De Vera Conversione Mentis ad Deum

An oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, on the true conversion of the mind to God.

Gernandus Naso

Whatever Abbot Trithemius has drawn forth from your inner sanctuaries, learned Greece, both pleases and is read. Only preserve so great a man, because he adorns the doctrine of salvation and refers to Christ, who is its origin.

Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, to Johannes Engellender, jurisconsult and most eloquent orator, greetings.

I received your most delightful letter, displaying the ancient majesty and grace of eloquence, when our Mutianus delivered it; by it you affected me both with incredible pleasure and with a certain honorable reproach. For what greater pleasure could have come to me than to be loved by you, a man by far most learned and most upright in every respect, whose learning, wisdom, and eloquence kings and princes admire, cultivate, and respect, to such a degree that all the more learned proclaim that most reverend prelate of Cologne Agrippina fortunate, because he has obtained you, a man most worthy, as prefect of those who are his secretaries? Or what reproach ought to lie closer to my heart than to know myself far beneath your praises, and by no means to be the man whom, deceived by love of me, you proclaimed Trithemius to be?

But I give undying thanks for your charity and goodwill toward me, since you deigned to anticipate me, when I wished indeed, though I did not dare, to knock at the doors of your friendship, a man who has hitherto deserved nothing at all with you. And so that I should not allow these little letters to go off to you empty, I have added an oration on the conversion of the mind to God, which I recently delivered at Erfurt in a gathering of the fathers, to be corrected by the file of your wisdom; and this same oration, cleansed of faults, I dedicate, give, and inscribe to you. And from now on, when I have been made more certain that these very small things have not displeased you, having been received under your patronage, I promise in return that I shall attempt greater things in literary work.

Mutianus Rufus himself, through whose mediation your love for me became known to me, a most celebrated interpreter of nature and of antiquity, who is now wrestling, as I read before him, with Homer and the other authors of Greece, of whom there is an abundance with me, and whose Attic monuments you will see in the near future, sends you many greetings and commends himself to you.

Farewell. From Sponheim. In the year 1500, in the month of November, on the twentieth day.

An oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, on the true conversion of the mind to its principle.

I would have greatly wished, reverend fathers, and would exceedingly have desired, that my mind had attained that splendor of the divine majesty by which I might make manifest, in a fitting, proper, and suitable oration, the one goal of our institution: the true, free conversion of the soul, released from the lowest things, to the principle of its essence, God, the best and greatest. For I believe that nothing can be said by me in this holy synod, at this most important time, when, shameful to say, nearly all of us, blinded by evil affections, wander disgracefully from the knowledge and love of the supreme unchangeable principle, either more honorably or more usefully than concerning the conversion of the mind to God, since all that we, voluntarily bound for God by the most sacred laws and the institutions of our elders, do in this mortal life ought to persuade us of nothing other than the return and passage of the soul to the center of its blessedness, which is God.

We know, moreover, that the soul, sweetly and freely turned through love toward its principle, when it is separated from the body, turns joyfully toward God as toward the immovable center of its rest; remaining happy in him and blessed without end, it is thereafter pressed by no disturbances. Therefore, fathers, nothing sweeter can ever befall those who love God in this life than continually either to speak or to hear about the true conversion of the mind to its principle, by which it is always stirred up in greater measure both to contempt of the lowest things and to love of the things above.

And I, fathers, although I am of no learning among you and of no merit before God, [unclear] nevertheless, having been delegated to this office of speaking, am accustomed to strive more than anything else to bring forward publicly, to the best of my powers, those things which may make you despisers of the world and your minds [unclear]. If you, my judges, will bear witness for me, I have never employed the brilliance of glittering eloquence in the orations delivered by me; the interrupters of sentences, which the introduction [unclear].

…which some call the local [unclear] of the Scriptures. I have omitted them, even to the point of ill-will, lest either, for the simpler sort, I should obscure the meaning of necessary admonition by a more polished treatment, or disturb the memory by taking up too many passages. For I have always desired more to move the minds of my hearers to inward compunction and divine love than either to admiration of myself or to love of secular knowledge.

But this is wont to draw me not a little away from my purpose: that in a public assembly of elders, whom both their most holy and reverend character and their learning, richly supplied in every way with the Scriptures, ought deservedly to make terrible to me like the battle-line of armies, I, a sinful and unlearned man, must speak. Not without justice is it commonly imputed to me as a fault by many that I have not [unclear] with [unclear], shining with varied beauty, to whom powers are ascribed by their peers: that novices can wrest the club from most mighty Hercules and can drive [unclear] swifter than the wind, especially concerning those matters which, being far withdrawn from the senses, are accessible only, insofar as they are accessible at all, to those whom that divine ray, when they have been stripped of the evil passions of the flesh, has led, by the ascent of inward love, above understanding into the mystical visions of divine things.

