towards the One, now feels
itself pouring into the Infinite Sea. Our personal activity, he says, has
done all that it can: as the separate career of Christ our Pattern closed
with His voluntary death, so the death of our selfhood on that apex of
personality where we have stretched up so ardently toward the Father,
shall close the separate career of the human soul and open the way to its
new, God-driven career, its resurrection-life. "None is sure of Eternal
Life unless he has died with all his own attributes wholly into
God"[70]--all else falls short of the demands of supreme generosity.
It is _The Book of the Sparkling Stone_ which contains Ruysbroeck's most
wonderful descriptions of the consciousness peculiar to these souls who
have grown up to 'the fulness of the stature of Christ'; and since this
is surely the finest and perhaps the least known of his writings, I offer
no apology for transcribing a long passage from its ninth chapter: 'How
we may become the Hidden Sons of God.'
"When we soar up above ourselves, and become, in our upward striving
towards God, so simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold
on us, there where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue
(that is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)--then
we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death
we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, and that
is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: 'Ye are dead, and your
life is hid with Christ in God.' In our approach to God we must bear with
us ourselves and all that we do, as a perpetual sacrifice to God; and in
the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, and, dying
in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom
of God. And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden
Things, saying: 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.'... If we
would _taste_ God, and feel in ourselves Eternal Life above all things,
we must go forth into God with a faith that is far above our reason, and
there dwell, simple, idle, without image, lifted up by love into the
Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence. For when we go out from ourselves
in love, and die to all observances in ignorance and darkness, then we
are made complete, and transfigured by the Eternal Word, Image of the
Father. And in this emptiness of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible
Light, which enfolds and penetrates us as air is penetrated by the light
of the sun; and this Light is nought else but a fathomless gazing and
seeing. What we are, that we gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are.
For our thought, our life, our being, are lifted up in simplicity, and
united with the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this simple gazing we
are one life and one spirit with God--and this I call the _seeing
life_."[71]
Such a passage as this lies beyond our poor attempts at analysis. Those
only will understand it who yield themselves to it; entering into its
current, as we enter into the music that we love. It tells us all it can
of this life which is 'more than being,' as _felt_ in the supreme
experience of love. Life and Death, Dark and Light, Idleness,
Bareness--these are but images of the feeling-states that accompany it.
But here, more than elsewhere in Ruysbroeck's writings, we must remember
the peril which goes with all subjective treatment of mystical truth.
Each state which the unitive mystic experiences is so intense, that it
monopolises for the time being his field of consciousness. Writing under
the 'pressure of the Spirit' he writes of it--as indeed it seems to him
at the moment--as ultimate and complete. Only by a comparison of
different and superficially inconsistent descriptions of this enhanced
life--which must harmonise and fulfil _all_ the needs of our complex
personality, providing inexhaustible objectives for love, intelligence
and will--can we form any true idea concerning it.
When we do this, we discover that the side of it which _seems_ a static
beatitude, still Fruition, perfect Rest, is always balanced by the other
side; which _seems_ a perpetual and progressive attainment, a seeking and
finding, a hungering and feeding, a giving and taking. These coexist; as
the ever-renewed 'coming of the Bridegroom,' the welling-up of the
Spirit, the stormy, eager, unsatisfied love of the soul do as a matter of
experience coexist within that perfect and personal union wherein Love
and Fruition, as Ruysbroeck puts it, 'live between action and rest.' The
alternate consciousness of the line and the Point, the moving river and
the Sea, the relative and the Absolute, persists so long as consciousness
persists at all; it is no Christianised Nirvana into which he seeks to
induct us, but that mysterious synthesis of Being and Becoming, 'eternal
stillness and eternal work'--a movement into God which is already a
complete achievement of Him--which certain other great mystics have
discerned beyond the 'flaming ramparts' of the common life.
