Meister Eckhart Biography Quotes 28 Report mistakes

Early Life and Formation
Meister Eckhart, born as Johannes Eckhart around 1260, was a German Dominican friar whose life unfolded in the intellectual and spiritual ferment of late medieval Europe. He likely came from Thuringia, in central Germany, and entered the Dominican convent at Erfurt as a youth. The Order of Preachers provided a rigorous education, and Eckhart advanced through the Dominican studia, moving from local instruction to higher studies. He pursued theology at the studium generale in Cologne, a center shaped by the legacy of Albertus Magnus, and he absorbed a curriculum deeply marked by the synthesis associated with Thomas Aquinas. From this milieu he learned the disciplined use of Scripture, the Fathers, and Aristotelian philosophy for theological reflection.

Teaching and Pastoral Roles
By the turn of the fourteenth century, Eckhart had emerged as a teacher and administrator. He taught in Paris, the most prestigious university of his day, where Dominican masters carried forward debates on the nature of God, creation, and the soul. His return to German-speaking regions brought a combination of academic, pastoral, and managerial tasks common to leading friars: serving in priories, supervising communities, and preaching to both religious and lay audiences. He spent extended periods in the Rhineland, including Strasbourg and Cologne, where a vibrant urban piety and lay religious enthusiasm met the formal learning of the mendicant schools.

Eckhart preached and taught in both Latin and the vernacular. His Latin works belong to the scholastic genre: biblical commentaries, questions, and prologues that set his thought within university discourse. His German sermons and short treatises, however, reveal his distinctive voice to a broader public. In them he addressed nuns, laywomen, craftsmen, and civic leaders, seeking to translate complex theological insight into accessible images and practices.

Thought and Writings
Eckhart is read today as a theologian, philosopher, and mystic. He drew on Scripture and Augustine, and on the speculative resources of the Dominican school, to explore the life of God and the transformation of the human person. A hallmark of his preaching is the claim that the eternal Word is to be born in the ground of the soul. He urges detachment and releasement, a letting-go of possessiveness and images, so that the soul may be free for God. In his language, the soul has a ground where it is most itself and most open to the divine. He can speak of God as beyond all names and images, distinguishing the living God known in revelation from the Godhead as ineffable source, while insisting that this apophatic reserve does not cancel Christian faith but purifies it.

Philosophically, he explores creation as the utterance of divine intellect and love, the relation of being and intellect, and the tension of time and eternity. He employs Aristotelian terms while pressing their limits, often redirecting metaphysical analysis toward spiritual practice. His famous images of the birth of the Word, the quiet desert of the soul, and the eye with which God and the soul see each other have had enduring influence. Yet he consistently binds daring speech to pastoral aims: the transformed person, freed from self-seeking, acts justly and lovingly in the world.

Communities and Relationships
Eckhart lived within a dense network of Dominican scholars and Rhineland devotees. In Cologne and Paris he moved in circles shaped by the achievements of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, whose methods and texts structured the curriculum. In the Rhineland, his sermons reached audiences that later nurtured figures such as Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso, both Dominicans who engaged his themes in their own preaching and writing. Eckhart also interacted with ecclesiastical authorities responsible for doctrine and discipline, including bishops and archbishops who monitored the flourishing of lay mysticism in the German cities.

Controversy and Trial
The boldness of Eckhart's language, especially in the vernacular, drew scrutiny. In Cologne his teachings became the subject of an ecclesiastical inquiry under the authority of the archbishop, Henry of Virneburg. Eckhart responded by explaining his intent and appealing to the papal court at Avignon. He publicly declared his willingness to retract any statement shown to be contrary to the faith and insisted that his purpose had always been to edify listeners. He died around 1328, before the papal process reached its conclusion. In 1329 Pope John XXII issued the bull In agro dominico, which censured a set of propositions drawn from Eckhart's works, some as heretical and others as suspect. The censure did not present a full portrait of his teaching but focused on excerpts that, in isolation, had raised concern. The document also acknowledged that he had submitted himself to the judgment of the Church.

Transmission and Legacy
Eckhart's writings circulated in manuscript in both Latin and Middle High German, and the textual record is complex. Some materials attributed to him are debated, and editorial work has continued to clarify authentic texts and their wording. Even with these challenges, his influence is visible in the Rhineland Dominican tradition, above all in the preaching of Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso, who adapted Eckhart's stress on interior transformation and detachment to their own contexts. Later readers, from scholastic theologians to humanists and early modern spiritual writers, found in his thought a demanding vision of union with God that refuses spiritual complacency and calls for ethical action.

Modern scholarship has taken Eckhart seriously as both a speculative thinker and a spiritual guide. He stands at a crossroads where scholastic analysis, biblical exegesis, and pastoral exhortation meet. His sermons show a careful craftsman of language who uses paradox to break idols of the mind, while his academic work roots those moments in carefully reasoned theology. The tension between daring expression and doctrinal vigilance that marked his trial has continued to frame his reception. Yet across centuries, in universities and monasteries, among philosophers and contemplatives, Meister Eckhart remains a touchstone for reflection on the ground of the soul, the nearness of God, and the integration of contemplation and action.

Our collection contains 28 quotes who is written by Meister, under the main topics: Wisdom - Truth - Justice - Live in the Moment - Hope.

Other people realated to Meister: Angelus Silesius (Poet), Johannes Tauler (Theologian), Evelyn Underhill (Writer), Matthew Fox (Writer)

• 2009 The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Book)
• 1994 Selected Writings (Book)
• 1987 Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises (Book)
• 1986 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher (Book)
• 1981 The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (Book)

• Wikipedia