Therefore for the time being I commit the account of my name to you, who have imposed upon me, unequal to it, this burden of speaking. Your authority has always been for me in place of Apollo’s oracles. As much as I can do for you, I remember that I have shown myself wholly yours before now, and I shall promise the same for the future; and if, after the abdication of all things, it is still lawful to speak of my own will, I desire that will to be devoted throughout my whole life to your commands and to those of the supreme maker of all. But now, fathers, as we are about to speak a few words on the conversion of the mind, let us humbly invoke the most excellent goodness of the highest and unchangeable good, which alone by its mercy and kindness can turn us to itself, since it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God, whose grace is ready for those who love him; and let us say: Come, Holy Spirit. [unclear]

If anyone, fathers, thinks that I am going to deliver this oration on the conversion of the mind either from a desire for novelties or moved by empty little glory, he is greatly mistaken, since the very profession of our religion, instituted by most holy men, is nothing other than a certain path of our soul itself, freely, tranquilly, and absolutely desiring, through the exercise of holy love, so long as it lives in the flesh, to turn itself to its principle and to be perpetually united with it. For this reason we have voluntarily left behind the world and all things that are in the world, according to the force of our institution; we have resigned ourselves, all that is ours, and our very own will into the hands of another for the love of God, in the presence of all the saints, for no other cause than this: that our soul, having nothing in this world to which it can cling with delight, may always, tranquil, quiet, free, and truly absolved from all things that are seen on earth, be able to lift itself without impediment from any thing to the love of the highest good by daily and indeed most holy exercises.

For a certain writer says among the holy things: Those at rest can search the law in some measure, if free hearts are empty of the world’s noise. And again, concerning the contemplation of heavenly things, which alone is the wisdom of Christians, he says: Wisdom fills a mind tranquil and free from cares, and will be the guest of a peaceful breast. Since these things are so, among all the matters which the account of our salvation is wont to bring before us, there is nothing concerning which we ought deservedly to be admonished both more frequently and more zealously than this: that, remembering daily as far as we can the brevity of the present life and the terrible necessity of our impending departure, we should always carefully draw our soul away from all earthly things; for it will never be able to be united with the highest principle unless, absolved and free from all other things, it has been united with itself.

But to persuade men of these things no one is fit, no one is sufficient, no one is rightly ordered, except him whom divine love, by the singular gift of its grace, has made experienced; so that whoever confounds his understanding through sensible things, or disturbs his affection by the passions of the flesh, is no more disposed to the contemplation of eternal things than an owl is to the light, or a blind man to the knowledge of colors. Into the mystery of this matter, to the burning mountain…

[unclear] Moses, illuminated by divine light, the future leader of the people, did not dare to approach before, with the coverings of his feet removed, by which worldly affections are signified, naked and free, he was admitted to the contemplation of divine things. And that great prophet Isaiah, when he had seen the mystical vision of almighty God seated on a lofty throne, mindful of his own frailty, trembled, nor did he consent to thrust himself further into the divine spectacles until one of the seraphim, flying to him, had cleansed the mouth of the fearful man with a burning coal. And we, fathers, whenever we are about to speak or hear of the highest and immutable good, let us put off the shoes of worldly affections, fearing that which God threatens against vicious men who dare to scrutinize his majesty, saying: “The beast that touches the mountain shall be overwhelmed with stones.” Let us also lift up our mind through desire of inward love, so that, touched by the coal of divine fervor, it may be made worthy to be filled with the mystical beholding of divine spectacles. For I say to you who have assembled in this audience of an unlearned man: God can truly be loved by no one without some prior knowledge; but knowledge, the maker of love, comes to no one who has not first been purified in affection from all hatred or love of those things that are in the world and that follow the movement of the flesh. Knowledge of the highest good causes love in us, and love also perfects knowledge. For the Son of God said to the Father concerning believers: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Therefore from knowledge love arises for us, and from love the everlasting enjoyment of the highest good. That highest immutable good, which we call God, from whom every good in heaven and on earth exists and is named, far and incomparably transcends both our intellect and the angelic intellect, since indeed it is above every affirmation; and toward knowledge of it our mind, aided by it, is advanced rather by affection than by intellect. For our soul, duly cleansed from all these earthly passions, ascends to God by loving, to whom it cannot come by understanding, since it leaves far behind it all images and likenesses both of those things that are and of those things that are not; and alone with love it enters the darkness of divine contemplation, in which no idol is admitted, no form, no mass ever set before the senses or the intellect. For as Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, disciple of Paul, says in the Mystical Theology: that divine majesty, existing far beyond every affirmation and negation, according to our intellect, is neither soul, nor sense, nor imagination, nor opinion, nor reason, nor understanding; nor does it have reason or understanding; nor is it spoken or understood. Nor is it number, nor order, nor greatness, nor smallness, nor equality, nor likeness, nor unlikeness. Nor does it stand, nor is it moved, nor does it enact rest. Nor does it have power, nor is it power, nor is it light, nor life, nor substance, nor age, nor time. Nor is there a spiritual touching of it; nor is it knowledge, nor truth, nor kingdom, nor wisdom. Nor is it one, nor unity, nor deity or goodness; nor is it spirit, insofar as we ourselves are able to know. Nor is there a denomination of Son or of Father; nor is it anything of those things that are known to us or to anyone in the world. Nor is it anything of those things that are. Nor [unclear] error, truth, nor is [unclear]. We neither seek [unclear], nor do we make negations or [negations?]; we neither affirm God himself nor remove him. For the highest ineffable good is above every affirmation, the perfect and singular cause of all things, and its excellence is above every negation; and it is simply free from all things that can be thought, understood, or spoken by us or by anyone in the world, and beyond all things. Indeed, whatever we

[whatever we can] conceive, grasp by the intellect, or utter with the mouth, is not God. But what he is, we can in no way know, understand, or say. Since, therefore, that highest good, God, the immutable principle of all things, is none at all of those things which we either understand or are able to understand, which it happens that we understand only through the service of the senses, which are fed upon the mass of bodily objects; and since everything spiritual is most remote from those senses themselves: whoever still clings to the senses, whoever, blinded by the passions of his flesh, sinks the concupiscible power of the soul into the chains of evil affections, it is not possible that he should ever perceive this gift of mystical illumination himself, or be able usefully to persuade others about it. For only the soul of a clean heart, raised from the lowest things not through intellect but through affection, can now, while established in the body, sweetly see God by loving him, in a mirror and in an enigma; and when at last, released from the flesh, free and absolved from every disordered affection, it has returned to its principle, then, more united to God through the grace of love, it will know him perfectly, as the Son of God promised us, saying: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. But now, proceeding to the examination of the senses, we shall see how far their consideration is from the knowledge of God.

