The following is an authorised translation of the essay prefixed by M. Maeterlinck to L’Ornement des Noces Spirituelles, de Ruysbroeck L’Admirable, Traduit du Flamand par Maurice Maeterlinck, which was published in 1891 by Paul Lacomblez of Brussels. I have added selected passages from Ruysbroeck’s own work....

Many works are more correctly beautiful than this book of Ruysbroeck L’Admirable. Many mystics—Swedenborg and Novalis among others—are more potent in their influence, and more timely. It is very probable that his writings may but rarely meet the needs of to-day. Looking at him from another point of view, I know few more clumsy authors. He wanders off now and then into strange puerilities, and the first twenty chapters of The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage , although they are perhaps a neces

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. The trees beneath which he prayed were illumined by an aureole;

He who desires to obtain and to preserve virtue will adorn, occupy, and arrange his soul like to a kingdom. Free will is the king of the soul. He is free by nature, and yet more free through divine mercy. He will be crowned with a crown named charity. This crown and this kingdom we shall receive from the Emperor, who is the Lord, the Ruler and the King of kings, and we shall possess, rule, and maintain this kingdom in His name. The sovereign, free will, shall dwell in the highest town of the kin

The sun shines in the east, in the centre of the world, on the mountains; it hastens summer in that region, and creates good fruits and potent wines, filling the earth with joy. The same sun shines in the west, at the ends of the earth; there the country is colder, and the power of its heat is less, yet nevertheless it produces a great many excellent fruits; but few wines are found there. Those men who dwell in the west of their own being, remain in the outward senses, and by their good intentio

Observe the wise bee and make it your model. It dwells in a community in the midst of its companions, and it goes forth, not during the storm, but when the weather is calm and still and the sun is shining; and it flies towards all the flowers on which it can find sweetness. It does not rest on any flower, neither in its beauty nor in its sweetness, but it draws from each calix honey and wax—that is to say, the sweetness and the substance of its brightness—and it bears them back to the community

Sometimes in these burning days there falls the honey-dew of some false sweetness, which soils the fruits or completely spoils them. It falls for the most part at noon, in bright sunshine, and its great drops can hardly be distinguished from rain. Even so there are some men who can be caught away from their outward senses by some brightness which is the gift of the enemy. And this brightness enwraps and envelops them, and at that moment they behold images, falsehoods, and many kinds of truths, a

I will give a brief parable to those who live in continual ebullitions of love, in order that they may endure this disposition nobly and becomingly, and may attain to a higher virtue. There is a little insect which is called the ant; it is strong and wise, and very tenacious of life, and it lives with its fellows in warm and dry soils. The ant works during summer and collects food and grain for the winter, and it splits the grain so that it may not become rotten or spoiled, and may be eaten when

He shall humbly consider that he hath nothing of his own save his misery, and shall say with resignation and self-abandonment the same words which were spoken by holy Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And in all things he shall yield up his own will, saying and thinking in his heart, “Lord, I am as willing to be poor and without all those things of which Thou hast deprived me, as I should be ready to be rich, Lord, if Thy will were so, and if in

When the time came for Christ to gather in and bear away to the eternal kingdom the fruits of all the virtues that ever were and ever shall be practised upon earth, then the Eternal Sun began to set; for He humbled Himself and gave up the life of His body into the hands of His enemies. And in His distress he was misunderstood and forsaken by His friends, and all consolation, from without and from within, was taken away from His human nature, and it was overwhelmed with misery and pain, with scor

We must consider and examine the sublime nature of God: how it is simplicity and purity; height that cannot be scaled and depth that cannot be sounded; breadth without understanding and length without end; awful silence and the savage wilderness; rest of all saints in the union and in the common joy which He shares with His saints throughout eternity....

The incomprehensible wealth and sublimity and the universality of the gifts which flow forth from the divine nature awake wonder in the heart of man, and above all he marvels at the universal presence of God and of His works, a presence which is above everything, for he beholds the inconceivable essence, which is the common joy of God and of all the saints. And he sees that the Divine Persons send forth one common effluence in works, in grace, and in glory, in nature and above nature, in all sta

Consider how Christ gave Himself to all in perfect faithfulness. His secret and sublime prayer flowed forth towards His Father, and was for the common good of all who desire salvation. Jesus Christ was all things to all men in His love, in His teaching, in His reproaches, in His consolations and sweetness, in His generous gifts, in His gracious forgiveness. His soul and His body, His life, His death, and His service were and are for the common good of all. His sacrament and His gifts are for all

There is a special benefit which Christ, in the Holy Church, has left to all the good: namely, that supper of the great feast of Passover, which He instituted when the time had come for Him to leave His sorrow and go to the Father, after He had eaten of the paschal lamb with His disciples and the ancient law had been fulfilled. At the end of the meal and of the feast, He wished to give them a special food, which He had long desired to give. In this way He would make an end of the ancient law and

Here there begins an eternal hunger, which shall nevermore be satisfied. It is the yearning and the inward aspiration of our faculty of love, and of our created spirit towards an uncreated good. And as the spirit desires joy, and is invited and constrained by God to partake of it, it is always longing to realise joy. Behold then the beginning of an eternal aspiration and of eternal efforts, while our impotence is likewise eternal. These are the poorest of all men, for they are eager and greedy,

In one single moment and at the same time, love labours and rests in its beloved. And the one is strengthened by the other; for the loftier the love, the greater is the rest, and the greater the rest, the closer is the love; for the one lives in the other, and he who loves not rests not, neither does he who rests not know aught of love. There are, nevertheless, some righteous men who believe that they neither love nor rest in God. But this thought itself springs from love, and because their desi

He (the believer) is hungry and thirsty, for he sees the food of angels and the drink of heaven. He labours diligently in love, for he beholds his rest. He is a pilgrim, and he sees his fatherland. He strives in love for the victory, for he sees his crown. Consolation, peace, joy, beauty, and riches, and all that the heart can desire, are shown to the reason which is enlightened to see God in spiritual similitudes and without measure or limit.... Those who do not possess, at the same time, the p

What is this eternal coming of our Bridegroom? It is a new birth and a new illumination which are without interruption; for the source from which the brightness streams, and which is itself the brightness, is living and fertile; and so the manifestation of the eternal light is renewed without interruption, in the secret depths of the spirit.... And the coming of the Bridegroom is so swift that He is always coming, and that He dwells within us with His unfathomable riches, and that He returns eve