Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Sayings

Eckhart was a Dominican, a Paris master, and a provincial of his order, and he preached in German to nuns and lay people rather than in Latin to scholars. That is why he is readable and why he got into trouble. He died in 1328 while his case was still open in Avignon; a papal bull condemned seventeen of his propositions the following year.

The sermons work by pressing a phrase until it gives way. God is not good, he says, because calling God good measures him against something. The soul has a spark in it that was never created and never will be. A man who has truly let go wants nothing, knows nothing, has nothing. Around the sermons this volume sets the tractates, including the piece on detachment and the strange narrative of Sister Katrei, then the sayings and the Liber Positionum.

This Reclaimed Press edition uses C. de B. Evans's 1924 translation of the Pfeiffer text, with every sermon, tractate and saying under its own title and working chapter navigation.

Format: EPUB, DRM-free.