&quot;The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage&quot; was written some time around 1350, not long after Flemish mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck moved to a small hermitage out in the country, where he wandered the woods and wrote as the Holy Ghost inspired him.<br /><br />&quot;The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage&quot; contains three of Jan van Ruysbroeck&#39;s best works: <i>The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage</i>, <i>The Sparkling Stone</i>, and <i>The Book of Truth</i>. These works are remarkable for their combination of lofty spiritual philosophy and robust common sense. As we read them, we feel that we are in touch with a man who, in his ecstatic ascents to God, never loses hold of the actualities of human life. In the <i>Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage</i>, he traces the gradual development of the soul through the active life of Christian virtue, the interior life of contemplation, and the super essential life of union with God. <i>The Sparkling Stone</i> further elaborates on some of the more difficult passages in <i>The Adornment</i>, and <i>The Book of Truth</i> was written as a refutation of the accusation that van Ruysbroeck&#39;s work supported a pantheistic and heretical view of the union of the soul with God.