That great prince of theologians, the holy evangelist John, at the beginning of his theology, thus beautifully concludes concerning the highest good by positions nearer to sight: In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Come now, man, you who trust in sensible things, who have learned to exercise your mind for understanding from nowhere except through sensible things; come, I say, and question your senses themselves, so that they, which report to you almost countless other things, may teach what the light is that shines in darkness and cannot be comprehended. First test your hearing.

Have you heard what light is? Mother [unclear], show me what light is, if you know, so that through it an ascent may be prepared for me to the spiritual light which I have sought in all things. Hearing will answer you, saying: I am airy; be content if I report airy sounds to you. I have not heard light. But if I have ever heard anything about it, it was not light itself, but air moved by the tongue, very far removed from the truth of light, which began and passed away. Such is not the incomprehensible light. Smell will say: I indeed am not so luminous; I belong to vapor; learn vapors from me. Why do you seek from me things that are foreign to me? If light is not vapor, it is nothing to me. Taste, when questioned about light, will answer: I move among liquids. If the light you seek is not a liquid, either sweet or bitter, or at least mixed, the judgment of it does not pertain to me. Touch will answer: Do not try to force from me what I cannot comprehend. I am corporeal; I report corporeal things. Seek from others; I do not know what light is. Turn at last, finally, to the shining eyes; by the light through which, above the other senses, indeed through which alone, they are delighted, call them to witness. Let them indicate to reason what light is. Sight will suddenly answer: I am a splendid spirit, and I am a spiritual splendor; when questioned, I shall gladly set forth my proper offices. Light is a certain spiritual, sudden, and very broad emanation from bodies, without detriment to their own nature: namely, of a certain brightness from transparent things, but of color from the opposites of these; of quantity, figure, and motion from all things. Now gather into one genus every kind of color. What will this whole be, except a certain many-colored light, or light made opaque in the more solid and darker matter of earth? Separate out the earth mixed with it. What will remain, except a certain quality, indeed a brightness and act of the transparent, just as color is the act of the opaque? Color indeed is opaque light; light, however, is clear color, indeed a certain flower and vigor of a transparent body and of colors, as if one-colored in act and many-colored in power. What is this that sight has reported to you about light? Is this the light that it described? I have never heard anything defined more obscurely. In what way can it happen that nothing is more obscure than light, than which nothing is more clea

[unclear], when through it all things shine? See what sense can do with regard to incomprehensible light, when it cannot rightly comprehend even the material light in which it exists and moves. Therefore, despising the blind report of the senses, let us ascend from here to the lofty watchtower of the mind, to see whether perhaps the mind itself can suggest to us what the light is which is said to shine in darkness.

O mind, you who measure all things rightly, tell me: is perhaps the light that shines in darkness God himself, than whom nothing is clearer and nothing more obscure? Nothing is clearer than that God exists, and that he is supremely powerful, wise, and good; for everything made by him proclaims this to our ears, so that no one is deafer than he who does not hear so great a sound and noise of all things. On the other hand, nothing is more obscure than what God is, so that nothing is darker than the man who thinks this is utterly clear. But the mind, illuminated by the light of the Catholic faith and raised by intellectual knowledge to cognition of heavenly things, will answer: God is the father of lights, with whom there is no change by which he may be extinguished or diminished, nor shadow of alteration by which he may in turn enter night or suffer any defect. Again it will say that God is light in which there is no darkness at all; form in which there is nothing formless; beauty also in which there is nothing deformed.

But what are these things to him who is above all things and transcends every positive assertion infinitely far; who made from nothing those things that exist; uncreated, eternal, immovable, incomprehensible, always existing; who is none of the things he made, he who made all things? Therefore, O mind eager for heavenly things, leave the senses behind, pass beyond reason, and transcend even yourself, withdrawing yourself into the affection of the heart. Even if not for others, at least for yourself do not be slow to gain, by loving, a taste of the highest and unchangeable good, leaving behind you all images and every likeness, so that by freely, absolutely, and purely going beyond yourself and all things, with all things removed and yourself released from all things, naked and alone, you may be able to fly up to the supersubstantial ray of the divine darkness. Meanwhile lead your intellect captive; indeed, allow it to be buried. Take care to enlarge your affection as much as you can by loving, since you can by no means comprehend God by understanding, for he stands far above every intellect. Yet access to him lies open to you by loving, if you are pure, if gentle, if tranquil, if released from all things and rightly united to yourself.

