unt devotus sed parum litteratus," says the
Abbe Tritheme (_ap._ Gessner, _Biblioth._). "Rusbrochius cum idiota
esset" (_Dyon. Carth._ Serm. i.). Compare Rousselot, _Les Mystiques
Espagnols_, p. 493.]

[Footnote 259: Maeterlinck, Ruysbroek's latest interpreter, is far too
complimentary to the intellectual endowments of his fellow-countryman.
"Ce moine possedait un des plus sages, des plus exacts, et des plus
subtils organes philosophiques qui aient jamais existe." He thinks it
marvellous that "il sait, a son insu, le platonisme de la Grece, le
soufisme de la Perse, le brahmanisme de I'Inde et le bouddhisme de
Thibet," etc. In reality, Ruysbroek gets all his philosophy from
Eckhart, and his manner of expounding it shows no abnormal acuteness.
But Maeterlinck's essay in _Le Tresor des Humbles_ contains some good
things--e.g. "Les verites mystiques ne peuvent ni vieillir ni
mourir.... Une oeuvre ne vieillit qu'en proportion de son
antimysticisme."]

[Footnote 260: So Preger, probably rightly. Noack places his birth
five years later. The chronology of the _Life_ is very loose.]

[Footnote 261: The extreme asceticism which was practised by Suso, and
(though to a less degree) by Tauler, is not enjoined by them as a
necessary part of a holy life. "We are to kill our passions, not our
flesh and blood," as Tauler says.]

[Footnote 262: It would be very interesting to trace the influence of
the chivalric idea on religious Mysticism. Chivalry, the worship of
idealised womanhood, is itself a mystical cult, and its relation to
religious Mysticism appears throughout the "Divine Comedy" and "Vita
Nuova" (see especially the incomparable paragraph which concludes this
latter), and in the sonnet of M. Angelo translated by Wordsworth, "No
mortal object did these eyes behold," etc.]

[Footnote 263: Nothing in the book is more touching than the scene
when the baby, deserted by its mother, Suso's false accuser, is
brought to him. Suso takes the child in his arms, and weeps over it
with affectionate words, while the infant smiles up at him. In spite
of the calumny which he knew was being spread wherever it would most
injure him, he insists on paying for the child's maintenance, rather
than leave it to die from neglect. The Italian mystic Scupoli, the
author of a beautiful devotional work called the _Spiritual Combat_,
was calumniated in a similar manner.]

[Footnote 264: By Schmidt, whose researches formed the basis of
several popular