INTRODUCTION THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART T O BECOME ACQUAINTED with the writing of Eckhart of Hochheim, a master of our inner atmosphere, is to be surprised. Looking hack at him and his thought from the perspective of seven centuries, we see in Eckhart not one intellectual world but several, and each is still present in our own time. There is the methodology of scholastic philosophy as well as the theology and the commentaries on the _Fathers and the Scriptures; there are the booklets for the life of the spirit, and especially, the brief but potent sermons. As a Dominican he was devoted to his brothers, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, hut the dominant philosophical framework of his thought is not that of Aristote1ianism (new to the West) but that of the NeoPlatonism preserved in the mystics of the Greek Church. Eckhart is a Catholic spiritual director; yet, his ideas resemble at times those of the German idealists while his language can be existentialist. Eckhart was a medieVial scholastic as well as a mystic. A university professor at home in the intellectual world of the thirteenth century, he was nonetheless a preacher and counselor concerning the inner spaces where communion with God touches possibility. M agister at the centers of academic life, Cologne and Paris, nevertheless he is famous because of his preaching to monasteries of cloistered nuns who were part of the movement towards a new spirituality. Meister Eckhart was an innovator in the desert of mystical prayer, as he called it (and for his original phraseology he was condemned by episcopal and papal authorities), but he was also a church 171 172 THOMAS F. o'MEARA administrator, a prior and a provincial of large and needy territories of the Dominican Order. If we are surprised at the variety of the activity of the Lesemeister (as the M agister in theolor}ia was called in medieval Germany), no less astonishing is his influence which lasted not merely for generations but endured from epoch to epoch pasSJing through Luther, Schopenhauer and Heidegger. From his first generation of students, somewhat bewildered and intimidated by the papal condemnation, two became famous mentors of spiritual theology: Tauler and Suso. Through the writings of Tauler (some of which held not only the ideas but the text of Eckhart) and the Theolog'ia deutsoh Luther (a Thuringian like Eckhart) gained strength and insight for pursuing his new pastoral and national approach to the Word of Christianity. In some sense Luther's reformation was not only biblical and ecclesial-political but mystical; it grew from an experience of God's sovereign word of existential forgiveness in Christ. It preferred over against the ossified Hellenism and scholasticism of the late Middle Ages not only the Scriptural Word but that Word as received in the open and yearning soul. When Schelling and Hegel were shown the writings of Eckhart by that extraordinary seminal thinker of the early nineteenth century, Franz von Baader, they were astonished that here was someone who had anticipated their own ideas on the nature of the absolute. Hegel praised Eckhart as exceeding all the mystics upon whom idealism could draw, while Schelling recognized that Eckhart was not only a religious genius. but a creator of speculative terminology .1 It is really with the German Romantics that the modern rediscovery of Eckhart, which is still continuing, began. 2 1 Heidegger writes of Schelling's Essay on Freedom: "Here the entire daring of Schelling's thought enters ... the realization of an intellectual position which emerges with Meister Eckhart and which finds in Jacob Boehme a unique deV'elopment." Schelling/! Abhandlung Uber das W esen der memchlichen Freiheit (1809) (Tiibingen, 1971), p. 140. •See I. Degenhardt, Studien zum Wandel des Eckhartbildes (Leiden, 1967). THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART 178 It is no coincidence that one of the important philosophical meditations of Martin Heidegger, Gelassenheit, derives its title from Eckhart. Reiner Schiirmann's and John Caputo's writings have shown the similarity in language and intent between the two thinkers, certainly a similarity modified by the different worlds they inhabited. There are different objects and goals for their paths of detachment but Heidegger cherished his reading of Eckhart. " The breadth of all growing things which rest along the pathway bestows world. In what remains unsaid in their speech is-as Eckhart, the old master of letter and life, says-God, only God." 3 While German idealism and existentialism have been influenced by the Dominican mystic, since the turbulent 1960's our culture has recorded more and more searches towards interior experience, inner ease and community beyond the secular city. An American interest in Asiatic mysticism begun with Thomas Merton has continued to grow. We have learned of similarities between Eckhart and Zen.4 The uncertainty of our times recalls the early fourteenth century: the same instability and frustrations, the same political harshness and personal anxiety. Eckhart stands as one who has had something to say about dropping-out of a society consumed by its own destructive self-will. The positive side of Eckhart's Gelassenheit and Abgeschiedenheit ("detachment" and" withdrawal") is strong selfhood and community. Community finds the ground of relationship with other persons to be full communion with one's self. At that diamond point of the self," the spark of the soul" (Seelenfunkle'in) each person can discover himself or herself borne up by the filial and generative love of the God beyond God. While one can find recent studies on Eckhart and Indian religion,5 Japanese Buddhism, 6 and Marxism,7 it would appear The Pathway," Listening, 2 ( 1967), 89. • D. T. Suzuki, "Meister Eckhart and Zen,'' Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (New York, 1957). •See H. Schomerus, Meister Eckhart und Manikka-Vasagar. Mystik auf indischem und deutschem Boden (Giitersloh, 1936). 