In her ‘Instructions,’ she lays it down as a rule that none can ever be deceived in the visions and manifestations vouchsafed them who are truly poor in spirit,—who have rendered themselves as ‘dead and putrid’ into the hands of God. (Capp. liv. lv.) She says that when God manifests Himself to the soul, ‘it sees Him, without bodily form, indeed, but more distinctly than one man can see another man, for the eyes of the soul behold a spiritual plenitude, not a corporeal, whereof I can say nothing, since both words and imagination fail here.’ (Capit. lii. p. 192.) Angela died in 1309.
[182]. ‘Catharine of Siena.’ Görres gives a short account of her in his Introduction to Diepenbrock’s edition of Suso, p. 96.
[183]. The theology of this remarkable little book is substantially the same with that already familiar to us in the sermons of Tauler. Luther, writing to Spalatin, and praising Tauler’s theology, sends with his letter what he calls an epitome thereof,—cujus totius velut epitomen ecce hic tibi mitto. (Epp. De Wette, No. xxv.) He refers, there can be little doubt, to his edition of the Deutsche Theologie, which came out that year.
[184]. See, especially, the twelfth chapter of the second book, On the Necessity of bearing the Cross. Compare Michelet’s somewhat overdrawn picture of the effects of the Imitation in his History of France.
The Ignitum cum Deo Soliloquium of Gerlacus Petrus is a contemporary treatise belonging to the same school. (Comp. capp. xxxix. and xxvi.; ed. Strange, 1849.) It is less popular, less impassioned than the Imitation, and more thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mysticism. Gerlach would seem to have studied Suso: in one place he imitates his language. The cast of his imagery, as well as the prominence given to mystical phraseology, more peculiar to the Germans, shows that he addresses himself to an advanced and comparatively esoteric circle.—Comp. capp. xxii, xxiv, p. 78.
[185]. ‘Gerson.‘—See an article by Liebner (Gerson’s Mystische Theologie) in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken; 1835, ii.
[186]. Malcolm’s Persia, vol. ii., p. 383.
[187]. See Schrader’s Angelus Silesius und seine Mystik; Halle, 1853. This author shows, that the supposition identifying Scheffler with Angelus (copied too readily by one writer from another) may be traced up to a source of very slight authority. Scheffler repudiated mysticism after entering the Romish communion. Furious polemical treatises by Scheffler, and sentimental religious poems by Angelus appeared contemporaneously during a considerable interval. Had Scheffler published anything mystical during his controversy, his Protestant antagonists would not have failed to charge him with it. With Scheffler the Church is everything. In the Wanderer of Angelus the word scarcely occurs. The former lives in externalisms; the latter covets escape from them. The one is an angry bigot; the other, for a Romanist, serenely latitudinarian. Characteristics so opposite, urges Dr. Schrader, could not exist in the same man at the same time.
The epithet ‘Cherubic’ indicates the more speculative character of the book; as contrasted, in the language of the mystics, with the devotion of feeling and passion—seraphic love.
[188]. Cherubinischer Wandersmann, i. 100, 9, 18; Schrader, p. 28.