A Book Review of Oliver Davies’s Meister Eckhart: Mystical
Theologian, 2nd edn (London: SPCK, 2011), pp. xiv + 258, pbk., £14.99. ISBN:
0281064105
In celebration of his stellar career and his
contributions to Eckhart scholarship, we dedicate this review of Meister
Eckhart: Mystical Theologian to Oliver Davies on the occasion of its 30th
anniversary. Ever since Davies first published Mystical Theologian in
1991, scholarship has been left ever richer for it. Although Davies could not
have foreseen my arrival to the Eckhart scene, I owe him my special thanks for
introducing me to the field and for making my acquaintance with our dearest
Dominican master, Meister Eckhart OP.
Before I get underway with the work of this
blog post, to present a book review, allow me to share my sympathies for my
colleagues, classmates, and the future scholars of Meister Eckhart. I am
acutely conscious of the difficulty of reading Eckhart and of the training
required to enter the guild of Eckhart philology. I encountered the master
Dominican as an undergraduate student under the tutelage of our very own
Professor Markus Vinzent, with whom I ventured forth on the most daunting work
yet of my academic career: an undergraduate dissertation on Eckhart and the cura
monialium. Of course, this is an abridged curricula vitae, however,
it shall suffice to introduce us to Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian.
I have great sympathy for
my fellow students of Meister Eckhart, and so it is out of this collegiate
spirit that I present my review of Mystical Theologian. It is difficult
to make an introduction into Eckhart philology, much less publish in it,
without an advanced command of the appropriate languages. It is no easier then
to participate as an undergraduate due to a lack of tutoring available at this
level to specialise on the topicos of Eckhart. How is it then that
scholars and advanced students, i.e. doctoral candidates, are able to make headway
in this field? That, I’m afraid, is a topic worthy of its own blog post, and so
I shall delay my reply for another occasion. I can, however, answer a far
more-timely question: how does one begin to study Meister Eckhart as a newcomer
to philology? This I shall answer for you with a hint – Oliver Davies’s Meister
Eckhart: Mystical Theologian.
There are in fact
multiple entry points into Eckhart philology, namely literature, philosophy,
history, and theology, which are all interwoven into each other in the
intersectional humanities. However the approach to Eckhart, how does a student
acquaint themself with the subject? Professor Davies furnishes us with just
this opportunity. Sparing us the need to trace lost manuscripts or locate
arcane tomes written in foreign languages, Davies consolidates the literature
across multiple intersections of scholarship all under one title. He makes
light of the theological dimensions of Eckhart’s work and grounds us in a
consolidated and refined history of Eckhart’s life, work, and career. In fact,
the Welshman makes it look too easy, but this is only to his credit and to us,
is a reason to be more prepared for the work that lies ahead. I recommend to
you now to read Davies and once you have read Davies, to continue reading
select volumes to bring your understanding in line with contemporary
scholarship. It is in light of this advice, which also captures my attitude and
stance in this review, that I seek to emphasise the utility of Davies’s work for
your own introduction to Eckhart studies and its accessibility as well as to
judge his ability to speak to this generation and the next of Eckhart scholarship.
Oliver Davies’s Meister
Eckhart: Mystical Theologian enjoys continuing success in its enviable
position as the leading Meister Eckhart textbook in the Anglo-American academy.
The blurb reads: ‘[Mystical Theologian is] both a stimulating scholarly
study and an ideal introduction for the non-specialist’. The work stands in
testimony to the vigour of Eckhart scholarship and its commendable effort at
reviewing its own progress and identifying future research. To its success, it represents
a step change away from an older paradigm in Eckhart philology and has ushered in
at least two new generations of scholarship since its first publication in 1991.
The task of this book review then is an urgent one, especially due to the
book’s past accomplishments. Davies’s second edition capitalises on the success
of the first, raising the question then, what makes this work so powerful and
relevant to the scholarship of today? In other words, this review is critical, because
it is a test of Mystical Theologian’s relevance and its standing in
contemporary scholarship.
For the advantage of
scholars and students conducting research and the precious little time
available to them, I have annotated the contents of the volume, but with some
of my own additions and clarifications marked in [angular brackets]. Hopefully,
it will facilitate you in your own research and in your assessment of Davies’s
work. The volume overwhelmingly follows a tripartite structure, around which
the following pattern emerges: Part, Chapter, section, and the occasional subsection.
Preceding the first three Parts is the front material, and exceeding them are
the appendices, bibliography, and index. Davies rarely breaks from this
pattern, but he only ever marks out subsections in Chapters 6 and 10, whilst he
allows line spaces to demark movements in his argument within sections, i.e.,
pp. 34, 40, 44, 56, 71, 78, 105, 129, 141-144, 182, 205, 207, 209, 220, 222,
224, and 229. I bring this to your attention now, with accompanying annotations
below, so that it may neither confuse you in your reading nor suggest more is
afoot than there really is. Presumably, a permutation in Davies’s design is the
addition of a fourth chapter to the first Part, whilst the other two contain only
three apiece in keeping with the rule of three. The Appendices are valuable,
but only a few pages altogether in length.
