page_title: Middle Dutch literature
section_title: Prose
hierarchical_section_title: Middle Dutch literature / Prose
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Mittelalterliches Porträt des seligen Jan van Ruysbroek English: Medieval portrait of the Blessed John of Ruysbroeck. Flemish mystic (1293 or 1294-1381)
context_page_description: Middle Dutch literature is the Dutch literature produced in the Low Countries from the 12th century up to the sixteenth century. It is preceded by only a few fragmentary texts existing in Old Dutch, and it was succeeded by Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature.
context_section_description: As for prose, the oldest pieces of Dutch prose now in existence are charters of towns in Flanders and Zeeland, dated 1249, 1251 and 1254. Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268) was the first known prose writer in the Dutch language, the author of the notable treatise known as the Seven Ways of Holy Love. From the other Dutch mystics whose writings have reached us, the Brussels friar Jan van Ruusbroec (better known in English as the Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, 1293/4–1381), the "father of Dutch prose" stands out. A prose translation of the Old Testament was made about 1300, and there exists a Life of Jesus of around the same date.
  Interesting relics of medieval Dutch narrative, as far as the formation of the language is concerned, are the popular romances in which the romantic stories of the minstrels were translated for the benefit of the unlettered public into simple language.
caption: Jan van Ruusbroec.
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