Rheno-Flemish mysticism
Rheno-Flemish mysticism, also called Rhineland mysticism, was a late medieval current of Christian mysticism and vernacular mystical theology that developed in the region extending from the Low Countries to the Rhineland between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It drew together Beguine spirituality, monastic and bridal mysticism, Dominican speculative theology, Middle Dutch and Middle High German vernacular writing, and later currents associated with Groenendael Priory, the Devotio Moderna, Franciscan spirituality, Carthusian transmission, and early modern Catholic and Protestant reception.
The tradition includes both the German Dominican mysticism associated with Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Henry Suso, and the Low Countries mystical tradition associated with Hadewijch, Beatrice of Nazareth, Jan van Ruusbroec, Jan van Leeuwen, Hendrik Herp, the anonymous author of The Evangelical Pearl, and related Middle Dutch authors. Modern scholarship often treats the Low Countries tradition, written chiefly in Dutch or Flemish, as one of the major vernacular mystical traditions of late medieval and early modern Europe, alongside the German school.[1][2]
Terminology and scope
[edit]The terminology used for the tradition varies according to scholarly emphasis. The expression "German mysticism" usually refers to the German-speaking Dominican current centred on Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and their circles. "Rhineland mysticism" often emphasizes Cologne, Strasbourg, Basel, and the Dominican intellectual milieu. "Rheno-Flemish mysticism" is broader, since it includes the Low Countries as an integral centre of mystical writing and theology rather than as a secondary extension of German mysticism.[3][4]
Bernard McGinn treats the Low Countries tradition cautiously as a "school" only in a loose sense: not as a formal institution or unified doctrine, but as a network of related authors, themes, institutions, and lines of influence centred especially on Ruusbroec, Groenendael, and later vernacular mystical culture.[5] The term "Rheno-Flemish mysticism" is therefore useful when referring to the broader Rhine–Meuse and Low Countries world in which German, Dutch, Flemish, Latin, and later French and Spanish transmissions interacted.
Historical background
[edit]Monastic and affective antecedents
[edit]The roots of Rheno-Flemish mysticism lie partly in the monastic renewal of the twelfth century. Benedictine, Cistercian, Premonstratensian, Carthusian, and canonical communities cultivated forms of spiritual exegesis shaped by liturgy, lectio divina, contemplation, and the interpretation of the Song of Songs. Authors such as Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, Rupert of Deutz, and Philip of Harveng helped form a vocabulary of love, bridal union, interior transformation, and affective participation in Christ.[3][6]
In German-speaking lands and neighbouring regions, visionary and monastic women such as Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, Mechthild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great developed forms of affective, liturgical, and Christ-centred mystical writing. These works are often treated as antecedents or neighbouring expressions of the broader Rhenish mystical world rather than as part of the more narrowly speculative current associated with Eckhart.[3]
Beguines and women writers
[edit]The thirteenth century saw the emergence of the Beguines, women who lived religious lives without entering established monastic orders or taking permanent vows. Beguine spirituality was especially important in Brabant, Flanders, Liège, and nearby German-speaking regions. The movement provided a social and literary setting for some of the most significant vernacular mystical writing of the Middle Ages, including the works of Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete.[3]
Hadewijch, probably writing in thirteenth-century Brabant, produced poems, letters, and visions centred on minne, or love, and on the soul's transformation through desire for God. Beatrice of Nazareth's Seven Ways of Holy Love likewise belongs to the affective and bridal stream of Low Countries mysticism. These authors combined biblical, courtly, monastic, and theological language in order to describe divine love, absence, suffering, fruition, and transformation.[1][6]
Dominican and scholastic contexts
[edit]The speculative current of Rheno-Flemish mysticism developed especially in Dominican settings. Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich of Freiberg, and the Dominican studia formed part of the intellectual background of Meister Eckhart, who wrote and preached in Latin and the vernacular. Eckhart's mystical theology drew on scholastic theology, Neoplatonism, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Proclus, and Christian doctrines of creation, grace, and the birth of the Word in the soul.[4][7]
Eckhart's disciples and readers, especially Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso, developed a vernacular spirituality of detachment, inner poverty, divine birth, and transformation. Their preaching and devotional writing addressed clergy, monastics, women religious, beguines, and lay devotional circles.[3][4]
Major currents
[edit]Affective and bridal mysticism
[edit]The affective current of Rheno-Flemish mysticism used the language of love, desire, bridal union, suffering, and conformity to Christ. It was deeply shaped by the Song of Songs, Bernardine and Cistercian exegesis, and courtly language of love. In this current, the soul is often presented as the bride of Christ, drawn through longing, purification, surrender, and grace into communion with God.
