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participation in the process of confessionalization that Weigel observed in the late
sixteenth century in Saxony. 248
That I give a prominent place to Eckhart in Weigel’s work marks a departure from
modern scholarship on Weigel. The earliest scholarship on the links between Eckhart and
Weigel was done by Winfried Zeller in the 1930s who was one of Weigel’s early
champions, and co-edited the first edition of Weigel’s works. Although Zeller’s early
article on Eckhart and Weigel is invaluable for starting to identify Eckhart citations in
Weigel’s substantial body of writings, Zeller incorrectly claims that Weigel’s interest in
Eckhart is limited to his early writings. However, although mentions of Eckhart’s name
and long quotations from Eckhart’s sermons are not found in Weigel’s later works, the
concept of Gelassenheit, which Weigel initially took from Eckhart, continues to occupy a
prominent place in Weigel’s writings. Furthermore, Zeller argues that Weigel uses the
Eckhartian concept Gelassenheit only in the context of the debate surrounding the
Lutheran doctrine of justification. 249 As this study shows, however, Weigel’s use of
Eckhart has much broader implications than the more modest ones for which Zeller
argues and that Weigel’s interest in Eckhart is best read as a response to the process of
confessionalization that Weigel observed in Saxony society, religion and politics.
In the eighty-odd years since Zeller’s article appeared, the topic of Eckhart and
Weigel has aroused little scholarly interest. Freya Odermatt’s 2008 publication examined
248 Elements of the argument made in this chapter also appear in a forthcoming publication: Alana King,
“Gelassenheit and Confessionalization: Valentin Weigel Reads Meister Eckhart,” in Mysticism and Reform
1400-1750, eds. Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), 61-105.
249 Winfried Zeller, "Eckhartiana V: Meister Eckhart bei Valentin Weigel: Eine Untersuchung zur Frage der
Bedeutung Meister Eckhars für die mstische Renaissance des sechzehnten Jahrhunders," Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte 57 (1938): 320.
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