A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
Written by Ruusbroec for Margareta van Meerbeke, a Poor Clare of Brussels, this shorter treatise addresses the soul's preparation for and reception of the Eucharist, treating the active union with God available to every soul through the sacrament. The work documents the pastoral relationship between the Groenendaal community — dependent on Brabant ducal patronage — and the women religious of Brussels, to whom it was sent in 1359. Unlike the Spiritual Espousals, which addresses advanced contemplatives, this text is directed to active religious women and is notably more pastoral, accessible, and sacramental in its focus.
Why it still matters
As a Eucharistic treatise written for women religious, A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness is among the most direct medieval guides to sacramental devotion from the mystical tradition and can be read as a Communion preparation in the days before receiving the Eucharist.
Kept alongside
The Spiritual Espousals (Die gheestelike brulocht)
Ruusbroec's masterwork was composed in Middle Dutch c. 1340 while he was still a chaplain in Brussels, before his 1343 move to the Groenendaal hermitage in the Sonian Forest. Organized around Matthew 25:6 — 'See, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him' — the Espousals traces three stages of the soul's ascent (active, interior, and contemplative) toward union with God. It survives in 36 Dutch manuscripts and Latin and Middle High German translations; Geert Groote visited Ruusbroec at Groenendaal c. 1378 and the text directly shaped the Devotio Moderna programme of interior reform. The Latin translation by the Carthusian Surius (1552) ensured broader circulation among learned elites across Catholic Europe.
The Sparkling Stone (Vanden blinkenden steen)
A compact mystical treatise on the soul's progression from external religious observance through the life of the hidden son of God to union with the divine, organized around the image of the white stone given to the overcomer in Revelation 2:17. The work's concise three-stage analysis of Christian perfection made it a favoured formation text across Devotio Moderna houses and beyond; a Middle English translation, 'The Treatise of the Perfection of the Sons of God,' survives in the 1413 Amherst Manuscript (British Library, Additional MS 37790). It is available in the Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality volume devoted to Ruusbroec.
Revelations of Divine Love (Showings)
A Revelation of Love
Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–after 1416), anchoress at St Julian's Church, Norwich, recorded sixteen showings (visions) received on 8–9 May 1373 and spent some two decades deepening them into the Long Text, completed probably in the 1390s–1410s. Her connection to the Plantagenet nobility is directly confirmed: Isabel de Ufford, Countess of Suffolk, left twenty shillings to 'Julian reclus a Norwich' in her will of 26 September 1416, and Margery Kempe — herself of Norfolk minor gentry — visited Julian for spiritual counsel in 1413, recording the conversation in the earliest English autobiography. Earlier bequests in the wills of Roger Reed (1394), Thomas Edmund (1404), and John Plumpton (1415) further document her sustained patronage by Norwich citizens and clergy. The three surviving Long Text manuscripts all trace to Syon Abbey (the Brigittine house of royal foundation) and were preserved by recusant exiles including descendants of Sir Thomas More and the Lowe family; the Paris Manuscript was copied c. 1580 by a Brigittine nun in Antwerp, and the Sloane manuscripts were edited by English Benedictine nuns at Cambrai for the first print edition (1670). Julian's theology of God's unqualified love — 'alle shalle be wele' — and her imagery of Christ as Mother made this the devotional capstone of 14th-century English female mysticism.