8 " 174 THOMAS F. O'MEARA that there was more material on Eckhart available in English fifteen years ago than is the case today. * * * * * * * * * * * Eckhart' s Life Eckhart was born about 1260 at Hochheim not far from Gotha in Thuringia. 8 Rather young he entered the novitiate of the priory of the Order of Preachers in Erfurt. In 1277 he was a student at Paris in liberal arts and philosophy where he could witness firsthand the conflict raging around the ideas of Albert and Thomas (who had died in 1274). He began theological studies in Cologne about 1280, the year Albertus Magnus died. Thomas Aquinas had accompanied his teacher, Albert, to Cologne in 1248 to attend his lectures on PseudoDionysius, a writer to be commented upon also by Aquinas and to exercise influence on Eckhart. In 1293 the Thuringian Dominican was in Paris as a young lecturer on the Sentences. We have a record that he preached the solemn academic sermon at Easter, 1294 on the text from First Corinthians, "Pasoha nostrum immolatus est Christus" (5: 7). In this sermon he refers to Albert us Magnus so familiarly that one can hardly escape the impression that Eckhart had studied under that master. 9 Upon his return from Paris he was made Prior of " Erdfortt " and Vicar Provincial of Thuringia. In 1302 he was given a professorship in Paris and from this time at the university and at the Dominican Studium Generale of St. Jacques we have his disputation on the ultimate nature of God.10 A scholastic professor faithful to the Dominican tradition, he felt sufficiently free to differ with Aquinas on the • See S. Ueda, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottkeit (Glitersloh, 1965). • See A. Haas, "Maitre Eckhart dans le miroir de l'ideologie marxiste," La vie spirituelle, 124 (1971), 8 J. Koch, " Kritische Studien zum Leben Meister Eckharts," Archivum (1959), 1-51. Fratrum Praedicatorum, • T. Kaeppeli, "Praedicator monoculus. Sermons parisiens de la fin du XIDe siecle," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, (1957), 120-167. 10 Parisian Questions and Prologues, A. Maurer, ed. (Toronto, 1974). THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART 175 issue of the ultimate nature of God. Nevertheless, Eckhart singled out his " holy brother " Thomas Aquinas for special admiration and public discipleship.11 In 1303 Eckhart was designated the first provincial of the newly-founded Dominican Province of Saxony which included forty-seven priories and reached from Thuringia to Holland. . Four years later, retaining his provincialate, he was made vicar of the Bohemian province. The general chapter of Naples did not approve the election of Eckhart to be provincial of the southern German province but sent him for a second time (the academic years 1311-1313) to teach at the University of Paris. During this second regency in Paris Eckhart laid the foundations for what was to be his great work, the Opus Tripartitum: a synthesis rather than a summa, an intellectual symphony of scriptural commentaries, philosophico-theological questions and responses, and sermons on the interior life-all brought together in a new unity. Alois Dempf writes that "Thomas's most gifted student was Meister Eckhart. He is primarily an exegete · of the data of creation and redemption." 12 In a charter dated 1314 there is a reference to "Magister Eckehardus, professor sacre theologie." From this we infer that he was a lector at one of the Dominican priories in Strassbourg in that year. No other city in the Empire had a more active religious life than Strassbourg, with its glorious Gothic cathedral, its many churches and religious houses among which the nunneries outnumbered the friaries. There were no less than seven Dominican convents in the city. There was a great tradition of preaching in Strassbourg during the Middle Ages. Here Eckhart won widespread fame as a popular preacher, here the Friends of God had their most important centre, and here German mysticism reached the culminating point of its development. 13 11 "Thomas Aquinas was his model in teaching and in life." H. Fischer, "Thomas von Aquinas und Meister Eckhart," Theologie und Philosophie, 49 (1974)' 284. 19 A. Dempf, " Gcistesgeschichtliche Dialektik der Theologien," Philosophisches lahrbuch, 73 (1966), 249. 11 J. M. Clark, Meister EckharfJ (New York, 1957), p. 19. 176 THOMAS F. O'MEARA Eckhart' s sermons and conferences in German gave a spectrum of interested hearers access to his ideas. He preached to Dominicans and Cistercians, lay people and fellow theologians, members of the nobility and artisans. Preaching and writing in the vernacular were the occasion for Eckhart to reveal another side of his genius as a creator of the German language. As with Catherine of Siena, and to a lesser extent John of the Cross, the mystic helped to fashion the vernacular. Languages, German and Latin, divide Eckhart's works, and the history of the rediscovery of the man is the history of a posted conflict between linguistic worlds: the scholastic and the preacher, the teacher and the mystic. In fact, the scholastic disputes touch on the same theology of God as the sermons, while the Latin sermons show that their German counterparts are not so unusual. Nevertheless, while Latin is conducive to Eckhart's magisterial Neo-Platonism, it is in the dense power of his German