The unbreakable unity with God, which constitutes the mark of the Third
Life, exists in the 'essential ground of the soul'; where the river flows
into the Sea, the line into the Point; where the pendulum of self has its
attachment to Reality. _There_, the hidden child of the Absolute is 'one
with God in restful fruition'; there, his deep intuition of Divine
things--that 'Savouring Wisdom' which is the last supreme gift of the
Spirit[72]--is able to taste and apprehend the sweetness of Infinite
Reality. But at the other end, where he still participates in the
time-process, where his love and will are a moving river, consciousness
hungers for that total Attainment still; and attention will swing between
these two extremes, now actualised within the living soul, which has put
on the dual character of 'Divine Humanity' and is living Eternal Life,
not in some far-off celestial region, but here, where Christ lived it, in
the entangled world of Time. Thus active self-mergence, incessant
re-birth into God, perpetual eager feeding on Him, is implicit in all
spiritual life. Even for the souls of the 'deified,' quietism is never
right. "For love cannot be lazy, but would search through and through,
and taste through and through, the fathomless kingdom that lives in her
ground; and this hunger shall _never_ be stilled."[73]
The soul, whenever it attends to itself--withdraws itself, so to speak,
from the Divine Synthesis, dwells in itself, and beholds instead of
being--feels again the 'eternal unrest of love'; the whip of the Heavenly
Charioteer, driving all spirits in towards the heart of God, where they
are 'one fire with Him.' "This stirring, that mediates between ourselves
and God, we can never pass beyond; and what that stirring is in its
essence, and what love is in itself, we can never know."[74] But when it
dwells beyond itself, and in the supreme moments of ecstasy merges its
consciousness in the Universal Consciousness, it transcends succession
and centres itself in the Divine Selfhood--the 'still, glorious, and
absolute One-ness.' Then it feels, not hunger but satisfaction, not
desire but fruition; and knows itself beyond reason 'one with the abysmal
depth and breadth,' in "a simple fathomless savouring of all good and of
Eternal Life. And in this savouring we are swallowed up, above reason and
beyond reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead which is never
moved."[75]
Such experiences however, such perfect fruition, in which the self dies
into the overwhelming revelation of the Transcendent, and its rhythm is
merged in the Divine Rhythm, cannot be continuous for those still living
in the flesh. There is in Ruysbroeck no foolish insistence on any
impossible career of ceaseless ecstasy; but a robust acceptance of the
facts and limitations of life. Man cannot, he says, "perpetually
contemplate with attention the superessential Being of God in the Light
of God. But whosoever has attained to the gift of Intelligence [_i.e._
the sixth of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit] attains this power, which
becomes habitual to him; and whensoever he will, he can wholly absorb
himself in this manner of contemplation, in so far as it is possible in
this life."[76]
The superessential man, in fact, is, as Francis Thompson said of the
soul, a
"... swinging-wicket set
Between
The Unseen and Seen."
He is to move easily and at will between these two orders, both actual,
both God-inhabited, the complementary expressions of One Love;
participating both in the active, industrious, creative outflow in
differentiation, and the still indrawing attraction which issues in the
supreme experience of Unity. For these two movements the Active and
Interior Lives have educated him. The truly characteristic experience of
the Third Life is the fruition of that Unity or Simplicity in which they
are harmonised, beyond the balanced consciousness of the indrawing and
outdrawing tides.[77]
Ruysbroeck discerns three moments in this achievement. First, a negative
movement, the introversive sinking-down of our created life into God's
absolute life, which is the consummation of self-naughting and surrender
and the essence of dark contemplation. Next, the positive ecstatic
stretching forth above reason into our 'highest life,' where we undergo
complete transmutation in God and feel ourselves wholly enfolded in Him.
