theology. Founded on experience, they deal with and incite to experience; and were addressed to all who felt within themselves the stirrings of a special grace, the call of a superhuman love, irrespective of education or position—to hermits, priests, nuns, and ardent souls still in the world who were trying to live the one real life—not merely to learned professors trying to elucidate the doctrines of that life. Ruysbroeck therefore belongs to that considerable group of mystical writers whose gift to the history of literature is only less important than their gift to the history of the spiritual world; since they have helped to break down the barrier between the written and the spoken word.

At the moment in which poetry first forsakes the ‘literary’ language and uses the people’s speech, we nearly always find a mystic thus trying to tell his message to the race. His enthusiasm it is which is equal to the task of subduing a new medium to the purposes of art. Thus at the very beginning of Italian poetry we find St. Francis of Assisi singing in the popular tongue his great Canticle of the Sun, and soon after him come the sublime lyrics of Jacopone da Todì. Thus German literature owes much to Mechthild of Magdeburg, and English to Richard Rolle—both forsaking Latin for the common speech of their day. Thus in India the poet Kabir, obedient to the same impulse, sings in Hindi rather than in Sanscrit his beautiful songs of Divine Love.

In Ruysbroeck, as in these others, a strong poetic inspiration mingled with and sometimes controlled the purely mystical side of his genius. Often his love and enthusiasm break out and express themselves, sometimes in rough, irregular verse, sometimes in rhymed and rhythmic prose: a kind of wild spontaneous chant, which may be related to the ‘ghostly song’ that ‘boiled up’ within the heart of Richard Rolle. It is well-known that automatic composition—and we have seen that the evidence of those who knew him suggests the presence of an automatic element in Ruysbroeck’s creative methods—tends to assume a rhythmic character; being indeed closely related to that strange chanted speech in which religious excitement frequently expresses itself. Released from the control of the surface-intellect, the deeper mind which is involved in these mysterious processes tends to present its intuitions and concepts in measured waves of words; which sometimes, as in Rolle’s ‘ghostly song’ and perhaps too in Ruysbroeck’s ‘Song of Joy,’ are actually given a musical form. In such rhythm the mystic seems to catch something of the cadences of that far-off music of which he is writing, and to receive and transmit a message which exceeds the possibilities of speech. Ruysbroeck was no expert poet. Often his verse is bad; halting in cadence, violent and uncouth in imagery, like the stammering utterance of one possessed. But its presence and quality, its mingled simplicity and violence, assure us of the strong excitement that fulfilled him, and tend to corroborate the account of his mental processes which we have deduced from the statements in Pomerius’ Life.

Eleven admittedly authentic books and tracts survive in numerous MS. collections,[5] and from these come all that we know of his vision and teaching. The Twelve Virtues, and the two Canticles often attributed to him, are probably spurious; and the tracts against the Brethren of the Free Spirit, which are known to have been written during his Brussels period, have all disappeared. I give here a short account of the authentic works, their names and general contents; putting first in order those of unknown date, some of which may possibly have been composed before the foundation of Groenendael. In each case the first title is a translation of that used in the best Flemish texts; the second, that employed in the great Latin version of Surius. Ruysbroeck himself never gave any titles to his writings.

1. The Spiritual Tabernacle (called by Surius In Tabernaculum Mosis).—The longest, most fantastic, and, in spite of some fine passages, the least interesting of Ruysbroeck’s works. Probably founded upon the De Arca Mystica of Hugh of St. Victor, this is an elaborate allegory, thoroughly mediæval in type, in which the Tabernacle of the Israelites becomes a figure of the spiritual life; the details of its construction, furniture and ritual being given a symbolic significance, in accordance with the methods of interpretation popular at the time. In this book, and perhaps in the astronomical treatise appended to The Twelve Béguines (No. 11), I believe that we have the only surviving works of Ruysbroeck’s first period; when he had not yet ‘transcended images,’ but was at that point in his mystical development in which the young contemplative loves to discern symbolic meanings in all visible things.

2. The Twelve Points of True Faith (De Fide et Judicio).—This little tract is in form a gloss upon the Nicene Creed; in fact, a characteristically Ruysbroeckian confession of faith. Without ever over-passing the boundaries of Catholic doctrine, Ruysbroeck is here able to turn all its imagery to the purposes of his own vision of truth.

3. The Book of the Four Temptations (De Quatuor Tentationibus).—The Four Temptations are four manifestations of the higher egotism specially dangerous to souls entering on the contemplative life: first, the love of ease and comfort, as much in things spiritual as in things material; secondly, the tendency to pose as the possessor of special illumination, with other and like forms of spiritual pretence; thirdly, intellectual pride, which seeks to understand unfathomable mysteries and attain to the vision of God by the reason alone; fourthly,—most dangerous of all—that false ‘liberty of spirit’ which was the mark of the heretical mystic sects. This book too may well have been written before the retreat to Groenendael.

4. The Book of the Kingdom of God’s Lovers (Regnum Deum Amantium).—This and the following work, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, contain Ruysbroeck’s fullest and most orderly descriptions of the mystical life-process. The ‘Kingdom’ which God’s lovers may inherit is the actual life of God, infused into the soul and deifying it. This essential life reveals itself under five modes: in the sense world, in the soul’s nature, in the witness of Scripture, in the life of grace or ‘glory,’ and in the Superessential Kingdom of the Divine Unity. By the threefold way of the Active, Contemplative, and Superessential Life, here described as the steady and orderly appropriation of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of man may enter into its inheritance and attain at last to the perfect fruition of God. To the Active Life belong the gifts of Holy Fear, Godliness, and Knowledge; to the Contemplative those of Strength and Counsel; to the Superessential those of Intelligence and Wisdom. The Kingdom of God’s Lovers was traditionally regarded as Ruysbroeck’s earliest work. It was more probably written during the early years at Groenendael. Much of it, like The Twelve Béguines, is in poetical form. This was the book which, falling into the hands of Gerard Naghel, made him seek Ruysbroeck’s acquaintance, in order that he might ask for an explanation of several profound and difficult passages.

5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage (De Ornatu Spiritalium Nuptiarum).—This is