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The First German Movement In Its European Setting (1270-1350)
Page 9
There was in this lofty intellectualism an echo of Thomas, especially in the emphasis which Eckhart laid on friendship between God and man [23]. The friendship of antiquity [24] led to the noblest of Eckhart's preoccupations: the care of souls. He pitied the poor dumb layfolk, whom pastors neglected in his time as they always had. Nothing had improved since the prelates of the Rhineland had begged Hildegard to make her missionary journeys among them, because they themselves had nothing to say to the people. Like his spiritual descendant, Luther, [25] Eckhart wanted to tell the people that God was near. Friendship meant kinship which bound the soul to God [26]. The Sacraments and other aids to salvation offered by the authoritative high Church were good and ought to be diligently used; but they were not the last word. Beyond all Sacraments, beyond grace itself, the divine soul could immerse itself in the immeasurable Godhead, who is all and nothing. Eckhart spoke to a "poor folk" of nuns and groups of earnestly religious people, many of whom were in great distress. Some had been excluded from the Sacraments because they had no money (Note of the author: cf. the account in the Vita Heriberti in the twelfth century). Others had been denounced as heretics. Some lived in cities which had been under an ecclesiastical ban for so many years that the Church had plainly ceased to function. Some had no idea to which bishop (as in the capitular quarrel at Hildesheim in 1363) or emperor or king or pope they were supposed to be loyal in time of civil war or schism.
Cf. Meister Eckhart von Friedrich Heer ||| Mail: Heer, Tauler & nazism
