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Eckhart's Orthodoxy Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Edmund Colledge OSA
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There probably has never been a generation since the year 1329, when the Holy See in Avignon condemned fifteen propositions extracted from Eckhart’s writings as heretical, when the justice of the condemnation has not been questioned. The object of this paper is to take account of some recent publications which seem to support the decision of the Dominican General Chapter at Walberberg in 1980 to initiate proceedings for a reexamination of Eckhart’s case.

One is by Richard Woods OP, and it may be commended for its concise and factual account of the troubled times in which Eckhart lived and suffered. Sagely he observes that some of the Church’s grievous problems, which she may be thought to have visited upon the German friar, are still afflicting her, so that the Order of Preachers, in seeking to restore to him his good name, is not merely indulging in Dantesque brooding over the parish pump.

The second is by a Dutch Jesuit, Paul Verdeyen, who has with Romana Guarnieri’s permission reprinted, in 1986, as volume 69 of the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis her text of the French Mirror of Simple Souls, parallel to his own critical edition of the manuscripts of the Mirror’s Latin translation. Though Verdeyen’s work is flawed (particularly by one strange misapprehension—that the translation was produced by the Inquisition in Paris before the author of the Mirror, Margaret Porette, was tried, condemned and put to death for heresy), nonetheless Verdeyen has made valuable contributions to our further knowledge of Margaret’s perplexing and engrossing case. Very soon I shall attempt to support my belief that it is relevant to that of Eckhart.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 71 , Issue 837 , April 1990 , pp. 176 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Eckhart's Way (London, 1987), in the series The Way of the Christian Mystics (general editor Noel O'Donoghue, ODC)

2 Meister Eckhart: Theologe, Prediger, Mystiker (Munich, 1985)Google Scholar.

3 A Canadian academic publisher has under consideration a modern English translation of the Mirror with historical introduction by Edmund Colledge, Judith Grant and J.C. Marler.

4 Meister Eckhart (note 3), p. 100.

5 Archivio Italiano per la storia delta pietà 4, 1965, pp. 501–645.

6 For example, the late Stephanus Axters OP, in private conversation with the writer.

7 We owe it to Romana Guanieri's perspicacious scholarship that his most important Eckhart studies were collected, chiefly from a variety of learned journals, and printed by her as Kleine Schriften (2 vols., Rome, 1973)Google Scholar.

8 Who in turn informed the writer.

9 In ‘Liberty of the Spirit: the “Mirror of Simple Souls”’ (Shook, L.K., ed.: Theology of Renewal vol 2, Montreal, 1968, pp. 100–117Google Scholar).

10 A text is in Deutsche Werke 2, ed. Quint, J (Stuttgart, 1970, pp. 486–506Google Scholar. The translation appeared in Colledge, Edmund and McGinn, Bernard: Meister Eckhart: the essential Sermons, Commentaries and Defence New York and London, 1981, pp. 199–203Google Scholar. The evidence that Eckhart had probably borrowed from the Mirror is set out by Edmund Colledge and J.C. Marler: ‘Poverty of the Will’: Ruusbroec, Eckhart and “The Mirror of Simple Souls” (Mommaers, P. and Paepe, N. De, ed: Jan van Ruusbroec: the Sources, Content and Sequels of his Mysticism Louvain, 1984, pp 14–47Google Scholar).

11 For the evidence that Ruusbroec translated from Sermon 52, and so exactly that Van Mierlo's suggestion that it was known in the Netherlands merely by word of mouth is ruled out, see Colledge and Marler (above).

12 For explanation and justification of this punctuation, first proposed by Quint, see Colledge and Marler (above). By ‘unpunctuated “God”’ we must understand ‘God as he is in himself, by “God”’“God” as he is in his creatures’, which we called (above) a ‘commonplace scholastic distinction’.

13 Colledge and McGinn (note 1), p. 200.

14 Ed. R. Guarnieri (note 6), p. 559

15 ‘Ketzerverhöre des Spätmittelalters’ (see Colledge and Marler, ‘Poverty of the Will’, p. 15 note 6).

16 ‘Eine Kölner Handschrift’ (see Colledge and Marler, ‘Poverty of the Will’, p. 15 note 7).

17 ‘Das namenlose Wilde’ is often translated as ‘nameless wild man’; it was Romana Guarnieri in ‘II movimento del libero Spirito’ (note 6) who pointed out that the personification is neuter, not masculine, and who adduced Margaret's remark in the Mirror, ‘or est telle Ame sans nom’. The claim to deification in this attribute of namelessness will be evident to all familiar with pseudo‐Dionysius.

18 Clark, J.M., trans.: Henry Suso: Little Book of Eternal Wisdom and Little Book of Truth (London, 1953), pp. 201–203Google Scholar. The ‘denial of all distinction’ alludes to 'In Agro Dominico, art. 10: ‘We are wholly transformed and converted into God … by the living God, it is true that there is no distinction’.

19 Vetter, F., ed.: Die Predigten Taulers (Berlin, 1910), p. 69Google Scholar.

20 Meister Eckhart (note 3), p. 11 e.s.

21 Colledge, Edmund and Marler, J.C.: ‘“Mystical” Pictures in the Suso “Exemplar”’ (Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 54, 1984, pp. 293–354Google Scholar).

22 Dictionnaire de spirituality 1, 1969, art. ‘Henri Suso’, 234–257.

23 Id., art. ‘Elisabeth Stagel’, 4, 1960, 588–589, and elsewhere.

24 Colledge and Marler, ‘“Mystical” Pictures’ (note 25), pp. 338, 349 and Plate 3, fig. 10.

25 ‘Meister Eckhart: his Times and his Writings’ (The Thomist 42, 1978, pp. 240–258). I am not responsible for its many printers' errors.

26 Id., p. 244 e.s.

27 It is regrettable that Woods (note 2) should allude to and so commend and publicise the distorted account offered by Ladurie in his Montaillou of Fournier as an opponent of heresy.

28 The Thomist op. cit.

The author thanks Winefride Cobb for her secretarial assistance.