Mystic, writer
Born: 1293
Died: 1381

Jan van Ruysbroeck (or Johannes van Ruusbroec) wrote religious prose in vulgar tongue. He became prior of the Augustine community at Groenendaal near Brussels.

He was strongly influenced by the life and the writing of the beguine- and Cistercian mystic (e.g. Die cierheit der gheesteliker brulocht)

His mysticism, expressed with consummate lucidity and grace in his writings, gained him the title of the Ecstatic Doctor; these writings were read widely through a great part of Europe into the 16th century.

Ruysbroeck was beatified by Pope Pius X in 1908. His feast day is December 2.