Selected Sermons of Johannes Tauler
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Catalogue updated 2026-06-08
Full Sub Rosa translationRead the full translationOpen reader →Open the chapter reader with the full English translation, source text, notes, and scripture echoes.What is Selected Sermons of Johannes Tauler?
Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), the Strasbourg Dominican associated with Rhineland mysticism, left no systematic treatise; his teaching survives chiefly in a corpus of roughly eighty sermons accepted as authentic, recorded and transmitted by hearers, with pseudo-Taulerian material entering later collections.
Der Brunnen des Lebens ist die Liebe, und wer in der Liebe nicht ist, der ist todt.
Our renderingThe fountain of life is love, and whoever does not dwell in love is dead.
What it is
Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), the Strasbourg Dominican associated with Rhineland mysticism, left no systematic treatise; his teaching survives chiefly in a corpus of roughly eighty sermons accepted as authentic, recorded and transmitted by hearers, with pseudo-Taulerian material entering later collections. This reader presents six sermons for the church year, from Advent through Eastertide, in an unidentified later German print recension rather than Ferdinand Vetter’s 1910 Middle High German edition. Tauler makes mystical theology pastoral: the hearer turns from possessive attachment toward Gelassenheit and the inward “ground” of the soul, while testing contemplation by works of charity. The Wittelsbach label records political setting, not patronage. Strasbourg supported Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria in his conflict with the papacy and came under interdict; Tauler left for Basel in 1338 and remained there until about 1343 or perhaps 1346. No evidence connects these six sermons to Louis IV, a Wittelsbach court, or a court commission, so the association is era-typical and flagged.
Why it still matters
Tauler offers a disciplined path from inward detachment to concrete love of neighbor, correcting both spiritual distraction and self-enclosed contemplation. His direct preaching makes demanding mystical theology usable in ordinary Christian life.
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Kept alongside
Thomas à Kempis: De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ)
Perhaps the most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, the Imitation of Christ counsels interior piety, Eucharistic devotion, and detachment from worldly ambition — values promoted at both the Wittelsbach Counter-Reformation court and in Erasmian Lutheran circles in Saxony. The Jesuits recommended it throughout their German mission work, making it a standard text in the Bavarian court milieu under Albert V and William V; Luther himself was formed in the Devotio Moderna tradition from which it springs. No single Wettin or Wittelsbach ownership record has been located, and the dual-house listing reflects the near-universal presence of the text in every German Catholic and Erasmian Protestant court of the period rather than documented patronage.
Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises (Exercitia Spiritualia)
The foundational method of Jesuit spiritual formation, the Exercitia Spiritualia were formally approved by Pope Paul III in 1548 after two decades of development by Ignatius. Bavarian Duke William V received a Jesuit education and populated his court with Jesuit confessors, living after his 1597 abdication adjacent to the Munich Jesuit college under Jesuit spiritual direction, devoting four hours daily to prayer and one to contemplation. The Spiritual Exercises are the structured backbone of such a directed prayer life, and contemporary accounts confirm that Jesuit confessors guided William and members of his household through precisely this kind of formation. Maximilian I continued the same Ignatian tradition under Jesuit guidance.
Heinrich Seuse: Sterbebüchlein (Little Book of Dying), chapter from Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit
An ars moriendi extract drawn from chapters 21–24 of Seuse's Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit, which guide the soul through the struggle toward a holy death by meditating on Christ's Passion and surrendering the will to God. The extract circulated independently and is preserved in a Bavarian ducal court manuscript (c. 1517), bound by court binder Kaspar Schinnagl, alongside Johannes von Indersdorf's prayers for Duke Wilhelm III, confirming its use among Wittelsbach noble laity. Seuse's Büchlein survives in over 160 manuscript copies across German-speaking lands, making it one of the most widely transmitted German mystical texts of the late medieval period. Its spiritual depth draws on the Rhineland mystical tradition of Meister Eckhart.