From the beginning to the
very end: [Front Material], pp. i-xiv; Introduction, pp. 1-7; Notes to
Introduction, pp. 6-7; Part One Meister Eckhart’s Background, pp. 9-95;
[Chapter] 1 Ways of Reading Eckhart, pp. 11-21; [Meister Eckhart and his
historical reception], pp. 11-17; Meister Eckhart in the English-speaking
world, p. 18; The achievement of Eckhart studies, pp. 18-19; Notes to Chapter
1, pp. 19-21; [Chapter] 2 Meister Eckhart: The Man, pp. 22-50; [Meister Eckhart
and his career], pp. 22-30; The background to the Bull In agro dominico,
pp. 31-45; [Meister Eckhart and his examination], pp. 31-34; [Henry II of
Virneburg and Pope John XXII], pp. 34-40; [Pope John XXII versus Lewis of
Bavaria], pp. 40-44; [Conclusion], pp. 44-45; Notes to Chapter 2, pp. 45-50;
[Chapter] 3 Meister Eckhart and the Religious Women of the Age, pp. 51-84;
[Introduction], p. 51; Hildegard of Bingen, pp. 51-59; [Meister Eckhart and
greenness], pp. 56-59; Mechthild of Magdeburg, pp. 59-65; Margaret Porete, pp.
65-68; Eckhart and the pastoral care of women, pp. 68-72; The spirituality of
the ‘holy women’, pp. 72-75; Meister Eckhart and the spirituality of the ‘holy
women’, pp. 75-78; [Conclusion], pp. 78-79; Notes to Chapter 3, pp. 79-84;
[Chapter] 4 Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican School, pp. 85-95;
[Introduction], pp. 85-86; St Albert the Great, pp. 86-88; The Albertian
school, pp. 88-90; Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican school, pp. 91-93;
Notes to Chapter 4, pp. 93-95.
Part Two Meister
Eckhart’s Thought, pp. 97-176; [Chapter] 5 The
Theology of Union, pp. 99-125; [Introduction], p. 99; Eckhart’s theory of
analogy, p. 100; Analogy according to Thomas Aquinas, pp. 101-102; Meister
Eckhart and the theory of analogy, pp. 103-107; God and Being, pp. 107-20;
Being as God, pp. 107-10; God as Intellect, pp. 110-112; God as the One and the
‘negation of negation’, pp. 112-115; Conclusion, pp. 115-118; God as Creator,
pp. 118-119; The nothingness of creatures, pp. 119-20; Notes to Chapter 5, pp.
120-125; [Chapter] 6 The Imagery of Union, pp. 126-159; [Introduction], pp.
126-127; I. In the Image of God, pp. 127-139; Tradition, pp. 127-131; The
ground of the soul, pp. 131-138; Summing up, pp. 138-139; II. Sanctification,
pp. 139-155; Tradition, pp. 139-145; The birth of God in the soul, pp. 145-153;
Summing up, pp. 153-155; The Imagery of Union: Conclusion, pp. 155-157; Notes
to Chapter 6, pp. 157-159; [Chapter] 7 The Spirituality of Union, pp. 160-76;
[Introduction], p. 160; Tradition, pp. 160-162; Detachment and metaphysics, pp.
162-166; Detachment and the virtues, pp. 166-169; Detachment and human
experience, pp. 169-74; Conclusion, pp. 174-175; Notes to Chapter 7, pp.
175-176.
Part Three
Understanding Meister Eckhart, pp. 177-234;
[Chapter] 8 Meister Eckhart’s Language, pp. 179-194; [Introduction], pp.
179-180; Meister Eckhart’s conceptual poetry, pp. 180-184; Meister Eckhart’s
language, pp. 184-185; Antithesis, pp. 185-187; Style, pp. 187-189; Vocabulary,
pp. 189-191; Conclusion, pp. 191-193; Notes on Chapter 8, pp. 193-194;
[Chapter] 9 Meister Eckhart and Christian Orthodoxy, pp. 195-214; [Meister
Eckhart and orthodoxy], pp. 195-211; The originality of Meister Eckhart, pp.
211-212; Meister Eckhart and eastern religions, pp. 212-214; Notes on Chapter
9, p. 214; [Chapter] 10 The Influence of Meister Eckhart, pp. 215-234;
[Introduction], p. 215; 1. John Tauler, pp. 215-218; Henry Suso, pp. 218-221;
2. Ruusbroec, the Theologia deutsch and the Book of Spiritual Poverty,
pp. 221-225; 3. The Reformers, Angelicus Silesius, Nicholas of Cusa, the
Spanish and English mystics, pp. 225-230; Conclusion, pp. 230-231; Notes to
Chapter 10, pp. 231-234; Epilogue, pp. 235-238; Notes to Epilogue, p. 238.
[Appendices], pp.
239-246; Appendix I: Establishing the Text of Eckhart’s German Sermons, pp.
239-241; Notes to Appendix I, p. 241; Appendix II: Eckhart as Biblical Exegete,
pp. 242-243; Notes to Appendix II, p. 243; Appendix III: A Register of
Eckhart’s German Sermons, pp. 244-246; Select Bibliography, pp. 247-253; Texts,
p. 247; Historical Documents, pp. 247-248; English Translations, pp. 248-249;
Secondary Literature, pp. 249-253; Books, pp. 249-251; Articles, pp. 251-253;
Index, pp. 254-258.
