APPELMANS, GHERAERT. - Flemish hermit, who lived between about 1250 and 1325, known only as a mystical writer, for his original and profound commentary on the « Pater Noster » (Glose op den Pater Noster), in which he combines great theological learning with lofty contemplative experience.
The Christological and Trinitarian approach, the precision of the dogmatic concepts, and the evident methodological and didactic qualities reveal a strong scholastic formation, of Thomistic orientation, and suggest that the author taught theology before withdrawing from the world. Noteworthy is his conception of mystical sonship, an extension of sonship by grace, and of the vision of God as the goal of this twofold sonship. From the linguistic point of view, his little work, found in manuscript by Fr Reypens in 1927, constitutes a gem of medieval Flemish literature, while showing that, by the fourteenth century, scholastic mysticism had already spread in the vernacular, before Eckhart.