MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THEIR RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT INCLUDING MEISTER ECKHART, TAULER, PARACELSUS, JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO, AND OTHERS BY RUDOLF STEINER Ph.D. (Vienna) AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M.A. (Cantab.) [Illustration: Printer’s Logo] G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY MAX GYSI MAX GYSI, Editor, “Adyar,” Park Drive, London, N. W. The Knickerbocker Press, New York CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD v INTRODUCTION 1 MEISTER ECKHART 52 THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 81 CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 133 AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS 182 VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB BOEHME 223 GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUS SILESIUS 246 AFTERWORD 269 FOREWORD The matter which I am laying before the public in this book formed the content of lectures which I delivered during last winter at the Theosophical Library in Berlin. I had been requested by Gräfin and Graf Brockdorff to speak upon Mysticism before an audience for whom the matters thus dealt with constitute a vital question of the utmost importance. Ten years earlier I could not have ventured to fulfil such a request. Not that the realm of ideas, to which I now give expression, did not even then live actively within me. For these ideas are already fully contained in my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (Berlin, 1894. Emil Felber). But to give expression to this world of ideas in such wise as I do to-day, and to make it the basis of an exposition as is done on the following pages--to do this requires something quite other than merely to be immovably convinced of the intellectual truth of these ideas. It demands an intimate acquaintance with this realm of ideas, such as only many years of life can give. Only now, after having enjoyed that intimacy, do I venture to speak in such wise as will be found in this book.