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The Friends of God

INTRODUCTION

On his website and in discussions on the Truth Meetings Message Board, Nate has referred to a group known
as the Friends of God. This appears to be part of his ongoing crusade to find a continuous chain of 2x2
precursors from apostolic times to William Irvine in the late 19th Century. In other words, by finding a group
known as "friends" in the 14th Century, Nate may think that he is establishing another sequence in the
apostolic heritage of the 2x2s. His website article quotes Frances Bevan's book Three Friends of God:
Records from the Lives of John Tauler, Nicholas of Basle, and Henry Suso which was written in 1887 and can
be found online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library here. Nate's interest was probably heightened by
Bevan's statement that the Friends of God "stood in immediate connection with Waldensian 'Brethren'", but it
should be pointed out that Bevan writes in his preface that the Friends of God were "of the fourteenth
century" (i.e., not apostolic in origin) and that his book's history may be "very imperfect" for the usual
reasons that are offered by revisionist historians trying to make a point but lack substantial proof thereof,
such as persecution and suppression of evidence by opposing powers. Upon examination of the lives of those
three men mentioned by Bevan, it will be shown that such a position does not withstand scrutiny. In order to
preempt any objection that the conclusions reached in this article are merely my own invention, I have
purposely made heavy use of numerous scholarly sources.

Friends of God

The Friends of God (Gottesfreunde in German) were a group of

Catholic mystics having their origins in Germany and Switzerland
in the early 14th Century. This was a period of major turmoil in
society due to the Black Plague, the collapse of the Hohenstaufen
dynasty, the moral decay of the clergy, the struggle for authority
between Bavarian Emperor Louis IV and the pope, earthquakes and
floods leading to famine, the exile of the papacy to Avignon from
Rome, and generalized economic instability. The response of
Christians seeking comfort from God was to renew emphasis on
developing a closer communion with God by withdrawing from the
world in order to cultivate their inner spirituality. Their name was
taken from the passage in John 15:15: "Henceforth I call you not
servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I
have called you friends...". They did not represent a separate,
organized sect but rather were Catholic in theology and practice;
they were comprised of priests, nuns, and people who were not even part of the clergy. It is necessary to
point this out because of the tendency of non-Catholics (including Martin Luther and, of course, Nate) to try
to portray the Friends of God as pre-Reformation Protestants. Even the great historian Philip Schaff, who
was by no means a friend (pardon the pun) of the Catholic Church, says that they "were not bound together
by any formal organization. Their only bond was the fellowship of a common religious purpose", and that
they carried out their mission "without disparaging the sacraments or disputing the authority of the [Catholic]
Church" (History of the Christian Church, iv).

John Tauler

John (or Johannes) Tauler was born in Strasbourg, Germany, around the year 1300. At a young age he
became a brother in the Dominican order there and later went to Cologne to finish his studies. He was
beloved by all as an outstanding preacher and humble Catholic priest. In keeping with the medieval custom
of cura monialium, he provided spiritual guidance and care to the nuns of the several convents in Strasbourg.
His sermons were a wonderful combination of the mystical with the concrete, the spiritual with the practical
- emphasizing man's inherent desire for God accomplished through Abgeschiedenheit, or detachment from
wordly things. He taught that the way to God is through love and the contemplation of the Divine nature by
recognizing the grace of God already at work within. He often spoke of the "ground of the soul"
(Seelengrund) as that private inner place where one can turn to God in prayer. For this he was known as the
Lebmiester, or "master of living" as opposed to the more esoteric preaching of Eckhart as the "master of
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thinking" (Davies, 11). In his article "Johannes Tauler: Mystic, Pastor, and Preacher" Michael Berry points
out that Tauler "does not preach a message of 'retreat' per se, or an absconding from tribulation, but instead a
more truthful entrance into reality -- through suffering with Christ." It is what Schaff calls his "evangelical
spirit" that "brings him in close affinity with the views of the Reformers", although Schaff is careful to point
out that "the mood of the heretic, however, was furthest from Tauler" because "the [Catholic] Church was to
him a holy mother". Although such an "evangelical spirit" is a description too vague to apply solely to
Protestant reformers, Tauler's sermon on the Feast of St. Matthew removes all doubt as to his Catholicity:
By God's Grace and from holy Church I have received my order, my cowl, this habit and my priesthood that I might
become a teacher and might hear confessions. Now if it should come to pass that the Pope and the holy Church, from
whom I have received them, should wish to take them away from me....I should let them go and I should not question
why they did so....I should not remain any longer in the monastery with the brothers, nor be a priest, nor hear
confessions nor preach....But if anybody else [but the Church] wanted to take these things from me, I would rather die
than allow them to be taken from me. Again, if the holy Church were to refuse us the holy Sacrament externally, we
must submit; but nobody can deprive us us the privilege of taking it spiritually." (from Die Predigten Taulers aus den
Engelburger und den Freiburger Hndschriften quoted in Jones' The Flowering of Mysticism p 97; 1939)

