Ursula King on Johannes Tauler

“Among all the medieval mystics, the Rhineland mystics are perhaps the ones best known today. They are widely accessible and cited more frequently than any others. Their message has a directness and freshness of expression that communicates itself across the centuries...Initially one might expect that all mystics from the Rhine region would be counted as Rhineland mystics...But the term “Rhineland mystics” is customarily used in a more restricted sense. It refers only to the mystics of the fourteenth century who lived in Germany and the Low Countries. It applies particularly to a group of several men—Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler and Jan van Ruusbroec...The most daring and original of the Rhenish mystics was Meister Eckhart, whose disciples were Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso. These three Germans all belonged to the Dominican order. Suso is seen as the most intimate and personal mystic, Tauler was known as an inspiring preacher, whereas the Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec was probably the most profound. These men, deeply involved in the theological debates of their own age, describe the deepest levels of inward experience where God is known in the inner recesses of the human soul, a most intimate presence that is also a transcendence. Their message addresses us so directly because it relates to a search for what is most essential to religion, its deepest, most inward dimension, and it emphasizes a real indwelling of ourselves in God and of God in us. The mysticism of the Rhineland is known in German as Wesensmystik, a mysticism of being or essence.”

“If Meister Eckhart’s teachings are highly abstract, intellectual and speculative, Tauler’s are much closer to ordinary Christian life and its devotions are easier to absorb and follow, although he retains much of Eckhart’s thought and terminology and shows a genuine understanding of his master’s message...Tauler never wrote in Latin, the universal language of medieval scholars. While he possessed a healthy suspicion of mere book learning, he nevertheless had a deep grasp of theological truths and, in about 1325, was ordained a Dominican priest. He soon became famous as a spiritual director, especially of nuns, and acquired a tremendous reputation as a popular preacher. His popularity probably also had much to do with his many travels. He even visited Groenendaal, outside Brussels, to meet Jan van Ruusbroec. During the Black Death of 1348 he devoted himself to the care of the sick, which further increased his popularity and reputation...Tauler is so closely associated with Strasbourg, where he died and is buried, that he is sometimes called “Johannes Tauler of Strasbourg.” His popularity meant that numerous works were later attributed to him, but few are genuine. He left eighty-four sermons in German, recorded by his listeners, most likely written down by nuns. But the clarity and form of these texts makes one think that he revised or at least approved their final version. These Sermons were first printed in 1498 and then translated into Latin in 1548. They found their widest diffusion in this Latin form and became known as far as Spain. Luther read Tauler’s German Sermons and greatly admired “such sterling theology, equal to that of the ancients.” But this referred mainly to Tauler’s spiritual advice on practical matters, whereas Luther mistrusted his essentially mystical teaching. Like Eckhart, Tauler emphasized the indwelling of God in the human soul without stressing the identity of creature and creator to the same degree. Tauler has more room for the role of grace and for the place of the Holy Spirit in mystical union. Yet his deeply mystical theology is, like Eckhart’s, based on “the uncreated ground of the soul” present in all human beings, the soul’s insatiable hunger for God, and the need for passivity so that God can work in the soul. This work can be a form of suffering, however, a teaching whereby he already anticipates the later “dark night of the soul” in St John of the Cross.”

“The difference between Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler was later summarized by contrasting Eckhart as a Lehrmeister, a “master of thinking,” with Tauler as a Lebemeister, or a “master of living.”...Yet Tauler follows Eckhart in describing God in negative terms. The way to God is for Tauler the via negativa of the desert fathers and of Dionysius, finding God in withdrawal and the wilderness. At the same time he also possesses a strongly affirmative spirituality, as when he says that works of love are more acceptable to God than even contemplation, that spiritual enjoyment is food for the soul, which should be taken only to support us in our active work. Thus his mystical teaching is eminently practical, translating experience into action. The down-to-earth, commonsense humility of this Dominican mystic is well expressed in the often quoted words: “One man can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Spirit I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all.””