that he reaches the heights. Eckhart had We do not know the exact date but after moved up the Rhine to Cologne. There the Dominicans worked not only in the school of theology but in public preaching and especially with monasteries and movements caught up in the exploration of the interior life. Soon he felt the displeasure of the Archbishop and the envy of fellow religious. In the Archbishop of Cologne, Henry of Virneburg, opened proceedings to examine his positions, profound in their theological metaphysics but extreme in some of their expressions... and yet so widely preached to nuns, lay persons, and devotees. We have the acts of the process in Cologne. Eckhart felt that this trial was unfair and disparaging of the Order and, because of the privileges of the Dominicans, illegal. The Dominican pointed out that his reputation within and without the Order for decades had been one of faithfulness to the church; it was made manifest in his life and teaching. He refuted in a patiently, scholarly way texts and charges brought against him, pointing out that both Thomas and Albert had been accused of heresy and vindicated. While showing respect to the Archbishop he denounced the hostile Dominican wit- THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART 177 nesses as publicly known to be worthy of little credence. 'I'herefore on January 24, 1327 he appealed to the Pope at Avignon. A few weeks later in the Dominican church in Cologne he explained publicly in a sermon in Latin and German what he was doing and why. Eckhart left for Avignon to defend himself before the commision set up by the Pope. He spent most of his remaining months at Avignon. We have the process from the papal curia along with Eckhart' s justification of his teaching. John XXII issued the apostolic constitution, In Agro Dominico,.on March 27, 1829, concluding that seventeen of the articles ascribed to Eckhart were to be construed as heretical and eleven to be supportive of heresy. The papal decision remarked that Eckhart had, prior to his death, rejected error and had submitted his teachings and writings to the See of Peter. Authorities presume that Eckhart of Hochheim died between 1827 and 1329 in Avignon or Cologne. * * * * * * * * * * * Eokhart' s Tlwught No one could exert the diverse influence Eckhart has upon philosophers and theologians, monks and mystics without holding in his thought both genius and richness. And yet the interpretations and stimuli of his thinking fl.ow out of only a few ideas. The Latin and German works of ontology and spirituality complement each other. Like Eckhart's life what was to be his novel masterpiece, the Opus Tripartitum, was left unfinished, but like his writings on the interior life and the sermons, his inner voyage found the shore. There is a single idea in Meister Eckhart's theology. His thought is a religious metaphysics of spi,rit. Everything focuses upon Geist. Spirit is twofold, that is, we find ourselves at the intersection of a dual process: in a dialogue between a searching self and an unseen presence; within a dialectic both ontic and redemptive between our spi,rit arul the Spirit of God. Behind creation is the divine mind with its activity and quiet sustenance. The human mind is the climax of creation for it is open to contact by the absolute Spirit. 178 THOMAS F. O'MEARA Nature and imagination delight in variety, but beyond and within them is a dynamic leading towards unity: unity in the godhead, unity in the human self. Drawing upon the apophatic tradition of Neo-Platonic mysticism, Eckhart calls God " nothing," " wilderness," " darkness." Yet this void (which is the overabundance of being realized in thought) is richer and brighter than creation. For Eckhart the three persons of the Trinity are not the absolute, for they display differentiation and activity. Behind the Trinity and beneath the history of salvation lies the absolute godhead, out of time and space, ineffable because infinitely diverse from the being of creatures. I will say something that I have never said before. God and the Godhead are as different as heaven and earth ... God and the Godhead are distinguished by working and not working.14 The second pole of this theology is the human spirit. By nature it is open to the voyage towards the godhead; by grace created spirit undertakes it in filiation. Eckhart is not content with defining God as being or cause but gives a new perspective to the human being, not as personhood or existence, but as spirit. Eckhart does not substitute a Plotinian mysticism for the Scriptures, but the message and reality of salvationhistory point to a deeper level where Spirit effects in created spirit its further image. Justification by Christ is, then, ·an ontological participation in being-begotten as well as a redemption from moral disfigurement. There is a point in the soul where its essence is so much spirit that it is open to transcendent possibilities. By the presence of God (which we name grace) the soul participates in a higher life. " It is only in the Holy Spirit that God is in us, and we are not in God except in the Holy Spirit, for 'being:..in ' is not appropriate to the Father or the Son but only to the Holy Spirit." 16 Eckhart's theology of grace is not H The sermon, "Nolite timere," in J. Quint, ed. Meister Eckhart, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (Munich, 1972), p. 271. 