ABSTRACT
The Franciscan teacher and preacher David von Augsburg profoundly influenced his contemporaries and successors through his vernacular and Latin tracts on the ascetic and mystical nature of religious life. Around 1240 David became the novice master at the Franciscan monastery in Regensburg, which along with Augsburg was the spiritual center of the Franciscans in the thirteenth century. David's extant works consist solely of his Latin and German tracts and letters; in many instances the authenticity is still disputed. The work consists of three treatises, each devoted to one aspect of the threefold way. The first part focuses on the life of the spiritual neophyte and how the novice must free himself of the world and its enticements and be educated. In part two the inner person is called to reform in light of the image of the trinity. The third part enumerates seven steps to be followed by a religious person seeking perfection, that is, divine knowledge.