This form of mysticism was especially prominent among women writers and communities, including Hadewijch, Beatrice of Nazareth, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Lutgardis of Aywières, and Gertrude of Helfta. It continued to influence later Low Countries texts, including Ruusbroec's The Spiritual Espousals, the writings of Groenendael, and the anonymous Evangelical Pearl.[1][8]
Speculative mysticism
[edit]The speculative current is associated above all with Eckhart and his Dominican milieu. It explored themes such as detachment, poverty of spirit, the ground of the soul, divine nothingness, the birth of the Word in the soul, deification, and the relation between the created intellect and God. This current did not simply oppose scholastic theology; it frequently developed mystical claims within scholastic, exegetical, and philosophical frameworks.[4]
Eckhart's vernacular preaching, however, became controversial. In 1329, after his death, Pope John XXII condemned a series of propositions attributed to him in the bull In agro dominico. Later Dominican and Low Countries authors therefore had to distinguish between orthodox apophatic and deifying language and what they regarded as false passivity, antinomianism, or confusion between God and creature.[4][6]
Ruusbroec and the Low Countries synthesis
[edit]Jan van Ruusbroec occupies a central position between the Rhineland and Low Countries poles of the tradition. Writing in Middle Dutch, he developed a trinitarian and Christological mystical theology that drew on earlier affective, monastic, beguine, and speculative currents while also criticizing what he regarded as false interpretations of mystical union.[9]
McGinn characterizes Ruusbroec's theology as a form of "dynamic trinitarian mysticism", in which the divine life is understood as both restful unity and outgoing relational activity. Ruusbroec's language of essence and superessence is therefore not simply an abstract metaphysics of absorption, but a mystical theology of dynamic love.[9] In his works, the highest contemplative life does not abolish action but issues in what Ruusbroec calls the "common life", where inward enjoyment of God and outward works of charity remain united.[9][10]
Ruusbroec's community at Groenendael Priory became a major centre of Middle Dutch mystical writing. Associated authors included Willem Jordaens, Jan van Leeuwen, and John of Schoonhoven. Jordaens translated Ruusbroec and wrote The Kiss of the Mouth, a sophisticated work of mystical theology combining Ruusbroecian themes with scholastic learning and Bernardine bridal mysticism. Jan van Leeuwen, a lay brother and cook at Groenendaal, wrote numerous Middle Dutch treatises and sharply criticized Eckhart. Jan van Schoonhoven helped mediate Ruusbroecian spirituality toward the Devotio Moderna.[1][5]
Theology and spirituality
[edit]Mystical anthropology
[edit]A distinctive feature of Low Countries mysticism is its theological anthropology. Many authors in the tradition ask how union with God is possible without abolishing the creaturely human person. They discuss the soul, memory, intellect, will, inwardness, the divine image, the "ground" of the soul, and the transformation of the faculties through grace.[6]
Ruusbroec and later authors distinguish between God's continuous creative presence in the ground of the soul and the active transformation of the soul's faculties. This distinction allowed them to affirm deep union with God while rejecting the collapse of Creator and creature. The mystical life is therefore frequently described as participatory union, deification, or conformity to God, but not as identity of essence between God and the soul.[6][10]
Trinity, desire, and dynamic love
[edit]The Low Countries tradition is strongly trinitarian. In Ruusbroecian and related authors, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not merely doctrinal background but structure the transformation of the human person. Several authors associate the Spirit with the transformation of the will, the Son with the illumination of intellect, and the Father with the drawing of the mind or memory into hidden union.[1]
This trinitarian anthropology is closely linked with desire. Human beings are understood as ordered toward God by longing, love, and self-transcendence. In Ruusbroec, the contemplative life moves beyond discursive reason without rejecting reason; contemplation is "above reason" rather than irrational.[10]
Detachment, nothingness, and deification
