The third term is nearly over; I am presently waiting for the last tutorial (handling some medieval manuscripts, yay!) to commence before I can devote myself fully to studying for the upcoming three exams. These are primarily about the middle ages, dealing with the intellectual medieval world (although it should be stressed that most historians consider the difference between the intellectual and ‘common’ world in the middle ages to be much smaller than it is today’s) and paleography and codicology. I have another exam on Europe, an important resit, which is unfortunately quite hard. A majority of students failed it the first time round (including, obviously, myself). I’m devoting most of my studying time to the first and last of those subjects. I also have to finish an essay for Middle Dutch literature in the same exam period, so it’s going to be busy alright.
This morning we had a guest lecture for that last course, dealing with the works of Jan van Leeuwen, a lay brother in the Groenendaal monastery/community of Jan van Ruusbroec in the Zoniënwoud near Brussels. For the past hundred or two hundred years, Ruusbroec (who was the leader of the community) received most attention from Middle Dutch scholars. He stands as one of the most important writers of Middle Dutch and even European medieval mystical thought. Jan van Leeuwen was viewed as no more than a mere unoriginal follower of Ruusbroec, who copied his works and ideas and presented them in less coherent and advanced texts. Youri Desplenter from the university of Ghent convincingly argued that this was a misconception. Very few scholars have actually studied Van Leeuwen’s works, but a closer look shows that Van Leeuwen tried to reach out to a different audience, namely merchants in stead of the higher clergy. Moreover, the Groenendaal community viewed Van Leeuwen in a similar way to Ruusbroec. Of course, Ruusbroec was hierarchically superior, Van Leeuwen was no more than a brother-cook. But like Ruusbroec, Van Leeuwen was portrayed in illumination (twice), had compilations of his manuscripts made by the monastery during his life (and his texts were overall more extensive than those of Ruusbroec) and received a Latin biography after his death. These clear indications of appreciation were granted to no other monks in Groenendaal (and one might well argue that the illumination showing Van Leeuwen is richer than that of Ruusbroec).
Jan van Ruusbroec shown twice, writing a preliminary text on a chalkboard and a redirected text on parchment or paper, while receiving divine inspiration.
Presumably, Van Leeuwen’s broader, non-clerical audience and his lower (non-clerical?) education made him more typical of the traits looked for in mystics. There’s also an interesting comparison with Jan Hus (yes, everyone in the 14th century was called Jan), as both men approved and even propagated purges of those not believing/following the word of God. Chopping off the unbelievers’ heads would be just, and better for society. Also, to see Van Leeuwen’s position towards some other 14th century mystics, he thought Meister Eckhart had (and I’m quoting based on memory, not with the text at hand, so this might be slightly off) all the religious feeling of a toad’s tail. Not very much, then. This underlines that grouping people together (‘mystics’) may easily overlook contemporary dispositions and thus be counter productive (the same is of course true with many similar groups, such as philosophes, as well as broader groupings based on faith or nationality alone).
So, concludingly, Jan van Leeuwen was more than just Jan van Ruusbroec’s cook. But if you want to know what else he was talking about, you’re not in luck: the last publication of any part of his work was in 1947. Until a more complete version will be published, you’ll have to make do with the 1915-1916 publications by De Vooys, the only edition up at the DBNL. Not having read any of it, I don’t know yet whether it’s worth the time.