It is clear from the Introduction
(pp. 3-6) that Davies has carved out a special project for himself and is
acutely aware of the need to distance himself from his predecessors and his
contemporaries. Davies defines his interpretation of Eckhart in the span of six
pages, leading us then to his unfurling of the Eckhartian banner in an
intelligent and systematic manner: i) Eckhart uses theology to articulate his
mystical vision; ii) he stands firmly within the Dominican tradition; iii) he
embeds mystical motifs into his preaching; iv) his core motif is the birth of
the Word in the soul; v) he adopts an intellectual attitude in his approach;
and vi) he juxtaposes doctrine with mystical speculation. Simply, Davies’s
Eckhart is a man who was a pious Christian and devout Catholic with a gifted
hand towards the scholastic, the mystical, and the pastoral. This is against
the trend towards the absurd: an anti-Catholic, Eastern mystical Eckhart
harbouring a reformist agenda or a heretical disposition. I shall show here
elsewhere, Davies gets to have his cake and eat it, but here we see already the
master plan for his work. The pace of the introduction is steady, and it builds
quickly to its crescendo. In equal fashion, the chapter begins from some ground
and then proceeds from there in steps to elucidate each element of the theme at
the appropriate junction. This ascent through the chapter prepares us for the
more profound commentary on Eckhart’s theology and mysticism.
Davies points us
immediately to the scientific basis of his work – a shrewd manoeuvre to quickly
acclimatise our expectations of his thesis and the methodology behind it. He
tells us: ‘In order to establish a reliable reading of Eckhart, one which is
founded upon Eckhart’s own meaning and not just our own concerns, we must first
reconstruct the world which created him.’ (p. 2). Towards then he leads us to
his thesis: ‘Are we to regard him as a mystic or a theologian, or is he both?
The answer given here is that he is both, but a mystic first and a theologian
second.’ (p. 3). The project of Davies comes full circle. Mystical
Theologian is an attempt to speak to its time and to shine a torch on a
neglected route through Eckhart scholarship. The historical Eckhart is our most
scientific base from which to proceed with a re-envisioning of him and yet, so
few scholars have followed this path. As a result of his ingenuity, Davies is
in danger of falling victim to his own success – without the injection of
common sense into the field, we would still have been wandering around searching
for our historical Eckhart! However, then, the first edition of Mystical
Theologian may have ushered in a new taste for sobriety and scientific
criticism, the second edition is likely to undersell Davies’s contribution
because it fails to meet the standard set by the first – it carries Davies’s
name, but it lacks his originality and vitality!
The tripartite form does
justice to Davies’s argument, and it delivers on each point of the thesis. With
good reason, Davies is left vindicated when he describes Eckhart as both a
‘mystic who sings, and theology is his song’ (p. 99) and in the title of the
work, brands him a ‘mystical theologian’. We find the thrust of Davies’s
argument divided across the three Parts, but together they each bring out
Davies’s new Eckhart. In the first part, we discover Eckhart the Dominican. We
historians are prone to the usual charge of ‘presentism’, the tendency to
examine cause and effect relations by first examining the effect and then
tracing its cause in a reverse trajectory across the logical order of things.
This is precisely how Davies rehabilitates our understanding. Eckhart took
ownership of his career and responded to the demands of the cura monialium
as it was set to him. The gift of his theology draws deeply on his Dominican education,
and he weaves that into his metaphysical arguments and sermons. Davies
concludes Part I with such an observation: ‘Far more important is the fact that
what for his brethren was theory, for Eckhart was very much a matter of
experience.’ (p. 93). For his arguments rehabilitating Eckhart as a theologian
and mystic, we find similar results in Parts II and III; they show the master
to be mystical as much as he is scholastic, and by all means is he Catholic. It
is true that Davies ignores recent scholarship in the second edition, but that
only speaks against his authority and not to the rigour of his argument. In any
case, a sympathetic reading of Davies will easily locate him within the
scholarly continuum leading up to the present day. In fact, it is his success
in breaking away from his contemporaries that has allowed for so much
revisionist scholarship to take root and blossom into the later paradigmatic
shifts that we see today. To settle then, the case for Davies’s argument, it
very much succeeds on its own merits, and it is this same achievement that has
earned Davies his place in the Eckhart canon.
Davies, in imitation of
Meister Eckhart vis-à-vis the Opus tripartitum, follows a threefold
framework within which to develop the Dominican master: i) ‘Part I: Meister
Eckhart’s Background’, or the historicity of the Meister; ii) ‘Part II: Meister
Eckhart’s Thought’, or the theological architecture of his thinking; iii) ‘Part
III: Understanding Meister Eckhart’, or a dissection of his originality through
a scientific lens. However, seemingly dissatisfied with the
compartmentalisation wrought by such an ambitious design, Davies supplements
his three-part structure with an appendix concerning Eckhart’s work as literature.
