Rhineland Mystics
This work was discovered and published in 1516 by Martin Luther, who said of it it that "Next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands from which I have learnt more of God and Christ, and man and all things that are." It has since appealed to Christians of all persuasions.
Many of the greatest mystical writers of the late Middle Ages lived in the lower Rhine valley, including Thomas a Kempis and especially the Dominican Meister Eckehart (c. 1260-1328). In general, they tended to reject the Aristotelianism of the Thomist school in favour of a unitive mysticism of Neoplatonic inspiration.
Eckehart saw the ascent of the soul to God in a process of gradually purifyication and absorption into the all-transcendent One. At its highest point, or "citadel," the soul is united with God who transcends all being and knowledge. Sometimes Eckehart's language tended towards pantheism, as when he describes God as the being of all things, although he also makes clear that there is an infinite gulf between creatures and God. He means that creatures have no existence of their own but are given existence by God, as the body is made to exist and is contained by the soul.
His followers among the Rhineland mystics, especially Henry Suso and John Tauler, defended his memory but qualified his daring language. Texts such as the anonymous Theologia Germanica of the late 14th century, reflecting the ideas of the loose groups of seriously God-seeking people who called themselves the Friends of God, conveyed this Rhenish mysticism to the Reformers. In the Low Countries, the rich mystical literature that developed reached its culmination in writings of Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381).
