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Document Details :

Title: Traces of John of Ruusbroec's Thought in the Writings of Maria van Oisterwijk
Author(s): UYTTENHOVE, Lieve
Journal: Ons Geestelijk Erf
Volume: 92    Issue: 2   Date: 2022   
Pages: 121-150
DOI: 10.2143/OGE.92.2.3290907

Abstract :
Traces of the fourteenth-century mystical author John of Ruusbroec from Groenendaal, near Brussels, in present-day Belgium, in the writings of the sixteenth-century mystical author Maria van Oisterwijk from Oisterwijk, near ’s Hertogenbosch, in today’s Netherlands, make clear that the Dutch mystic must have been familiar with Ruusbroec’s mystical ideas and the imagery he used to express them. Whether it may be concluded that Maria van Oisterwijk was familiar with Ruusbroec’s texts herself, however, remains uncertain until further notice. After all, it is possible that Ruusbroec’s ideas and imagery were known to her through the works of later spiritual and mystical authors who were influenced by the Groenendaal mystic. In any case, it is evident that the treatises and letters found in The Straight Road toward the Evangelical Perfection, the first book by Maria van Oisterwijk, testify to a greater intertextuality than previously assumed.

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