Thirdly, from these 'completing opposites' of surrender and love springs
the perfect fruition of Unity, so far as we may know it here; when "we
feel ourselves to be one with God, and find ourselves transformed of God,
and immersed in the fathomless Abyss of our Eternal Blessedness, where we
can find no further separation between ourselves and God. So long as we
are lifted up and stretched forth into this height of feeling, all our
powers remain idle, in an essential fruition; for where our powers are
utterly naughted, there we lose our activity. And so long as we remain
idle, without observation, with outstretched spirit and open eyes, so
long can we see and have fruition. But in that same moment in which we
would test and comprehend _What_ that may be which we feel, we fall back
upon reason; and there we find distinction and otherness between God and
ourselves, and find God as an Incomprehensible One exterior to us."[78]
It is clear from this passage that such 'utterness' of fruition is a
fleeting experience; though it is one to which the unitive mystic can
return again and again, since it exists as a permanent state in his
essential ground, ever discoverable by him when attention is focussed
upon it. Further, it appears that the 'absence of difference' between God
and the soul, which the mystic in these moments of ecstasy feels and
enjoys, is a psychological experience, not an absolute truth. It is the
only way in which his surface-mind is able to realise on the one side the
overwhelming apprehension of God's Love, that 'Yes' in which all other
syllables are merged; on the other the completeness of his being's
self-abandonment to the Divine embrace--"that Superessential Love with
which we are one, and which we possess more deeply and widely than any
other thing."[79] It was for this experience that Thomas à Kempis prayed
in one of his most Ruysbroeckian passages: "When shall I at full gather
myself in Thee, that for Thy love I feel not myself, but Thee only, above
all feeling and all manner, in a _manner not known to all_?"[80] It is to
this same paradoxical victory-in-surrender--this apparent losing which is
the only real finding--that Francis Thompson invites the soul:
"To feel thyself and be
His dear nonentity--
Caught
Beyond human thought
In the thunder-spout of Him,
Until thy being dim,
And be
Dead deathlessly."
Now here it is, in these stammered tidings of an adventure 'far outside
and beyond our spirit,' in 'the darkness at which reason gazes with wide
eyes,'[81] that we must look for the solution of that problem which all
high mystic states involve for analytic thought: how can the human soul
become one with God 'without intermediary, beyond all separation,'[82]
yet remain eternally distinct from Him? How can the 'deification,' the
'union with God without differentiation' on which the great mystics
insist, be accepted, and pantheism be denied?
First, we notice that in all descriptions of Unity given us by the
mystics, there is a strong subjective element. Their first concern is
always with the experience of the heart and will, not with the deductions
made by the intelligence. It is at our own peril that we attach
ontological meaning to their convinced and vivid psychological
statements. Ruysbroeck in particular makes this quite clear to us; says
again and again that he has '_felt_ unity without difference and
distinction,' yet that he _knows_ that 'otherness' has always remained,
and "that this is true we can only know by feeling it, and in no other
way."[83]
In certain great moments, he says, the purified and illuminated soul
which has died into God does achieve an Essential Stillness; which seems
to human thought a static condition, for it is that Eternal Now of the
Godhead which embraces in its span the whole process of Time. Here we
find nothing but God: the naked and ultimate Fact or Superessential Being
'whence all Being has come forth,' stripped of academic trimmings and
experienced in its white-hot intensity. Here, far beyond the range of
thought, unity and otherness, like hunger and fulfilment, activity and
rest, _can_ co-exist in love. The ultimate union is a love-union, says
Ruysbroeck. "The Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of
ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God, where we are satisfied
and overflowing, and with Him, beyond ourselves, eternally
fulfilled."[84]
This hungry and desirous love, at once a personal passion and a cosmic
force, drenches, transfigures and unites with the soul, as sunlight does
the air, as fire does the iron flung into the furnace; so that the molten
metal 'changed into another glory' is both iron and fire 'ever distinct
yet ever united'--an antique image of the Divine Union which he takes
direct from a celebrated passage in St. Bernard's works. "As much as is
iron, so much is fire; and as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the
iron doth not become fire, nor the fire iron, but each retains its
substance and nature. So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
but is deified, and knows itself breadth, length, height and depth: and
as far as God is God, so far the loving spirit is made one with Him in
love."[85] The iron, the air, represent our created essence; the fire,
the sunlight, God's Essence, which is added to our own--our
_superessence_. The two are held in a union which, when we try to see it
