II. PAPER MSS.

. München, k. hof- und staatsbibliothek, cod. germ. 365.
15th cent. (I, 6, 7, 18, 14, 47, 55, 57-59, 63-66, 713 11,:75 III, 66.)
. Stuttgart, k. privatbibliothek, No. 1, 26 (old numbering).
15th cent. 4to. (I, 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 45, 54, 57, 61, 62; II, 2.)
. Berlin, k. bibliothek, cod. germ. 4, 125. 14th cent.
(I, 6, 14.)
. Basle, Adam Petri’s edition of Tauler’s sermons, 1521
21. e.
22.
23. 24.
pa SS
25. 1.
26. k.
Ziel.
28. m.
29.
3
30. 31.
9
32. 33.
mS
34-38.
39. t.
40. u. 41. v.
42. W.
43-44
45. Y.
PREFACE vii
and 1522. Fol. (I, 6-8, 10-14, 17-23, 25, 34, 36, 37, 40-43, 45, 56-60, 65, 73-92, 98, 101, 102; III, 1, 15, 21, 66.)
Berlin, k. bibliothek, cod. germ. 4, 191, 14th-15th cent. (I, 8, 15; II, 11, 12; III, 28, 24; IV.)
Melk, klosterbibliothek, L. 5. 15th cent. Fol. (iar: 76 (b), 105-110; II, 2, 11.)
Same, L.27. 15thcent. 12mo. (II, 2, 3.)
. Coblenz, gymnasiums bibliothek, No. 48. 15th cent.
4to. (I, 15, 57; II, 9; III, 8.)
Stuttgart, own possession. 15th cent. 4to. (I, 9, 40, 57.)
Cologne, Jaspar von Gennep’s edition of Tauler’s sermons, 1543. Fol. (I, 69; II, 1; III, 70.)
Leipzig, Cunrad Kachelouen’s edition of Tauler’s sermons, 1498. 4to. (I, 1-4.)
Breslau, Gin possession of Cond. Prince-Bishop Melchior v. Diepenbrock. 15th cent. Fol. Tractate on Active and Potential Intellect.
. Stuttgart, k. öffentliche bibliothek, cod. theol. fol. No. |
155. 15th cent. (II, 4, 18.) Same, cod. theol. fol. No. 283. 15th cent. (III, 69.)
. Same, cod. theol. 8, No.18. 15th cent. (II, 8, 11, 14,
15; III, 9, 67.)
Colmar. 15th cent. (III, 1.)
München, k. hof- und staatsbibliothek, cod. germ. 116. 15th cent. 8vo. (III, 17-19, 68.)
s**, Same, cod. germ. 388, 411. 15th cent. 4t0.— 447, 463. 15th cent. 8vo.—783. 15th cent. (III, 70.)
Stuttgart, k. öffentliche bibliothek, cod. theol. 8, No. 13. 14th cent. (I, 40; II, 9; III, 13:)
Schaffhausen, stadtbibliothek. 15thcent. 4to. (I, 104.)
Stuttgart, k. öffentliche bibliothek, cod. theol. fol. 33, v. j. 1426. (II, 7.)
Frankfurt, stadtbibliothek, No. 3500 (old Dominican library). 15th cent. 8vo. (II, 17.)
az”. München, hof- und staatsbibliothek, cod. germ. 218 and 4482. 15th cent. 4to. (II, 17.)
Stuttgart, k. öffentliche bibliothek, cod. theol. 4to. No. 50. 15th cent. (III, 67.)
In addition I have to note aMS. with forty sermons by Eckhart, paper, of the date 1440, in the possession of Prof. Karl Schmidt of Strassburg. Unfortunately this has remained inaccessible to me,
Viil MEISTER ECKHART
I only know what the possessor has disclosed in his French mono- graph on Eckhart (Mémoires de Vacadémie franc. mor. et polit. par savants étrangers. Paris, 1847. T. 2).
With regard to the internal arrangement and ordering of my material I make the following observations. The broad division into Sermons, Tractates, Sayings was obvious. On the other hand it was difficult to decide what sequence the sermons ought to follow. An arrangement which showed the changes in Eckhart’s teaching in a logical manner was out of the question, and the same applies to putting them in order of age or time of delivery; the data for this are wholly lacking. It is quite exceptional for Eckhart to make any reference to a previous sermon. Among the earliest of these sermons, belonging perhaps to the period of his Vicar-Generalship in Bohemia (about 1307), I reckon those numbered 105-110 from the Melk MS., L. 5. (No. 22.) In the superscription of these Eckhart is so called instead of Meister Eckhart, a designation which points to the time»when the memory of his final years of study in Paris was still lively. These I have placed last, simply on the grounds that, like all the MSS. obtained from Austria, they seem to be much edited; superficially, in diction, they certainly are and I think too their matter has been tampered with. As being the simplest arrangement, the liturgical order of the Gospels commended itself but here great difficulties were encountered the sermons being prefaced by texts chosen quite at random and as a rule all reference to the Sunday or festival is wanting. The titles of the old Basle edition are for the most part arbitrary.
I decided therefore to rely solely on my sources and the order in which their individual sermons were presented. With this end in view those manuscripts were chosen out which were specially distinguished for their age or authenticity, and from these again selection was made of those with superscriptions imputing them to Eckhart. In this way and in this way only I found it possible to enter into the genius and the method and the idiosyncrasy of Eckhart and gain a reliable standard whereby to determine those sermons which, though found among the authentic ones, were yet without his name. By this means I hope to have acquired the necessary practice and familiarity with Eckhart’s writings and I believe I need not fear that any important item of my collec- tion will ultimately prove to be wrongly attributed to Eckhart.
