“Then you know nothing of the delights which God bestows, or of the delicious savour of the Holy Ghost,” thought Ruysbroeck to himself, for he happened to overhear the words, and he proceeded tranquilly on his way.
III
False Mystics
But with all his love of peace and retirement, when it was a question of guarding the integrity of the Faith and of warding off peril from immortal souls, Ruysbroeck hesitated not to stand in the breach; even though others of much higher position in the Church and of much higher repute for theological learning than the obscure chaplain of St. Gudule’s should raise not a finger nor so much as utter a warning word.
The student of history is well aware of the many and startling contrasts and contradictions presented by the Middle Ages. It was an epoch of magnificent virtues and of gross vices, of splendid heroism and of unspeakable cruelty, of superb generosity and of disgusting meanness, and, which is more to our point at present, of intense devotion and of the most revolting vagaries in doctrine and morals. While also on the one hand there was much genuine zeal, much earnest endeavour to reform crying abuses in Church and State; on the other hand hypocrites and fanatics abounded, who aimed at the destruction of the principle of authority on the plea of amending those in power, or who, the while they inveighed against the futility of a merely exterior religion and insisted on the supreme need of purity of heart, themselves fell into the excess of neglecting all external form, and at times all outward decency and observance of morality.
In varying degrees these latter errors are to be encountered under one shape or another in every age; but at the period of which we treat they were especially intense and extreme. The Beghards and the Béguines (when and where these broke loose from ecclesiastical control), the Flagellants, the Brethren of the Free Spirit were chief of a group of extravagant sects which afflicted the Church in Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands; while England at the same time was disturbed by the fanaticism of the Lollards. In general their peculiar tenets were a strange admixture of pantheism, false mysticism, apparent austerity, and very real immorality. The following is one of their characteristic propositions, condemned by Clement V. in the Council of Vienna, A.D. 1311-1312: “That those who are in the aforesaid grade of perfection and in the spirit of liberty (contemplatives) are not subject to human authority and are not obliged to obey any precepts of the Church, because (as they say) where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
It so happened that contemporary with our Saint in Brussels was a prominent leader of the heretics of the Free Spirit, a woman whose name is given as Bloemardinne, a good type, to judge by the description of Ruysbroeck’s biographer, of the whole genus of such teachers in those days and in our own.[2] So great was this creature’s reputation for sanctity that it was commonly reported that two Seraphim accompanied her to the altar when she approached to receive Holy Communion. She always delivered her teachings, whether by word or in writing, seated on a throne of silver. At her demise this chair was presented to the reigning Duchess of Brabant. After Bloemardinne’s death also cripples came to touch her body in the persuasion that they would be miraculously healed thereby. Her teaching was of the kind indicated above, concerned chiefly with the so-called liberty of the spirit; the passion of lust she had the impudence to call seraphic love. She issued numerous pamphlets remarkable for their subtlety; and by one means and another she managed to win and retain a very considerable number of disciples.
Moved by zeal and compassion on witnessing the ruin and loss of souls thus effected, John Ruysbroeck set himself to confute this heretic’s various publications point by point as they appeared. In consequence, he incurred not a little hostility and persecution. Possibly it was this opposition which finally decided Ruysbroeck and his holy companions to quit Brussels for the more peaceful retirement of the neighbouring forest of Soignes. But meanwhile he never for a moment desisted from his efforts in defence of the Faith, and in the propagation of the doctrines of sane mysticism. Of the treatises published professedly against Bloemardinne there is nothing extant. But in all his works Ruysbroeck keeps an eye on the errors of the day. He returns to them again and again, analysing their sources, describing their characteristics, indicating the mischief they work, and offering a reasoned and solid confutation. At the same time, with wondrous sureness and perspicacity, from the rich stores of his own intimate experience, he points out the safe and sure paths which lead the soul to loving union with God.
Some thirty years after Ruysbroeck’s death, in 1410, the Archbishop of Cambrai called his disciples, the Canons Regular of Groenendael, to come and aid him in preaching against the successors of the notorious Bloemardinne—a fact eloquent both of the obstinacy of this particular heresy and of Blessed John’s reputation as its most vigorous opponent.
IV
The Hermitage of Groenendael
It appears that it was on the suggestion of Francis van Coudenberg that the three holy priests resolved to abandon Brussels to seek elsewhere for themselves a refuge of greater security and retirement. It was through the influence also of van Coudenberg with John III., Duke of Brabant, that they obtained the cession of an ideal property for their purpose, the hermitage, namely, of Groenendael, with its lands and lake.