under the symbolism of space, appears a mingling, a self-mergence; but,
when we feel it under the symbolism of personality, is a marriage in
which the lover and beloved are 'distinct yet united.' "Then are we one
being, one love, and one beatitude with God ... a joy so great and
special that we cannot even think of any other joy. For then one is one's
self a Fruition of Love, and can and should want nothing beyond one's
own."[86]
It follows from all this that when the soul, coming to the Fourth State
of Fruitive Love, enters into the Equilibrium which supports and
penetrates the flux, it does and must reconcile the opposites which have
governed the earlier stages of its career. The communion reached is with
a Wholeness; the life which flows from it must be a wholeness too. Full
surrender, harmonised with full actualisation of all our desires and
faculties; not some thin, abstract, vertical relation alone, but an
all-round expansion, a full, deep, rich giving and taking, a complete
correspondence with the infinitely rich, all-demanding and all-generous
God whose "love is measureless for it is Himself." Thus Ruysbroeck
teaches that love static and love dynamic must coexist for us as for Him;
that the 'eternal hunger and thirst' of the God-demanding soul continues
within its ecstatic satisfaction; because, however deeply it may love and
understand, the Divine Excess will always baffle it. It is destined 'ever
to go forward within the Essence of God,' to grow without ceasing deeper
and deeper into this life, in "the eternal longing to follow after and
attain Him Who is measureless." "And we learn this truth from His sight:
that all we taste, in comparison with that which remains out of our
reach, is no more than a single drop of water compared with the whole
sea.... We hunger for God's Infinity, which we cannot devour, and we
aspire to His Eternity, which we cannot attain.... In this storm of love,
our activity is above reason and is in no wise. Love desires that which
is impossible to her; and reason teaches that love is within her rights,
but can neither counsel nor persuade her."[87]
Hence an eternal desire and an eternal satisfaction are preserved within
the circle of the deified life. The full-grown self feels, in its most
intense degree, the double movement of the Divine Love and Light, the
flux and reflux; and in its perfect and ever-renewed responses to the
'indrawing and outflowing attraction' of that Tide, the complete
possession of the Superessential Life consists.
"The indrawing attraction drags us out of ourselves, and calls us to be
melted away and naughted in the Unity. And in this indrawing attraction
we feel that God wills that we should be His, and for this we must
abnegate ourselves and let our beatitude be accomplished in Him. But when
He attracts us by flowing out towards us, He gives us over to ourselves
and makes us free, and sets us in Time."[88]
Thus is accomplished that paradoxical synthesis of 'Eternal Rest and
Eternal Work' which Ruysbroeck regards as the essential character of God,
and towards which the whole of his system has been educating the human
soul. The deified or 'God-formed' soul is for him the spirit in which
this twofold ideal is actualised: this is the Pattern, the Likeness of
God, declared in Christ our Archetype, towards which the Indwelling
Spirit presses the race. Though there are moments in which, carried away
as it seems by his almost intolerable ecstasy, he pushes out towards
'that unwalled Fruition of God,' where all fruition begins and ends,
where 'one is all and all is one,' and Man is himself a 'fruition of
love';[89] yet he never forgets to remind us that, as love is not love
unless it looks forward towards the creation of new life, so here, "when
love falls in love with love, and each is all to the other in possession
and in rest," the _object_ of this ecstasy is not a permanent self-loss
in the Divine Darkness, a 'slumbering in God,' but a "new life of virtue,
such as love and its impulses demand."[90] "To be a living, willing Tool
of God, wherewith God works what He will and how He will," is the goal of
transcendence described in the last chapter of _The Sparkling Stone_.
"Then is our life a _whole_, when contemplation and work dwell in us side
by side, and we are perfectly in both of them at once";[91] for then the
separate spirit is immersed in, and part of, the perpetual creative act
of the Godhead--the flowing forth and the drawing back, which have at
their base the Eternal Equilibrium, the unbroken peace, wherein "God
contemplates Himself and all things in an Eternal Now that has neither
beginning nor end."[92] On that Unbroken Peace the spirit hangs; and
swings like a pendulum, in wide arcs of love and service, between the
Unconditioned and the Conditioned Worlds.
So the Superessential Life is the simple, the synthetic life, in which
man actualises at last all the resources of his complex being. The active
life of response to the Temporal Order, the contemplative life of
response to the Transcendent Order are united, firmly held together, by
that 'eternal fixation of the spirit'; the perpetual willed dwelling of
the being of man within the Incomprehensible Abyss of the Being of God,
_qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I. Flemish Text
_Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec_. Ed. J. David. 6 vols. (Maetschappy der
Vlaemsche Bibliophilen). (Gent, 1858-68.)