Because of the ongoing struggle between the Bavarian Emperor Louis IV who openly defied Pope John
XXII, an interdict was issued by the pope forbidding the administration of sacraments (including the
celebration of mass) in cities that were loyal to the Bavarian king. In 1338 Louis of Bavaria issued a law
ordering the reinstatement of worship in all cities under the pope's interdict. This forced a Catholic priest into
a predicament, because to obey this law mean to disobey the Church; likewise, to obey the Church's interdict
meant to break the new law. Regardless, Tauler's Sermon on the Feast of St. Matthew demonstrates that he
was willing to obey the papal interdict at all costs if the pope said so, but only if the pope said so. As Jones
asserts, Tauler "loved the Church, he was a loyal son, he was not likely to break with the sacred requirements
of the Church which had become to him a beloved mother." (97)

Henry Suso

Henry Suso (or Heinrich Seuse) was acquainted with John Tauler, being a Dominican priest as well. Together
they formed the center of the universe of the German mysticism movement along with Meister Eckhart. He
was born at Lake Constance in Germany around the year 1300 and became a priest after entering the
Dominican convent there at age thirteen.

In contrast to what Kieckhefer calls the "less bold, less provocative, more obviously balanced" preaching of
Tauler (Szarmach, 259), Suso's prose tended to be exuberantly poetic and graphically emotional. He has been
labeled "extremely sentimental" with "the vivid imagination of a poet - an artist's temperament." (Jones, 142)
For decades he practiced a severely ascetic lifestyle, forsaking worldly pleasures and sometimes going so far
as to inflict suffering upon himself as a form of penance, although caution should be exercised when reading
his own descriptions of such practices by taking them in the context of his "imaginative dominion over actual
life" (Jones, 148). "Psychologists, even such wise ones as William James, have often gone wrong in their
assumptions that the horrible details which are given in Suso's pages of the torments perpetrated on his body
from the time he was eighteen until he was forty are to be taken literally." (Jones, 145)

Suso preached Gelassenheit, that one must die to himself by complete detachment in order to achieve
perfection of the soul in Christ. He wrote in his autobiography that it was desirable to "be steadfast and never
rest content until thou has obtained the Now of Eternity as thy present possession in this life."

Just as with John Tauler, there should be no question as to Suso's status as a Catholic. He was a Dominican
priest. He was sent to Cologne in 1324 to finish his studies because of his faithful adherence to Catholic
teaching and his superb intellectual abilities. He cared for and corresponded with the nuns of various
convents in Germany. He claimed the influence of other Catholics such as St. Dominic, St. Arsenius, St.
Bernard, St. Aquinas, and St. Dionysius. Like John Tauler, he took the side of the pope over Louis of Bavaria
and was forced to leave Constance as a result. He died and was buried in Ulm in 1366 "already venerated by
many in his order and by others in those areas where he had been engaged in preaching and other pastoral
activities" (Tobin, p. 26). His life was one of fervent devotion to God and his church, so much so that he was
beatified by Pope Gregory XVI in 1831. For these reasons, Wikipedia Encyclopedia
states that "in his
doctrine there was never the least trace of an unorthodox tendency".The encyclopedia goes further, saying:
"the individualism, the philosophic insight and the anti-Catholic tendencies which made the mystic
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movement in its later manifestations so important a forerunner of the Reformation are absent in Suso."
(emphasis added)

