§ 32. THE FRIENDS OB^ GOD. 269
edged his debt to Eckart, " the high teacher," " his high and holy master," from whose " sweet teachings he had taken deep draughts." As he says in his Autobiography^ he went to Eckart in a time of spiritual trial, and was helped by him out of the hell of distress into which he had fallen. He uses some of Eckart's distinctive vocabulary, and after the Cologne mystic's death, Suso saw him " in exceeding glory " and was admonished by him to submission. This quality forms the subject of Suso's Book on the Truths which in part was meant to be a defence of his spiritual teacher.
A passage bearing on the soul's union with Christ will serve as a specimen of Suso's tropical style, and may fitly close this chapter. The soul, so the Swiss mystic represents Christ as saying —
" the soul that would find me in the inner closet of a consecrated and selfdetached life, — abgeschiedenes Leben, — and would partake of my sweetness, must first be purified from evil and adorned with virtues, be decked with the red roses of passionate love, with the beautiful violets of meek submission, and must be strewn with the white lilies of purity. It shall embrace me with its arms, excluding all other loves, for these I shun and flee as the bird does the cage. This soul shall sing to me the song of Zion, which means passionate love combined with boundless praise. Then I will embrace it and it shall lean upon my heart." ^
§ 32. The Friends of God.
The Friends of God attract our interest both by the suggestion of religious fervor involved in their name and the respect with which the prominent mystics speak of them. They are frequently met within the writings of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroeck, as well as in the pages of other writers of the fourteenth century. Much mystery surrounds them, and efforts have failed to define with precision their teachings, numbers and influence. The name had been applied to the Waldenses,2 but in the fourteenth century it came to be a designation for coteries of pietists scattered along the Rhine, from Basel to Strassburg "aiicr'to"the Netherlands, laymen and priests who felt spiritual longings the usual church services did not satisfy. They did not constitute an organized ject.
1 Von cler ewigen Weisheit, Bihlmeyer's ed., p. 296 sq.
2 Preger, III. 370 ; Strauch, p. 205.
270 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
They were addicted to thejitudy of the Scriptures, and sought close personal fellowship with God. They laid stress upon a godly life and were bent on the propagation of holiness. Their name was derived from Jolin 16 : 15, " Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends." Their practices did not involve a breach with the Church and its ordinances. They had no sympathy with heresy, and antagonized the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The little treatise, called the German Theology^ at the outset marks the difference between the Friends of God and the false, free spirits, especially the Beghards.^
A letter written by a Friend to another Friend ^ represents as succinctly as any statement their aim when it says, "The soul that loves God must get away from the world, from the flesh and all sensual desires and away from itself, that is, away from its own self-will, and thus does it make ready to hear the message of the work and ministry of love accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ." The house which Rulman Merswin founded in Strassburg was declared to be a house of refuge for honorable persons, priests and laymen wlio, with trust in God, choose to flee the world and seek to improve their lives. The Friends of God regarded themselves as holding the secret of the Christian life and as being the salt of the earth, the instructors of other men.^
Among the leading Friends of God were Henry of Nordlingen, Nicolas of Lowen, Rulman Merswin and " the -gxfiat Friend of God from the Oberland." The personality of the Fi-iend^oTTjod from the Oberland is one of the most evasive in the religious history of the Middle Ages. He is presented as a leader of great personal power and influence, as the man who determined Tauler's conversion and wrote a number of tracts, and yet it is doubtful .whether such a personage ever lived. Rulman Merswin affirms that he had been widely active between Basel and Strassburg and in the region of Switzerland, from which he got his name, the Oberland. In
1 See Rulman Merswin's condemnation of the Beguines and Beghards in the Nine Rocks, chs. XIII., XIV. 2 ^.s printed by Preger, III. 417 sq.
' See the last chapter of R. Merswin's Nine Eocks.