This edition, based on the MSS. preserved at Brussels and Ghent, and the
foundation of all the best translations, is now rare. It may be consulted
at the British Museum.
A re-issue of the Flemish text is now in progress; the first volume being
_Jan van Ruysbroeck, Van den VII. Trappen_ (i.e. _The Seven Degrees of
Love_) _met Geert Groote's latijnsche Vertaling_. Ed. Dom. Ph. Müller
(Brussels, 1911).
II. Translations
A. _Latin_
The chief works of Ruysbroeck were early translated into Latin, some
during their author's lifetime, and widely circulated in this form. Three
of these early translations were printed in the sixteenth century: the
_De Ornatu Spiritualium Nuptiarum_ of Jordaens, at Paris, in 1512; and
the _De Septem Scalæ Divini Amoris Gradibus_ of Gerard Groot, together
with the _De Perfectione Filiorum Dei_ (i.e. _The Sparkling Stone_), at
Bologna, in 1538.
The standard Latin translation, however--indispensable to all students of
Ruysbroeck--is the great work of the Carthusian monk, Laurentius Surius:
_D. Joannis Rusbrochii Opera Omnia_ (Cologne, 1552).
This was reprinted in 1609 (the best edition), and again in 1692. It
contains all Ruysbroeck's authentic works, and some that are doubtful; in
a translation singularly faithful to the sense of the original, though it
fails to reproduce the rugged sublimity, the sudden lapses into crude and
homely metaphor, so characteristic of his style.
B. _English_
_The Book of the Twelve Béguines_ (the first sixteen chapters only).
Translated from the Flemish, by John Francis (London, 1913).
A useful translation of one of Ruysbroeck's most difficult treatises.
C. _French_
_OEuvres de Ruysbroeck l'Admirable. Traduction du Flamand par les_
Bénédictins de Saint Paul de Wisques.
Vol. I.: _Le Miroir du Salut Éternel_; _Les Sept Clôtures_; _Les Sept
Degrés de l'Êchelle d'Amour Spirituel_ (Brussels, 1912, in progress).
This edition, when completed, will form the standard text of Ruysbroeck
for those unable to read Flemish. The translation is admirably lucid, and
a short but adequate introduction is prefixed to each work.
_L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles. Traduit du Flamand par_ Maurice
Maeterlinck (Brussels, 1900).
This celebrated book, still more its beautiful though unreliable
introduction, is chiefly responsible for the modern interest in
Ruysbroeck. The translation, exquisite as French prose, over-emphasises
the esoteric element in his teaching. Those unable to read Flemish should
check it by Lambert's German text (see below).
_Vie de Rusbroch suivie de son Traité des Sept Degrés de l'Amour.
Traduction littérale du Texte Flamand-Latin, par_ R. Chamonal (Paris,
1909). _Traité du Royaume des Amants de Dieu. Traduit par_ R. Chamonal
(Paris, 1911). _De la Vraie Contemplation_ (i.e. _The Twelve
Béguines_). _Traduit par_ R. Chamonal. 3 vols. (Paris, 1912).
These are the first volumes of a proposed complete translation; which is,
however, far from literal, and replaces the rough vigour of the original
by the insipid language of conventional French piety.
_Livre des XII. Béguines ou de la Vraie Contemplation_ (first sixteen
chapters only). _Traduit du Flamand, avec Introduction, par_ L'Abbé P.
Cuylits (Brussels, 1909).
This also contains a French version of the _Vita_ of Pomerius. The
translator is specially successful in rendering the peculiar quality of
Ruysbroeck's verse; but the statements in his introduction must be
accepted with reserve.
D. _German_
_Drei Schriften des Mystikers Johann van Ruysbroeck, aus dem Vlämischen
übersetzt von_ Franz A. Lambert (Leipzig, 1902).
A vigorous and accurate translation of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
Marriage_, _The Sparkling Stone_ and _The Book of Supreme Truth_.
Ruysbroeck translates better into German than into any other language;
and this volume is strongly recommended to all who can read that tongue.