I would not have you be deceived by taste, since whatever you see, whatever you grasp, whatever you say, is not God; and what he is, you, clothed in a frail little body, cannot know, nor understand, nor in any way express, even if you were endowed with all the tongues of the world. Strive nevertheless with prudent sobriety, only as one wholly purified from the affections of the flesh, loving no one in this world except God alone, actually stripped of passions, calm and tranquil, quiet without any disturbance. The ray of the highest good has poured its goodness into you, by which God himself is shown to you to be invisible, incomprehensible light, the truth of every truth and the cause of all things. Its splendor, or rather its shadow, is that visible and finite light, the cause of visible things, whose nature is to disclose all other things to the rest. But to God, the invisible light, all things are truly and clearly visible through himself: he enlightens every man coming into this world, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made that was made.

But, O reason, do not trust the senses when you go on investigating, with mystical concern, the principle of all things, God, the unfailing light. For all the senses of the body are dulled, and perceive nothing of the highest truth. Sight did not sufficiently report to you about light; the others did not report at all. Everything spiritual is far removed from the senses.

Ascend to that lofty watchtower of the mind, O reason, friend of truth, once the senses have been entirely lulled. Since it is a certain intellectual light and luminous understanding, indeed illuminated by the invisible light through a certain participation, whose object is intelligible light itself, it can lead you by the hand to the summit of the divine darkness, in which the highest Truth inhabits inaccessible light. For what has sight to do with invisible things, when sensory light is what only

receives and gives splendor? Turn to the mind, and to it as wholly purified from absolutely every iniquity; it will teach you that reason is a certain rational light, and a shining reason illuminated by that invisible light itself which shines in the darkness. But after you seek out, by reasoning, with such eagerness the reason of light as your origin, since this is above all reason, admitting no affirmation at all either of those things which are, or of those which are not, it is necessary that you, leaving behind all your powers, ascend even above the mind, by an affection free and released from all things, purified from every entanglement either of carnal love or of hatred of any kind, to that supreme ray of divine inspiration, so that in the highest truth, which is also itself the highest certainty, and an altogether incomprehensible brightness, you may find the truth of light and a brightness beyond all estimation. Its brightness and truth, being the same, far and incomparably transcend every human and angelic intellect. Its immeasurable abundance of goodness and truth, without detriment to itself, illuminates the minds of those who truly seek it, and powerfully and sweetly drives the soul upward with the invisible fire of its love, when it has found that soul purified from all evil and carnal passions.

But since the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and an earthly habitation depresses the sense that thinks many things, one must not leap so suddenly to so sublime a contemplation of divine things; rather, the mind warns that one must ascend by degrees, first, namely, with the inner affection purified, and then with suitable exercises observed at intervals, lest it happen to be darkened and wholly blinded by too great a brilliance. Our spirit, however, which I would rightly wish to be called by a more excellent kind of name, is summoned to the beauty above not only through reason, when, namely, it argues from things known to the sense that corporeal beauty, as being set in shapelessness, distance, and mobility, is necessarily imperfect, and therefore proceeds from incorporeal beauty, toward which the spirit itself, as toward the principle of its own beauty, in which alone it knows that it can be made blessed, hastens with eager inquiry, as though desiring to ascend from the beauty which is splendor in many things, as in stars, to the simple light of the good itself, as of the sun. Although in that light there is no form, yet it is itself the beauty of beauty; and since its goodness and beauty are infinite, it will kindle love in those who draw near.

Although, indeed, the supreme and unchangeable good, existing far above every affirmation and negation, is penetrable by no comparison or likeness for any mortal, since there is plainly no proportion of the finite to the infinite, of the creature to the creator, and of man to God, nevertheless in the holy Scriptures it admits many comparisons and likenesses concerning itself, on account of the slowness of our understanding, although none of those things which are said of it by our assumed license belongs to it at all. Not only have our princes and prophets used these things in mystical comparisons and likenesses concerning the highest principle of all things, but also all the wiser philosophers of the gentiles, who were able to understand that there is one God, whom they determined must be worshiped invisibly by no other thing than devotion of mind.

Among these, Empedocles, one of them, wishing by a certain imaginable likeness to persuade men that God is infinite and immeasurable, and wholly incomprehensible, fashioned a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. When he sets the structure of this sphere before a weak mind, he renders heaven and earth narrow, and enclosed by the greatness of that image, and the mind, at once stupefied and shaken with fear, humbly adores the divine power. And another man, when he attempted to demonstrate the same thing by mathematical reasoning, proposed that one should imagine, from a straight line of infinite length, a circle than which neither a greater nor a smaller can be given, while the straightness of that line itself is preserved. Although the mind itself utterly recoils from forming this within itself as an impossible thought, nevertheless it understands that from that line there necessarily arises a circle than which neither a greater nor a smaller can be given, while the line remains by its own nature.

For this reason, in the holy Scriptures also various comparisons and likenesses concerning God are set down; their cause is wrapped in mystical and secret wisdom, known to few, and indeed only to clean hearts, lest the secrets of the divine mysteries should easily be seized by the unclean, things which belong only to pure lovers of holiness, who every

[unclear], destroying imagination altogether in sacred speculations, are sufficient to pass beyond the summit of the mind; to arrive at the most simple beauty of the highest goodness without any imagination or composition [unclear]. For this reason Saint Dionysius, prelate and martyr of Christ, affirms a twofold theology. One is secret and mystical: symbolic and truly perfective, sweetly acting through love purified above mind and understanding. This is accessible to few, friendly to fewer: only to those who, crucifying their flesh with its vices and desires, and trampling underfoot for the love of God all the noise of the tumultuous age, profess that theology not in words but in deeds. The other is better known, manifest, and receptive, physical, transmitted through letters and the writings of men to men. Today we see that it is regarded as quite celebrated among many, although it is less powerful than the former in stirring the soul to divine love. By daily labor a passage must be prepared for us from the second to the first, in which alone the soul is saved.

