Northern Europe seems incompatible with mysticism: skies too cold and gray to be congenial to long hours of prayer, and a people whose ancestors had a reputation, at least among the Greeks and Romans, of being bearded savages. And while mystics are often thought of as anti-rational and outside of organized religion, when mysticism did eventually flower in fourteenth-century northern Europe, its ranks were populated from within the rationalist structures of the universities and the religious orders. These, at least, were the origins of the writers whose teachings have come down to us; outsiders such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Friends of God have left us far less material to study.

Meister Eckhart was one of these establishment mystics: a German, a Dominican, and a university man. Though charges of heresy were laid against him by the Archbishop of Cologne, Eckhart was very much part of the ecclesiastical power structures — the man in charge of a large Dominican province, and a professor of theology at the University of Paris. His writings reflect his thorough academic training and include philosphical analyses of creation, beingness, and the distinction between God and Godhead. It is our capacity for reason, he says, that shows we have a spark of the divine within us. And it is only by going deep within, detached from all created things, that we transcend the ego and arrive at this spark, the uncreated within. At this point, God’s will becomes our will and we see ourselves as we are: nothing.

It is likely but not certain that Eckhart influenced the later Dominican, Johannes Tauler. We know Tauler’s teachings from published collections of his transcribed sermons. While Eckhart taught that we have a spark of God within us, thus opening himself to accusations of monism or pantheism, Tauler would say only that we have an “image” of God within us. There is a point in the soul that lies closest to God, but this point is not itself God. By withdrawing into this point we can find God, even become joined to God, and yet we remain separate. In terms of practice, we arrive at this point by withdrawing from worldly things. However, it is God and not ourselves who takes the final initiative after our arrival at the still center.

We know more about the life of the southern German Dominican Henry Suso, at least if his biography is to be believed. He joined the Dominicans as a teenager, was counseled personally by Eckhart, and spent sixteen years practicing extreme mortifications until a vision told him to stop this. Suso, as may be gathered, was a mystic of the trances and visions variety that Ruth Burrows calls “lights on” mysticism.

The Dominicans — known originally for their preaching, of course — may have taken this mystical turn as a result of their responsibility to supervise and direct nuns. This brought them into contact with the mystical spirituality that flourished in northern European convents beginning in the twelfth century, of which Hildegard of Bingen is the best known exemplar. This mystical spirituality worked its way into popular consciousness in the form of lay movements such as the Beguines and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The Beguines were particularly influential in the Low Countries, and it is to them that we owe the feast of Corpus Christi. From this Dutch soil came Jan van Ruusbroec. His mysticism is devotional, and while in some respects he resembles Eckhart, Ruusbroec puts the emphasis on love of God as the driving force.

While the German and Dutch mystics get a chapter each in this book, the English mystics must share one between them. What they have in common, says the author, is a preference for the practical over the theological. The Cloud of Unknowing receives the most attention, but sections in the English chapter also cover Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and Julian of Norwich.

Finally, the author asks why the fourteenth century should produce so many mystics and even lay mystical movements. The answers must at best be speculative. One can point to clerical corruption, a low point in Papal power, and the Black Death, but these neither separately nor taken together provide a satisfactory explanation.

Throughout the book, Oliver Davies situates his subjects within their religious and political contexts, in addition to describing the chief characteristics of their writings. It would be interesting to know more about the mystics’ personalities and lives, but sadly very few facts have come down to us. This is the second edition of a work the author first published some twenty years ago.


Oliver Davies. God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe. 2nd edition. Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2006. Paperback. 242 pages. ISBN 9781565482401. $17.95.