Brussels shaped both John of Ruusbroec’s pastoral life and the beginnings of his literary career. For twenty-six years he served as an assistant pastor at St. Gudula’s church; the city’s distractions and the difficulty of cultivating a deep spiritual life there later helped lead him to leave for the rural hermitage at Groenendaal.

Education and Pastoral Ministry

Born in a village a few miles south of Brussels, Ruusbroec was sent to the city at eleven to be educated by an uncle who was a priest. He was ordained at twenty-four, a year earlier than usual, and remained in Brussels as an assistant pastor at St. Gudula’s church for the next twenty-six years. His uncle was a canon there, linking Ruusbroec’s early formation and ministry to the same church community.

The years in Brussels were also an important period of writing. Five of Ruusbroec’s eleven books were composed during his time as a priest in the city. His first work, The Kingdom of Lovers, explained union with God through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Ruusbroec later judged it immature and did not want it copied. A copy nevertheless reached the Carthusians of Herne, prompting him to write The Book of Clarification to explain the earlier work. The episode shows how writing begun in Brussels continued to generate new work beyond the city.

Urban Pressures and Departure

Ruusbroec and two companions left Brussels in 1343 for an old hermitage at Groenendaal, where they established a community that adopted the Rule of St. Augustine. The move reflected their belief that the city was too deeply infused with materialistic values for sustained spiritual concentration. Continuing construction at St. Gudula’s brought noise and distraction, and the account presents these practical pressures alongside broader uncertainty in the Church, disputes among religious movements, war, and plague.

Brussels therefore figures not simply as Ruusbroec’s place of education and employment, but as the urban setting from which his community sought distance. Others joined the hermitage, which became a destination for pilgrims. Ruusbroec became its prior and spent the remaining thirty-eight years of his life there.

Writing Across Two Places

The move did not end Ruusbroec’s work as an author; it shifted its setting. He began The Spiritual Tabernacle in Brussels and completed it at Groenendaal. The two locations mark successive phases of his vocation: years of parish service in a busy city, followed by communal and contemplative life in a rural hermitage. In this account, Brussels is thus both the place where Ruusbroec developed as a priest and writer and the contrast against which his later withdrawal to Groenendaal becomes intelligible.