Meister Eckhart (Eckhart Von Hochheim) (
ca. 1260-
ca. 1328), the most important German mystic of the Middle Ages and one of the most original religious thinkers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Eckhart's impact on contemporaries was primarily as a teacher and preacher, and his extant sermons in Middle High German are powerful monuments to a high-flying poetic spirit and linguistic genius. No one before Martin Luther expanded the possibilities of religious expression in the vernacular as much as Eckhart, and no other mystic described the experience of the mystical union in such intellectual terms as he did.
Not much is known about Eckhart's early life. He is first documented as a member of the Dominican Order and a student of the arts at Paris in 1277. He was born probably about 1260 in one of the two Hochheims in Thuringia. In 1280 he was a student at the studium generale of the Dominicans in Cologne, where he most likely met Albertus Magnus. In 1293 Eckhart lectured at St. Jacques in Paris, and from 1294 to 1298 he held the posts of prior of the Dominican convent in Erfurt and vicar of the Dominican vicariate of Thuringia. He had become an important administrator and a leading intellectual personality in his order while still in his thirties.
Later, in 1302-1303 and again in 1311-1313, he held the only chair reserved for non-French professors at the University of Paris, where he obtained the honorific title
magister sacrae theologiae, which in German was translated into
Meister. He was also elected provincial of the Dominican province of Saxony (1303), vicar-general of Bohemia (1307), and head of the Dominican
studium generale (1322).
During the last years of his life, Eckhart came into serious conflict with the Roman curia: in fact, he became the first Dominican friar to be accused of heresy. His trials in Cologne (1326) and Avignon (1327) have been the subject of much scholarly discussion, most of it colored by denominational bias. The papal bull
In agro dominico (27 March 1329) condemned as potentially heretical (
prout verba sonant) twenty-eight sentences in Eckhart writings and noted that Eckhart recanted these statements before his death. (Since he is elsewhere mentioned as being still alive early in 1327, the year of his death can be approximated.)
Although the papal condemnation cast a shadow on Eckhart's reputation immediately after his death, he inspired the sermons and writings of such popular religious figures as Tauler and Suso (who were students at the
studium generale in Cologne) and numerous nuns and layfolk who heard him speak. Eckhart's influence extended to Nicholas of Cusa, Martin Luther, Jakob Boehme, Hegel, Fichte, and the existentialist philosophers. Recent comparative studies have pointed out similarities between Eckhart's mystical doctrines and certain aspects of Hinduism and Zen Buddhism.
The bulk of Eckhart's German works consists of fifty-nine authenticated sermons. He may have dictated some of these sermons to followers, but most were probably written down from memory by listeners. The only signed sermon is "Vom edlen Menschen" (On noble men), composed in 1313 in conjunction with Eckhart's most beautiful work, the
Buch der gottlichen Trostung (Book of divine consolation). He also wrote two German tractates:
Reden der Unterscheidung (Talks of instruction) (1289) and
Von Abegescheidenheit (On emptiness) (ca. 1290).
Eckhart's Latin work was conceived on a grand scale, probably during his first professorship in Paris: but apparently the master did not find time to execute his plan of presenting to posterity the sum of his theology. What remains of his
Opus tripartitum is an introduction to the first part, the
Opus propositionum, and nearly all of the third, part, the
Opus expositionum, but nothing of the seoncd part, the
Opus quaestionum. Thus the
Opus expositionum, the expository part, constitutes Eckhart's principal Latin work. Because of its precise vocabulary and clear syntax, it contains many valuable clues to the interpretation of some of his German sermons. Of considerable importance is the
Rechtfertigungs-schrift (Writ of justification, 1327), in which Eckhart adamantly rejects the accusation of heresy. His minor Latin works include a commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard (1293/1294), a
collatio, or inaugural lecture (ca. 1297), and three disputations (1302/1303).
Eckhart's Latin works, though helpful to the modern scholar, would not secure his reputation as a great mystic or innovative theologian. The German works, by contrast, bear witness to his brilliance. There is little in Middle High German prose that can bear comparison with Eckhart's style and diction. His semons are filled with unique images and metaphors; his use of paradox, abstraction, hyperbole, asyndeton, and circumscription appears exaggerated by modern standards, but it must be kept in mind that there was no ready-made working German vocabulary for complex theological matters, and that it was primarily Eckhart who created one. The
doctor extaticus, as he was called by a contemporary, was a "God-intoxicated" mystic who addressed believers eager to share his experience of the mystical union.