The effort invested in the tripartite structure leads to a thorough and
comprehensive account of Eckhart, but this structuring does narrow Davies’s
scope. The thematic homage to Eckhart is a kind gesture, but it does shift the
focus of the work away from its scientific objective. In the present state,
Davies does succeed in part because of his lucidity and ability to train his
words to just his point, but the gamble may not have been as profitable as it
seems. In my eyes, this recommendation encourages Davies to reconsider the
purpose of his work with an eye towards a didactic objective. Notwithstanding
the monograph’s age, it enjoys the privilege of being the first port of call
for many students interested in probing the topic of Eckhart further.
Davies’s second edition
of Mystical Theologian is not a revised edition but instead a reprint.
The lack of revision in this edition is a missed opportunity for Davies to deliver
a fresh verdict on contemporary Eckhart historiography. Looking closer to 2011,
the second edition post-dates recent criticism against Otto Langer and Herbert
Grundmann, but Davies makes no mention of this (pp. 75-9). Davies reports:
‘Eckhart’s use of language in an intentional way, turning upon the use
of contradiction, paradox and the suppression of the created dimension, can
further contribute to the possibilities of misunderstanding.’ (Davies’s emphasis,
p. 5). This gives Eckhart too broad a license here. Eckhart’s attitude towards
the nuns developed forwards from Denifle to Langer, but does that mean Davies
subscribes to their view, that Eckhart intended his homiletic programme to
chastise the nuns’ spirituality? Such is no longer a tenable thesis.
In the twenty years
between 1991 and 2011, Loris Sturlese, Lydia Wegener, and others have
convincingly shown the fault with Heinrich Seuse Denifle’s original hypothesis.
That being, Eckhart was intimately engaged with the delivery of the care of the
nuns (cura monialium), and so organised his homiletic programme to
receive and respond to their spirituality (pp. 38, 75-9). The turning points in
our understanding of Eckhart’s motivations and his homiletic programme lie at
the heart of historical study on Meister Eckhart and has served as the
motivating force behind much recent novel and compelling scholarship. I appreciate
this will become a dull and familiar point in my hands, but I must labour this
particular criticism because of the scientific achievement Mystical
Theologian represents. It would make for an improved second edition for
Davies to acknowledge the recent criticism against Denifle, Grundmann, and
Langer, but also to discuss the paradigmatic shifts that now lead Eckhart
philology. In brief, Eckhart’s homiletic career developed around the Opus
sermonum (The Book of Sermons) and the liturgical calendar in Cologne
rather than out of an assignment to Strasbourg.
To give this last point
its full due, it is commendable for Davies to have cast his generation’s
scholarship into such accessible terms, but that also presents a difficult
challenge for the book. Literary scholarship on Eckhart takes its lead from
Frank Tobin, Niklaus Largier, and Dietmar Mieth inter alia, but that is not to
say that Davies is uneven in his approach elsewhere – what he affords in
breadth, he also purchases in depth. We see here in Part I, Davies’s
consideration towards Eckhart in a mystical tradition extending forwards from
Pseudo-Dionysius, but also his proximity to Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard
of Bingen, and Marguerite Porete in the German sermons (pp. 51-68). On the
theological side, Davies draws our attention to the German Dominican school
(pp. 85-93), whereby he directs us to Eckhart’s scholastic influences: Aristotle,
Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Dietrich of Freiburg, amongst others. Of
course, these lists are only partial treatments of Eckhart’s debt and inheritance,
which continue to be of interest to scholarship, but they are a good starting
point for historians such as myself who are unfamiliar with the Literaturwissenschaft
(‘literary science’) of Eckhart scholarship.
For Chapter 1 Ways of
Reading Meister Eckhart, I am grateful to Davies for affirming the history of
Eckhart studies and his effort at surveying the depths of modern Eckhart
scholarship. To newcomers, especially those outside of Germany, Eckhart will
not be remembered or known as a national hero or as an icon of an ethnic
consciousness. We ought to be grateful then for such an introduction to an
unexpectedly rich history to Meister Eckhart and the effort of Davies to
summarise the positions of near 200 years of scholarship across German and
Latin for our benefit in English. Rightfully, Davies makes mention of Franz
Pfeiffer (p. 11) and Heinrich Seuse Denifle (p. 14), the modern restorer of
Eckhart’s name and the father of the cura monialium hypothesis
respectively: ‘In Denifle’s hands, therefore, Eckhart emerges as a “mediocre
student of Thomas Aquinas”. Although Denifle’s judgement of Eckhart (from the
perspective of a narrow neo-Thomism) has been entirely superseded, his
recognition that the sharp distinction between “mysticism” and “scholasticism”
was a spurious one and, above all, his passionate belief that Eckhart can only
be properly understood within the context of scholastic thinking were of
lasting value.’ (p. 14).
Just as we are done with
this chapter, allow me to repeat Davies on two salient points. The first is a
warning against fantasy: ‘The first is that the least satisfactory readings of
him occur where the interpreter is strongly committed to a particular
ideological viewpoint.’ (pp. 18-19). The second is an endorsement of a rigorous
and scientific mood in our approach to Meister Eckhart: ‘The growth in [our]
understanding of Eckhart has been slow and has been achieved by the careful
scholarly reconstruction of his life, his works and his world. Needless to say,
these are the sole parameters within which Eckhart can be seen on his terms,
as he was in actuality, and not as we would choose him to be.’ (Davies’s emphasis,
p. 19). We will do well to heed Davies’s advice as we continue in our own
research.