The Mysterious Friend of God from the Oberland

The "Meisterbuch" of the "Friend of God

of the Upland" gives an account of a
The main reason why these German mystics are sometimes master of the Scriptures who attracted
mistakenly assumed to be pre-Reformation reformers is because great attention in 1346 by his preaching.
of the creation of a fictional character known as Der One day a layman accused the master of
Gottesfreund vom Oberland, or the "friend of God from the seemingly seeking his own honour rather
Upland" (see gray box for details). The story of this mysterious than that of God, saying also that
layman was told in the Meisterbuch ("Book of the Master") and probably he had not himself borne the
was assumed for centuries to represent an actual person. Today, burdens he had laid upon others. Without
no serious scholar regards either Tauler, Eckhart, Suso, or even making any stipulations the master
Nicholas of Basle as the Master. Accordingly, Rufus Jones allowed himself to be guided by the
writing in 1939 says the following: layman and learned from him to forget the
world and himself, to turn all his thoughts
"The research of the last sixty years has assaulted nearly all of upon God and to lead a life of the Spirit.
Schmidt's historical positions and has left very little of the For two years he lived in seclusion. When
visible structure of his work standing. Father Denifle began the
after this he preached again for the first
demolition of Schmidt's work in 1879, while he and later
scholars have slowly completed the debacle. Doubts about the
time the effect was so great that forty of
story of Tauler's conversion had been expressed much earlier his hearers went into convulsions and
than this date by various writers who felt suspicious that the twelve could hardly be revived. After the
story was untrustworthy." (87) master had lived and laboured for nine
years more he fell dangerously ill, and
calling for the layman gave him a written
account of his conversion. To this account
the layman added five sermons of the
master that he had copied." (CE)

The reason the identity of the "friend of God" and his "Master" is so important is because of the obviously
anti-Catholic tone of the Meisterbuch. In other words, if it could be demonstrated that any of the German
mystics were the Master, it would prove that they were not Catholic at all but rather were true believers
seeking to "purify" the Roman Catholic Church before the Reformers existed. Jones summarizes Denifle's
work with regard to Tauler with the following:

None of the editions of Tauler's sermons before 1498 (which is more than 100 years after his
death) contain any reference to the story of his conversion.

Tauler was always referred to as "Brother Tauler", as a member of the Dominican order of
priests, never as "Master" or "Doctor" (the title of "Doctor" = "Master of Holy Scripture").

The edition published in 1508 (which is the one Martin Luther read and liked so much) is the
first one to call Tauler "Doctor".

Tauler never received the degree or title of "Master" or "Doctor" in his lifetime. This began
when fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors who assumed the The Meisterbuch was true began
referring to him this way.

The sermons in The Meisterbuch were not even sermons by Tauler in the first place. The first
one was actually Tractate No. 7 in the Pfeiffer collection now attributed to Meister Eckhart. The
others do not match the well-known style of Tauler.

The sermons in The Meisterbuch show the writer of them to be in a state of revolt against the
authority of the Church and an insurgent against the prescriptions and sanctions of the Church.

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As has been already shown, such as in his Sermon on the Feast of Saint Matthew for example,
Tauler never stood against his church.

The date of death of the "Master" is given in The Meisterbuch as 1369, when it is well-
documented that Tauler died in 1361.

