The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage

[34] The Sparkling Stone, cap. 14.

[35] Ibid., cap. 10, and The Book of Truth, cap. 12.

[36] The Twelve Béguines, cap. 16.

[37] The Book of Truth, caps. 11 and 13.

[38] "Light" is the second of the Divine Names which Dionysius the Areopagite attributes to the Godhead, being placed by him between "Goodness" and "Beauty"; and his influence may be traced in Ruysbroeck's frequent use of it. Thus he says, "Let us now extol the spiritual name of Light, under which we contemplate the Good; and declare that He is called spiritual Light because He fills every supercelestial mind with spiritual light, expelling ignorance and error from all souls in which they may be . . . the Good is therefore called spiritual Light above all other light: as fontal Ray and overflowing Stream of light, shining out of its fulness upon every mind above, around, and in the world, renewing all their powers, and embracing them in its span. (Divine Names, cap. 4.)

[39] The word here translated "conditions" is Ruysbroeck's favourite term, "wise," meaning ways or modes of being; literally, "how" Christ was as regards each virtue. The Flemish of this passage reads, "Want alsoe menighe inwendighe doghet, alsoe menighe inwendighe wise hadde Christus."

[40] "Righteousness" (gherechticheit) must be read here and onwards in the sense, not only of goodness, but of justice and rightness in the conduct of life. "It is meet and right so to do."

[41] It will be seen that the description of the virtues in this section, like that of the terraces in Dante's Purgatorio, is arranged upon a definite plan. Each virtue or group of qualities opposes one of the seven mortal sins, and is associated with one of the Beatitudes.

[42] The three points here described the enlightenment or impulse of grace, concentration of mind, and the deliberate expulsion of distracting thoughts and imagesare summed up in the exercise which ascetic writers call Recollection, and which prepares consciousness for the contemplative state.

[43] The source of this image seems to be a well-known passage in Dionysius the Areopagite

[44] The word "weelden," here translated "rapturous delight," really means a luxury of enjoyment: an overpassing and voluptuous rapture, in which the soul partakes of the rich content of God.

[45] The "wound of love" as a metaphor for the rapturous yet piercing entrance of Divine Love into the heart, meets us again and again in the literature of mysticism. "God," says St Basil, "is the Perfect Beauty which inflicts on the soul an ineffable wound of love." In many cases, as for instance in the celebrated "transverberation" of St Teresa, this image probably describes one of those psycho-physical parallelisms—not uncommon in the records of high religious experience—in which actual bodily pangs accompany the spiritual crisis. Thus Richard Rolle says, "O thou everlasting fairness, thou hast wounded my heart; scarcely I live for joy and almost I die, for I may not in my deadly flesh suffer such a sweetness of this great majesty." (The Mending of Life, cap. 11.)

Thus, too, St John of the Cross "O burn that burns to heal! O more than pleasant wound! And O soft hand, O touch most delicate That dost new life reveal, That dost in grace abound, And, slaying, dost from death to life translate." (Llama de Amor Viva. Trans. by Arthur Symons.)

[46] The Jubilus, or inarticulate song of joy, was recognised by medieval writers as a normal form of religious exaltation: there are many references to it in mystical literature. Thus Jacopone da Tod in the poem, "O jubilo del core"

"The Jubilus in fire awakes And straight the man must sing and pray, His tongue in childish stammering shakes, Nor knows he what his lips may say; He cannot quench nor hide away That sweetness pure and infinite. "The Jubilus in flame is lit And straight the man must shout and sing; So close to love his heart is knit He scarce can bear the honeyed sting; His clamour and his cries must ring And shame for ever take its flight." (Laude 76. Trans. by J. Beck.)

[47] This is the traditional Christian test for all visions and revelations. Thus Richard of St. Victor, the source of so much of Ruysbroeck's teaching, says in a celebrated passage:

"Even though you believe that you have been taken up into the high mountain apart, even though you believe that you see Christ transfigured, be not too ready to believe anything you see in Him or hear from him, unless Moses and Elias run to meet Him. I hold all truth in suspicion which Scripture does not confirm: nor do I receive Christ in His glory unless Moses and Elias are talking with Him." (Benjamin Minor, cap. 81.)

[48] Rolle's Fire of Love provides an apt commentary upon this chapter. Thus he says of the devout and ardent lover who "burns in the fire of the Holy Ghost"

"He utterly burns and longs for light while he thus fervently tastes of things heavenly . . . as the seraphim, to whom he is like in loving mind, he cries and says to his noble Lover, 'Behold, loving I burn, greedily desiring.' Thus with fire untrowed and thirling flame the soul of a lover is burned. It gladdens all things and heavenlike sparkles: nor happily do I long to make an end, but, always going to that which I love, death to me is sweet and sicker." (Incendium Amoris, I., cap. 14.)

[49] Probably Ruysbroeck had here in mind such a "fountain" or lavabo as was to be seen in almost any fourteenth century cloister: a cistern or basin fed by a duct of running water, and pouring itself out in several streams into the lower basin or trough which provided washing-places for the brethren.

[50] "The Godhead," says Dionysius, "is celebrated by religion as One and as Unity, because of the simplicity and oneness of its supernatural indivisibility. Thereby, as by a unifying power, we are unified; and, when our various diversities have been gathered together in a supernatural way, we are collected into a divine onefoldness and union wherein we are like unto God." (Divine Names, cap. 1.)

