De visione Dei

IF I strive to carry you in human fashion to divine things, this must be done by a certain likeness. But among human works I have found no image more fitting to our purpose than the image of one seeing all things: such that the face by subtle painter's art so disposes itself as though it gazed upon all things around. And although many of these are found excellently painted, as that of the Archer in the marketplace of Nuremberg, and at Brussels that of Roger, the greatest painter, in the most precious panel kept in the town hall, and at Koblenz in my chapel the Veronica, and at Brixen in the castle the angel holding the arms of the church, and many others everywhere: lest you fail in the practice for want of such a sensible figure, I send to your charity such a small panel as I could obtain, holding the figure of one seeing all things, which I call the icon of God. You shall affix it in some place, say on the northern wall, and you brethren shall stand around it a little apart from it and gaze upon it: and each of you will experience, from whatever place he looks upon it, that he is seen by it as though alone. And to the brother stationed in the east the face will seem to look eastward, and to him in the south, southward, and to him in the west, westward. First, therefore, you will marvel how it can be that it looks upon all and each at once. For the imagination of one standing in the east in no way grasps the gaze of the icon as turned toward another quarter, namely the west or the south. Then let the brother who was in the east place himself in the west, and he will experience the gaze fixed upon him in the west just as before in the east; and since he knows the icon fixed and unchanged, he will marvel at the change of the unchangeable gaze. And if, fixing his gaze upon the icon, he walks from west to east, he will find the gaze of the icon continually going with him; and if from the east he returns to the west, it will likewise not leave him; and he will marvel how it moved immovably. Nor will the imagination be able to grasp that it moves likewise with another meeting him with a contrary motion. And when, wishing to test this, he has made a confrater, while gazing upon the icon, pass from east to west while he himself goes from west to east, and has asked the one meeting him whether the gaze of the icon continually turns with him, and has heard that it moves likewise in the opposite manner, he will believe him. And unless he believed, he would not grasp this to be possible. And thus by the report of the relator he will arrive at knowing that that face deserts none of those who advance, even with contrary motions. He will experience, therefore, the immovable face to move thus eastward that it also moves at once westward, and thus northward that also southward, and thus to one place that also to all places at once, and thus to regard one motion that it regards all motions at once. And when he attends to how that gaze deserts no one, he sees that it takes care of each as diligently as though of him alone who experiences that he is seen, and cared for no other: so much so that even by the one whom it regards it cannot be conceived that it takes care of another. He will see also that it has the most diligent care of the least creature as of the greatest, and of the whole universe. From this sensible appearance I propose to raise you, most loving brethren, by a certain practice of devotion into mystical theology, premising three things opportune for this.

MARG: mystica theologia