Eckhart's early training was as a Scholastic, and there is much in his writings that he learned from Peter Lombard's
Sentences and Thomas Aquinas'
Summa contra gentiles, both staples of Scholasticism. Later, though, as his mysticism crystallized, he learned more on the writings of St. Augustine, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, whose
Guide of the Perplexed seems to have had a special impact on Eckhart. Although he built his theology on Scholastic (that is Aristotelian-Thomist) foundations, the spirit that permeates his ideas and make him a mystic is Neoplatonic. Eckhart's greatest achievement as a religious innovator was to solve the contradiction between divine transcendence and divine immanence, though in doing so he made himself vulnerable to charges of pantheism and heresy.
The central idea in al of Eckhart's teachings is the
Gottesgeburt in der Seele (birth of God in the soul): God can fill the soul with himself; he can be born, or "generated," in the "empty" soul. The human soul is a mirror that "absorbs" the divine light and reflects it back to God without losing its identity. The point at which God and the soul "touch" is the very depth of the soul, at the
Seelengrund. From there emanates a spark (
Seelenfunklein), a part of the soul and of God, yet external to both. It "leaps" spontaneously from one to the other, connects them but leaves them separate and differentiated.
How does a person prepare for the leap of the
Seelenfunklein? Eckhart says that just as God ultimately is nothingness, so man must rid himself of all physical and spiritual desires that remind him of created things; in other words, his aim should be to approximate God's nothingness as much as possible. When the individual has become "nothing," has achieved poverty in spirit, then the attraction between God and the soul is so great that the spark of the soul "ignites" and athe mystical union takes place. Thus Eckhart in his sermons emphasizes again and again that the only purpose of life in the physical would is to engage in a spiritual cleansing process, and asceticism that allows the soul to realize its
Adel, the nobility with which God endowed it on its creation. In one of his most famous sermons there is the following passage:
When I preach, I usually speak of "emptiness," of the need for man to rid himself of his self and of all things. Then, I also preach the possibility that one can be molded into the uniform goodness that is God. And third, (I preach) that one should think of the great nobility that God has given to the soul so that man might use it as a miraculous link with God (Quint, ed., Meister Eckhart. Die deutchen Werke, I, 528; my trans.)
Eckhart advocates not renunciation of all worldly activity, but rather a state of nonvolition, an existence that is void of ambition and nonspiritual desire. It is not surprising, then, that Eckhart ascribes little importance to good works. In fact, he considers good works in themselves worthless as far as the relation between the soul and God is concerned; what really matters is the attitude of the individual. "Goodness" is obtained through the grace of God, and even a life led in close imitation of Christ would not avail an individual who lacked inner nobility. In this attitude there are clearly germinal elements of Luther's doctrine of salvation.
Eckhart also has little to say about the historical Christ. He is much more interested in the "role" or "function" of the Son in the triune God, and in such eternal Trinitarian processes as the begetting of the Son by the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. He is also very much concerned with the manner in which the birth of Christ takes place in the soul, a process that, in his opinion, constitutes the most vital aspect of human existence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources. Meister Eckhart. Die deutschen Werke, Joseph Quint, ed., I-III, V (1958-1976) - IV still in preparation - the only critical ed. of Eckhart's German works;
Meister Eckhart. Die Lateinischen Werke, Joseph Koch et al., eds., 5 vols. (1936-1964), the only critical ed. of Eckhart's complete Latin works; Franz Pfeiffer, ed.,
Die deutschen Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts, II, Meister Eckhart (1857, repr. 1966), not critical and unreliabe.
Modern German translations are H. Buttner,
Meister Eckhart's Schriften und Prdeigten, 2 vols. (1903); Joseph Quint,
Meister Eckhart, deutche Predigten und Traktate (1955, repr. 1963).
English translations are J. M. Clark, ed. and trans.,
Meister Eckhart; An Introduction to the Study of His Works (1957); J. M. Clark and J. V. Skinner, eds. and trans.,
Meister Eckhart, Selected Treatises and Sermons... from Latin and German (1958).
Studies. J. Ancelet-Hustache,
Maitre Eckhart et la mystique rhenane (1956); I. Degenhardt,
Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes (1967); Alois Dempf,
Meister Eckhart (1960); Dietmar Mieth,
Meister Eckhart (1979); Ernst H. Soudek,
Meister Eckhart (1973); F. W. Wentzlaff-Eggebert,
Deutsche Mystik zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (1969), 301-307.
Ernst H. Soudek
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. IV, pgs 381-382. (1989)