Ruusbroecs Brulocht tussen de preken van Tauler in handschrift en druk

It has been known for over a century that the printed edition of Tauler's sermons, published in Basle in 1521 (reprint 1522), has a sermon (for the first sunday of Lent) that consists entirely of excerpts taken from Ruusbroec's Die geestelike brulocht ('The Spiritual Espousals'). The sermon is on the text Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis et conculcabis leonem et draconem (Ps. 90,13). This paper discusses an older copy of the text in a fifteenth-century Tauler manuscript (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, 724b). Here, as well as in the Basle printed-edition, the sermon appears in combination with another Ruusbroec text: Vanden vier becoringhen ('The Four Temptations'), that has been copied more often within a Tauler-corpus, from the oldest manuscripts onwards. It is argued that the Super aspidem-sermon together with Vanden vier becoringhen may have circulated among the Strassbourg Gottesfreunde, who had close ties with Tauler and showed an interest in Ruusbroec's writings in an early stage. The Hildesheim manuscript with the Super aspidem-sermon has a number of texts and references that point to this literary milieu of Gottesfreunde.