1 • Lateinische Werke, IV, p. 26. THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART 1'79 novel; it repeats the same teaching and classification as most of the rest of medieval theology. We recall here its place in Eckhart's sermons, many of which treat directly of grace. Still his apparent neglect to distinguish divine grace as something Christ-purchased from grace as simply created spirit has led readers to misunderstand him. While he frequently omits the distinction of nature and grace and speaks only of reason and the soul, still the reader sympathetic to him must presume that he means these realities as elevated by grace and thereby capable of enjoying the adoption of God, the detachment of the saint. God's life is one of creative love pouring forth into Trinity, cosmos, spiritual selfhood, Incarnate head. Does Eckhart teach that this life imparted to the human spirit is the process of becoming an offspring of God in the same way that the Logos is the Son of God? The theologies of John and Paul can be summoned to witness that those born anew in grace are sons and daughters of God. Eckhart's language implies our filial generation to be the same as that of the Logos. The Dominican views the generation of the divine persons, the creation of the world, the spiritual and charismatic affiliation of men and women to be one in a timeless process of divine self-realization. In the sermon " Ave, gratia plena " he explains: "In the beginning." This gives us to understand that we are the only son whom the Father has eternally begotten out of the hidden darkness of the eternal mystery, remaining in the first beginning of primal purity, which is the fullness of all purity. Here I rested and slept eternally in the hidden knowledge of the eternal Father, indwelling and unspoken. 16 Indwelling yet unspoken. Eckhart goes further: not only am I (in my eidetic existence in the active divinity) eternally begotten with the Logos and with creation but at the center of the self " the Father begets me as his only begotten Son and the same Son." 11 This sameness with the generation of the 18 17 The sermon, "Ave, Gratia plena," in Clark, Meist(!//' Eckhart, p. ft14. Deutsche Werke, I, p. 109. 180 THOMAS F. O'MEARA Logos and the incarnation of Jesus, though modestly supported by the traditional theologies of uncreated grace and Trinitarian indwelling, gained new force in Eckhart's words with, some would say, an unorthodox exaggeration. If daring in its speculative dimension, this theology of spirit is simple and radically ordinary in its practical side. The ontology of the quiet being of the Godhead grounds an ascetical theology of the human will. If God is Being, creatures The voyage to the true self and to union with are the Godhead is a voyage through detachment from creatures with their contingency. Eckhart gave to intellectual history the words Gelassenheit (to let things be) and Abgesohiedenheit (to stand back, to withdraw, to be separate) . Light and darkness cannot exist together. God is the truth and a light in Himself. When God comes into this temple, He drives out ignorance, that is darkness, and reveals Himself through light and truth. 18 Because of the Fall our will desires things around us, desires them more than our true self or God. Self-will drives us in the wrong directions. Eckhart is impatient with questions about what we should do to attain union with God. Self-will too easily changes its objects as it remains self-will. The compulsive will fashions a chain of its own activity. Regardless of how religious and moral our activities are, they do not guarantee that the will has found humble alignment with God. Activity flowing from a life and will in harmony with true self and the God who eschews any manipulation allows the birth of the Word in the soul. The object of Eckhart's vision remained the Unnameable. On the one hand writers such as Colledge, Caputo, and Ashley ably defend the fidelity of this master of theology to medieval Roman Catholicism. And yet there is truth in the implication by Schiirmann that ultimately Eckhart's exploration of the world of the Godhead leads us beyond even Christianity. Eckhart had turned the regio dissi,m'ilitudinis of Augustine 18 The sermon, "Intravit Jesus in templum," Clark, Meister Eckhart, p. US. THE PRESENCE OF MEISTER ECKHART 181 and Bernard around. No longer the realm of :finitude and sin, it became the non-being of the Godhead beyond God. Do we find there the ground of all religion, even of revelation? Now you are loving God as he is God, Spirit, person, image. All of that must disappear. "But how should I lov.e him?" You should love him as if he were a non-God, a non-spirit, a non-person, a non-image. No, even more, as a simple, pure, clear One, separated from all duality. And in this One we should eternally immerse ourselves, sinking from something to Nothing. Towards this may God help us. Amen.19 Eckhart was not a historian of the eschaton nor a historian of Christianity. Like his teachers he found metaphysics in history, divinity in psychology. For each believer whose faith is deepening into that grace-born insight called mystical, the gloom of aloneness and detachment gives signs of leading to what is sought. Eckhart and these essays have set out to explore that darkness of faith which is illumined by a pillar of cloud during the day and by a pillar of fire at night. THOMAS F. O'MEARA, 0. P. Aquinas Institute of Theology Dubuque, Iowa 19 The sermon, "Renovamini spiritu," in Quint, Meister EckhartJ• •• , p. 855. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY I N THE LEGENDS, the collection of stories and anecdotes about Meister Eckhart, it is recorded that " a priest once came to Meister Eckhart and said to him: ' I wish that your soul were in my body '. To which the Meister responded: 'You are really foolish. That would get you nowhere; it would accomplish as little as having your soul in my body. No soul can really do anything except through the body to which it is attached.'" 