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The First German Movement In Its European Setting (1270-1350)
Page 14
The new religiosity was a product of the exaltation of mind of a brotherhood bound together in God - friends of God, daily receiving the Holy Spirit in inwardness (innechait) and unity (eynicheit). Each day was the feast of Pentecost [56]. This was the beginning of the vulgarization and profanation of the paschal and pentecostal world. The joy of Easter Day had been turned into a source of everyday energy. There had been a foreshadowing of this in the world of the courtly epics, the world of Arthur's court, where all was splendour and feasting, [57] but now the "people of God", with its exaltation of spirit and joy, had been released from the Church's paschal and pentecostal liturgy. In a real sense, this was the beginning of the people of the Western world, with all their revolutionary propensities. Tauler's revolution of the heart did not issue in any transformation of political society. He knew its nature too well to expect that [58]. The "third kingdom", the "secret kingdom", was to be built within that depth of the soul which was the image of the Trinity [59]. The high politics of this inner kingdom consisted of prayer, offered up for Christendom in its need [60]. The world depended upon the inner nobility of heart of the spiritual man as "many masters" had declared, from Plato, Aristotle and Proclus [61] to Albert, Dietrich and Eckhart. The spiritual man could find the word of God through reading the Bible with his understanding illuminated by the divine light. Perfect surrender to the love of God was the key to such wisdom [62]. This amour pur sustained the piety and industrial ethos of Beguines and Beghards in their spinning-sheds and workshops. (Note of the author: European industry had its roots in the devotio moderna and the poorhouses, houses of correction and workhouses of Calvinism.) Tauler's life and work was a kind of introduction to spiritual and practical living in the emerging world of the petty-bourgeoisie whose work and prayer he knew so well.
Cf. Meister Eckhart von Friedrich Heer ||| Mail: Heer, Tauler & nazism
