THEOLOGIA GERMANICA






INTRODUCTION

Sect. 1. THE PRECURSORS OF THE GERMAN MYSTICS





TO most English readers the "Imitation of Christ" is the
representative of mediaeval German mysticism. In reality, however,
this beautiful little treatise belongs to a period when that
movement had nearly spent itself. Thomas a Kempis, as Dr. Bigg has
said,[1] was only a semi-mystic. He tones down the most
characteristic doctrines of Eckhart, who is the great original
thinker of the German mystical school, and seems in some ways to
revert to an earlier type of devotional literature. The "Imitation"
may perhaps be described as an idealised picture of monastic piety,
drawn at a time when the life of the cloister no longer filled a
place of unchallenged usefulness in the social order of Europe. To
find German mysticism at its strongest we must go back a full
hundred years, and to understand its growth we must retrace our
steps as far as the great awakening of the thirteenth century--the
age of chivalry in religion--the age of St. Louis, of Francis and