III. Selections
_Rusbrock l'Admirable: OEuvres Choisies. Traduit par_ E. Hello (Paris,
1902).
A series of short passages, paraphrased (_not_ translated) from the Latin
of Surius. There are two English versions of this unsatisfactory book,
the second being the best:
_Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic._ Translated by Earle
Baillie (London, 1905).
_Flowers of a Mystic Garden._ Translated by C. E. S. (London, 1912).
_Life, Light, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics._ By the
Very Rev. W. R. Inge, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's (London, 1905).
Contains an abridged version of _The Adornment of the Spiritual
Marriage_.
Biography and Criticism
(_A Selection_)
Auger, A.--_De Doctrina et Meritis Joannis van Ruysbroeck_ (Louvain,
1892).
Engelhardt, J. G. von.--_Richard von St. Victor und J. Ruysbroeck_
(Erlangen, 1838).
Useful for tracing the correspondences between the Victorines and
Ruysbroeck.
Maeterlinck, Maurice.--_Ruysbroeck and the Mystics._ Translated by Jane
Stoddart (London, 1908).
An English version of the Introduction to _L'Ornement des Noces
Spirituelles_, above-mentioned; with many fine passages translated from
Ruysbroeck's other works.
Pomerius, H.--_De Origine Monasterii Viridisvallis una cum Vitis
Joannis Rusbrochii._
Printed in _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol. iv. (Brussels, 1885). The chief
authority for all biographical facts.
Scully, Dom Vincent.--_A Mediæval Mystic_ (London, 1910).
A biographical account, founded on Pomerius, with a short analysis of
Ruysbroeck's works. Popular and uncritical.
Vreese, Dr. W. L. de.--_Jean de Ruysbroeck_ (_Biographie Nationale de
Belgique_, vol. xx.) (Brussels, 1907).
An important and authoritative article with analysis of all Ruysbroeck's
works and full bibliography.
----_Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Leven en de Werken van Jan van
Ruusbroec_ (Gent, 1896).
Contains Gerard Naghel's sketch of Ruysbroeck's life, with other useful
material.
----_De Handschriften van Jan van Ruusbroec's Werken._ 2 vols. (Gent,
1900).
An important and scholarly study of the manuscript sources by the
greatest living authority.
Notices of Ruysbroeck will be found in the following works:--
Auger, A.--_Étude sur les Mystiques des Pays Bas au Moyen Age_
(_Académie Royale de Belgique_, vol. xlvi., 1892).
Fleming, W. K.--_Mysticism in Christianity_ (London, 1913).
Inge, Very Rev. W. R., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.--_Christian Mysticism_
(London, 1899).
Jones, Dr. Rufus M.--_Studies in Mystical Religion_ (London, 1909).
Applications of his doctrine to the spiritual life in:--
Baker, Venerable Augustin.--_Holy Wisdom; or Directions for the Prayer
of Contemplation_ (London, 1908).
Blosius, F. V.--_Book of Spiritual Instruction_ (London, 1900); _A
Mirror for Monks_ (London, 1901); _Comfort for the Faint-hearted_
(London, 1903); _Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul_ (London, 1905).
Denis the Carthusian.--_Opera Omnia_ (Monstrolii, 1896), in progress.
Petersen, Gerlac.--_The Fiery Soliloquy with God_ (London, 1872).
Poulain, Aug., S.J.--_The Graces of Interior Prayer_ (London, 1910).
Underhill, E.--_Mysticism_, 5th ed. (London, 1914).
Influences
Much light is thrown on Ruysbroeck's doctrine by a study of the authors
who influenced him; especially:
St. Augustine; Migne, _P.L._, xxvii.-xlvii.; Eng. Trans., edited by M.
Dods (Edinburgh, 1876).
Dionysius the Areopagite; Migne, _P.G._, iii., iv.; Eng. Trans., by
Parker (Oxford, 1897).
Hugh and Richard of St. Victor; Migne, _P.L._, clxxv.-clxxvii. and
cxcvi.
St. Bernard; Migne, _P.L._, clxxxii.-clxxxv.; Eng. Trans., by Eales
(London, 1889-96).
