Meister Eckhart

Eckhart was born in Thuringia, joined the Dominicans young, studied at Cologne and Paris, and in 1302 took his master's degree in theology at Paris, whence the title Meister. He held high office in his order, administering dozens of convents in the province of Saxony, while writing scholarly works in Latin and preaching in German to nuns and laypeople. It was the German sermons that made him famous and brought him trouble.

He preached that the Godhead is beyond every name and determination, beyond even 'God'; that in the ground of the soul there is a 'spark' or 'little castle', uncreated and one with the Godhead; and that if a person lets go of self, of every creature, even of attachment to God, God is born in the soul. To ordinary hearers this was thrilling and bewildering, and in 1326 the archbishop of Cologne charged him with heresy.

He went to Avignon to defend himself, saying he might be in error but could not be a heretic, since error is of the intellect and heresy of the will. He died before the verdict; in 1329 the pope condemned twenty-eight of his propositions. His influence never stopped. Tauler, Suso and the Theologia Germanica carried him on, Luther read the last, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Heidegger drew on him, and D. T. Suzuki compared him with Zen.