In Chapter 2 Meister
Eckhart: The Man, Davies sets out in two sections: the first (pp. 22-30)
recollects the known elements of Eckhart’s career and culminates in the second
(pp. 31-45), with the tragic affair of the papal Bull In agro dominico.
This second section focuses on three questions: ‘The first is who was the
instigator of the attack upon Eckhart? The second is why was such an attack
mounted? And third is what factors led to Pope John XXII proving so amenable?’
(p. 34). To answer these questions, Davies divides the second half of the
chapter into three subsections for each respective question. In brief, Henry II
of Virneburg was the chief architect of Eckhart’s demise because he counted
Eckhart as a rival to himself and his ambitions, and so he leveraged the pope
to remove him with the promise of political support against Lewis the Bavarian.
Davies summarises this neatly with: ‘It is not to be wondered at, consequently,
that within this context Meister Eckhart, who was one of the chief figures on
the Dominican side during these turbulent years, must have appeared as a
defender of the Beguine cause against the efforts and interests of the secular
clergy’ (p. 40).
To comment briefly on the
former half of the chapter, I am glad Davies has taken the time to de-mystify
Eckhart. There are varying degrees of confidence in any item of evidence
brought forward, and in the historiography drawn therefrom, which overall
results in confusion and doubt. Of course, all science, including history, is a
human enterprise and so I shall offer some criticism of my own, but first I
shall give praise. This chapter is pivotal to the training of the Eckhart
scholar, especially the historian. Davies brings to life a whole constellation
of voices from across the nations and the languages. For this, we ought to be
grateful to him. However, and this truly the value of Davies’s work, but where
he is confident, that is where must train our scrutiny most. This is the charm
of Mystical Theologian – its work is never complete!
There are two points of
criticism to raise here, Firstly, Loris Sturlese already succeeded in
dispelling the myth of the ‘Strasburger Decade’ (Das Straßburger Jahrzent)
in 2008, so I expect Davies to have commented on this development for his 2nd
edition. The legal documentation once thought to recall Eckhart’s residence in
Strasburg now makes new sense in light of our corrected understanding of
Eckhart’s vicariate. Armed with Sturlese’s contribution, we now see Eckhart
must have returned to Cologne prior to 1324, namely in 1314 immediately
following his second Parisian magisterium. This leads us to our second problem:
what was Eckhart doing in Cologne in this time and what happened to him whilst
there?
The above questions mean
to imply a confrontation between Eckhart and Henry II of Virneburg, but there
is not room to explore them fully here. There is place, however, to test
Davies’s presentation of the historiography. Davies acknowledges Eckhart’s
detractors bore a grudge against him: his pastoral work undermined their
political vision. Despite the ease of this summary, Davies leaves us to wonder
on an adjacent question: what causes the Dominican Order to perform damage
control on Eckhart as soon as 1325? Davies ventures forth on documenting a
stirring amongst the Dominicans from 1323 until 1326, when Henry initiates
proceedings against Eckhart, but he does not explicitly tell us if they were
simply anticipating Henry, responding to the political climate, or pursuing a
possible third option. Even if it is something like the first two options, some
further clarification would have eased confusion.
With some consultation of
note 30 on p. 33, it appears something of an answer is at hand. However,
without the note and further explanation of this point, it is difficult to see
Davies means to point to Henry. The chapter is up until this point crisp, but the
confusing element here in the second paragraph of p. 33 disrupts the flow of
the argument, but maybe I am the only one who found it jarring. To close the
chapter, I come to an agreement with Davies’s closing words – it really is a
shame how the Church is responsible for Eckhart’s demise: ‘And the fruit of
this animosity was that a distinguished Dominican theologian with a penchant
for academic subtilia was dragged before the Inquisition in an affair
which disgraced him and disgraces still, not a little, the Church of his day.’
(p. 45).
In Chapter 3 Meister
Eckhart and the Religious Women of the Age, Davies wrestles with one of Eckhart
philology’s most pressing questions: what was Eckhart’s involvement with the
holy women of his day? Davies attempts to answer this very question with two
parallel approaches. The first concerns Eckhart’s mystical theology in its
influence and debt to Hildegard of Bingen (pp. 51-59), Mechthild of Magdeburg
(pp. 59-65), and Margaret Porete (pp. 65-68), and the second examines his
pastoral career with the Beguines and the nuns in the established houses. There
is a clear distinction made here to isolate and dissect the two dimensions of
Eckhart, but readers be warned – this is largely an artificial and scientific
division to encourage enquiry into the complexity of Eckhart’s career. It
should not be taken to represent Eckhart’s own attitude towards female piety.
