SOURCE: An introduction to Spiritual Conferences, by John Tauler, edited by Eric Colledge and M. Jane, B. Herder Book Co., 1961, pp. 1-32.

In the following essay, Colledge describes some of fourteenth-century Christendom’s scandalous and divisive elements and explains how Tauler advocated dealing with them through the practice of true simplicity and true humility.

Three great figures dominated German spirituality in the fourteenth century, and all three were members of the Order of Preachers: Eckhart, Tauler and Suso. We cannot rightly appreciate any one of them without knowing and understanding the other two; and although Eckhart and Suso appear to us across the centuries as mysterious and tragic personalities, utterly unlike the genial, sanguine, equable Tauler, we are made to realize, as we learn to know him better, that he had not escaped the mortal sorrows which had afflicted his brethren. He speaks of these sorrows, not with...