the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

was a devilish heretic to others (“een duvelijc mensche,” as one writer put it), 149 whose
heretical ideas ought to be pulled out root and branch. The leaders of the Dominican
order reaffirmed the papal decision against Eckhart at their general meeting in 1328,
warning in particular against preaching dangerous ideas that common people might
misunderstand. 150 Other polemical texts, mostly from Holland and mostly from the
fourteenth century, also emphasized the need to avoid misleading laypeople. 151
Vilifications of Eckhart such as these (fearing that Eckhart’s ideas were spreading and
gathering followers) might also indicate Eckhart’s popularity and renown across Europe,
or might simply reflect a degree of paranoia amongst the clergy. 152
Eckhart’s name also appears in a few histories and chronicles from the late
medieval and early modern era. Dominican chroniclers attempted a form of public
relations, attempting to conceal the “Schandfleck ihrer Ordensgeschichte” 153 by
imagining that the papal bull from 1327 was directed not against Eckhart himself, but
rather against Beghards and Beguines. The devoted Dominican reformer Johannes Meyer
also included Eckhart in his fifteenth century “who’s who” of the Dominican order, the
Liber de viris illustribus ordinis praedicatorum (1466), where Eckhart is memorialized as
a “magister in theologia, homo doctus et sanctus.” 154 The humanist Johannes Trithemius
included Eckhart in a catalogue of his own, the Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum
(1531), as a learned man and a good speaker (“in divinis scripturis eruditus et in
149 Jan van Leeuwen, quoted in Degenhardt, 37.
150 Ibid, 31.
151 Degenhardt lists Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen, Jan van Ruusbroec, Jan van Leeuwen and Geert Groote.
Groote, in particular, was a leading light in the devotio moderna movement, and Degenhardt sees his anti-
Eckhart writings as a tactical move to distance his movement from a theologian declared suspect by the
Pope. William of Ockham and Michael von Cesena also wrote against Eckhart in the 14 th century.
152 Degenhardt, 49.
153 Ibid, 71.
154 Johannes Meyer, quoted in Degenhardt, 74.
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