Across the three sections of the first half, Davies fleshes out the argument
for a transmission of mystical thought towards Eckhart. Rightfully, he cites
the words of the mystics and brings them into a close comparison. Eckhart
belongs firmly amongst the gifted few with insight into the union of soul and
God, but that does not mean he sits there idle. In the Paradisus animae
intelligentis sermons, Davies draws our attention to Hildegard’s influence
on Eckhart via the motif of ‘greenness’ (See W 95; pp. 56-59). Proximity is not
his only suggestion, however, and so Davies brings to the fore the second arm
of his argument: Eckhart does not passively receive the greenness motif, but he
actively fashions it into a vessel for his own metaphysics with an acute
understanding of its origin. Davies reports this as such: ‘In the final
analysis, God’s fertility is shown, for Hildegard, not only in the life of
grace within the soul, and within the Church and her sacraments, but also at
the level of nature and the creation, while for Eckhart the created order
obstructs and obscures our connaturality with the uncreated God, and so God’s
birth in us is simultaneously our birth “out of the world” (W 7)’. (p. 59). For
the intrepid scholar, this is your call to view Eckhart as being alive in the
mystical tradition of his contemporaries, whilst also belonging equally to the
Dominican, the Catholic, and the scholastic. The innovation, however, lies in
his intellectual attitude and his capacity for a creativity and an originality
all of his own!
For the latter half of
the chapter, Davies places Eckhart’s pastoral activities under three separate
lenses: i) Eckhart’s assignment (pp. 68-72), ii) the profile of female piety
(pp. 68-75), and iii) Eckart’s response (pp. 75-79). The first section
discusses the Frauenfrage (‘The woman question’) and the possible causes
behind the major exodus of women into religious life and the transformation
wrought as a result. The section concludes with a statement on Eckhart’s legal
involvement with the Dominican duty towards the pastoral care of the nuns, or
the cura monialium (p. 71). The second and third section proceed on the
firm legal basis for Eckhart’s involvement with the cura. A discussion
follows on the affective and exterior nature of the women’s spirituality, but
this is really for the benefit of the reader’s understanding rather than
leaping straight into the critical discussion held in the third section. In
this final section, Davies gets to the heart of some very serious Eckhart
historiography. The leading hypothesis behind this chapter stems from the
esteemed Denifle’s own work on Eckhart and the nuns. It is his belief that
Eckhart’s pastoral work exposed him to contamination and his absorption of
mystical elements from the nuns in his care (pp. 76-77). In Herbert Grundmann’s
view, this means Eckhart formulated his sermons to channel the piety of the
nuns and expound further on their system, whilst others believe Eckhart
targeted his sermons at the nuns to criticise them for their affective
disposition. Otto Langer treads the middle ground here, as Davies has shown us,
in that he holds to a receptivity to the nuns’ spirituality in Eckhart, but
believes Eckhart developed his sermons to nourish and nudge the nuns towards an
interior spirituality.
In the eyes of the most
recent scholarship, Langer stands as the last of his school. Despite the
nuances in their views, there is an overwhelmingly similarity surviving in the
positions from Denifle to Langer – they all assume Eckhart’s homiletic
programme was the product of the cura monialium forcing his hand to
respond in the expected fashion of a Dominican – to preach, to serve, to
administer. More recent thinking does the opposite, Eckhart approached the nuns
confident of his own position and was welcoming of his duty to preach and to
serve as a spiritual director (Lebemeister) to the nuns. In other words,
he channelled his own distinct metaphysical system throughout his sermons and
poured forth from the wealth of his own private thinking to meet the assignment
of providing spiritual care. In case it was too subtle, the nuns do not
motivate Eckhart to invent some kind of pastoral programme, they are in fact
the beneficiaries of a man already convinced of his theology and speculation.
Of course, Davies fails to make mention of any of this in time for the second
edition, which in fact post-dates the publication of the scholarship summarised
here, namely Lydia Wegener and Loris Sturlese (if not also others). I would
hope for Davies to treat this material in the third edition, but this is also
an opportunity for your own independent research.
In Chapter 4 Meister
Eckhart and the German Dominican School, Davies acquaints us with the
scholastic environment of Eckhart’s upbringing. This completes the quartet of
chapters comprising Part I and rounds off our training before we dive into the
theology of Eckhart. Davies is conscious of his task and its difficulty, so
much so that he warns us in the second sentence of the chapter: ‘Much of the
following material is philosophical and at times unavoidably technical.’ (p.
85). This is true, but I assure you the chapter is not impossible to penetrate
– you just need to grasp the gist of it, then re-read for comprehension. The
chapter proceeds along a gentle tangent. It starts with an exposition and
introduces us to William of Auvergne, the Bishop of Paris and his condemnation
of radical positions on negative theology (pp. 85-86). This gives us the
circumstances surrounding St Albert the Great (pp. 86-88). After a brief
introduction, we learn of his theory of intellect. Albert allows us to speak of
God by acknowledging his difference to created things and the difference in our
faculty of understanding created things, which we know in one way, and our
superior understanding of God, whom we know according to another, superior way.
Davies narrows in on the students of Albert, namely Meister Dietrich of
Freiburg, a contemporary of Eckhart’s (pp. 88-90). Dietrich makes us alert to
four points before Davies returns us to Eckhart’s philosophical place amongst
the Dominicans: i) ‘[Intellect] becomes the essential soul itself. Intellect
therefore is substance and is the very causal principle of the soul.’ (p. 89),
ii) ‘The intellect is the true image of God, who is likewise intellectual
substance.’ (ibid), iii) ‘The intellect is entirely simple and self-contained,
and yet at the same time it is wholly dynamic.’ (p. 90), and iv) ‘The process
of thought, which is the very essence of intellect, is at the same time
productive.’ (ibid). To define him against only the philosophy of his brethren,
this is where we find Eckhart.
