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Updated: June 29, 2025
When we recall that spiritual heritage, as previously described, when we think of Schiller, Herder and Goethe, Froebel, Herbart and Richter, Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher, Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, we stand aghast at the way in which she has plunged it all into the abyss, for what?
It is what Jesus means when he speaks of the faithful ones they who have endured even to the end entering "into the joy of their Lord". It is the apostle's unspeakable peace, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding". Another of the school of Eckhart, Tauler, gives his own experience, and it is not dissimilar.
"All kinds of skill," said Tauler, "are gifts of the Holy Ghost," and he might have said, all kinds of beauty and all kinds of courage too. The heroic makes a direct appeal to lads and girls, and is by far the safest way of approach to their emotions. The chivalrous, the noble, the desperately brave, attract the adolescent far more than passive goodness.
Tauler was asked where he, who was so great a contemplative, and who held such close and familiar communication with God, had found God. He answered, "Where I found myself." On being further asked where he had found himself, he said, "Where I forgot myself in God."
Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, however impressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, were undistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name to English Quakers and French Convulsionists, which were to be read of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa, and which were a matter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany.
Whilst Luther was prosecuting his labours in this path, he became acquainted in 1516 with the sermons of the pious, deep-thinking theologian Tauler, who died in 1361; and at the same time an old theological tract, written not long after Tauler, fell into his hands, to which he gave the name of 'German Theology. Now for the first time, and in the person of their noblest representatives, he was confronted with the Christian and theological views which were commonly designated as the practical German mysticism of the middle ages.
Saint Denys the Areopagite was a Greek; Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Sister Emmerich, were Germans; Ruysbröck came from Flanders; Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Marie d'Agreda, were Spaniards; Father Faber was English; Saint Bonaventure, Angela of Foligno, Magdalen of Pazzi, Catherine of Genoa, Jacopo de Voragine, were Italians....
Again, at a later date, followed the productions of the Meistersingers, and especially of Hans Sachs, of Nürnberg. Then, again, we have the prose literature of the mystics, Eckhart, Tauler, and their followers.
"See," and he pointed out on the shelves some heavy folios, "here: 'Saint Gregory the Great, 'Venerable Bede, 'Saint Peter Damian, 'Saint Anselm. ... And your friends are there," he said, following Durtal with a glance as he read the titles of the volumes, "'Saint Teresa, 'Saint John of the Cross, 'Saint Magdalen of Pazzi, 'Saint Angela, 'Tauler, ... and she who like Sister Emmerich dictated her conversations with Jesus during her ecstasy."
Nevertheless, when one recalls the spiritual heritage of Germany: when one thinks of Herder, Schiller and Goethe; Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher; Froebel, Herbart and Richter; Kant, Fichte and Novalis; Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner; one feels that something of the old German heritage must survive.
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