[edit]Rheno-Flemish mysticism frequently uses the language of detachment, poverty of spirit, annihilation, divine nothingness, and deification. In Eckhartian contexts, detachment is linked to the ground of the soul and the birth of the Word within. In Ruusbroecian and later Low Countries contexts, detachment is integrated more explicitly with love, Christic conformity, trinitarian life, and active charity.[4][9]
The theme of divine nothingness appears strongly in The Evangelical Pearl. Rik Van Nieuwenhove argues that the text uses "nothingness" not as nihilism but as apophatic language for God's transcendence beyond verbal and conceptual possession. The resulting spirituality is marked by non-possessiveness, self-transcendence, recollection, and transformation of intellect and will by faith and love.[11]
Christology and the humanity of Christ
[edit]Although speculative mysticism has sometimes been accused of neglecting the humanity of Christ, many Rheno-Flemish authors place Christ at the centre of the spiritual life. Suso links detachment with conformity to the suffering Christ; Tauler emphasizes the birth of Christ in the soul; Ruusbroec integrates the humanity of Christ into the soul's ascent to God; and later Franciscan and devotional authors develop intense meditations on the Passion.[3][1]
Low Countries works such as A Ladder of Eight Rungs, The Nine Little Flowers of the Passion, The Evangelical Pearl, and The Temple of Our Soul show the continuing importance of Passion devotion, allegorical interpretation, and Christ-centred interior transformation.[1]
Action and contemplation
[edit]A recurring concern in the tradition is the relation between contemplation and active love. Ruusbroec's ideal of the common life holds together inward union with God and outward works of charity. Jordaens, Herp, and other later authors likewise distinguish true contemplative rest from passive emptiness. Authentic rest remains active in love, knowledge, virtue, and service.[1][9]
This concern shaped criticism of the Brethren of the Free Spirit and other alleged forms of antinomian or quietist spirituality. The problem for Ruusbroec and his followers was not apophatic language itself, since they used highly apophatic language, but the collapse of distinction between Creator and creature or the abandonment of moral and ecclesial life.[6]
Low Countries mysticism after Ruusbroec
[edit]Groenendael after Ruusbroec
[edit]After Ruusbroec, Groenendael remained a centre of vernacular mystical theology. Willem Jordaens, Jan van Leeuwen, and Jan van Schoonhoven transmitted, translated, defended, and reinterpreted Ruusbroecian spirituality. Their works show that the Low Countries tradition was not the achievement of one isolated master but a sustained textual and communal culture.[5][1]
Jan van Leeuwen is especially important as a lay witness to the tradition. Besides his polemics against Eckhart, he wrote moral, devotional, and mystical treatises in Middle Dutch. His writings on the Ten Commandments show that Groenendaal spirituality was not indifferent to moral instruction, conscience, and practical formation.[12]
Devotio Moderna
[edit]The Devotio Moderna, associated with Geert Groote, the Brethren of the Common Life, and the Windesheim Congregation, emerged in the northern Low Countries in the late fourteenth century. Its relation to Rheno-Flemish mysticism was both continuous and reforming. Jan van Schoonhoven helped mediate Ruusbroecian spirituality toward the movement, while the Devotio Moderna emphasized moral reform, interior devotion, humility, imitation of Christ, and practical spirituality.[5][13]
The movement did not simply reject earlier mysticism, but redirected aspects of it into disciplined lay and communal devotion. Its best-known expression, The Imitation of Christ, shares with the broader tradition a concern for interiority, humility, detachment, and conformity to Christ, while avoiding some of the more speculative language of Eckhartian and Ruusbroecian theology.[13]
Franciscan and Carthusian transmission
[edit]Hendrik Herp, or Harphius, a Franciscan author of the fifteenth century, played a major role in transmitting Low Countries mysticism into early modern Europe. His Mirror of Perfection drew heavily on Ruusbroec and related traditions, but shaped them into a practical mystical manual that circulated widely in Latin and vernacular forms. Through Herp, Ruusbroecian and Rheno-Flemish themes entered French, Spanish, Capuchin, Carmelite, and other early modern Catholic spiritualities.[1][8]