The reasons given above led Jones to decide that "we may now take as settled the conclusion that The
Meisterbuch has nothing to do with Brother Johannes Tauler and supplies no biographical material for the
story of his life." (91-93). Even Schaff admits that "it is doubtful whether such a personage ever lived."
(History of the Christian Church, iv,  § 32). Modern scholarship tends toward the position that the friend
of God was a literary creation of an layman named Rulman Merswin, whom Schaff calls the "inventor of this
fictitious personage...The reason for this view is that no one else knows of the Oberlander and that, after
Rulman's death, attempts on the part of the Strassburg brotherhood to find him, or to find out something
about him, resulted in failure."(iv,  § 32). The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
calls his writing "plainly the work of an ignorant, unskilful layman" (vol. iv p. 393) which would be in stark
contrast to the preaching of Suso or Tauler.

Nicholas of Basle

Nicholas of Basle was born around the year 1308. Information about his life is scarce - a "very imperfect
sketch" according to Bevan who writes about him in chapters 38-39 of his book referenced by Nate. He grew
up as the son of a rich merchant and became a preacher after having an intense religious experience on the
night before his wedding (a story strikingly similar to the one of St. Alexis which so inspired Peter Waldo,
the founder of the Waldensian movement). Ferdinand Piper's 1880 book Lives of the Leaders of the Church
Universal identifies him as a "mysterious and indefatigable chief of a Waldensian society" (vol I, 224).
Frederick Leete's Christian Brotherhoods 1912 characterizes him merely as a "traveling missionary" (p 76).

Because he relied on Karl Schmidt's

research, Frances Bevan believed that
Nicholas of Basle was the mysterious
layman from the Oberland. However,
the Encyclopedia Britannica points out
that "a considerable legend has
attached itself to Nicholas through the
persistent but mistaken identification
of him with the mysterious 'Friend of
God from the Oberland'". The
encyclopedia goes on to say that "since
Denifle's researches (see especially
Der Gottesfreund im Oberlande and
Nikolaus von Basel, 1870) the belief
has gained ground that the 'Friend' is
not a historical personage at all...Apart from the collection of literature ascribed to him and Merswin there is
no historical evidence of his existence." [emphasis added] It appears that Schmidt's conclusion was reached
with questionable motives, as the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics states: "before long the process of
historical criticism brought to light the fact that Schmidt had excercised a quite arbitrary choice in his editing
of the sources and had - without due indication - altered rubrics and text in accordance with his own
opinion...Denifle's work was so thorough and convincing that Schmidt's, on the chief question, was
completely undermined." (p. 140).

It is interesting to note that already by the writing of Leete's, Christian Brotherhoods 1912 the scholarly
opinion had turned against the idea that Nicholas of Basle was the truly the friend of the Oberland, saying
merely that he was "at one time generally identified with the mysterious layman from the Oberland" (p. 76).
The available evidence seems to be that he became the leader of the group called the Beghards, a heretical
sect that began spreading throughout the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy in the fourteenth century.
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (p. 843) quotes a startling passage from a private book of the
Beghards:

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"Moreover, the godlike man operates and begets the same that God operates and begets. For in God he worked and
created heaven and earth. He is also the generator of the eternal word. Nor can God do anything without this man. The
god-like man should, therefore, make his will conformable to God's will, so that he should will all that God wills. If,
therefore, God wills that I should sin, I ought by no means to will that I may not have sinned. This is true contrition.
And if a man have committed a thousand mortal sins, and the man is well regulated and united to God, he ought not to
wish that he had not done those sins; and he ought to prefer suffering a thousand deaths rather than to have omitted one
of those mortal sins." (quoted from Mosheim, Instititutes of Ecclesiastical History, II. v, 11)

In other words, this group took the doctrinally-correct mysticism of Tauler and Suso and turned it into a
license to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. They did so by somehow rationalizing that once you reach
that state of perfect union with God, you are not capable of sinning; therefore, any act you commit is not a
sin. As appealing as this illogic may seem, the Catholic church understood it as the theological nonsense that
it was and reacted the way it always dealt with perceived threats to the moral fabric of society - Nicholas and
two of his followers were burned at the stake in Vienna in 1409. It seems that Tauler and Suso were aware of
this deviant group because Tauler "shows at every stage a keen awareness of the need to protect himself and
to protect his congregations from the dangers of heretical licence based on false claims to mystical
experience." (Davies, p. 10) and Suso "distinguishes carefully the role of genuine despoilment from that of
the Beghard libertines." (Petry, 247)