1 The 14th century background is the " body " to which the " soul " of Eckhart is attached. No age, and no person of that age, can really be understood except when studied in the context of the times to which he was attached. Many challenging and valid comparisons can be made between the terrible Fourteenth Century and our own age. The persons and events of that century may have indeed a particular relevance for our own times. Yet these comparisons can only be validated after we understand Eckhart's age in itself. There are fashions in the writing and study of history. Some centuries are more popular than others. When the Middle Ages had become a respectable field of study, most historians chose to write about the 13th century. Another generation of historians thought the rnth century more interesting; still others found the 10th or 11th centuries more worthy of close examination. The 14th century-" the terrible times "-was, however, neglected. Catholics and medievalists saw it as a period of unfortunate decline and decay; rationalists and humanists saw in it only the birth-pangs of the glorious Renaissance ·and the resplendent modem world. Two global wars, the overthrow of the Western and Atlantic 1 Raymond M. Blakney, Meister Eckhart: A Mode:m Translation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), p. 258. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY 183 political, economic and social order, the erosion of faith in the postulates of liberal and rational Western civilization, the rise of new powers, new ideologies and a half-century of violence, war, and terrorism have all conspired to re-direct our attention to the 14th century. Then medieval civilization was sapped from within, assaulted from without, and a great culture began to die, a marvelous synthesis of faith and learning slowly unravelled and came apart. There were population problems, economic depressions, demands for reforms and a merry dance of hedonists bent upon instant pleasure. It was a time when men and women began to think that the world was coming to an end. They were of course right: a world was coming to an end: the world of the Middle Ages. Engelbert of Admont, at the beginning of the 14th century, saw parallels between his times and the end of the Roman Empire. He said that the Anti-Christ was near. He noted three " wounds " in the human soul that were draining the life-blood from Christendom: revolt against belief, revolt against authority, and revolt against the unity of Christian peoples. Engelbert could not see how these wounds could be healed and he prophesied the imminent end of the world. Catherine of Siena was a child of the 14th century. In January of 1380, Catherine went to pray in the old St. Peter's basilica in Rome. She raised her eyes to the mosaic in the apse of the church, a mosaic that depicted the vessel of the Church tossing upon a raging sea. Catherine moaned and began to fall to the ground, unconscious. When she had recovered, her friends asked the reason for her distress. She replied that she had beheld the Church in a storm of such intensity that, even with the apostolic steersman at the helm, the waves seemed about to engulf the vessel. In a moment of agonized wonder she thought: can even God Himself prevent it from foundering? 2 The Sienese mystic's vision corresponded all too well to reality. In the 14th century, the winds of history had grown to a tempest. Men and women 1 H. Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade: Studies of the Medieval Church, trans. J. Warrington (New York: Dutton, 1957), p. 28. 184 RICHARD K. WEBER everywhere wondered if the Church, and the civilization it bore, were not headed for shipwreck. Historians have endeavored to find causes for the distress. Friedrich Heer posits a closing of European society that had begun in the 13th century. "In the twelfth, and to a large extent still in the 13th century, Europe had the characteristics of an open society." The frontiers were fluid, traffic was free and there was" a corresponding internal fl.exibility."3 Learning was liberal, popular piety took many forms and the Church itself was open. But in the late 13th century Europe became a closed society. There was an isolation both internally and externally. The Mongol deluge in the east, the rise of Turkish power in Asia Minor and eventually in the Balkans were only the most obvious external threats. Within Europe the great Empire had been effectively destroyed; the ideal of unity was being rapidly replaced by the reality of competitive dynastic kingdoms. The Church, now made aware of the shocking extent of heresy, began to combat that menace by means of clericalization and imposed uniformity and standardization. The tolerence of earlier centuries was replaced by fear and mounting hysteria. 4 Historians have noted the succession of deaths of great men towards the close of the 13th century: Frederick II in Louis IX in 1270, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure in 1274; some have concluded it was the failure of the next generation in leadership. 5 Other historians pay more attention to political events: the rise of the new monarchies in France and England, the devastating wars of the 14th century. Or was it economics that was the basis of the changes, " the underlying condition for the discontent and the bitterness ... apparent in the later medieval period," noting the long economic depression caused 8 Friedrich Heer, Tke Medieval World: Europe 1100-1350, trans. J. Sondheimer (New York: World, 1961), p. 19. 