This group of works, forming a graduated instruction on the ascetic
inspired thereto by God. When old age came upon him, though his ghostly vision never lost its keenness his earthly eyes grew dim: and his later works were dictated, when the Spirit moved him, to one of the younger brothers of the house. At eighty-eight years of age his strength failed: and after a short illness, which never clouded the radiance of his spirit, he died upon December 2nd, 1381. Ruysbroeck wrote all his works in the dialect of his native province of Brabant: which stands in much the same relation to modern Flemish as Chaucer's English stands to our own speech. Eleven of these works have come down to us in various MS. collections; and all of them, with one or two others of doubtful authenticity, are included in the great standard Latin translation made in the sixteenth century by the Carthusian monk Laurentius Surius.
The authentic writings are these: 1. The Spiritual Tabernacle: a long symbolic treatise on the tabernacle of the Israelites, considered as a type of the spiritual life. 2. The Twelve Points of True Faith: a short mystical interpretation of the Creed. 3. The Book of the Four Temptations: an oblique attack on false mystics. These are probably early works. 4. The Kingdom of God's Lovers. 5. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage. Two elaborate and orderly treatises on the threefold life and development of the soul, which probably belong to the first years at Groenendael.
6. The Mirror of Eternal Salvation: written before 1359. 7. The Seven Cloisters: written before 1363. 8. The Seven Degrees of Love: written before 1372. This group of works, forming a graduated instruction on the ascetic and mystical life, seems to have been written for Dame Margaret Van Meerbeke, a nun in the Convent of Poor Clares at Brussels.