CONCLUSION

Desiring closeness to God is a natural tendency in humans, and it was certainly not new to Catholic theology
by the time of Tauler and Suso. Even before the 12th Century which has been called "the contemplative age
of gold" (Petry, 47), Catholics throughout history have written beautiful works emphasizing detachment from
the world and inward focus on a closer union to God. As Tobin writes, "This emphasis on an intense personal
relationship with God can hardly be considered an innovation of the fourteenth century. Within Western
Christianity one can point to the writings of St. Augustine, especially the Confessions, and to those of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux as clear evidence that an intense personal relationship with God was already
established as a primary concern in the best traditions of Christian thought." (Henry Suso: The Exemplar, p.
15). Indeed, examination of Tauler's sermons - such as his Sermon for Epiphany, Sermon for the 1st and 2nd
Sunday of Advent, and Sermon on Christmas - demonstrates total fidelity to his Church and awareness of his
spiritual lineage from St.Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Gregory, St. Francis, St. Jerome, St.
Thomas, and others.

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge affirms that the Friends of God were
"strongly influenced by the teaching of Bernard of Clairvaux" (vol. iv: p 392) and even notes that with Henry
Suso "many of his views and speculations are derived from the great teachers of the Church, John of
Damascus, Augustine, Bonaventura, and others." (vol xi: p. 172) To the example of Augustine in the fifth
century and Bernard of Clairvaux of the twelfth I would add Benedict of Nursia, whose Rule was known as
ora et labora, or pray and labor; see also John Chrysostom, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan. Irenaeus,
writing in the third century, said, "for communion with God is life, and separation from God is death"
(Adv.Her., V, 27,2 quoted in Clement's The Roots of Christian Mysticism).

The Friends of God were not early Protestants. They were Catholics who sought ways to become closer to
God through meditation and prayer without forsaking the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Because
Rulman Merswin created a nonexistant character named the friend of God whose false writings contained
anti-Catholic statements, many historians have been misled into portraying them as proto-Protestants. The
Columbia Encyclopedia puts it delicately: "In spite of their orthodox and scholastic Catholicism, they have
been much admired by Protestants." On the other hand, Schaff is more blunt with regard to Tauler, for
example - saying that "in his attitude to the revealed Word, he is no more entitled to the name of forerunner
of the Reformation" (New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol xi: p 277). Jones agrees,
saying "The attempts of late writers to turn Tauler into a pre-Protestant reformer rest on fiction and not on
verifiable facts." (95) Schaff summarizes it best: "Their practices did not involve a breach with the Church
and its ordinances. They had no sympathy with heresy, and antagonized the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The
little treatise, called the German Theology, at the outset marks the difference between the Friends of God and
the false, free spirits, especially the Beghards." (A A 32)

----------------------------

SOURCES
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Clark, James M. The Great German Mystics: Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso. Oxford, 1949.

Clement, Olivier. The Roots of Christian Mysticism. London: New City Press, 1993.

Davies, Oliver, ed. The Rhineland Mystics: The Writings of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Jan van
Ruusbroec and Selections from the "Theologica Germanica" and the "Book of Spiritual Poverty". New York:
Crossroad, 1989.

Hastings, James, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910.

Jones, Rufus Matthew. The Flowering of Mysticism. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939.

Ozment, Steven E. Homo spiritualis. A Comparative Study of the anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean
Gerson and Martin Luther (1509-16) in the Context of Their Theological Thought. Leiden E. J. Brill, 1969.

Petry, Ray, ed. Late Medieval Mysticism. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1957.

Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church. Vol. VI, chapter 4. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/
(accessed December, 2005).

Schaff, Philip. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol IV.

http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/ (accessed December, 2005).

Szarmach, Paul, ed. An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1984.

Tauler, Johannes. Sermons. The Classics of Western Spirituality Seris. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.

Tobin, Frank, ed. Henry Suso: The Exemplar with Two German Sermons. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.

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