The Friend of God From the High Lands

Who was the "Friend of God"? He was a lay person from the High Lands of fourteenth-century Central Europe, whose name was a mystery. He became the teacher and spiritual mentor of the most famous preacher and mystic of that age, Johannes Tauler, and tradition speaks of his great love and wisdom. His personal letters and writings, rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century, describe his founding of a lay monastery near Strasbourg, as well as intimate details of his life and the inner trials of him and those in the brotherhood around him. The writings also describe his 1377 visit to Pope Gregory XI to appeal for a renewal of the Christian impulse in the established, though spiritually declining Church. These documents caused a furor among European historians and scholars, and many writers tried to identify the Friend of God or deny his existence as a historical figure. The author has painstakingly interpreted the medieval pictorial language and lifts the veil of mystery surrounding this nameless person, who is considered to have been one of the leading European mystics, and whose actions and teachings identify him as a "teacher of humanity."