We find the final section
the following premisses concerning Eckhart’s own position (pp. 91-93): ‘The
first is that the nature of God himself is intellect. The second is that we in
our own essence are intellect and the third is the principle of ascent, from
the lower levels of cognition (i.e. of created things) to the highest level of
cognition, which is the knowledge of God himself.’ (p. 92). Clearly, Davies’s
goal has been to draw out the bond of Eckhart’s own intellectual position,
which entwines itself intimately with the non-scholastic elements of Eckhart,
to that within the schools of Dominican thought. The entire labour on Davies’s
part has been to define Eckhart against the interpretations of scholars in
Davies’s generation, who have tried to locate the master as a radical and insurgent
character against the Church. The sobriety of Davies’s approach speaks for
itself here and lends great credibility to an Eckhart who cherished his fellows
and fastened himself tightly to his teachers – the same Eckhart who denies
being a heretic during the later trial.
I must at this point
admit that I have sacrificed brevity for coverage, but that must not mean that
I also sacrifice quality for quantity. My own expertise on the subject of
Eckhart is limited to the historical, and so I shall not attempt an expert
comment of Parts II and III of the present work. I can, however, satisfy myself
with at least this much. Davies wastes neither words nor ink in bringing the
contents of Parts II and III to our attention. He knows this too. His writing
continues to be lucid and welcoming, especially on the arcane particulars of
theology. His command of the literature is immense, and he does us a great
service in providing the German and Latin material in English, which I know
from experience to be a difficult task. I urge you to read the two parts for
yourself and to be ready to witness the full talent of Davies in his defence of
Eckhart’s orthodoxy. I do disagree with his previous reviewers, but I do agree
that he succeeds in giving us Meister Eckhart, the mystical theologian.
The present review
follows in the footsteps of two other esteemed scholars and their own critical
observations on Mystical Theologian. In 1993 and 2012, Professors Philip
Lyndon Reynolds and David Torevell both critiqued the first and second edition
of the book respectively. I would like to locate this immediate review against
their contributions. There are three points on which we agree: i) the monograph
represents a considerable achievement in Eckhart philology, ii) Davies succeeds
in presenting Eckhart as a Catholic mystic and theologian, and iii) Mystical
Theologian challenges audiences to re-examine familiar assumptions and
pursue their own investigations into Eckhart.
Torevell shares my
opinion and is conscious of Davies’s accessibility to lay scholars and
students. On the first point, he tells us, ‘Twenty years after the first
edition in 1991, this indispensable text on Meister Eckhart has reappeared as a
timely reissue, not a revised version’, because ‘it contains one of the most
balanced and detailed accounts of Eckhart’s life and work to date.’ (2012: p.
138). A point I keep returning to is Davies’s attitude and methodology ‘his
sobriety’, because many other attempts at Eckhart have been fanciful and
colourful in their depiction of him. The concern for balanced debate and
scientific scrutiny permeates Davies’s judgements and his rehabilitation of the
Dominican. Torevell continues with this same thought in mind: ‘It is impressive
for its erudite yet accessible discussion and explication of Eckhart as a mystical
theologian working creatively within the Medieval scholastic tradition.’
(ibid).
This point is not lost on
Reynolds either. Agreeing with Davies’s approach, he finds it to be fruitful.
In his own words, ‘Eckhart’s theology, according to this interpretation, was
subordinate to his spirituality; or as the author puts it more poetically,
Eckhart “is in essence a mystic who sings, and theology is his song”.’ (1993: pp.
167-168). What both commentators show is that Eckhart philology, despite the
eminence of the man himself and the decorated scholars who came after him,
should not be allowed and ‘flights of fancy’. It, at least for the philological
enterprise, is a scientific endeavour to solve the mystery of Eckhart, which
has come about from the excesses of imaginative minds harnessing the Dominican
to their own ends. In the confidence we have as historians, that Eckhart is not
some mythological Germanic Helde (‘hero’), we inherit some part of the enthusiasm
we ourselves criticise in our commentaries. The only difference is, we do it
better and we know the limits of our authority – we want Eckhart to live
eternal, but we also know that cannot be, so we resign ourselves to tempering
the enthusiasm of our peers with hard science. Torevell, wisely, feels exactly
the same: ‘Or, as the author memorably puts it, Eckhart is essentially “a
mystic who sings[,] and theology is his song”.’ (2012: p. 139). To end this
comment and commemorate this achievement, I close with Reynolds’s astute
observation: ‘The same idea is reflected in the epithet “mystical theologian”
applied to Eckhart in the book’s title.’ (1993: p. 168).
