HENRY OF NÖRDLINGEN. - Priest of the diocese of Augsburg, spiritual director and preacher, d. after Nov. 1351.
In the conflict between the Avignon popes and Louis the Bavarian, H. rigorously sided with the Church. From 1335 to 1356 he went to Avignon. Expelled from Nördlingen in 1338 for enforcing the interdict, H. lived as a wandering priest in Constance, with a long stay in Basel where he met Tauler and many “Friends of God” and achieved great success along the Upper (Strasbourg, Sulz) and Lower Rhine (Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle). From Bamberg in 1347 he brought relics of St Henry and St Cunigunde to Basel. After various visits to Miedingen, his return to Nördlingen in 1350 and a visit to Engelthal, H. disappears from history in 1351.
A great admirer of Holy Scripture and St Thomas Aquinas, H. was not a mystic nor did he possess a properly mystical doctrine. Without further speculation, he was a practical spiritual director, devoted to affective spirituality and marked by a notable zeal to lead souls to union with God. His influence and success stemmed from his amiable character, his rich, sometimes sweet and exuberant feeling, his sincere piety, and his appreciation of mysticism.
H. has three merits for religious literature: for his correspondence with Bl. Margaret Ebner (1332–50), which constitutes the first true correspondence in the German language; for the rendering from Low German into the Upper German dialect of the *Fliessendes Licht der Gottheit* or Revelations of Mechthild of Magdeburg, prepared in Basel c. 1344–45, which thus preserved this important text while the original is lost; and for his order to Bl. Ebner in 1344 to write down her spiritual experiences. The correspondence with Ebner and her Revelations were published by Strauch, and Mechthild’s Revelations by Fr G. Morel, *Das Fliesende Licht der Gottheit* (Regensburg 1869).