Friends of God
The Friends were devout souls. Though deprived of the sacraments, they came to believe they were
not thereby excluded from the presence of God. They were greatly influenced by Meister Eckhart
(1260-1361). Less extreme were the most outstanding members of the group, two Dominican
preachers, John Tauler (1300-1361), and Henry Suso (d. 1366), for whom the chief end of
man is to be wholly enraptured by the love of God and the love of man.
The friends of God were a fourteenth century Bavarian mystic brotherhood in southwest
Germany and Switzerland. Next to such secularist tendencies as have been manifest in the
age, we meet the north with a great revival of mystical religion among the Friends of God
and the Brethren of the Common Life. The Friends originated early in the 14th century in
the lands of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, which lay under an interdict for roughly a
quarter of a century.
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