For one must, by more eager inquiry and by love, pass from the created beauty of the world, which physical theology beholds, to the ineffable beauty of the highest good, which mystical theology considers; there the mind, forgetful of all things that are in the world and freed from all things, carried upward by the fire of purest love, begins sweetly, in affection, to marvel at the beauty of the divine light. This is your theology, O cloistered ones; this singular study of divine love is enjoined upon you above all others, and all your studies must be principally ordered to it. But alas, I am ashamed to recall the studies of cloistered persons, who have turned holy theology into pernicious babbling; who pursue idleness and fables, whose god is their belly, for whom in this life nothing is sweeter than to eat and drink and, contrary to regular discipline, to be fattened on the pleasures of the flesh. The lesser learn these things from the greater, when abbots and the other shepherds of souls, forgetful of God and unmindful of their own salvation, under the cloak of piety most zealously pursue pride and avarice, spending all their time on transitory things and cares. As if by way of recreation after immense labors, they miserably turn themselves to the various pleasures of the body. Woe to you, and again woe, who, immersed in earthly cares or pleasures, do not rise up to the love of the highest good; who, having a heart turned away from the highest principle, are monks and Christians in name alone. I say to you: unless you are converted to repentance, you will have no share with the lovers in the kingdom of God. Wondrous, indeed astounding, is your madness, which has prevailed so far in blinding you that, although you always live rebellious and opposed to God, you nevertheless so boldly expect from him the kingdom of heaven, as though you were just. And how can it happen that a soul joined to the body and subjected to it by excessive sympathy, a soul that does not admit into itself the ray of divine love, should at last, when separated, make its way joyfully to God, whom, on departing, it did not love? O wretched and unhappy ones, how shamefully you deceive yourselves, who seek your consolations anywhere other than from God. It is impossible for a soul departing from the body to be able to reach its own principle, which is God, joyful and blessed, if, while placed in the body, it did not love God himself above all things. For pure love, free from and detached from all else, makes union between God and the soul; and when this has been neglected by a person throughout his whole life, it must be believed that it can never, or only rarely, be grasped at the point of death. Therefore live, mortals, while you live, bound over to love, always attending to the end of life; the less it is known to you, the more it is to be feared.

Come now, soul, search out where he is who created the whole world with such great beauty, who bestowed upon us so excellent a life, who promised bright and eternal dwellings in heaven to those who love him. You see beauty itself flashing in all things and in varied forms. It is beautiful to dwell in it; yet it is more beautiful and more necessary for the mind, already present in the beautiful, to investigate where these things come from and whence they are made beautiful. Plainly, [one must investigate] the very author of beautiful things, none of them...

to be wholly so; otherwise there will be some part of those things which he made, which reason does not admit. Therefore God himself is the beginning above all things, who made all things; whom no understanding can comprehend, because he is above every understanding; who created every understanding; who is worshipped in spirit and truth, and, invisible, is seen by the love of the purest affection; who, always remaining unchangeable, causes not himself, but us, to be changed by our affection according to the image of piety. Since he made all things and can do all things, the ineffable principle of all things, he is not circumscribable, but immense, incomprehensible, including all things, filling all things, containing all things. And because he is immense, he has no magnitude, since magnitude has place only in external things. Indeed, the author of magnitude himself must not be a participant in magnitude. When he is called great, there is no quantity at all; rather, his magnitude is that nothing is more powerful than he, and nothing more sublime, to whom there is nothing either in heaven or on earth that can be compared. Moreover, when we say that God himself reigns through all ages of ages and everywhere throughout the universe, this signifies neither measure in him nor, again, vast immensity; otherwise by what means would he measure the remaining things? Nor is it permitted to imagine any figure or form in him, since that incomprehensible divinity and the immense majesty of beauty, by infinite comparisons and beyond measure, far surpasses everything that can be imagined, thought, comprehended, or spoken; nor is there anything of those things which mortal man has ever understood or could understand, concerning which the prophet Isaiah rightly cried out: Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the savior, who makes darkness your hiding-place and dwells in inaccessible light; by whose wisdom every man has been made foolish. O immense beauty of the divine majesty, able to be tasted by loving affection alone, desirable to the mind above all things; of which we can receive no figure and no form, to be supremely desired and loved by us; whose love is immense, whom to know and love is eternal blessedness. For this love is not finite, since even the beloved himself is not finite; but his love is infinite, always [unclear] with eternal felicity.

Therefore also his beauty is lovable above every beauty: for indeed he created every beauty; and since he is both its beginning and its end, he is not a participant in it, but, existing without comparison beyond measure above every position in his own beauty, goodness, truth, and eternity, he transcends it.

¶ But now you will have to consider further how the mind itself ought to conform itself to its own principle; by what inquiry it must return to that principle after the allurements of pleasures; what necessity or what utility is imposed upon those returning; and finally what is the manner of purging the affection from the lowest and carnal passions, as it seeks the highest and unchangeable good, so that, free and released from desires opposed to reason and to the rectitude of the mind, it may take up the upward passage of love. For our soul itself, made in the image of God, as Scripture bears witness, always indeed, stirred by the natural love implanted in it, desires to have recourse to the fountain of its beauty and to be united to its own principle, which reason has most excellently persuaded it must be loved; and the nature of loving, surpassing every appearance, consists in the one object of blessedness itself. Whatever you show it by referring it, in respect, to that object, is not enough, since in this very thing it always seeks something else that formed it. For reason teaches that everything which has form, and the form and appearance itself, is something measured, and for that reason is neither universal, nor sufficient of itself, nor beautiful by its own nature, but rather is mixed, not pure, not simple, and made by another. Therefore these things must be beautiful, but measured. But the highest good itself, which is truly beautiful, or rather above beauty, is circumscribed by the limit of no measure. Certainly it is not formed; likewise it is neither appearance nor something participating in any of those things which are known to us or to anyone in the world. Therefore that which is lovable first and exists first utterly surpasses every appearance; and there the beauty of intelligible beauty, above every understanding, and its comeliness, is the highest goodness itself, free from all things that are not, always existing absolute, the living principle of all things, of the rational soul

the highest and unchangeable good, always present everywhere. When this first shines upon the soul, now serene and purified from lower things, it kindles a wondrous love: namely, when, transcending in mind all forms and intentions, not only imaginable but also intellectual, it has stripped them away, then through love of the infinite good, despising itself, it rejoices with ineffable joy over all things that can either be said or thought. This indeed the soul can attain not only after the present life, but sometimes even in this life, when, purified from lower things and freely restored and united to itself, it is so borne upward through the desire of love, [unclear] affectionately into God, that, utterly forgetful of all things that are in the world, and not even knowing itself, [it rejoices] with inexpressible joy. Those who have experienced these things know them; if time allowed, their virtues could be thrown in the face of those who, since they are carnal and given over to vices, having a veil spread over their heart, dream that the mystical theology of the saints and the contemplative life contain nothing of truth, and think that it is fabricated according to the quality of affections in the opinion of an unlearned man, as they themselves are accustomed to say. Of these the holy Apostle said: The animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit, for it is [unclear] to him; and he cannot understand, because [they are examined?] spiritually. And Saint Jude the Apostle: “These are,” he says, “they who separate themselves, animal men, not having the spirit.” Unhappy are those who immerse themselves in earthly cares and the pleasures of the flesh, who hunt after the vain knowledge of this world, together with false honors; just as their mind, always occupied with lower things, has never learned to shake itself free from sensible things, so it does not rise to the sweetness of divine love. You err, O mortals, and indeed you err greatly, who, intent either on vain studies, or sunk in the cares of the world, or oppressed by the pleasures of the flesh or by evil passions, think that you either know or love God. For it cannot happen that a mind which loves any other thing, about which it is occupied, can purely love the highest and unchangeable good, which is God, or ever be joined to him through desire; but it must have nothing else, neither of good nor of evil, at hand, so that, free and released from all things, it may someday grasp, alone, the One alone. For union between God and the mind cannot come to be unless, all things having been cast aside that are wont either to stain the affection or confound the intellect, the mind itself is joined through love, pure to the most pure, clean to the most clean, one to the One, and alone to the Alone.

Now, man, approach the deep heart; and after such cultivation of your soul, whereby through the study of letters and the various traditions of masters, from youth down to old age and extreme age, you have labored for a little knowledge, at last cast the seed of divine sweetness into the field of your heart, so that someday you may receive the fruit of most holy love, without which no one will arrive at the enjoyment of the unchangeable good. The studies of letters are indeed beautiful; to devote labor to receptive theology is pleasant; to have knowledge of law, astronomy, poetry, music, rhetoric, arithmetic, philosophy, and the other arts is certainly delightful. Yet one must not grow old in them in such a way, not linger, not consume all the time of life; rather, from these one must ascend by the ladder of love to the highest beauty, in which the true blessedness of the soul infinitely transcends every created beauty. Otherwise, O learned men, what does it profit to cultivate the field of the mind laboriously through the daily study of letters, as though by plowing, if either, hungry, it is not sown with divine seed, or the slender fruit of inward love is choked among the thorns of riches and the briars of pleasures? If we believe the proverb, or rather, if with open eyes we see what experience teaches us, integrity of life is rarer among the learned: the brighter they are in intellect through acquired knowledge, the more foul they are in affection. In their person, Saint Augustine, having heard of the conversion of Saint Anthony and moved by just grief, cried out: “The unlearned rise up and seize heaven, and we, with our doctrines, serving flesh and blood, descend to hell.” Turn back to the heart, O wise men; leave vain cares; purify your souls from every carnal affection; drive out hatred together with love [of the world]; cleanse your minds of all things that can impede the sweet divine influx, so that you may be able truly to love God. To his unsurpassable enjoyment the soul can in no way be admitted after the present life if, while set in the flesh, it has not loved him above all things. Therefore, so that a graded ascent toward true conversion may be prepared for the mind, since no one suddenly becomes highest, we shall erect, in a few words, a ladder distinguished by seven steps. By it the mind itself, ascending in some measure to the knowledge of the highest good, and devoting itself meanwhile to holy exercises of divine love, may deserve to obtain sweetness.

