Luminaries of Eckhart research came together for a masterclass at the Campus for Theology and Spirituality in Berlin

Dietmar Mieth: Mysticism as self-withdrawal in Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porète

To kick off the masterclass, Dietmar Mieth gave a public evening lecture in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on ‘Mysticism as self-withdrawal in Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porète’. The course participants and other interested listeners gathered in the chapel to listen to Mieth, who presented Eckhart and Porète as kindred spirits: instead of moral activism, both are concerned with developing the right kind of passivity and serenity. In order to do this, he said, you have to take back your own ego in its thirst for recognition and action in order to become free for the work of God. Porète, who in her ‘Mirror of Simple Souls’ even speaks of the self-destruction, the ‘annihilation’ of the soul, is particularly radical in this respect. Mieth, who has written a novel about Porète's fate, also knows how to skilfully weave the biographical and historical background into his lecture: Porète, like Eckhart, is targeted by the Inquisition; however, the reactions of the two to this threat differ: While Eckhart cooperates, Porète completely refuses, as a result of which she is burned alive at the stake in Paris on 1 June 1310 as a stubborn heretic. 
The practicality of these two difficult-to-access mystics of the Middle Ages in times of ‘spiritual care’ is demonstrated in the concluding discussion: Eckhart and Porète follow the assumption that it is not the benefit of our actions that is important, but the source from which they are fuelled. A spiritual departure from instrumental thinking in terms of expediency and feasibility could bring the greatest benefit - regardless of whether it is about environmental protection or caring for sick people.

Freimut Löser: The many variants of spiritual poverty

Freimut Löser, President of the Meister Eckhart Society and member of the Erfurt Research Centre, focused in particular on the striking and literal relationships between Meister Eckhart and Marguerite Porète in the area of their doctrine of poverty (‘this is a poor person who wants nothing, knows nothing and has nothing’). In several individual lessons throughout the day, he analysed the doctrine of poverty, placed it in the context of medieval poverty as a social, economic and societal phenomenon and compared it with the poverty movement of Eckhart's and Porète's time, particularly among the Waldensians and Franciscans. His text analyses focused on the prologue and some chapters from Porète's book, in which her high literary education could be shown as well as a conscious anti-intellectual and anti-academic attitude, which initially distinguishes her from Eckhart, but of which certain traces can also be found in Eckhart on closer inspection. As a highlight, in two separate units he presented German-language Eckhart sermons he had discovered, which shed a completely new light on Eckhart's doctrine of poverty. The very lively public interest focussed strongly on the historical environment in which Eckhart and Porète are to be located, on Porète's unexpected literary skill and its sources, on the new aspects of Eckhart's doctrine of poverty and, in particular, on its reception and its continued effect on his audience.

Markus Vinzent: Eckhart and Marguerite Porète move closer together in new Meister Eckhart texts to be edited

Markus Vinzent, Vice President of the Meister Eckhart Society and Head of the Eckhart Research Centre at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt, looked at the manuscript holdings, in particular those of the Berlin State Library, and presented as yet unexplored manuscript treasures that document Meister Eckhart's special closeness to Marguerite Porète. Such sermons in particular are hardly represented in the large critical edition of Eckhart's German Works, and when they are, they are denied by the editor Eckhart (such as the last sermon on the ‘Kingdom of God’ printed in the Eckhart edition, p 117). The sermon cycle in the Berlin manuscript Ms. germ. qu. 1084 (= B6), which dates from around 1400, was presented as an example. Right at the beginning of this manuscript, after an introductory treatise, there are 11 sermons that belong closely together. These sermons were not put together by the person who compiled the manuscript, but they refer to each other several times and have a wealth of parallels and references to the above-mentioned sermon on the ‘Kingdom of God’. As four central sermons from this series (i.e. almost half) have not yet been critically edited (and also not translated), this cycle, which deals with the divine transformation of man, has so far escaped the attention of readers. It also supports the authorship of the ‘Kingdom of God’ sermon and proves how closely related Meister Eckhart's theological thinking is to Marguerite Porète. Finally, another example was used to illustrate further parallels and differences between Porète and Eckhart based on the idea of the ‘three deaths’: Man must die in his physicality, his spirituality, but also in his spirituality in order to be completely transformed.