'Edward P. Cheyney, Tke Dawn of a New Era: 1250-1453, Rise of Modem Europe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1986), p. 1-2. G Norman F. Cantor, Medieval History: Tke Life and Deatk of a Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. /.146. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY 185 by population decline and soil exhaustion ... a depression that " explains the short temper and restlessness of the men of later medieval Europe." 6 Since the great work by J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, in 1924, the popularity of a psychological explanation of an epoch has grown. Huizinga began his masterful study of " the fonns of life " in Northern Europe with this eloquent description: To the world when it was half a thousand years younger, the outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us. The contrast between suffering and joy, between adversity and happiness, appeared more striking. All experience had yet to the minds of men the directness and absoluteness of the pleasure and pain of child-life.7 In treating of the life of the period, Huizinga again and again stressed " the violent contrasts and impressive forms" ; he marvelled at how violent and high-strung was life at that period and emphasized the emotional character of party sentiments, the blind passion of loyalty. He concluded: "so violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and of roses ... a sombre melancholy weighs on people's souls." 8 N orrnan Cantor, writing in the 1960's, took up this idea of a psychological answer to the question: Why did medieval civilization, which had been the creative work of so many centuries, disintegrate so suddenly and quickly? Detenninists, like Spengler, had insisted that civilizations are organisms which pass through a life-cycle: a creative spring, a brilliant summer, a mellowing autumn, and a dying winter. Cantor argued, however, that civilizations like human beings could develop a "will-to-die," a neurotic condition that medieval civilization after 1270 seems to exhibit. 9 Ibid., p. 578. •Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York: 6 1954), p. 9. 8 Ibid., p. •Cantor, Medieval History, p. 574. Doubleday, 186 RICHARD K. WEBER Cantor explains the cause of this death-wish as " repression." The first seventy years of the thirteenth century witnessed strenuous attempts to resolve conflicts between science and religion, between authority and freedom, between the Church and the state. But after 1270, men could no longer maintain the line of subtle compromise. After 1270, men and women wanted "to end the complexity, the subtleties, the compromises, the intricacies of medieval civilization." 10 Maintaining it had become an intolerable burden. There began a search for a new identity. To understand the search, one begins with the political climate of the times. In Germany, as Meister Eckhart was born in 1260, the " Great Interregnum " had already run for six years; it would last for another thirteen. This time of Empire without an Emperor was the epilogue to the struggle between Papacy and Empire, the coda that marked the effective end of the imperial idea and the triumph of particularism in Germany. In 1266, Manfred, illegitimate son of the great Frederick II, was defeated and killed at the battle of Benevento. The Papacy had invited Charles of Anjou, brother and uncle of French kings, to take the southern kingdom of the Hohenstaufens. In 1268, Conradin, fifteen year-old grandson of Frederick II, was called by Italian Ghibellines to reclaim the inheritance of the Hohenstaufens. But the young man was defeated in battle and then betrayed into the hands of Charles of Anjou. He was then executed in the main square at Naples. The Pope approved the execution; Europe was shocked. Germany seethed at the outrage. Seven hundred years later, the poet Heine could still feel indignation at the crime which German patriots were not loath to call the greatest crime in history. By 1280 Eckhart was a Dominican and a student of theology in Cologne. On Easter Monday, 1282, the people of Palermo rose against the rule of Charles of Anjou. This uprising, the famed" Sicilian Vespers," ignited revolution across Sicily. The 10 Ibid., p. 548. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY 187 French, men, women and children, were massacred. In Rome, the Pope issued excommunications against the rebels but to no avail. Seeking support from the King of Aragon, the Sicilians had ended the papally-blessed Angevin dream. In U93 and U94, Eckhart was pursuing higher theological studies at the University of Paris. In Perugia, after a vacancy in the See of Peter for twenty-seven months, the cardinals elected a Benedictine hermit as pope: Celestine V. Christendom hailed the " evangelical pope," a waited since the prophecies of Joachim of Flora and the Eternal Gospel. But the reign lasted only from July until December 13th, when Celestine abdicated. His successor was the arrogant Boniface VIIIthe " high-souled sinner " as Dante described him. Celestine died, imprisoned in the castle of Fumone, in U96. In 1313, when he was no longer an embarrasment, he was canonized. While Eckhart was at Paris, Philip IV had been on the French throne since U85; he would remain there till his death in 1313. His challenge to the Papacy had been successful. Through his hired thugs, he had had one Pope killed, another poisoned and a third completely cowed. In 1302, while Eckhart lectured in Paris, Philip summoned the Estates General of the realm. With masterful ease he enlisted the support of French nobility, clergy and people against Boniface VIII. In the next years, Philip would expel the Jews from France, mobilize the power of the state and force of public opinion against a religious order, the Knights