The first step, therefore, is the purification of the soul itself from every attachment to corruptible things, actions, and desires: so that it may be clean, still, tranquil, released from cares, empty of evil desires, free from every carnal love, and, as far as possible, united to itself in its innate beauty. For the soul’s natural beauty, formed by the supreme Beauty, is defiled by admixture with the body it has assumed, just as ugliness befalls gold if it is covered with clods of earth. If someone shakes these off, pure gold at once remains; and it is now beautiful when it has been separated from what is alien, content in its own purity for beauty. In the same way the soul, separated from those desires which it conceived in itself through excessive commerce with the body, and freed from other disturbances, the stains now erased which bodily familiarity had burned into it by long habit, and thus left alone to itself, has without doubt cleansed away all ugliness previously imbibed from an alien nature; and, having found again its lost beauty, it now first ascends the step of divine knowledge, and that more difficult step itself. For this reason the oracles of the Scriptures rightly prophesy that the soul not purified in the present life from sins contracted in the flesh, after death, lying in filth among the dead, is tormented. For an impure soul, on account of its depravity, is very like filthy swine in the body: they delight in filth and dirt. What else is true temperance, by which alone the monastic religion is especially adorned, than not to indulge bodily pleasures, but to flee them far away as the foulest diseases of the soul? Fortitude, however, is to fear none of the things that are transitory, nor even death itself, which is nothing but a certain separation of the soul from the body, which the mind does not fear when it desires to be alone and to be happily united forever with its own beginning. Moreover, what else is magnanimity than contempt for mortal things for the love of the divine? And prudence is understanding that shuns lower things and raises the soul to higher things. When the soul has been instructed in these doctrines and already purified from the filth of vices, reason and beauty become united to it, so that thereafter it yields to no pleasures of the flesh that are opposed to the highest principle; wonderfully restored to beauty and understanding, it advances, illuminated by the ray of divine splendor.

The second step is knowledge of divine works. When the mind considers their beauty with admiration in many and diverse forms, it cannot fail at some time to lift itself upward with the desire of love to the author of so great a beauty. Hence also the holy Apostle says to the Romans that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are perceived by understanding through the things that have been made. For all the beauty of the world has been formed by the supreme Beauty, and by its variety invites us to knowledge of him, to such a degree that nothing is more foolish than one whom so great a variety of beautiful things does not kindle to contemplation of the supreme Beauty. What else, too, does the very sequence of the Scriptures suggest to us than that that highest, unchangeable good, God, in the beginning created heaven and earth, and all things contained within the circuit of that heaven; and, through the miracles made by him, marvelous and countless as they are, which by their cry compel us, as if by hands, to knowledge of the highest truth, unless we are harder than stones.

The third step is contemplation of the order by which lower works are brought back step by step to higher ones. For since the supercelestial world, and also the celestial, is most orderly, the sublunary world too is necessarily ordered; and since, in it, things lower than man are ordered, therefore human things are much more so. Therefore all individual things that happen to human beings are justly dispensed by God, although the cause of them is hidden from us. For the highest providence

[Provi]dence governs the world by so beautiful and so manifest an order that we need seek no other more evident proof of his goodness and wisdom than in that which the ordered fabric of the universe itself proclaims to us.

The fourth step is a certain proportional comparison, drawing from the order of inferior works a relation to the divine order. For just as the author of all beauty must be infinite beauty, wholly sufficient in itself, needing nothing, so the ineffable Good, surpassing all things, by whose most peaceful will, ordering it, he clothed the universe in varied beauty, abides always in his majesty in a wondrous and incomprehensible order.

The fifth step is negation, by which you separate everything you conceive from the highest first principle of all things, just as Saint Dionysius taught in the Mystical Theology, and as we spoke in the former part of this discourse of ours. For that highest and incomprehensible majesty, the cause of all things, since it is above every affirmation of the things that we, or anyone else in the world, can know, understand, or speak, rejects every image, likeness, form, or species; and for that reason our mind rises nearer to it by negation than by affirmation.

The sixth step is humble prayer to God, that the father of the intellectual world himself may make you clean, intellectual in act. For this you must remember the benefits and free gifts that the goodness of almighty God has generously granted to you, though undeserving, and especially the benefit of redemption, which alone is sufficient to soften the mind to great compunction, when remembered attentively by use and familiarity.

The seventh and last step of this ladder is this: that, when by the gift of the good itself you have now become an intellectual world, you should then, stirred by love of that good itself, be transformed from the intellectual state into the good that is above intellect; there the quiet seat of holy contemplation unites the holy soul, through its love, to its own principle. The soul indeed remains in its own essence, but, abstracted from all alien things, becomes one by grace with God, not by nature: here in part, after death wholly.

We must therefore ascend, brothers, to that highest good which every soul desires, in which alone it will obtain eternal blessedness, if, turned toward it through love, it departs from the body. Therefore let whoever can enter and advance into the inward places, leaving outside the sight of the eyes, and no longer looking back behind him at the accustomed spectacles of the senses. For one who beholds the highest beauty on the mountain of contemplation must look upon absolutely nothing of bodily beauty thereafter, but, knowing bodily things to be images, traces, and shadows, must flee altogether to that of which these are works and likenesses. For created beauty ought not to hold the mind, but to lead it step by step to the uncreated; otherwise one must cry out with Ulysses: Let us go hence, friends, fleeing to our sweet homeland. But our homeland is there whence we came, as the holy Apostle also says: We have here no lasting city, but we seek the one to come. We must not flee to it on foot, nor again prepare horses for riding, nor ships for sailing. Rather, we must leave all these things behind and not even look forward, but, with the sight of the body closed, take up and awaken another sight in its place, the inward sight of the mind, which indeed all have, but very few use. Yet one must not rashly burst forth toward the unfamiliar light of divine brightness, since that inward eye, suddenly awakened, can hardly look upon very bright things. Therefore the soul must be accustomed and introduced to divine spectacles: first, indeed, to consider beautiful pursuits; then beautiful works, works, I say, not those made by the arts, but those done by upright men, by whose example, provoked to love of virtue, you may become an imitator of the goodness you have observed in them. Examine also what sort your own soul is; recall yourself into the temple and contemplate. But if you do not yet know yourself as beautiful and purified from every foulness of bodily familiarity, you will imitate the sculptor, who, when he desires a beautiful statue, cuts away one part.

