Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T22:09:27.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

II: Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999 The Medieval Rhineland: Eckhart and Popular Theological Preaching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

John Orme Mills OP
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Thirty years ago the very idea of including the Rhineland mystics in a series of articles on the role of the Dominicans in the promotion of peace and social justice would have been seen as intolerably bizarre. At that time it was still widely taken for granted that mysticism and dedication to the promotion of social justice were irreconcilable: that they belonged to profoundly different ways of understanding the world and understanding the teaching of Jesus Christ. There were, of course, some remarkable people who seemed to be able to keep a foot in both the camps, but lesser mortals who attempted this were in danger of not being taken seriously by the occupants of either.

In spite of the massive changes which have taken place since then in politics, the culture and the Church, even today the presence of the Dominican Rhineland mystics in this series demands some explanation. By ‘the Dominican Rhineland mystics’ we mean, first and foremost, three friars of the Dominican Province of Teutonia: the brilliant but controversial Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1328) and two of his disciples, Johannes Tauler (c.1300-1361) and Henry Suso (1295-1366). At first sight the only things which these men seem to share in common with, for instance, the French Dominican worker-priests of the 1950s or the Brazilian Dominican liberation theologians of the 1970s are membership of the same religious order and considerable strength of character.

After all, Frank Tobin has said that Eckhart’s sermons ‘center so exclusively on what is within and are so utterly devoid of any comments that might be used as references to time and place that they might just as well have been delivered on the moon as in turbulent fourteenth-century Strasburg or Cologne.’

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 929-930 , July 1998 , pp. 307 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Introduction to Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with two German sermons, Paulist Press, New York 1989, p.15Google Scholar.

2 nn. 139,146. Augustine discussed the relation of the good to order in The Nature of the Good 3qq., and Thomas in e.g. ST 2a2ae.81,2. Eckhart's direct source for die notion of the concatenation of all reality into the great chain of being appears to be the Pseudo-Augustinian The Spirit and the Soul.

3 Eckhart's Way, Darton Longman & Todd, London 1987, p.216Google Scholar. Cf also McGinn, Bernard, Meister Eckhart: An Introduction, Szarmach, Paul E. ed. An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, Albany: State University of New York Press 1984, p.238Google Scholar.

4 Medieval popular culture: Problems of belief and Perception, Cambridge 1988, p.216Google Scholar.

5 New Blackfriars Vol 79 No. 927 May 1998, Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216-1999:I-Early Voices for Justice p.215.

6 See, for example, the loving respect he shows in sermon H47 for cobblers and ploughmen, his statement in sermon H40 that an uncouth peasant will be a thousand times more welcome at the heavenly banquet man vain worldlings, and his criticisms in sermons H23 and H27 of great lovers of themselves who will rob one another of their rights by injustice, fraud and violence and dominate their neighbour.

7 See, for example, Duby, Georges, The Age of the Cathedrals, Chicago 1981, p.268Google Scholar.

8 cf. Owst, G.R., Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, Oxford 1961Google Scholar, Preaching in Medieval England, Oxford 1965Google Scholar; Richter, M., Kommunikationsprobleme im lateinischen Mittelalter, Historische Zeitschrift 1976,222:43-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kleinschmidt, E. ed., Rudolf von Schlettstadt: Historiae Memorabiles. Zur Dominikanerliteratur und Kulturgeschichte des 13. Jahrhunderts, Cologne-Vienna 1974Google Scholar.

10 Tugwell, Simon, Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, Paulist Press, New York 1982, pp.2013Google Scholar.

11 op. cit. p. 16.

12 ibid. p.3.

13 Mysticism and Theology in Meister Eckhart's Theory of the Image, Eckhart Review 2 (1993), p.30Google Scholar.

14 The first number is of the sermon in the Quint edition of the German works, Meister Eckhart: die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart and Berlin 1936Google Scholar-;the second number is of the translation in Walshe, M. O'C., Meister Eckhart: German Sermons and Treatises, Element Books, Shaftesbury 1979-8Google Scholar7.

15 College, Edmund & McGinn, Bernard, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, Paulist Press, New York 1981, p.31Google Scholar.

16 Meister Eckhart: die deutschen Werke vol V p. 192.

17 op. cit. p.219.

18 Meister Eckhart's Conception of Union with God, Harvard Theological Review, 71 (1978), p.224Google Scholar.

19 Kieckhefer, Richard: Unquiet Souls-Fourteenth-Century Saints and their Religious Milieu, Chicago U.P., 1984, pp.150-1Google Scholar.

20 Colledge & McGinn, op. cit. p.239.

21 Unquiet Souls, p.150.

22 Eckhart and Women, Eckhart Review 3 (Spring 1994), p.41Google Scholar.

23 op. cit. p.46.

24 See e.g. Tobin, Frank, Meisier Eckhart: Thought and language, Philadelphia 1986, pp.116fCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davies, Oliver, Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian, London 1991, pp.76-8Google Scholar.

25 Apocryphal Followers of Meister Eckhart?, Eckhart Review 7 (Spring 1998) pp.3-13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography, Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate & Szell, Timea, ed.: Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, Cornell U.P. 1991, p.225Google Scholar.

27 See Davies, Oliver: Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian, SPCK London 1991Google Scholar, ch.3: Meister Eckhart and the Religious Women of the Age.

28 Translations from Eckhart's Middle High German and Latin are taken from Walshe, M. O'C.: Meister Eckhart: Sermons & Treatises I-III, Element Books, Shaftesbury 1979-198Google Scholar7; College, Edmund & McGinn, Bernard: Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, Paulist Press, New York 1981Google Scholar; McGinn, Bernard: Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, Paulist Press, New York 1986Google Scholar; Davies, Oliver: Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, London & New York 1994Google Scholar.