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Mysticism in Latin Translation

Rijcklof Hofman, Marinus van den Berg and Guido De Baere add a new and important chapter to the edition of the opera omnia of Gerardus Magnus in the Continuatio Mediaevalis of the Corpus Christianorum, viz. the Versiones latinae mysticorum.



CC CM, 172A contains the editio princeps of two Latin translations made by the late medieval Dutch Church reformer Geert Grote (Gerardus Magnus, 1340-1384) and a revised edition of another translation, made by Anthonius Henrici de Viersen (fl. 1460-1490), Brother of the Common Life in Butzbach and collaborator of the proto-humanist Gabriel Biel. The source texts had originally been composed in Middle Dutch, by the great Brabantine mystic Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381) and by Godfried Wevel, one of his fellow canons regular at Groenendaal near Brussels from 1360 until his death in 1396. Another editio princeps completes the volume: a Middle Dutch adaptation of Meister Eckhart’s Reden der Unterweisung, the main source for Wevel’s Vanden twaelf dogheden. This adaptation was probably compiled in Grote’s entourage, if not by him personally, and is here edited as Eyn boeck van der gelatenheit. The publication of Grote’s adaptation of Eckhart and the accompanying convincingly underpinned analysis may mean a landslide for the proper assessment of Eckhart’s reception in the Low Countries and adjacent territories in modern western Germany during the later Middle Ages. Each of the edited texts is accompanied by an apparatus comparatiuus, indicating in detail all discrepancies between the translations and the source texts. Lengthy introductions complete the volume.


Rijcklof Hofman (1958-) is Research Fellow at the Titus Brandsma Instituut, Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and at the Department of Practical and Missional Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of the Free State (South Africa), and editor of the Gerardi Magni Opera Omnia, published in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis, vol. 172 (2000), 192 (2003) & 235 (2011).


Marinus van den Berg (1949-) has published several Medieval Dutch texts, including De Noordnederlandse historiebijbel. Een kritische editie met inleiding en aantekeningen van Hs. Ltk 231 uit de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek (1998) and Het Gaesdonckse-traktatenhandschrift. Olim hs. Gaesdonck, Collegium Augustinianum, ms. 16 (2005). Together they have published Gerardi Magni Opera Omnia, Pars II.2. Scripta contra simoniam et proprietarios (CC CM 235A [2016]).


Guido de Baere (1940-) is best known as editor in chief of Jan van Ruusbroec, Opera omnia (CC CM, 101-110).


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