Meister Eckhart — Franz Pfeiffer, trans. C. de B. Evans (1924)

Eckhart! (d. cir. 1827) has been called the father of the German mystics,’ the philosophical creative genius of the German mystics 3 and the father of German speculation.t According to Dean Inge he is ‘next to Plotinus the greatest philosopher-mystic’ > and the most Plotinian of all Christian philosophers.’ ‘He was a learned ? member of the Dominican or Preaching Order and sometime lector biblicus at the University of Paris, then the Dominican College of St Jacob where he was given his title of Meister by Pope Boni- face VIII. But it was probably at Cologne that he graduated in the Scholasticism of Albertus Magnus (1205-1281) and Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) whose system was at that time rapidly acquiring its hold. He held at different times important provincia posts and proved himself an able administrator and reformer of the numerous religious houses in his care but it was principally at Strassburg and afterwards at Cologne that he established his great influence as a teacher and ‘for an entire generation, with the boldest freedom, preached to the multitudes in the German tongue on topics bristling with difficulties for the orthodox faith.’ § For he had conceived the then novel idea of instructing the laity . and the many semi-religious communities and brotherhoods of that date—Beguines, Beghards, Friends of God (Gottesfreunde), ete.— no less than the religious of his Order, and for this purpose it was necessary to make the further innovation of using the vulgar tongue instead of Latin, the teaching medium of that day. His success in expounding the abstruse tenets of the Scholastic philosophy in an undeveloped language which he had to supply with words and fashion to his needs, has earned for Eckhart the titles of father of the German language and the father of German philosophic ® prose. Ultimately the Church authorities became alarmed at the enthusiasm roused by his teaching and especially at its effect upon the laity. He was accused of preaching to the people in their own language

1 The following facts are taken chiefly from Preger’s Geschichte and Lasson’s Meister Eckhart. (See Bibliography for full titles.)

2 Bach, p. 1. 3 Wackernagel, p. 298.

* Bach. 5 Light, Life and Love, p. xv.

6 Philosophy of Plotinus, vol. ii, p. 107.

7 Tauler (1300-1361) describes him as ‘a man of prodigious learning, too profoundly versed .in the subtilties of God- and nature-wisdom for many of the scholars of his day rightly to understand him ’ (Sermons, Basle ed., 1521).

® Rufus M. Jones, p. 218. ® Lasson, pp. 66, 69.

xii MEISTER ECKHART

things that might lead to heresy ! and this led to his excommunica- tion in 1829, after his death, on the general grounds of preaching to the laity the secrets of the Church, a list of seventeen specific heretical and eleven objectional doctrines being appended to the inditement.2 To the first accusation he replied : ‘ If the ignorant are not taught they will never learn’; ‘the business of the doctor is to heal.’ The charge of heresy he strenuously denied and largely succeeded in rebutting while he lived. ‘I protest in the presence of God,’ he says, ‘that I have always avoided with horror all error in matters of faith,’ and he never made any recantation of his teaching although he publicly declared his willingness to retract any error ‘that might be proved against him.’® His ‘errors’ appear to_be the logical outcome of the system he taught. As Lasson says, ‘He taught what Dionysius and St Thomas taught . . . but he goes further than any of his predecessors and crosses the boundaries of Church dogma.’

There is only the scantiest material for a biography of Eckhart. Of his birth neither date nor place is known. It is argued that he was born before 1260 either at Strassburg in Saxony, or at Hochheim in Thüringia. The first known mention of his name is in a list of Professors at the University of Paris: fr. Echardus, Tutonicus, licentiatus per Bonifacium, 1302. In 1303 he was Provincial of the Order in Saxony, with its sixty convents, men’s and women’s. To this title he added in 1307 that of Vicar-General of Bohemia where he reformed the religious houses. In 1311 he returned to Paris University and in 1312 began his long sojourn as head of the Order at Strassburg. Eight years later (1320) he is Prior of Frankfurt. There is now some suspicion of his orthodoxy but the Order still supports him and he is given a Chair at the Dominican College in Cologne where he enhances his reputation as a preacher. Here Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroeck probably heard him, and Tauler also at Strassburg. In 1825-6, suspicion of his teaching having revived, Nikolaus of Strassburg was appointed his special Inquisitor and his case came before the Inquisition in Venice. He delivered his Protest before that body on 24 Jan. 1327, and on 13 Feb. following made his public Declaration of orthodoxy in the Dominican Church at Cologne. This is the last date on which he is known to have been alive. The answer of the Inquisition to his appellation, refusing to accept it, is dated 22 Feb. 1327, and it is conjectured that he died soon after. He was excommunicated by the Bull of John XXII, 27 March 1829.

1 Inquisition at Venice, 1325.

® Bull of John XXII. See Preger, Appendix. 3 Declaration at Cologne, 13 Feb. 1327.

ECKHART xiii

After his excommunication in 1329 Eckhart gradually lost all but legendary fame and his writings survived mostly under other names. Five hundred years later, in 1829, Gorres speaks of him as ‘une figure chrétienne presque mythique.’1 But for at least two generations after his death his writings, secretly passed from hand to hand and frequently transcribed, formed what Lasson calls ‘ the text-books of God-intoxicated piety.’ To the preachers of his school, John Tauler (1300-1361), Suso (1300-1365), Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), all members of the Brotherhood of the Friends of God, and to others of less note, they were a veritable mine from which they drew not only inspiration but words, sayings, whole passages and even whole sermons. To the Basle 1521 edition of Tauler’s sermons Adam Petri had appended a few pages of sermons under Eckhart’s own name and this led to his rediscovery by Schmidt in 1847.2. Tauler’s sermons were after- wards shown by Pfeiffer to be a valuable source of Eckhart’s writings and this applies also to the works of Suso and Ruys- broeck to a less degree.

