Publisher's description:
Amicus Dei, 'friend of God', is a theological concept with Biblical and liturgical origins, already discussed in patristic texts. This collection of essays investigates the ideas of Friend of God (Gottesfreund) and Friendship with God (Gottesfreundschaft) as witnessed in the literary documents of late medieval vernacular mysticism in Rhineland and the Low Countries, from the Lake of Constance and the cities of Basel, Strasbourg to the intellectual centre of Cologne and the cities of Louvain, Malines and Brussels in the Low Countries. In looking at the new religious and lay elites, their texts and their manuscripts as well as at their social, intellectual and linguistic context, this book sets out to better determine the historical meaning of the term Gottesfreunde in the religious discourse of the later Middle Ages.