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

libraries and cloisters. It was in pursuing his particular devotion to Tauler that he
discovered Eckhart, as a predecessor to Tauler. He was aware of Eckhart’s reputation as a
heretic, but dismisses this—given the mistrustful and accusatory attitude he observed and
deplored in his fellow Christians at the time—as an indication that Eckhart’s books were
spiritually improving (“gar nutzlich, alle tage zu lesen und zu behalten).” 161
That Sudermann came to Eckhart via his enthusiasm for Tauler is perhaps no
great surprise, given how Eckhart’s sermons came to be circulating by the sixteenth
century. First of all, a number of Eckhart’s sermons circulated under Tauler’s name. 162
Secondly, the chief source of Eckhart’s writings after the advent of printing was as a sort
of appendix to a large edition of Tauler’s sermons, printed in Basel in 1521 and reprinted
only a year later, presumably due to its success, in 1522. (This edition is generally
referred to as the Baseler Taulerdruck, and I will refer to it as such even though my
interest in it is Eckhart’s contribution.) Although the sermons in the third part are
attributed to Eckhart by name, his name does not appear on the title page. In other words,
the composition of this edition would mean that readers would approach Eckhart only via
Tauler.
Unfortunately, as Josef Quint, one of Eckhart’s early editors, notes, the
transmission of Eckhart’s sermons is extraordinarily complicated (he describes it as an
161 Daniel Sudermann, quoted in Degenhardt, 92. Sudermann also composed hymns inflected by Eckhartian
ideas that can be seen from the titles alone. One is entitled “Hör mein Seel, hast kein warumb!”, another is
called “Mensch versenk dich in deinem Nicht”. Degenhardt, 96. On Sudermann and Eckhart, see also
Pieper, 56.
162 In the 15 th and 16 th century printed editions, Sermons 2, 6, 8 and 9 (Sermons 101-104 in the critical
edition) were in fact by Eckhart but were printed under Tauler’s and not in the section of Eckhart sermons.
“Eckhart, Meister”, Killy Literaturexikon, 2 . Auflage, Band 3, 186. See also Henrik Otto, Vor- und
frühreformatorische Tauler-Rezeption, (Heidelberg: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003), 24.
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