Templars, and destroy them-their leaders, their members and their reputation. In the first and second decades of the fourteenth century, Eckhart was a preacher of fame in his native Germany. In those years, Church and State were troubled again by quarrels between an Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, and a Pope, John XXII. In 1328, the year of the Meister's death, the last of the Capetian kings in France died, the dynasty ending in a decade of scandal, sex, incompetence, and insanity. In 1315, people had been terrified by the appearance of a comet; in 1325, there was a conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter. Astrologers predicted disaster. This time they 188 RICHARD K. WEBER were right. Twelve years later, in 1387, the Hundred Years War between England and France began. In Avignon, the Popes settled down for a long stay, leaving their temporary quarters in the Dominican priory and building the vast and beautiful Papal Palace that still amazes. In 1848, the pandemic plague known as the Black Death first struck in Florence. It would soon devastate Italy, France, Germany, England, and Scandinavia. By 1350, when there was a respite, Europe counted a minimum of twenty-five million dead, a figure that possibly ran to fifty million. Fifty years after Eckhart's death, the popes returned to Rome. But within months of that event, the Church was split over a papal election. The next quarter of a century was a distr&ssing time of schism and separation. Cardinals schemed, theologians spun theories and the simple folk whipped themselves to blood and frenzy as the terrible fourteenth century came to an end. Men could no longer be sure of anything. The century was flickering out and so, it seemed, was human confidence. Everywhere there was less flame and less fervor. Vincent Ferrer found a continent ready to believe his report that God was ringing down the curtain on this whole sorry mess. It would be difficult to prove that there was more violence in the fourteenth century than in other medieval centuries. But it is easy to see that contemporaries thought it was a new kind of violence. The execution of Conradin shocked Europe because it contradicted all the laws and customs of feudal warfare. The Sicilian Vespers were not the first massacre in European history but they did mark "a savage and important turning-point in the history of Sicily (and) ... taught a lesson to the whole of Europe" because it unleashed the fury of aroused national passions.11 The struggle between Boniface VIII and Philip IV paralleled earlier Church-State confron11 Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespe1's: A of the Mediterranean World in the Late Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: University Press, 1958), p. 280. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY 189 tations, but the Capetian conducted it with a new mastery of statecraft, manipulation of public opinion, and amoral use of force. A significant element in this new violence was the violence of language itself. The " incessant use of slander and calumny in debate had so debased the moral currency of Europe, that men were prepared to accept the most outlandish accusations, even against the popes." 12 Thus, the fantastic lies put out by Nogaret about Boniface VIII were believed by people, now bewildered by streams of constant accusation. Papal documents, for a century, had grown shriller and more hysterical in their denunciations; royal propaganda contributed to the :flood of billingsgate that poured forth from chanceries. People at first frightened by the accusations became inured to them. Part of the reason for the violence of debate was the growing impossibility to distinguish, within the Church, between its spiritual offices and political functions. The appearance, in these times, of protest groups that adopt the name " spiritual " is indicative of the deeply troubled soul of Christian people. Church had become a word and concept that was overloaded with connotations of hierarchy, authority, power, sword, and rule. Thus, the words religious and spiritual became descriptive of groups opposed to an over-institutionalized Church. The Papacy, since the 18th century, had been occupied by a succession of canon lawyers, diplomats and ecclesiastical bureaucrats. Their struggles with Hohenstaufens and Capetians blunted spiritual sensibilities.18 But the attempted ' cure ' in 1294 of electing a saintly hermit proved disastrous to the administration of the Church. Then, with a violent wrench back, the cardinals chose Boniface VIII, whose election was a scandal. And then, on Boniface's death, when the need for a strong Pope was evident, the cardinals began to choose Cantor, Medieval History, p. 568. Whether politically astute or not, the advice of Pope Clement IV when asked for advice by Charles of Anjou about the fate of Conradin was hardly the answer of a Vicar of Christ. " Vita Conradini, mors Caroli; vita Caroli, mor1 Conradini." 19 18 190 RICHARD K. WEBER timid and easily-swayed prelates, like Benedict XI and Clement v.a It was to Avignon that Eckhart was summoned near the end of his life; it is in Avignon that he may well have died. That city had been intended to be a refuge for the Bishop of Rome, safe from the tumults and violence of his own decayed see-city. But Avignon became a byword for loose living and corruption. A brilliant court gathered there where the vast and growing organization of the Church was concentrated. An extensive financial, judicial, and administrative bureaucracy was created, carrying on the work of an international corporation. Such a spirit led to a climate of secular interests and luxurious living. "It was not a life conducive to piety, nor to spiritual elevation, nor in many cases even to a decent morality." 15 Petrarch, admittedly a hostile witness, proclaimed the city to be "the home of all vices and all misery ... (where there) is no piety, no charity, no faith, no reverence, no fear of God, nothing holy, nothing just, nothing sacred." That Meister Eckhart was condemned by such a group of people would be, in the eyes of many, a fair claim to sanctity. To be spiritual or holy now seemed to place one in conflict with the Church. Reform of the Church was proving more and more difficult even as its need was becoming more apparent. On the lips of many was the evangelical query: " If the salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?" (Matthew, 5: 18). The poverty and apostolic-life movements of the 11th century had led to the Gregorian reforms in the papacy. But now the papacy itself seemed to be the stumbling-block to reform. Reform movements in religious life had produced new monastic establishments like the Cistercians and finally the great and revolutionary establishment of the friars. But by the 14th century, the Franciscans and Dominicans had passed their zenith and were on the verge of decline. Everywhere the salt seemed to have lost its savor. For many, in the 14th century, 14 10 Cantor, Medieval History, p. 569. Cheyney, The Damm of a New Era, p. THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY 191 there was an ardent desire to find new identites, new communities. Ronald Knox wrote that " the Middle Ages suffered from a growing nostalgia for the Sermon on the Mount." 15 a The call was for an evangelical simplicity and a life of poverty. This spiritual yearning contrasted strongly with the rising power of bankers, merchants, shopkeepers who were creating a money economy, a Europe of trade and commerce. But vast numbers of people detested this emphasis on money and greed. In the year of Eckhart's birth, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino published his book, Introduction to the Eternal Gospel. He promised that ' spiritual ' men would soon rule the earth and establish here the kingdom of God. Gerard's book and many other writings of the period heaped scorn on those who deviated from the rule and spirit of Francis, the Poor Man. The story and fate of the Spiritual Franciscans is well known. An equal concern was voiced in ecclesiastical circles over a similar contemporary phenomenon: the Beguines and the Beghards. And it was Eckhart's association with the Beguines that provided his enemies with the handle which would bring him down. It was Eckhart's work among these simple people that John XXII would stigmatize as "sowing errors and thorns." The impression one receives is that popes and curia fell victim to panic when confronted with the Beguinine movement. Who were the Beguines and the Beghards? Caesar of Heisterbach, in 1230, makes the first mention of them. They are reported as an organized group around Liege. The name of a reforming priest, Lambert le Beges (died: 1177) is associated with the group. Some few scholars believe that the name is derived from this priest; it is rather more likely that the name was given to him because of his work with the group. A greater number of historians guess that the name " Beguine " is derived from Albigensi, corrupted to Bigensi and thence to Beguini. Hence the name points to an heretical orientation. 1 •• Knox, Ronald, Enthusiasm, A Chapter in the History of Religion (Oxford: University Press, 1961), p. 104. 192 RICHARD K. WEBER That theory is superficially tempting, but I think it confuses a later development of some Beguines into heresy with the original purpose. When first encountered, the Beguines were groups of pious women, with no heretical intentions; rather they had passionate desire for the most intense forms of religious experience. They were, for the most part, unmarried women, with some widows. Unmarried women had no status in medieval society and enjoyed no social esteem. The Beguine movement spread rapidly in Belgium, northern France, the Rhine valley, Bavaria, and Central Germany. Many of the women adopted a form of religious dress and lived in unofficial convents. They had vernacular translations of the Bible and discussed the Scriptures among themselves. A Franciscan of Tornai complained that, though they were untrained in theology, they delighted in new and over-subtle ideas. A German bishop characterized them as " idle, gossiping women who refuse obedience to men under the pretext that God is best served in freedom." 16 The demands of the Beguines for spiritual direction vividly exposes the greatest weakness of the medieval church: the ignorance of the clergy. Few priests were able to give religious counsel, direction, and formation. The friars, especially the Dominicans, did undertake some work among the Beguines, but they never succeeded in touching the whole movement. There was so much to do that work among these ' gossiping' women seems to have had a very low priority. Fear, fed by rumor, led bishop after bishop to condemn the Beguines. A synod of Mainz in 1259 condemned them all and this judgment was repeated in 1310. In the Rhine valley, where Eckhart worked, friars were forbidden to speak to a Beguine except in church or in the presence of witnesses. Pope John XXII, in 1810, issued a blanket condemnation of the movement, unleashing a persecution that did not discriminate between orthodox and heretical members. 18 For background of Beguines and Beghards, cf. Norman Cohn, Tke Pursuit of the Millenium, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 148-162 and Rufus Jones, The Fl