Atherton. Yet you will be unjust to the Greek Church (which has little enough to boast of) if you reckon this gross materialist Quietism as the only specimen of mysticism she has to show during this period. There was a certain Cabasilas, Archbishop of Thessalonica,[[177]] a contemporary of our German friends, an active man in the political and religious movements of the time, whose writings exhibit very fairly the better characteristics of Byzantine mysticism. His earnest practical devotion rests on the basis of the traditional sacerdotalism, but he stands between the extremes of the objective and the subjective mysticism, though naturally somewhat nearer to the former. He presents, however, nothing original to detain us;—so let us away to supper.
Note to page 354.
The following passage, placed in the mouth of the Everlasting Wisdom may serve as a further specimen of the sensuous and florid cast of Suso’s language:—
‘I am the throne of joy, I am the crown of bliss. Mine eyes are so bright, my mouth so tender, my cheeks so rosy-red, and all my form so winning fair, that were a man to abide in a glowing furnace till the Last Day, it would be a little price for a moment’s vision of my beauty. Behold! I am so beauteously adorned with a robe of glory, so delicately arrayed in all the blooming colours of the living flowers—red roses, white lilies, lovely violets, and flowers of every name, that the fair blossoms of all Mays, and the tender flowerets of all sunny fields, and the sweet sprays of all bright meadows, are but as a rugged thistle beside my loveliness.’ (Then he breaks into verse):—
‘I play in the Godhead the play of joy,
And gladden the angel host on high
With a sweetness such that a thousand years
Like a vanishing hour of time run by.
‘... Happy he who shall share the sweet play, and tread at my side the joy-dance of heaven for ever in gladsome security. One word from my sweet mouth surpasses all the songs of angels, the sound of all harps, and all sweet playing on stringed instruments.... Lo! I am a good so absolute that he who hath in time but one single drop thereof finds all the joy and pleasure of this world a bitterness,—all wealth and honour worthless. Those dear ones who love me are embraced by my sweet love, and swim and melt in the sole Unity with a love which knows no form, no figure, no spoken words, and are borne and dissolved into the Good from whence they sprang,’ &c.—Leben, cap. vii. p. 199.
The following is a sample of Suso’s old Suabian German, from the extracts given by Wackernagel, p. 885:—