(This introduction to the writing and preaching of the gre...)
This introduction to the writing and preaching of the greatest medieval European mystic contains selections from his sermons, treatises, and sayings, as well as Table Talk, the records of his informal advice to his spiritual children.
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Johann was born in 1260 near Gotha in Thuringia, Germany. It was previously asserted that he was born to a noble family of landowners, but this originated in a misinterpretation of the archives of the period. In reality, little is known about his family and early life. There is no authority for giving him the Christian name of Johannes, which sometimes appears in biographical sketches: his Christian name was Eckhart; his surname was von Hochheim.
He studied in Strassburg and Cologne. In Paris he received a master's degree in theology in 1302.
He became provincial in 1303, later vicar, in Bohemia. In 1311-1313 he was again in Paris as a teacher and then was a professor of theology in Strassburg until 1323. Finally, he taught and preached as regent in Cologne. His Thought Eckhart's doctrine of the "little spark in man's soul" (Seelenfünklein) afforded a direct confrontation with God. Eckhart was twice involved in ecclesiastical conflicts. He favored the Pope in the struggle between Louis IV of Bavaria and the papacy over the imperial election. He was later a victim of the displeasure of Archbishop Henry II of Cologne, who was determined to destroy the Dominican order. Cited before a hostile tribunal, Eckhart was accused of heresy on 100 counts. He appealed to Pope John XXII in Avignon and was received there but returned to Cologne because of illness. He died soon after and was posthumously condemned, or suspected, of heresy on over 20 counts.
He founded German mysticism. He was well known for his work with pious lay groups such as the Friends of God. Eckhart ranged far in his studies. As a preacher and prolific writer, he addressed the people in the vernacular and his fellow clerics in Latin. He coined many German philosophical terms, and scholasticism received a fresh stimulus as he preached of emotions welling from his heart and emerging from everyday life. He influenced two other mystics: Johannes Tauler of Strassburg (died 1361) and the Swiss Heinrich Seuse, or Suso (died 1366).
(This introduction to the writing and preaching of the gre...)
('A free mind can achieve all things. But what is a free m...)
He joined the Dominican order. A theologian and preacher, he represented God as dwelling in man's soul. To him, God is not an aloof personal deity in whose image man was created, but a shapeless, incommensurable being ever unchanged and immanent in all matter and creatures. Once man sheds the dross of personal assertiveness and selfish drives, he can merge with God, becoming one with Him, like Christ. Eckhart was deemed heretical for denying a difference between the essence of God and that of creatures and for negating the temporal nature of the world. He was not, however, a pantheist.
He was beholden to Aristotle, St. Albertus Magnus, and St. Thomas Aquinas, but also to the Neoplatonism of the Spanish rabbi Maimonides and the Moslem philosopher Averroës.
Quotations: "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life; your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. . .. If you're frightened of dying and holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth"