St. Thomas Aquinas; _Opera_ (Romæ, 1882-1906); Eng. Trans., by the
Dominican Fathers (in progress).
St. Bonaventura; _Opera_ (Paris, 1864-71).
Meister Eckhart; _Schriften und Predigten_ (Leipzig, 1903).
Suso; _Schriften_, ed. Denifle (Munich, 1876). Eng. Trans., _Life_, ed.
by W. R. Inge (London, 1913); _Book of Eternal Wisdom_ (London, 1910).
Tauler, _Predigten_ (Prague, 1872); Eng. Trans., _Twenty-five Sermons_,
trans. by Winkworth (London, 1906); _The Inner Way_, edited by A. W.
Hutton (London, 1909).
Footnotes
[1]The _Vita_ of Pomerius is printed in the _Analecta Bollandiana_, vol.
iv. pp. 257 ff.
[2]_The Book of Supreme Truth_, cap. iv.
[3]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. vii.
[4]_Vita_, cap. xv.
[5]De Vreese has identified 160 Flemish and 46 Latin MSS. of Ruysbroeck.
[6]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
[7]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
[8]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvii.
[9]_Op. cit._, _ibid._
[10]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
[11]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxix.
[12]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. viii.
[13]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. ix.
[14]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
[15]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
[16]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
[17]_Op. cit._, cap. vii.
[18]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
[19]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv.
[20]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiii.
[21]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
[22]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. i.
[23]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
[24]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
[25]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. viii.
[26]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. i.
[27]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvi.
[28]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vi.
[29]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. vii.
[30]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xiv.
[31]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. capp. xii.-xxiv.
[32]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xviii.
[33]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. i. cap. xxvi.
[34]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. vii.
[35]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. vii.
[36]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. ix.
[37]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. iv.
[38]Cf. _The Twelve Béguines_, cap. x.
[39]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xix.; _The Book of Truth_,
cap. ix.
[40]_The Seven Degrees of Love_, cap. xiv.
[41]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xx.
[42]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii.
[43]_Op. cit._, lib. ii. cap. xxvii.
[44]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxiv.
[45]Richard Rolle; _The Mending of Life_, cap. xii. (Harford's edition,
p. 82).
[46]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxv.
[47]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.
[48]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxix.
[49]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
[50]Cp. _The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. lvii.
[51]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxvi.
[52]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxviii.
[53]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. ii. cap. xxxix.
[54]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ii.
[55]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xi.
[56]_Loc. cit._
[57]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. cap. x.
[58]St. Augustine, _Confessions_, lib. vii. capp. xvii. and xx.
[59]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
[60]_Loc. cit._
[61]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxiv.
[62]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
[63]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
[64]_The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, cap. xvii.
[65]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. iii.
[66]Cap. viii.: 'Of the Difference between the Secret Friends and the
Hidden Sons of God.'
[67]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xii.
[68]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
[69]_The Seven Cloisters_, cap. xix.
[70]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. viii.
[71]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
[72]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_; cap. xxxiii.
[73]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Twelve Béguines_, cap.
xvi.
[74]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
[75]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. also _The Book of Truth_, cap.
xii.
[76]_The Kingdom of God's Lovers_, cap. xxxi.
[77]_The Book of Truth_, cap. xii.
[78]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
[79]_Op. cit._ cap. ix.
[80]_The Imitation of Christ_, lib. iii. cap. xxiii.
[81]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xiv., and _The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.
[82]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
[83]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. ix.; cp. _The Book of Truth_, cap. xi.
[84]_The Twelve Béguines_, cap. xvi.
[85]_Ibid._ cap. xiv.; cp. St. Bernard, _De Diligendo Deo_, cap. x. The
same image is found in St. Macarius and many other writers.
[86]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xii.
[87]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
[88]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. x.
[89]_Op. cit._ cap. xii.
[90]_Op. cit._ cap. xiii.; cp. also _The Seven Degrees_, cap. xiv.
[91]_The Sparkling Stone_, cap. xiv.
[92]_The Spiritual Marriage_, lib. iii. cap. v.
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