BL. JOHANNES TAULER, PRIEST, RELIGIOUS, AND MYSTIC - 24 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER 

Saints celebrated on the 24th of October

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BLESSED JOHANNES TAULER, PRIEST, RELIGIOUS, AND MYSTIC 

Blessed Johannes Thaulerus, (October 24th), also Taulerus [John Tauler], the well-known mystic from the Order of St Dominic, whom his contemporaries called the "enlightened teacher" (Doctor illuminatus), was born in 1294 to respected parents, probably in Strasbourg, but according to others in Cologne. 

In 1308 he was admitted to the Dominican monastery in Strasbourg. He then did his theological studies, it seems, in the Dominican monastery of St Jacob in Paris. 

His life story is very obscure, and so, among other things, it is not known where he went once he left Paris. 

Around the year 1322 he surfaced once more in Strasbourg, where Master Eckart lived, a Dominican whose writings were thoroughly mystical, with whom John now seems to have had frequent intercourse. Tauler also seems to have been in contact with Blessed Henricus Amandus Suso [Bl. Henry Suso, Heinrich Seuse]; and he definitely did visit the famous mystic Bl. Johannes Ruysbroek. 

But Tauler's preaching in Strasbourg in the years 1336, 1341, 1345 is particularly noteworthy, where his zeal in comforting the sick and dying through the reception of the holy Sacramente is praised. There is also much documentation of his writings, which are in any case more difficult to understand than those of the author of the "Imitation of Christ." 

In Cologne he also preached to the Dominican sisters of St Gertrude. There he died on June 16, 1361 in a garden house of the nunnery St Klaus in den Linden, where his sister lived. 

Some of Tauler's writings are originally written in German, and they presuppose significant progress in the development of the German language. They consist in sermons and ascetic treatises. 

Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints