Meister Eckhart

The life of Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart left almost nothing in the way of personal letters or diaries. What we have instead is a record of offices held, dates of appointment, and the sermons and treatises he wrote or preached along the way. It is the life of a working friar: a prior, a provincial, a professor, and finally a preacher in two of the busiest Dominican cities in Germany.

He was born in Thuringia around 1260 and died in or around 1327, somewhere between Cologne and Avignon, waiting for a papal court to rule on charges of heresy. In between, he taught twice at the University of Paris, a distinction shared at the time only with Thomas Aquinas, held senior posts in his order, and preached in German to nuns, laypeople and fellow friars in a voice that still reaches readers today.

Thuringia and Erfurt

Eckhart von Hochheim was born around 1260, most likely in or near a village called Hochheim or Tambach close to Erfurt, the Thuringian capital.He was born around 1260, most likely in or near the German village of Tambach near the Thuringian capital of Erfurt, where he probably entered into the Dominican order sometime during his late teenage years.

His early schooling is harder to pin down.It is assumed he studied at Cologne before 1280, likely at the Dominican house there, a center of learning shaped a generation earlier by Albert the Great. Erfurt remained a touchstone for him his whole life: it is where he entered the Order as a young man, and where he returned more than once in positions of responsibility.

Student and teacher in Paris

The first date we can fix with confidence comes from Paris.The first definite date of his life is 18 April 1294, when he preached the Easter Sermon at the church of St Jacques in Paris, where the manuscript describes him as Lector Sententiarum, 'Reader of the Sentences,' the standard theological textbook of Peter Lombard.This suggests he had already been in Paris for several years before that; 1286 has been suggested as the year of his arrival in the city.

Eckhart went on to earn the highest academic standing his order could offer. He was made Master of Theology at Paris in 1302 and taught there as regent master through the following academic year. It was this title, Magister, that gave him the name by which he is still known: Meister Eckhart.

Offices in the order: Erfurt, Saxony and Bohemia

Teaching alternated with administration for most of Eckhart's career.In late 1294 he was made Prior at Erfurt and Dominican Provincial of Thuringia, and he remained there until 1303.

In 1303 he was called back to be the first Provincial of the new province of Saxony, carved out of the older and much larger province of Teutonia, and he held this post until 1311. During these yearshe founded three convents for women, and in 1307he was re-elected to Saxony and also appointed vicar-general of Bohemia, charged with reforming its convents.

In 1311 Eckhart was sent back to Paris for a second period as regent master.To be invited back to Paris for a second stint as magister was a rare privilege, previously granted only to Thomas Aquinas.He stayed in Paris for two academic years, until the summer of 1313.

Strasbourg: preaching to nuns and ordinary people

In the summer of 1313, Eckhart left Paris for Strasbourg in the Alsace region, to serve as special vicar for the Dominican Master General.Strasbourg was an important center of female piety at the time, with numerous beguine houses and convents of Dominican nuns.From 1314 to 1322 he was increasingly active there as a preacher caring for Dominican convents.

It is from these Strasbourg years, and the Cologne years that followed, that most of the German sermons gathered on this site come down to us: preaching given in the vernacular to women and laypeople who had no Latin, on texts he knew they would recognize from the Mass. The theme of living without a why, so central to his preaching, turns up again and again in sermons of this kind.

Here God's ground is my ground and my ground is God's ground. Here I live in what is my own as God lives in what is his own. To one who has seen into this ground even for an instant, a thousand ducats of pure beaten gold are worth no more than a counterfeit coin. Out of this innermost ground your works should be done without why.
Sermon 13: Sharing Christ's nature and living without a why

That line, about God's ground and the soul's ground being one, and about work done without why, is the kind of thing a congregation of nuns in Strasbourg would have heard directly from him, not read in a book.

Cologne and the last years

In late 1323 or early 1324, Eckhart left Strasbourg for the Dominican house at Cologne.He had been called back there in 1323 to become regent master of the Studium Generale, the same position once held by Albertus Magnus.

It was in Cologne that his troubles began.A second investigation was launched at the instigation of Archbishop Henry of Virneburg, and in September 1326 Eckhart was charged with heresy by a diocesan commission, which he strongly refuted.In January 1327, when the archbishop pressed an independent inquiry, Eckhart and a fellow friar, Nicholas, appealed to Rome against his authority in the matter.

I say that next to God there is nothing nobler than suffering. If there were anything more noble than suffering, the heavenly Father would have given it to his Son Jesus Christ, as the model, for everything. We find in Christ, as far as his humanity goes, nothing so much as suffering.
Sermon 104: Sermon 104: suffering as the noblest thing next to God

He never lived to hear the verdict.Accused of heresy in 1326, he died during the proceedings, most likely in 1327 or 1328, somewhere between Cologne and the papal court at Avignon, where his appeal was pending. Three years after his death, Pope John XXII issued the bull In agro dominico, which condemned twenty-eight statements drawn from his writing. The full story of the trial, the charges and what became of them is told on the trial page.