The Cologne Carthusians also contributed to the preservation and dissemination of northern mystical texts. They edited, translated, and printed works associated with Tauler, Ruusbroec, Herp, and related authors. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, figures such as Louis de Blois, Peter Canisius, Laurentius Surius, and Maximilian Sandaeus helped carry northern mystical traditions into Counter-Reformation Catholic spirituality.[14]
The Evangelical Pearl and The Temple of Our Soul
[edit]The Evangelical Pearl, first printed in Antwerp in 1537/1538, is an anonymous Middle Dutch mystical work traditionally attributed to a woman author. It synthesizes themes from Ruusbroec, Eckhart, Tauler, Herp, and late medieval Low Countries spirituality, and was later translated into Latin, French, and German. McGinn treats it as a major example of a "mystical renaissance" in the eastern Netherlands, while Van Nieuwenhove describes it as a work that encapsulates the medieval Flemish and Rhineland schools of mysticism and transmits them to the modern era.[8][11]
Guido de Baere's historical and philological study of Die grote evangelische peerle argues that the author was a woman with an intense spiritual life, that she remained anonymous, and that the work circulated in several textual forms, including Dutch editions, a Latin translation, French translation, and German translations.[15] The work's threefold pattern of active, interior, and contemplative life, although not always systematically arranged, reflects the late medieval synthesis of prayer, meditation, doctrine, and mystical self-transcendence.[15]
The Temple of Our Soul, associated with the same spiritual milieu, uses the image of the soul as an interior temple. It continues Ruusbroecian and Pearl-like themes of recollection, ordered faculties, divine indwelling, allegorical interpretation, and interiorized sacramentality.[1]
Women writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
[edit]The Low Countries tradition after Ruusbroec included numerous women writers and spiritual figures. Alijt Bake, Sister Bertken, Claesinne van Nieuwlant, Maria van Hout, the anonymous author of The Evangelical Pearl, and related conventual or semi-religious authors show the continuing importance of women's mystical authorship. Their works include Passion meditations, songs, letters, dialogues, allegories, and contemplative treatises.[1]
This female authorship was not peripheral to the tradition. It belonged to the same vernacular theological culture that linked beguine spirituality, Groenendaal, Devotio Moderna circles, Franciscan spirituality, and early modern Catholic reform.[8][15]
Reception and later influence
[edit]Early modern Catholic spirituality
[edit]In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rheno-Flemish mysticism was received, transformed, and contested within Catholic reform. Herp, Blosius, the Cologne Carthusians, Surius, Sandaeus, and the Latin and vernacular translations of northern mystical texts transmitted themes of detachment, contemplation, affective union, and mystical theology into France, Spain, Germany, and the Southern Netherlands.[14]
The encounter between northern mysticism and Spanish Carmelite spirituality provoked both assimilation and suspicion. Some early modern critics associated abstract or apophatic mysticism with the dangers of false passivity or illuminism, while others defended northern contemplative theology as an orthodox tradition when properly understood.[14][16]
Angelus Silesius and German Baroque mysticism
[edit]Angelus Silesius received and transformed northern mystical traditions in the seventeenth century. McGinn notes that Silesius had access to texts including The Evangelical Pearl, Blosius, John of the Cross, Victor Gelen, and Sandaeus. His Cherubinischer Wandersmann reworked Eckhartian themes such as the Godhead, divine birth, and union, but did so in poetic form and with a strong nuptial and Christological dimension.[14]
Silesius also translated The Evangelical Pearl into German in 1676. In his preface he praised the work as a spiritual treasure and presented its aim as the transformation of the old person into the new person in Christ.[14]
Protestant and Pietist reception
[edit]Some texts of the Rheno-Flemish and Rhineland traditions were received in Protestant contexts. Martin Luther admired and published the Theologia Germanica and valued Tauler, though he did not simply adopt medieval mystical theology as a whole. Later Protestant and Pietist authors, including Valentin Weigel, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius before and after his Catholic conversion, Gerhard Tersteegen, and some radical Pietists, drew selectively on themes of interiority, divine birth, detachment, and union with God.[3][14]
