John Tauler

Extract

John Tauler, a contemporary of Suso, is perhaps the best known of the three great German Dominican mystics. For he is the most characteristic representative of his Order, being first and foremost a preacher and shepherd of souls. Like St. John the Baptist, he was a voice crying in the wilderness of the world : ‘Repent ye, abandon the creatures and turn to the Creator.’ This was his battle cry, and his life work was to show man how to fulfil its demand. Whereas Suso made his own life a mirror, as it were, of the mystic way, reflecting in it both its glories and its agonies, Tauler took man by the hand and led him step by step to the Sanctuary of Mystic Union.

He was eminently fitted for his work, for he had that deep insight into human nature which is indispensable in the preacher and teacher. ‘Man, he said, hangs between heaven and earth. With his highest faculties he is exalted above himself and above all things, and dwells in God, but with his lowest faculties he is subjected under all things into the very ground of humility.’ He calls the higher faculties the ‘inner man,’ whilst the lower faculties form the ‘outer man.’ The inner man is subject to God alone, but the outer man to all creatures in true humility. The task of the inner man is of a double nature: he directs the outer man by the light of his superior knowledge, whilst in himself he remains unruffled by the changes of earthly existence, ‘sunk and united’ in his communion with God.