We now come to the final
point of the comparison, but also my sole point of disagreement with the
commentators. I disagree slightly with Torevell and find myself aligned with
Reynolds’s antagonistic appraisal of Mystical Theologian – the monograph
challenges its reader to adopts a scientific attitude and scrutinise the work
in the same way. Torevell again shares my concern for the accessibility of Davies’s
work. We both broach the same question, ‘Who might be the readers of such a
book?’, and although I do not wholly disagree with his answer, ‘it will appeal
to a wide audience interested in religion’ (2012: p. 140), I do disagree with
its philosophical appeal being the sole appreciable quantity in the book – I am
confident every student can participate in the debate, and this includes the
historiographical discussion. My view really only amounts to a minor shade of
difference with Torevell’s appraisal, but I am optimistic, and I speak from my
own experiences as a former undergraduate writing on Eckhart. In his own words,
Torevell comments: ‘While some of the denser philosophical discussion would
appeal to and only be fully appreciated by postgraduate students, most of the
work is so lucid that any undergraduate would be able to take something from
it.’ (ibid). I am a little bit surer about things than Torevell is.
Mystical Theologian is a scientific work and as such is subject to scrutiny and error.
This alone is par for the course, but my expectations are greater still. I
agree with Reynolds that ‘among its merits’, ‘there are many points in this
book with which one could take issue at length.’ (1993: p. 168). Davies’s
writing is so lucid and wonderfully accessible, that it involves the junior
scholar in the debate contained within its pages. The Welshman cites his
sources extensively and has provided generous coverage of the primary
literature. This is enough to introduce the audience to the debates prevailing
in scholarship today. Above, I mention the cura monialium and discuss it
alongside the Strasburger decade in reference to historiographical debate. It
is this lucidity on Davies’s part that equips the reader with the knowledge
necessary to follow the developments in the debate and find their owns voices
in the conversation. Readers are welcome to return to Mystical Theologian
armed with fresh criticism and to locate for themselves the flaws in Davies’s
argument. This is the scientific process at work and the antagonistic force of
which brings me to agree with Reynolds over Torevell. To summarise this
literary review, I borrow once again from Torevell’s commentary: ‘This is a
very fine book indeed and anyone who wishes to study and understand Meister Eckhart
in any depth is strongly encouraged to find a copy of Davies’s text and take
time to absorb his rich exposition of one of the greatest mystical theologians
who has ever lived. It is a remarkable accomplishment.’ (2012: p. 140).
Davies’s opus, Meister
Eckhart: Mystical Theologian, still enjoys incredible success even today,
but this is primarily due to its most remarkable feature: it is the only
contemporary English-language monograph on Eckhart and his life. The value of
the volume lies in its accessibility and in its utility. Flanking the
publication of this second edition, Maurice O’ C. Walshe released the modern English
translation of Eckhart’s sermons, whilst Jeremiah Hackett corralled the latest
scholarship of his day into the one-volume masterpiece, A Companion to
Meister Eckhart. The utility here then is this: Mystical Theologian is
an easy induction point, from which to acquaint oneself with the fruits of past
scholarship and to begin dissecting the paradigm shifts that have emerged ever since.
A prudent teacher, then, would do well to treat Davies as a map with which to introduce
students to recent scholarship. Even without a teacher, however, Mystical
Theologian is indispensable to new scholars navigating the field of Eckhart
studies. All the same, in the hands of both student and teacher alike, Davies holds
up a beacon of light that draws scholars as well as lay people to the riches
and wonders of our enigmatic friend, Meister Eckhart OP.
Bibliography
The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. and trans. by Maurice O’C. Walshe and rev. by Bernard McGinn
(New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2007)
Davies, Oliver, Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian (London:
SPCK, 1991)
—— Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian, 2nd edn (London:
SPCK, 2011)
Die deutschen Werke, ed. and trans. (German) by Josef Quint and
others, Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, 5 vols
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1936-2007)
Die lateinischen Werke, ed. and trans. (Latin) by Josef Koch and others,
Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, 6 vols (Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1964-2015)
Langer, Otto, Mystische Erfahrung und
spirituelle Theologie: Zu Meister Eckharts Auseinandersetzung mit der
Frauenfrömmigkeit seiner Zeit, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur
Deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 91 (München/Zürich: Artemis, 1987)
Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and
Defense, ed. by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A and Bernard
McGinn, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1981)
Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher,
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Mieth, Dietmar, ‘Geflügelte Motive und Leitbilder: Meister Eckhart
liest Marguerite Porete’, in Meister Eckhart in Paris and Strasbourg,
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Sturlese, Loris, ‘Hat es ein Corpus der deutschen
Predigten Meister Eckharts gegeben? Liturgische Beobachtungen zu aktuellen
philosophiehistorischen Fragen’, in Meister Eckhart in Erfurt, ed. by
Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 32 (Berlin: 2005),
pp. 393-408
—— ‘Meister Eckhart und die “cura monialium”:
Kritische Anmerkungen zu einem forschungsgeschichtlichen Mythos’, in Meister
Eckharts Straßburger Jahrzehnt, ed. by Andrés Quero-Sánchez and Georg
Steer, Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch, 2 (2008), pp. 1-16
Torevell, David, ‘Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart Mystical
Theologian’, Medieval Mystical Theology, 21 (2012), pp. 138-140
Wegener, Lydia, ‘Eckhart and the World of Women’s Spirituality in
the Context of the “Free Spirit” and Marguerite Porete’, in A Companion to
Meister Eckhart, ed. by Jeremiah M. Hackett, Brill’s Companion to the Christian
Tradition, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 415-443
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