RUYSBROEK (or RUYSBROECK),

See also:

• JAN

JAN

See also:

• VAN

VAN (1293-1381)  , Dutch mystic, was born at Ruysbroek, near Brussels, in 1293 . In 1317 he was ordained priest and became vicar of St Gudule, Brussels . When sixty years of age he withdrew with a few companions to the monastery of Groenendael, near Waterloo, giving himself to meditation and mystical writing, and to a full share of the practical tasks of the society . He was known as the " Ecstatic Teacher,” and formed a link between the Friends of God and the Brothers of the Commbn Life, sects which helped to bring about the Reformation . Ruysbroek insisted that " the soul finds God in its own depths,” and noted three stages of progress in what he called " the spiritual ladder " of Christian attainment: (I) the active life, (2) the inward life, (3) the contemplative life . He did not teach the fusion of the self in God, but held that at the summit of the ascent the soul still preserves its identity . His works, of which the most important were De vera contemplation and De septem gradibus amoris, were published in 1848 at Hanover; also Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic (1906) and Die Zierde der geistlichen Hochzeit (1901) . See Rufus M . Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, pp . 308–14 (1909) ; M . Maeterlinck, Ruysbroek and the Mystics, with selections from The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage (tr. by J . T .

Stoddart,

London, 1894); and art . MYSTICISM .