The Evangelical Pearl was also received in German spirituality and Pietist circles. Tersteegen compiled a German anthology from the work, and Van Nieuwenhove cautiously notes the possibility of indirect influence on Søren Kierkegaard, though he treats this only as a suggestion for further research rather than a demonstrated line of influence.[11]
Modern study
[edit]The modern rediscovery of Rhineland mysticism began in the nineteenth century, especially through German Romanticism, idealism, and renewed interest in Eckhart. Philosophers such as Franz Xaver von Baader, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer interpreted Eckhart in relation to their own philosophical concerns. Catholic scholarly rehabilitation of Eckhart proceeded more slowly, especially through Dominican historians such as Heinrich Seuse Denifle.[3]
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, scholars including Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, Alain de Libera, Kurt Ruh, Bernard McGinn, Rob Faesen, Paul Mommaers, Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Veerle Fraeters, Wybren Scheepsma, John Van Engen, Guido de Baere, and others have studied the German, Dutch, Flemish, Beguine, Dominican, Franciscan, Carthusian, and Devotio Moderna dimensions of the tradition. Current scholarship increasingly treats the Rheno-Flemish world as a network of related but distinct mystical cultures rather than as a single national school.[1][6][2]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Van Nieuwenhove, Rik; Faesen, Rob; Rolfson, Helen, eds. (2008). Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries. The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press. pp. xiii–xvi.
- 1 2 McGinn, Bernard (2012). The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–1550. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 5. New York: Crossroad. pp. ix–xi.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Ancelet-Hustache, Jeanne (1980). Maître Eckhart et la mystique rhénane. Paris: Seuil. pp. 13–21, 41, 127, 167–174.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 de Libera, Alain (2007). "Rhéno-flamande, mystique". In Lacoste, Jean-Yves (ed.). Dictionnaire critique de théologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. pp. 1226–1229.
- 1 2 3 4 McGinn, Bernard (2012). The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–1550. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 5. New York: Crossroad. pp. 1–3.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Arblaster, John; Faesen, Rob, eds. (2017). Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 1–20.
- ↑ de Libera, Alain (1994). La mystique rhénane: d'Albert le Grand à Maître Eckhart. Paris: Seuil.
- 1 2 3 4 McGinn, Bernard (2012). The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–1550. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 5. New York: Crossroad. pp. 1–175.
- 1 2 3 4 5 McGinn, Bernard (2012). The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350–1550. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 5. New York: Crossroad. pp. 5–61.
- 1 2 3 Van Nieuwenhove, Rik (2017). "Ruusbroec's notion of the contemplative life and his understanding of the human person". In Arblaster, John; Faesen, Rob (eds.). Mystical Anthropology: Authors from the Low Countries. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 73–88.
- 1 2 3 Van Nieuwenhove, Rik (2022). "Divine Nothingness, Ecstasy and Self-transcendence in the Evangelical Pearl". Medieval Mystical Theology. 31 (1): 33–40. doi:10.1080/20465726.2022.2084840.
- ↑ Desplenter, Youri (2017). "Morals from a Mystical Cook: Jan van Leeuwen and the Ten Commandments". In Desplenter, Youri; Pieters, Jürgen; Melion, Walter (eds.). The Ten Commandments in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Leiden: Brill. pp. 133–151.
- 1 2 Van Engen, John (2008). Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 McGinn, Bernard (2020). "Mysticism in Catholic Germany and the Low Countries, 1525–1675". The Persistence of Mysticism in Catholic Europe: France, Italy, and Germany, 1500–1675. New York: Crossroad. pp. 538–611.
- 1 2 3 de Baere, Guido (2021). Die grote evangelische peerle. I: Historische en filologische studie. Miscellanea Neerlandica. Vol. 48. Leuven: Peeters. pp. 3–31.
- ↑ Orcibal, Jean (1959). La rencontre du Carmel thérésien avec les mystiques du Nord. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
