Johannes Tauler Biography Quotes 28 Report mistakes

Early Life and Entry into the Dominicans
Johannes Tauler was a Dominican friar and preacher active along the Upper Rhine in the first half of the fourteenth century. He was likely born around the turn of that century in or near Strasbourg, a city that, at the time, lay within the German-speaking world and served as a commercial and religious hub. Drawn to the Order of Preachers, he entered the Dominican convent in Strasbourg when still young. The order provided him with the typical Dominican formation: a disciplined regimen of study, prayer, and pastoral work. From the outset he showed gifts for preaching to laypeople as well as to religious communities, a talent that would shape his life and reputation.

Formation and Teachers
Tauler's theological formation unfolded within the studia of the Dominican network, and sources place a period of study in Cologne, where he encountered the teaching of Meister Eckhart. Eckhart's speculative exploration of the union of the soul with God and his language of the soul's ground left a lasting mark on Tauler's vocabulary. Yet Tauler tempered the daring metaphysical heights that drew scrutiny to his teacher, especially after propositions from Eckhart's works were condemned in 1329 by Pope John XXII. The younger friar emphasized pastoral clarity and prudential reserve while retaining a strongly mystical orientation. In these same circles he also encountered Henry Suso, another Dominican of the Upper Rhine. Suso's more affective and lyrical approach to devotion complemented Tauler's plainspoken, practical tone, and the two are often remembered together as the major heirs of Eckhart's legacy.

Preacher on the Upper Rhine
Tauler spent much of his career in and around Strasbourg, preaching in the vernacular to artisans, merchants, householders, and to communities of women religious, including Dominican nuns and beguines. Political and ecclesiastical tensions in the region in the 1330s, including conflicts between imperial and papal parties that unsettled the city and affected the mendicant orders, led to periods of displacement. Tradition holds that Tauler spent time in Basel during these disruptions, where he continued his preaching and spiritual counseling. He adapted his message to civic life, urging hearers to seek God in the midst of work, family obligations, and the changing fortunes of the city.

Circles of Piety and the Friends of God
During his Upper Rhine years Tauler was associated with circles of devout laypeople and religious later known as the Friends of God. The movement, which emphasized interior conversion and earnest reform without breaking communion with the Church, found articulate leadership in the Strasbourg banker-turned-ascetic Rulman Merswin. Merswin admired Tauler and preserved accounts of his preaching and counsel. Through these relationships Tauler's influence extended beyond the cloister to households, workshops, and small lay fraternities seeking deeper prayer. Though the exact contours of the Friends of God are debated by historians, the circle around Merswin shows how Tauler's sermons nourished disciplined interiority among non-scholarly audiences.

Teachings and Style
Tauler preached in German rather than Latin, crafting sermons that could be understood by ordinary listeners while also guiding more advanced souls. He favored images of the ground of the soul, detachment (Abgeschiedenheit), and letting-go (Gelassenheit), insisting that God's Word must be born within. Unlike Eckhart's more speculative accents, Tauler consistently tied contemplation to humility, obedience, and works of mercy. He urged stability of heart amid suffering, taught attention to the sacraments, and counseled that God could be found in patient fidelity to one's station. His language moved between homely examples from urban life and a profound call to interior silence, in which the soul is freed from inordinate attachments so that it may be formed by grace.

Later Years and Death
The mid-century crisis of plague and social fear gave Tauler's pastoral message added urgency. The Black Death of 1348, 1349, which struck the Upper Rhine, forms the unspoken background of many of his counsels on suffering, fear, and trust. He addressed not only personal affliction but also civic disarray, inviting hearers to interpret turmoil through the cross of Christ rather than through frenzy or despair. He appears to have spent his final years again in Strasbourg, preaching and guiding penitents, confessing, and advising religious women's communities. He died around 1361, a date transmitted by local tradition, and was remembered there for sober wisdom and holiness of life.

Works and Transmission
Tauler left no systematic treatise. His legacy survives chiefly in collections of sermons taken down by listeners and copied in the decades after his death. The corpus varies by manuscript, and questions of authenticity surround some pieces, but a substantial body of Middle High German preaching has long been recognized as genuinely his. These sermons follow the liturgical year and the gospel readings, but they are less exegetical lectures than spiritual exhortations guiding hearers through stages of purification, illumination, and union. In the age of print they were edited and circulated widely. Early modern readers sometimes linked Tauler to the anonymous Theologia Germanica, a distinct work that shares themes of interior reform; modern scholarship keeps those authors separate while noting resonances.

Legacy
Tauler's reputation grew well beyond the Dominican milieu. His moderation, practical counsel, and insistence on the presence of God in ordinary life made him a bridge figure between scholastic theology and popular devotion. He influenced currents of late medieval piety along the Rhine and was read by later Catholic reformers and spiritual writers. In the sixteenth century Martin Luther found much to admire in Tauler's preaching, praising the depth he perceived in the sermons and encouraging their circulation even as he disagreed with other aspects of medieval theology. Subsequent generations across confessional lines continued to read Tauler for guidance in prayer and detachment. Modern editions and translations have secured his place as one of the most compelling voices of the German mystical tradition, alongside Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso. He endures as a model of pastoral mysticism: a theologian of the heart who taught that the path to God runs through the sanctification of daily life, the purifying fire of trial, and the quiet birth of the Word in the soul.

Our collection contains 28 quotes who is written by Johannes, under the main topics: Deep - Faith - Health - Letting Go - Prayer.