Background
Jan van Ruysbroeck was born c 1293–4 in the village of Ruysbroeck a few miles from Brussels
(The fourteenth century in Europe has been called "the age...)
The fourteenth century in Europe has been called "the age of adversity." It was a time when medieval society was racked by the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and peasant turmoil of the age, saw the decline of its mendicant orders, the "Babylonian Captivity" of the papacy in Avignon, and the rise of wide-ranging heretical movements such as the Free Spirit heresy that disparaged the Church and its sacraments in favor of an immediate experience of God. In this context John Ruusbroec (1293-1381) lived as a monk in the duchy of Brabant and produced a corpus of works on the spiritual life that has made him the most important Flemish mystic in an age of such greats as John Tauler, Julian of Norwich, and Birgitta of Sweden. For the first time in English, four of Ruusbroec's most influential writings have been collected in one volume: The Spiritual Espousals, A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness, The Little Book of Clarification, and The Sparkling Stone. This new translation by James Wiseman offers a fresh, contemporary rendering of Ruusbroec's brilliant discourses that caused Abbot Cuthbert Butler to comment that "in all probability there has been no greater contemplative; and certainly there has been no greater mystical writer."
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(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.
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Jan van Ruysbroeck was born c 1293–4 in the village of Ruysbroeck a few miles from Brussels
For his education and religious training he was sent to Brussels at the age of 11 to live with his uncle, John Hinckaert, a priest and canon of the Cathedral of St. Gudule.
There he also came under the spiritual influence of another canon, Francis van Coudenberg, who was a friend of his uncle, and these two men had a strong effect on the young man's career and religious development.
Ruysbroeck's personal inclinations as well as his environment eventually persuaded him to adopt the religious life, and in 1317 he was ordained to the priesthood.
For more than a quarter century he lived in the area of St. Gudule in Brussels and attained a reputation as a preacher and orthodox religious thinker.
In order to recapture the quiet, contemplative life of his early years, in 1343 Ruysbroeck retired with his two aging spiritual advisers, Hinckaert and Coudenberg, to a hermitage in the forest of Soignes called Groenendael on the southeast edge of Brussels.
In this place of solitude Ruysbroeck wrote the mystical treatises on which his reputation is based, and he remained there until his death in 1381, at the age of 88.
Most of Ruysbroeck's writings describe how the soul of man can be joined with God in mystical union.
Although stated more cautiously in his later writings, these ideas led to an attack on Ruysbroeck not long after his death.
His writings, however, have been judged orthodox by most.
He forms a link between the Rhenish mystics of the early 14th century, especially the Dominican mystics like Meister Eckhart, Heinrich Suso, and Johannes Tauler, and the Devotio Moderna, the major spiritual movement of the 15th century in the Low Countries, northern France, and the Rhine Valley.
Most of Ruysbroeck's writings have been translated into English.
His most important works are Die Chierheit der gheesteliker Brulocht (The Spiritual Espousals) and De septem gradibus amoris.
(Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
(The fourteenth century in Europe has been called "the age...)
