Ruysbroeck and the Mystics

The life of Jean von Ruysbroeck, like that of most of the great thinkers of this world, is entirely an inner life. He said himself, “I have no concerns outside.” Nearly all his biographers, Surius among others, wrote nearly two centuries after his death, and their work seems much intermixed with legend. They show us a holy hermit, silent, ignorant, amazingly humble, amazingly good, who was in the habit of working miracles unawares.