Pfeiffer’s collection of Eckhart’s works is the earliest and still by far the largest. He confined himself principally to writings in Alemanic, the High German dialect of Strassburg at that date, but there are a number of others in different dialects of German, a few in Latin,? and some in a mixture of the two.* There are often numerous variants of the same original, sometimes under Eckhart’s name but often attributed to others, e.g. Franke von Köln, Hermann von Fritslar, Nikolaus von Landau, Johannes von Sterngassen, Kraft von Royberg, all belonging to the fourteenth century. The names of David of Ausburg and Nikolaus of Strassburg might possibly be added but, as Pfeiffer points out, frequently the only test of authorship is the internal evidence of style and matter and this test has yet to be conclusively applied. A few of Pfeiffer’s attributions would seem to have been wrongly made and in some cases overworking has robbed the writing of its Eckhartian flavour. In the following translation the six last and doubtful sermons have been omitted and a few other numbers of Parts I and II have been replaced by substitutes, either discoveries of Pfeiffer’s or from independent sources. _

With regard to the authorship of these substitutes, I, lviii, II, xvii and xix, are attributed to Eckhart on the authority of Preger (see Geschichte, pp. 318-824); I, xii on that of Bittner (see M. Eckhart’s Schriften, etc., vol. ii, p. 228). Tractate i (from the Jostes collection) is evidently by the same hand as I, xix and

1 Works of Suso, 1829. Quoted by Jundt. A
2 Martensen had already published his Monograph in 1842.
3 Denifle. Also Spamer’s Texte. 4 Spamer’s Texte and Jostes.

_ xiv MEISTER ECKHART

I, xliii by the same author as I, Ixxii. Sermon xlvi is found (see Jostes, No. 84) forming part of Pfeiffer’s Tractate iv. Of the other substitutes, I, ix is a typical Eckhart fragment from Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Heiligenleben (1849), a collection which must now be recognised as a source of Eckhart’s writings (see also II, vill). Lastly, I, x and xv (from Spamer’s Texte) appear to be compila- tions from Eckhart’s works. This applies also to Greith’s Second Book ! from which I, Ixxxix is taken.

Note on Scholasticism

The Scholastic movement originated in the schools founded by Charlemagne (742-814). It aimed at reconciling the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists ? (Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus) with the doctrines of Christianity. The first and greatest period of Scholasticism, which culminated with Aquinas (d. 1274) and his Summa Theologica began with Scotus Erigena (d. cir. 877) who translated into Latin the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius (sixth _ century) and in reviving his system popularised also the philosophy of Aristotle as known chiefly in the Latin translations of his works and of Porphyry’s which had been made by Boéthius (d. 542). The tradition of Aristotle had also been handed down through the great Arabian Aristotelians represented later by Avicenna (d. 1037) and Averroes (d. 1193) the Latin translations of whose commen- taries Aquinas appears to have used. Through the same Moham- medan school came the so-called Theology of Aristotle, really the Enneads (iv—vi) of Plotinus. Finally, Proclus exerted a profound influence on the Scholastic philosophy not only through the medium of Dionysius’ writings but also directly through his own, for it was his Elements which, emanating from the Arabians under the name of the Liber de Causis, famous in the middle ages, was a favourite text-book in their schools.®

x Greith attributes to Suso, by a process of exclusion, the untitled work which forms his Second Book. (See Die deutsche Mystik, pp. 81 and 96.) The original of this is an early fifteenth-century MS. of 342 small 4to pages from a Dominican Convent at St Gall, and reference to the various Eckhart

collections shows it to be a ‘ Teaching System’ mainly, if not wholly, com- piled from his writings.

ae Eckhart’s ‘New Philosophers’? ‘The Philosopher’ is Aristotle. Aquinas is called ‘The Doctor,’ and ‘a heathen doctor’ is often, but by no means always, Averroes. }

Fee Ber Rig feed on Empire, J. B. Bury; Macmillan, 1923.

mne, VCarra de Vaux; Paris, 1900. The M hysical Elements

Proclus, Thos. M. Johnson; Missouri, U.S.A., 1909. nee S

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1530. FLacn (Martin), Ein demütige ermanung, etc. Strassburg. (Four pages only.)

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tudie.

1845. PFEIFFER (FRANZ), Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehuten Jahrhunderts, Bd. i. Leipzig.

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1871. Junpr (A.), Essai sur le Mysticism spéculatif de Maitre Eckhart. Strasbourg.

1872. SIEVERS, Zeitsch. f. d. Alt. Berlin. Bd. 15. (Twenty sermons from an Oxford MS., Laud. Misc. 479. 8.)

1874. PREGER (W.), Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter. Leipzig. 1 Theil.

1875. WACKERNAGEL (W.), Altdeutsche Predigten und Gebete aus Hand- schriften. Basle.

1875. Junpr (A.), Panthéism populaire. Paris.

1885-6. DENIFLE, Meister Eckhart’s Latin Schriften etc., in Archives für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters. Berlin. Vol. 2. (Latin sermons found at Erfurt.)

1885. MıcHELsEN (C.), Meister Eckhart: Ein Versuch. Berlin.

1895. Jostes (F.), Meister Eckhart und seine Jünger, Ungedruckte Texte. Friburg. (Contains 82 sermons, etc., from a Nuremberg MS. Als 4 more in Appendix.) ‘

1895. Harrmann (F.), Die Geheimlehre in der Christlichen Religion nach Erklärung von Meister Eckhart.

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xvi MEISTER ECKHART

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