he partly also sets straight, and scrapes away in order to polish; partly he smooths and cleans, until he brings out a beautiful face in the statue. So too must you: remove what is superfluous; straighten what is crooked; cleanse and illuminate what is obscure. Do not cease laboring over your statue until the radiance of divine virtue gleams upon you, and you firmly behold it seated in pure majesty and holy temperance. But when you have become clean and pure, and now dwell with yourself, having, that is, no impediment to prevent you from thus being made one, nor again having anything else mixed within you, but being wholly yourself, free, withdrawn, and released from all passions of the flesh and evil affections, then your inner sight itself, now rightly ordered and purified, can in some measure lift the mind to the contemplation of the uncircumscribable light. But if by chance the eye of the mind, which is affection itself, either infected with filth and not yet cleansed, or weak through sloth, is directed toward that most luminous spectacle, it will at once grow dark and discern nothing. For one eye of the mind is called intellect, the other affection; unless both have been duly cleansed, they will render the man approaching the contemplation of divine things blind rather, and mad, than a sharer in the divine light. For whoever, still given over to the passions of the flesh, with them not yet truly mortified in his soul according to the monastic rule, rashly approaches the contemplation of uncircumscribable beauty, will at once, struck back by the immeasurable light, go away blind and full of great errors. For the holy prophet David says: If I have looked upon iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And the wise man, concluding to the point, says: Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins. Now attend to yourselves and to your profession, O cloistered men, who have been called to a share in the contemplative life and for that reason released from all cares, and who eat the alms of the faithful, so that no occasion might be given you for interrupting study if you had concern for the necessities of the body. What are you doing? Where is the sweetest tranquillity of contemplation [granted?] to you? Alas, alas, we have all been called to the contemplative life, and almost all of us are ignorant of the sweetness of contemplation. Very rare today is the monk, and much rarer the abbot, who devotes himself to the contemplative life after the example of the holy fathers. Indeed, if it is right to say so, few in this time know what contemplation is. Therefore, O monks, since you are not what according to your institution you ought to be, you are bad. For everyone who is not what he ought to be is in a bad state; but the recompense of the bad is hell. It is rightly said that the soul’s good and beauty consist in this: that it be like God by a certain beauty of purity and love, withdrawn from all things that are accustomed to make it ugly, since union can take place only among like things. Whoever has come to that purity of soul so that he begins to taste the things we are saying will thereafter easily despise any violent passions, and carnal or earthly loves, and will cast far away all things that previously seemed beautiful. Here is set before us the greatest and final struggle, for the sake of which we must labor completely, lest perhaps we be left without this best contemplation; whoever attains it in the present life passes to the future blessed by a happy vision, but conversely he who does not attain it is unhappy. For he is not wretched who lacks riches, money, vessels of gold and silver, and honors; nor he who does not obtain splendid possessions, beautiful horses, a noble wife, freeborn children, and beautiful bodies; nor he who falls from power, an abbacy, a prelacy, a principality, or a kingdom; nor he who is afflicted in this world by diseases, poverty, or disgrace, all of which will shortly pass away; but he who lacks possession of the highest good, for which certainly all the kingdoms and empires of the whole earth, sea, and heaven must be cast aside, if, after all these things have been abandoned and scorned, entrance to the contemplation of so great a good is granted to us.

End of the oration of Johannes Trithemius, abbot, delivered in the annual chapter at Erfurt at Saint Peter’s, in the year of the Lord 1500, on the penultimate day of the month of August, by the same.

From the letter of Libanus Gallus the Platonist, a most learned man.

As for your oration on the saving conversion to God, I cannot but approve it. It is sweet indeed, and yet not idle; and although it flows peacefully like a most pure spring, nevertheless it is filled with weighty and choice thoughts, so that the careful reader may understand that you are a man of very wide reading, singular talent, and endowed with the highest learning. Would that those whom I might rightly call [unclear] did not defile Christian theology with that [unclear] manner of speaking, or at least would bear with an even mind that it be claimed back, by right of return, from the barbarians who even made it barbarous, into its former state and dignity by the best men learned in Greek and Latin. Against those barbarians, namely teachers of youth, who, though untaught, profess themselves learned, Brother Joannes Annius, a learned and upright man, not unjustly growing indignant, cries out in the questionary prologue on Philo, saying: “O impiety! Sacred Scripture is manifest; the testimony of God is clear, giving wisdom to little ones. The divine letters have no need of folds, nor coverings, nor refoldings, because these do not give wisdom to little ones, but leave their minds in confusion, and throughout the whole of life compel the minds of men to go astray, as Diodorus writes concerning the Greeks in the third book. Not those who fold, not those who refold, but those who unfold and elucidate me shall have eternal life, as the sacred letters bear witness.”