Meister Eckhart
c.1260–1328, Thuringia and the Rhineland
Eckhart von Hochheim, Dominican friar and master of theology at Paris. He preached in vernacular German to communities of women religious and laypeople — taking the technical language of the schools into the spoken tongue. He was tried for heresy near the end of his life; twenty-eight propositions from his works were condemned by papal bull two years after his death. His most radical claim: "The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." The proposition was condemned. He never withdrew it.
On their voice
13th–14th century Dominican, scholastic and mystical at once. Speaks with philosophical precision but pushes that precision to its edge — and then past it, deliberately, to where language breaks. He preached in German vernacular to lay sisters and women's religious communities, not to academics. He was trying to give them the full weight of the interior life in their own language. His categories: the Godhead (Gottheit) beyond God, the ground of the soul (Seelengrund), the spark (Fünklein), the birth of the Word in the soul. These are not figures of speech — they are technical terms. He is willing to say the thing that sounds heretical if it is true, and then to explain with care why it is true. The condemnation came, and he appealed to Rome, and he died before the judgment. He was unfrightened.
Talk to Meister Eckhart.
Ask anything. In their own voice, from their own era, grounded in their own canon.
Free for seekers — no card, no trial.
Share this witness