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The Book of Supreme Truth: Chapter I - Wherefore This Book Was Written

CHAPTER I

WHEREFORE THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN

Certain of my friends have desired and besought me, that I should show and make plain in a few words and according to my best cunning, shortly and clearly, how I understand and feel the truth of all the highest teachings that I have written before; so that none should take offense at my words, but everyone should profit by them. And this I willingly consent to do. I will, with God’s help, teach the humble who love virtue and truth; and, with the same words, I shall inwardly vex and darken the false and the proud: for to these my words will be displeasing and contrary, and this the proud cannot endure, but it provokes them to anger.

Context

Certain of my friends have desired and besought me, that I should show and make plain in a few words, shortly and clearly, how I understand and feel the truth of all the highest teachings that I have written before; so that none should take offence at my words, but everyone should profit by them. The opening of the Book of Supreme Truth tells the reader exactly what kind of document this is. It is Ruusbroec’s late, defensive, careful restatement of his own teaching, in response to friends who had warned him that certain phrasings in his earlier works could be — and probably had been — read as heretical. Jordan of Quedlinburg’s critique was in the air by the 1340s; Gerson’s full polemic would not arrive until a generation after Ruusbroec’s death, but the climate that produced Gerson was already shaping reception. Read this whole short treatise as a man explaining his earlier self to a wary audience.