III
Notes on Tauler's Teaching
Only to Tauler's Sermons must recourse be had to
ascertain his teaching; and even of these, as has been noted, a critical
edition is desirable. The other works once attributed to him, and printed as
his in the Latin version of Surius, are now accounted doubtful, if not
certainly spurious. These works are: 1. "The Following of the Poor Life of
Christ"; 2. "Exercises on the Life and Passion of our Saviour Jesus Christ";
and 3. "Divine Institutions," also called "The Marrow of the Soul." All these
are spiritual works of high value, and they deserve a place in any library of
devotion; but, as attributed to Tauler, they are not authentic. Such at least
is the present verdict of the critics.
Judged then solely by his Sermons, Tauler is
described by Von Loe, his latest biographer, as "one of the foremost among the
medieval German mystics and preachers, uniting the intellectual depth of
Eckhart with the interior spirituality of Suso and the fervour of Berthold of
Ratisbon." The first-named was mystical; the last-named was practical; Suso was
both; but he was rather a director than a preacher. Tauler also was both, and,
like Berthold, he preached for his times. Herder criticizes him, saying that to
have read two of his sermons is to have read them all; but this is hardly a
verdict to be accepted; for his method varies largely, and the Sermon numbered
xi. in this volume, for the most part so dull and in places barely
intelligible, would strike a critic as not the work of the same author as the
Sermon numbered xv. which the German editors have described as "a most precious
and thoughtful exhortation," and perhaps the best example of Tauler's method.
Sometimes moreover he expounds a text like a homilist; sometimes his text is
barely referred to, and becomes a mere peg on which to hang a discourse on a
subject of which he was full. No doubt there are readers to whom his
allegorical interpretation of Scripture will be distasteful. Kingsley admits
that it is "fantastic and arbitrary"; and the method is, of course, one that
can easily be abused, especially when the interpretation of numbers is in
question. But it has its justification, both in the fact that it is in
accordance with Christian tradition--it is found in St Paul, in the early
Fathers (as Keble's Tract lxxxix. made abundantly clear), and in the offices of
the Church, whether those for the choir or those for the altar, and traces of
it are left in the Anglican Prayer Book--and also in the experience of
sympathetic souls, who find light and consolation in its use. But Tauler's
mysticism (of which more is said below) by no means exhausted itself in the
allegorical interpretation of Scripture. To him, as to Keble and to Kingsley,
the book of Nature was full of parables of things spiritual; and, beyond that
again, he clearly enjoyed (for he was no hypocrite) an intuition of things
divine, wherein he found more light and certitude than in mere submission to
the dogmatic magisterium of the Church.
Further, as to his manner, he is eager and
earnest in his presentation of his subject; he uses homely illustrations from
daily life, yet without loss of dignity, and when he disparages, as he often
does, "outward works," he is saying nothing against the performance of the
duties, even the humblest, of ordinary life; he is merely protesting against
reliance on ecclesiastical routine, such as fasting, self-discipline, long
prayers, and such-like; and this protest is of course quite compatible with
Catholic orthodoxy; nor is it unnecessary for these times any more than for his
own. But the manner of his sermons, as they have come down to us, is sometimes
hard and even menacing; and readers may not always find it easy to reconcile
his frequent use of the words "dear children" with such an apparent lack of
tenderness and sympathy. But, likely enough, this defect of manner was less
noticeable in the discourses as delivered, than it is in the reports as now
read.
Readers will also fine it necessary to bear in
mind that the mystical standpoint in religion does not by itself free a man
from contemporary views and prepossessions. The mystic is of his own age and
race; and it is amply evident that the articles of Tauler's creed were just
those of any other Catholic believer of his time. There is throughout a
spiritual element in his teaching; but it does not exclude the use of what we
should now account popular and conventional language about the fall of man, the
pains of hell, and so forth. True, he says in one place, what indeed any
Catholic preacher may say, that the chief pain of hell is the consciousness of
being excluded from the Presence of God; but he does not go on to suggest, as a
spiritually-minded teacher might now, that all other language about the pains
of hell, "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched," is merely
figurative of that one pain, and that such language was and is necessary to
bring home men,--to all men in different degrees,--the exceeding greatness of
that pain or penalty, as it will hereafter be realised. He is liberal indeed in
extending to the spiritually-minded heathen a sufficient knowledge of things
divine. He holds that in the "inner ground"[8]
Plato and Proclus apprehended the Holy Trinity; he things that in Plato can be
found the whole meaning of the opening verses of St John's Gospel, though in
veiled words. He teaches that a king, remaining such, may yet rise to the
height of "interior poverty," if there is nothing that he is not ready
cheerfully to resign to God's Fatherly love. He extols the "evangelical
counsels"; but teaches also that the highest perfection is attainable by a
married cobbler working to maintain his family. His doctrine of Purgatory does
not differ from that usually held by Catholics; but he regards it more as a
place for the purging away of self-will than for the expiation of sin. In his
sermon for the second Sunday in Lent there is a passage somewhat in
disparagement of the invocation of Saints. A good soul, he says, once prayed to
the Saints; but they were so lost in God that they did not heed her. Then she
betook herself humbly to God direct, and straightway she was lifted far about
all media into the loving abyss of the Godhead. But perhaps he comes nearest to
the Protestant position in his language about the "Friends of God." They are,
he teaches, the true pillars of the Church, and without them the world could
not stand. In his sermon for Laetare Sunday he bids his hearers "beg the
dear Friends of God to help them (in the way of perfection), and to attach
themselves simply and solely to God and to his chosen Friends." And there is a
similar passage in the sermon for All Saints (see pp. 218-222, and cf. pp. 93
and 174). But, in his teaching, the "Friends of God" do not form, as they would
have formed for the later Puritans, "the Church invisible"; they constitute
rather a second visible Church, to which the hierarchical Church is in some
respects inferior. Some thirty years after Tauler's death the Inquisition at
Cologne condemned as heretical certain propositions of Martin of Mayence; one
of which was that these "Friends of God" (who were laymen) understood the
Gospel better than some of the Apostles, even better than St Paul; and another
was that submission to their teaching was necessary to perfection. But Tauler
never went so far as this.
It may be added that, from the modern Christian
social point of view, Tauler's limitations are obvious. True, that in his
sermon for Septuagesima he exhorts his hearers to use "natural gifts" for God.
But his conception of "nature" is a very narrow one. Rightly it should include,
besides those natural gifts which constitute personal character, such social
virtues as patriotism, love for the community and for the family, a desire to
master the earth and to make it the seat of a well-ordered Christian society, a
realization of the Kingdom of God on earth. But Tauler manifests no conception
of anything of this. For the social elevation of mankind, here and now, he has
nothing whatever to say.
Nevertheless, whatever were our author's
limitations, Preger's judgment on the value of Tauler's sermons is one to
command general assent:--"Their strength lies in the fact that Tauler knew how
to put into them his whole heart, the fulness of his moral being. So utterly
and completely is he penetrated by love of God and of Christ, so happily is the
sublime and unworldly zeal of the orator blended with gentleness and freedom,
that he masters the will unawares, and lays the heart open to the demands he
makes upon it ...His sermons will never cease to hold their place among the
most perfect examples of pure German speech, of fervid German faith, and of
German spirituality in all its depths.
[8] See the note on this word Grund, on p. 94