The Sayings, with few exceptions, bear all the marks of authen- ticity and need no further verification. Only a couple of them are traceable to the complete sermons and tractates included, though most are fragments and portions of larger works. From this we can form some notion of the amount of Eckhart still lost to. us.
PREFACE ie
With regard to the fourth section, which I have called Liber Positionum, I had no external evidence of Eckhart’s authorship, but Eckhart’s genius and characteristic outlook seem to me to be unmistakably shown in these arguments in which, in the form of dialogues between master and pupil, a series of weighty philo- sophical and theological questions are ventilated. Further, the separate items of this work which only loosely hang together, I have met with only among Eckhart’s writings. The title I have borrowed from Trithemius’ Catalogue (see above) ; it might have been made for it.
Obviously my text is not all of equal value and correctness ; who could expect it ? With the numerous pieces preserved only in late and bad MSS. it was often impossible owing to the careless- ness of the scribe to unravel the manifold confusion of thought and connection ; how was I to restore and supply words and whole sentences which had been omitted ? I mean to comment in the Notes on the passages which seem to me to be corrupt and give the emendations and conjectures which I have found it inexpedient to publish with the text. Of another kind but no less great was my difficulty with those passages which certainly appeared in the best MSS. but showed considerable variations among themselves. How important these discrepancies often are the variants will show. In cases of this sort the recognition and isolation of the authentic from the unauthentic later additions or distortions is rarely to be done with any certainty and for that reason I have sometimes adopted the expedient of putting the variants themselves in juxtaposition in the text.!
As to the diction of the contents of this volume, which I have neither wished nor been able to give much order to, I have followed the oldest and best MSS. which, consistently with Eckhart’s home and birthplace, Strassburg, are written almost entirely in the Alemanic idiom: Middle German and the speech of Cologne do appear occasionally but notwithstanding Eckhart’s long sojourn on the lower Rhine, only rarely and in late MSS.
STUTTGART, 5th July 1857.
1 The last two pages of Pfeiffer’s Preface are occupied with acknow- ledgments of the help and kindness received from professors, librarians, keepers of archives, etc. Among these appear the names of Wackernagel, P. Gall-Morel, Franz Hoffmann, and the Cardinal Prince-Bishop of Breslau, Melchior von Diepenbrock, 1 Many examples of this occur. See especially I, Ixxvi and II, xi.
= MEISTER ECKHART
‘ who never tired of lending me a helping hand.’ He is especially grateful to the then Prefect of the Vatican Archives who enabled him to trace and placed at his disposal eight documents (s. Pertz. archiv 9, 449) relating to Eckhart and of much importance ‘ as showing the relations of Eckhart with the Church, his position with regard to the Archbishop of Cologne and the justification of the latter for setting in motion the Inquisition against him, as well as for the history of the powerful spiritual movement which at the beginning of the fourteenth century took place on the Rhine.’ All these documents he reserves for his projected volume of Notes, with the exception of one short quotation from Eckhart’s Declara- tion at Cologne, 18 Feb. 1327. This, together with other relevant documents, was afterwards published by Preger at the end of the first volume of his Geschichte der deutschen Mystik.
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.
xi
-
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
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1521-2. TAULER (J.), Sermons. Adam Petri. Basle.
1530. FLacn (Martin), Ein demütige ermanung, etc. Strassburg. (Four pages only.)
1842. Syren (Bishop of Zealand), Meister Eckhart: Ein theologische
tudie.
1845. PFEIFFER (FRANZ), Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehuten Jahrhunderts, Bd. i. Leipzig.
1847. Scumipt (K.), Studien und Kritiken, 1339, Heft 3, S. 663. And Etudes sur le mysticism allemand in the Mémoires de l’acadömie des Sciences morales et politiques. Paris.
1850-1. PrEIFFER (FRANZ) in Zeitschrift für deutscher Alterthum. Leipzig. Bd. viii, Heit. 1 and 2, 1850. Also Heft 3, 1851.
1857. PFEIFFER (Franz), Deutsche Mystiker, etc., Bd. ii. Meister Eckhart. Leipzig.
1861. GreitH (E.), Die deutsche Mystik im Prediger-Orden (von 1250-1380). Friburg.
1864. Bacu (JoserH), Meister Eckhart der Vater des deutschen Speculation. Wien.
1868. Lasson (A.), Meister Eckhart der Mystiker. Berlin. (Monograph with Emendations to Pfeiffer’s text, for which see also Zt. f. dt. Phil., 1878.)
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.
1900. Dzxacrorx, Essai sur le mysticism spéculatif en Allemagne au 14me siécle. Paris.
xv
xvi MEISTER ECKHART
1905. ZueHHoLD (H.), Des Nikolaus von Landau Sermone als Quelle für die Predigt M. Eckharts, etc. Halle. f
1908. SPAMER (A.), Zur Überlieferung des Pfeifferschen Eckharttexte in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, Bd. 34 (2).
1909. Birrner (H.), Meister Eckhart’s Schriften und Predigten, 2 vols. Jena. (A very free translation from Middle High into modern German.)
1912. SPAMER (A.), Texte aus der deutschen Mystik des 14 und 15 Jahr- hunderts. Jena. (Latin and German texts from MSS. in Berlin, Brussels, Cues, Oxford, etc.)
In English, some account of Eckhart and his writings is found in the following works: Vaughan’s Hours with the Mystics ; Max Miiller’s Theosophy ; Dean Inge’s Light, Life and Love. Methuen, 1904 ; Von Hügel’s The Mystical Element of Religion. Dent, 1908. Vol. ii, and Studies in Mystical Religion by Rufus M. Jones. Macmillan, 1909. Also Karl Pearson’s “ Meister Eckhart the Mystic’ in Mind, vol. xi.
PREFACE
ECKHART
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY