§ 28. The New Mysticism.
In joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin, He is his own best evidence —
His witness is within.
— Whittier, Our Master.
At the time when the scholastic method was falling into disrepute and the scandals of the Avignon court and the papal schism were shaking men's faith in the foundations of the Church, a stream of pure pietism was watering the regions along the Rhine, from Basel to Cologne, and from Cologne to the North Sea. North of the Alps, voices issuing from convents and from the ranks of the laity called attention to the value of the inner religious life and God's immediate communications to the soul.
To this religious movement has recently been given the name, the Dominican mysticism, on account of the large
§ 28. THE NEW MYSTICISM. 237
number of its representatives who belonged to the Dominican order. The older name, German mysticism, which is to be preferred, points to the locality where it manifested itselfj and to the language which the mystics for the most part used in their writings. Like the Protestant Reformation, the movement had its origin on German soil, but, unlike the Reformation, it did not spread beyond Germany and the Lowlands. Its chief centres were Strassburg and Cologne; its leading representatives the speculative Meister Eckart, d. 1327, John Tauler, d. 1361, Henry Suso, d. 1366, John Ruysbroeck, d. 1381, Gerrit Groote, d. 1384, and Thomas a Kempis, d. 1471. The earlier designation for these pietists was Friends of God. The Brothers of the Common Life, the companions and followers of Groote, were of the same type, but developed abiding institutions of practical Christian philanthropy. In localities the Beguines and Beghards also breathed the same devotional and philanthropic spirit. The little book ealledr the German Theology^ and the Imitation of Christ, were among the finest fruits of the movement. Gerson and Nicolas of Cusa also had a strong mystical vein, but they are not to be classed with the German mystics. With them mysticism was an incidental, not the distinguishing, quality.
The mystics along the Rhine formed groups which, however, were not bound together by any formal organization. Their only bond was the fellowship of a common religious purpose.
Their religious thought was not always homogeneous in its expression, but all agreed in the serious attempt to secure purity of heart and life through union of the soul with God. Mysticism is a phase of Christian Jife. It is a devotional habit, in contradistinction to the outward and formal practice of religious rules. It is a religious experience in contrast to a mere intellectual assent to tenets. It is the conscious effort^ of the soul to apprehend and possess God and Chrisj*, and expresses itself in the words, "-I live, and yet not I but Christ liveth in me." It is essentially what is now called in some quarters "personal religion." Perhaps the shortest definition of mysticism is the best. It is the love of God shed
238 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
abroad in the heart.^ The element of intuition has a large place, and the avenues through which religious experience is reached are self-detachraent from the world, self-purgation, prayer and contemplation.
Without disparaging the sacraments or disputing the authority of the Church, the German mystics soughta better way. They laid stress upon the meaning of such passages as " he that believeth in me shall never hunger and he that cometh unto me shall never thirst," " he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father " and " he that foUoweth me shall not walk in darkness." The word love figures most prominently in their writings. Among the distinctive terms in vogue among them were AbgeseJiiedenheit, Eckart's word for self-detachment from the world and that which is temporal, and Kehr^ Tauler's oft-used word for conversion. They laid stress upon tlie new birth, and found in Christ's incarnation a type of th& realization of the divine in the gpul.
German mysticism had a distinct individuality of its own. On occasion, its leaders quoted Augustine's Confessions and other works, Dionysius the Areopagite, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, but they did not have the habit of referring back to human authorities as had the Schoolmen, bulwarking every theological statement by patristic quotations, or statements taken from Aristotle. The movement arose like a root out of a dry ground at a time of great corruption and distraction in the Church, and it arose where it might have been least expected to arise. Its field was the territory along the Rlujie where the heretical sects had had representation. It was a fresh outburst of piety, an earnest seeking after God by other paths than the religious externalism fostered by sacerdotal
1 See Inge, Engl. Mystics, p. 37. This author, in his Christian Mysticis7n, p. 5, gives the definition that mysticism is "the attempt to realize in the thought and feeling tlie immanence of tlie temporal in the eternal and of the eternal in the temporal." His statements in another place, The Inner Way, pp. xx-xxii, are more simple and illuminating. The mystical theology is that knowledge of God and of divine things which is derived not from observation or from argument but from conscious experience. The difficulty of giving a precise definition of mysticism is seen in the definitions Inge cites, Christian Mysticism, Appendix A. Comp. Deutsch, p. 632 sq.