[51] This wonderful description of the attributes of God contains many reminiscences of mystical writers, from St Paul onwards: especially St Augustine, Dionysius, St Bernard, and Meister Eckhart. Cf. St Augustine, Confessions, bk. 1. caps. 3 and 4, Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Names, caps. 1 and 7, and Celestial Hierarchy, cap. 7, St. Bernard, de consideratione, bk. v. cap. 8, Meister Eckhart, Predichten.There are striking parallels to this and other similar passages in Ruysbroeck in the Book of Truth of his contemporary Suso.

[52] The Flemish "welbehagen" is perhaps more accurately translated "well-being," "comfort" or "good pleasure." Cf. The Book of Truth, cap. 10. The idea intended is the complete and blissful self-comprehension and self-satisfaction of the Divine Essence; the "perfect round" which is enringed in love. So Dante

"O luce eterna, che sola in te sidi, sola t'intendi, e, da te intelletta ed intendente te, ami ed arridi!" (Par. xxxiii. 124.)

[53] Here again Ruysbroeck and Dante, both depending upon scholastic conceptions of the Universe, are in close agreement. Ruysbroeck's "heaven of unmingled radiance" is the Empyrean "ch' pura luce" (Par. xxx. 39): from this the Primum Mobile, or first revolving heaven, takes and distributes the power by which all creation is moved.

"E questo cielo non ha altro dove che la mente divina, in che s'accende l'amor che il volge e la virt ch' ei piove." (Par. xxvii. 109.)

[54] The word is "levendicheit," really meaning the vital essence of the soul: that "life-giving life" which Ruysbroeck, following St Bernard, regards as the link between the soul's essence and the Divine Essence, and the vivid source of our life in time. Thus for him the spiritual man is a "levende mensche": more vividly alive than those in whom this germ of Eternity has not been quickened.

[55] Thus Dionysius

"Every essence, power, energy, condition, perception, reason, conception, contact, knowledge and union—in a word, all things existing—are from the Beautiful and Good, and in the Beautiful and Good, and return towards the Beautiful and Good." (Divine Names, cap. 4.)

[56] This is the scholastic doctrine of the lumen gloriae. See Introduction, p. xxv.

[57] "Onsinct die gheest hem selven in ghebrukeliker minnen"—the spirit, as regards its separate consciousness, drowns and loses itself in the Eternal Love of God. This immersion, self-mergence, or sinking of the spirit into the One which is its home, is the "completing opposite" of that other action of grace, which thrusts the self out with its powers as a free and energetic instrument of the Divine Will: thus perfecting the soul's dual likeness to God, in work and in rest. Compare Ch. LXIII, "The Gift of Understanding."

[58] By the "effective understanding" Ruysbroeck probably meant the faculty, sometimes called the "higher reason" or "pure intellect" which the Victorine mystics described as "beyond and beside reason," and whereby the mind contemplates intellectibilia: the "invisible things which may not be comprehended by human reason." Cf. Richard of St Victor, Benjamin Major, bk. i. caps. 6 and 7.

[59] "Ghebrukelike gheneychtheit." This, one of Ruysbroeck's favourite terms, is generally translated "inclination"; but really includes the meaning—so characteristic of his doctrine—of a perceptual willed and active tending or drawing-nigh of the spirit to the enjoyment and possession of God: and instinctive effort of the soul to achieve its goal. It is the tendency immortalised in St Augustine's saying, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart can find no rest except in Thee." (Confessions, bk. i. cap. 7.)

[60] So Dionysius: "God-receptive minds, being the images of God, are the Divine abodes wherein above all God rests." (Celestial Hierarchy, cap. 7.)

[61] "Smakender wijsheit": "tasting wisdom." Taste and touch, the most intimate of the bodily senses, are those most frequently used by Ruysbroeck as images of the soul's apprehensions of God.

[62] This is that "contemplation in caligine" celebrated by all Christian mystics of the Dionysian tradition. It introduces consciousness into a universe which seems dark, bare, and nought to the intellect, because it transcends all the conceptions with which that intellect is able to deal; being indeed "dark with excess of light." Thus Dionysius says:

"We pray that we may enter the Radiant Darkness, and through blindness and ignorance may see and know that this blindness and ignorance is itself above sight and knowledge" (Mystic Theology, cap. 1); and again, "The Divine Dark is the inaccessible Light in which God is said to dwell. Into this dark, invisible because of its surpassing brightness and unsearchable because of the abundance of its supernatural torrents of light, all enter who are deemed worthy to know and see God: and by the very fact of not seeing or knowing, are truly in Him Who is above all sight and knowledge." (Letter to Dorothy the Deacon.)

So, too, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing"Let be this everywhere and this aught, in comparison of this nowhere and this nought. Reck thee never if thy wits cannot reason of this nought; for surely I love it much the better. It is so worthy a thing in itself that they cannot reason thereupon. this nought may better be felt than seen: for it is full blind and full dark to them that have but little while looked thereupon. Nevertheless, if I shall soothlier say, a soul is more blinded in feeling of it for abundance of ghostly light, than for any darkness or wanting of bodily light."

(The Cloud of Unknowing, cap. 68.)

[63] The Flemish "inblicke Gods" suggests the sudden flashing glance of Divine enlightenment: keen, vivid, but transitory, like lightning in the sky.