The Rhineland Mystics

The work of the great Rhineland mystics of the fourteenth century speaks to the modern reader with astonishing directness and clarity. In their emphasis on the personal, inward experience of God and their questioning of the formal, ritualistic side of religion, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Jan van Ruusbroec appear almost as contemporaries. This impression is heightened by vivid new translations by Oliver Davies, who also sets the Rhineland mystics in their historical and cultural context and examines why we seem to have a special sensitivity to their voice in spite of a gap of over six hundred years.