JAEGEN, JEROME

German layman and mystical writer; b. Trier, Aug. 23, 1841; d. there, Jan. 26, 1919. In his youth he studied at Berlin and became an engineer. However, his long career in the business world was that of the director of a bank. He served also as deputy in the Prussian Landtag from 1899 until his retirement in 1906. Along with his business and political activities, he was very active in assisting various Catholic institutions and projects.

His writings on the spiritual life were the fruit of his own continual devotion and personal dedication to the Christian ideal and his experience of the high degrees of mystical union. He directed his writing largely to lay people and sought to refute the common assumption that the achievement of Christian perfection is incompatible with an active life in the world. He saw perfection to consist in love of God and abandonment to the divine will and believed that mystical union is the harmonious conclusion of the achievement of Christian virtue. Furthermore, he warned against various delusions associated with mysticism, such as false visions, and held that ecstasy is not a necessary phenomenon in any stage of the mystical life. His works have been widely read and have gone through repeated editions. They include Der Kampf um die Krone (Dülmen 1883; also pub. as Der Kampf um das höchste Gut, Trier 1903) and Das mystische Gnadenleben (Trier 1911). The process for Jaegen's canonization was introduced in 1939.

Bibliography: j. jaegen, Das mystische Gnadenleben, ed. and annot. i. backes (Heidelberg 1949). e. mossmaier, Hieronymus Jaegen (Paderborn 1959).

[j. c. willke]