Ludolph of Saxony

Ludolph of Saxony (Ludolphus de Saxonia, or Ludolph the Carthusian), was a German ecclesiastical writer of the fourteenth century.

Biography

His life is as little known as his works are celebrated. His date of birth is unknown. We have no certain knowledge of his native country; for in spite of his surname, "of Saxony", he may well, as Echard remarks, have been born either in the Diocese of Cologne or in the Diocese of Mainz, which then belonged to the Province of Saxony. He first joined the Dominicans, passed through an excellent course of literary and theological studies, and may have learnt the science of the spiritual life at the school of Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso, his contemporaries and companions in religion. After about thirty years spent in the active life, he entered the Charterhouse (Carthusian monastery) of Strasburg towards the year 1340. Three years later he was called upon to govern the newly founded (1331) Charterhouse of Coblentz; but scruples of conscience led him to resign his office of prior in 1348. Having again become a simple monk, first at Mainz and afterwards at Strasburg, he spent the last thirty years of his life in retreat and prayer, and died on 13 April, 1378 almost an octogenarian, universally esteemed for his sanctity, although he never seems to have been honoured with any public cult.

Works

Ludolph is one of the many writers to whom the authorship of "The Imitation of Christ" has been assigned; and if history protests against this, it must nevertheless acknowledge that the true author of that book has manifestly borrowed from the Carthusian. He is also considered a leading candidate for authorship of the "Speculum Humanae Salvationis". [Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1984 . [http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7v19p1w6/] p.26-7] Other treatises and sermons now either lost or very doubtful have also been attributed to him. Two books commend him to posterity:

(1) A "Commentary upon the Psalms", concise but excellent for its method, clearness and solidity. He especially developed the spiritual sense, according to the interpretations of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Cassiodorus and Peter Lombard. This commentary, which was very popular in Germany in the Middle Ages, has passed through numerous editions, of which the first dates from 1491, and that by Montreuil-sur-Mer is from 1891. (2) The "Vita Christi", his principal work, is not a simple biography as we understand such to-day, but at once a history, a commentary on the Gospels with large texts borrowed from the Fathers, a series of dogmatic and moral dissertations, of spiritual instructions, meditations and prayers, in relation to the life of Christ, from birth to His Ascension. It has been called a summa evangelica, so popular at that time, in which the author has condensed and resumed all that over sixty writers had said before him upon spiritual matters.

Sr Bodenstedt mentions Ludolph's particular debt to Pseudo-Bonaventure's Meditationes Vitae Christi, some believe is Pseudo-Bonaventure is Thomas a Kempis [Sr Mary Immaculate BODENSTEDT, The Vita Christi of Ludolphus the Carthusian, A dissertation. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1944 - British Library ref. no Ac.2692y/29.(16)at page 31 "Ludolph makes textual borrowings from more than sixty chapters out of a total of one hundred from the Mediationes of Ps.-Bonaventure especially in his sections in the Vita Christi on the Infancy of Jesus and his Passion] . Bodenstedt argues that Ludolph also follows Ps.-Bonaventure in his visual method of meditation [r Mary Immaculate BODENSTEDT, The Vita Christi of Ludolphus the Carthusian, A dissertation. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1944 - British Library ref. no Ac.2692y/29.(16)at page 31 "He (sc. Ludolph) frequently exhorts the reader to centre his mind upon some situation in the life of Christ by some such words as CONSPICE, CONSIDERA or VIDE - similar exhortations are in the Meditationes by Thomas a Kempis] Nothing shows better the great popularity of the "Vita Christi" than the numerous manuscript copies preserved in libraries and the manifold editions of it which have been published, from the first two editions of Strasburg and Cologne, in 1474, to the last editions of Paris (folio, 1865 Published by Victor Palme(heavily criticised by Father Coleridge SJ see below) and 8vo, 1878). It has besides been translated into Catalonian (Valencia, 1495, folio, Gothic), Castilian (Alcala, folio, Gothic), Portuguese (1495, 4 vols., folio), Italian (1570), French, "by Guillaume Lernenand, of the Order of Monseigneur St. François", under the title of the "Great Life of Christ" (Lyons, 1487, folio, many times reprinted), by D. Marie-Prosper Augustine (Paris, 1864) and by D. Florent Broquin, Carthusian (Paris, 1883). St. Teresa and St. Francis de Sales frequently quote from it, and it has not ceased to afford delight to pious souls, who find in it instruction and edification, food for both mind and heart.

Ludolph's De Vita Christi is mentioned in almost every potted biography of St Ignatius of Loyola. St Ignatius read it whilst recovering from the cannon-ball wound after the siege of Pamploma in an edition in Castilian [Michael Foss, The founding of the Jesuits, 1540, Published by Hamilton, London 1969 p.68] . Ludolph proposes a method of prayer which asks the reader to visualise the events of Christ's life (known as simple contemplation). In his commentary on the Gospel for the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalen, the story where Mary the sister of Lazarus, comes into the house of the Pharisee where Jesus is eating, and washes his feet with her tears and then dries his feet with her hair, Ludolph repeatedly urges the reader to see ( ie visualise ) the scene of the washing etc. He also has beautiful insights into the humanity and attractiveness of Jesus. He explains why Mary the public sinner overcame her shame and entered the house of the Pharisee by noting that the Pharisee was a leper and disfigured from the disease. St Mary Magdalen could see from the fact that Jesus was prepared to eat with a leper that he would not reject her.

This simple method of contemplation outlined by Ludolph and set out in De Vita Christi in many of his commentaries on the gospel stories that he chooses it can be argued influenced the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola [Sr Mary Immaculate BODENSTEDT, The Vita Christi of Ludolphus the Carthusian, A dissertation. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1944 - British Library ref. no Ac.2692y/29.(16)] . Indeed it is said that St Ignatius had desired to become a Carthusian after his pilgrimage to Jerusalem but was dissuaded by a Carthusian Prior. To this day members of the Society of Jesus may enter a Charterhouse. If their vocation there does not work out they may return to the Society of Jesus without penalty. This closeness between the Carthusians and Jesuits is arguably due to the great influence of Ludolph of Saxony's De Vita Christi on the future founder of the Society of Jesus.

Michael Foss is dismissive of the influence of Ludolph on the Exercises of St Ignatius saying "The Exercises show a bit of Ludolph" and then writing of St Ignatius recovering from the cannon would at the Castle of Loyola he says St Ignatius "Bored, as only a man of action can be when driven to bed, he was driven by desperation to a few unappetising volumes that the Castle of Loyola offered. he found a Castilian translation of the long, worthy and popular Life of Christ by a certain Ludolph of Saxony a 14th Century writer. [Michael Foss, The founding of the Jesuits, 1540, Published by Hamilton, London 1969 p.92]

Father Henry James Coleridge SI, the grand-nephew of Coleridge in his article of 1872 in The Month in the Review of Famous Books section of that periodical urges future translators of the Vita Christi to be cautious with the Folio edition of the Vita Christi published by Palme in 1865 since it is marred by poor punctuation and based on a poor manuscript [Ludolph's Life of Christ by Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ, "The Month" Vol 17 (July-Dec 1872) pages 337-370 in a footnote on page 342 "We are sorry to say that the text in the Folio is not so correct as earlier editions. No translator should use it without having one fo the latter by his side - this is more to be regretted, as the Editor has taken great pains to multiply the marginal references, and in other ways to make the text more available for use". ] [ [] ]

Notes

References

*CathEncy|title=Ludolph of Saxony|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09416b.htm
*Catholic|Ludolph of Saxony