Faith through history

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98)

Isaac Padinjarekuttu (Professor of Church History at Oriens Theological College, Shillong) Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar, preacher, and reformer, active in Renaissance Florence. Born and educated at Ferrara, he entered the Dominican Order at Bologna in 1475 but later shifted to the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence which became the centre […]

The Cloud of Unknowing

It is an anonymous 14th century English mystical treatise. There has been much inconclusive discussion about the identity of the author. Probably the author was a priest, dedicated to the contemplative life and was perhaps a spiritual director. He was a competent theologian with a great knowledge of patristic and monastic literature. It is simply […]

Julian of Norwich (c.1342 – c.1423)

Revelations of Divine Love Julian of Norwich was an anchoress who lived in solitude in Norwich, England, in the late fourteenth century. She is called “Julian” because her cell was attached to the parish church of Saint Julian at Norwich. We do not know her given name. According to her own account, in May, 1373, […]

The Ladder of Perfection Walter Hilton (c. 1343-96)

Walter Hilton was an English spiritual writer. Practically nothing is known of the life of Hilton. It is clear from his writings that he was a learned man and he probably studied at Cambridge. His early life was perhaps spent as a hermit, his middle years as a scholar and his last, as an Augustinian […]

Theologia germanica

It is the name given to a medieval spiritual treatise, written in German, by an anonymous author who is simply known as the “Frankfurter,” because of a tradition that attributes it to a priest of the Teutonic Order who lived at Sachsenhausen in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It must have originated about 1350 within an informal […]

John Tauler (c. 1300-1361)

John Tauler was a popular German Dominican preacher and spiritual guide. Little is known of his life. He was born in Strasbourg and entered the Dominican Order and received a thorough education. Possibly he was fellow student with the famous German mystics, Henry Suso and Meister Eckhart at Cologne. He was certainly influenced by the […]

Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)

Flemish Mystic, Ruysbroeck was educated at Brussels and was ordained priest in 1317. He served as priest until 1343 and then withdrew to a hermitage with two others. The number gradually grew and a community of Augustinian Canons was formed in 1350 where Ruysbroeck was prior till his death. It became the centre of prominent […]

Richard Rolle (c. 1300-49)

Richard Rolle was an English hermit and spiritual writer born at Yorkshire. He began his studies at Oxford, but desiring to be a hermit, he broke off his studies at Oxford at the age of eighteen, and returned to his native Yorkshire and stayed on the estate of his friend John Dalton and in various […]

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