The very nature of Eckhart's subjects and the untechnicality of his language were calculated to cause him to be misunderstood, not only by the ordinary hearers of his sermons, but also by the Schoolmen who listened to him or read his treatises. And it must be admitted that some of the sentences in his sermons and treatises were Beghardic, quietistic, or pantheistic. But although he occasionally allowed harmful sentences to proceed from his lips or his pen, he not unfrequently gave an antidote in the same sermons and treatises. And the general tenor of his teaching shows that he was not a Beghard, nor a quietist, nor a pantheist. While at Strasbourg, although he had no relations with the Beghards, he was suspected of holding their mystical pantheism. Later, at Frankfort suspicion was cast upon his moral conduct, but it was evidently groundless; for, after an investigation ordered by the Dominican general, he was appointed to a prominent position at Cologne. Finally the charge was made at a general chapter of his order, held at Venice in 1325, that some of the German brethren were disseminating dangerous doctrine. Father Nicholas, O.P., of Strasburg, having been ordered by Pope John XXII to make investigation, declared in the following year that the works of Eckhart were orthodox. In January, 1327, Archbishop Heinrich of Cologne undertook an independent inquiry, whereupon Eckhart and Father Nicholas appealed to Rome against his action and authority in the matter. But the next month, from the pulpit of the Dominican church in Cologne, Eckhart repudiated the unorthodox sense in which some of his utterances could be interpreted, retracted all possible errors, and submitted to the Holy See. His profession of faith, repudiation of error, and submission to the Holy See were declared by Pope John XXII in the Bull "Dolentes referimus" (27 March, 1329), by which the pontiff condemned seventeen of Eckhart's propositions as heretical, and eleven as ill-sounding, rash, and suspected of heresy (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 428 sqq.; Hartzheim, Conc. Germ., IV, 631).
The entire works of Eckhart have not been preserved. Pfeiffer in "Deutsche Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts" (1857), II, has given an incomplete version of his sermons. Additions have been made by Sievers in "Zeitschrift für deutsche Alterhümer", XV, 373 sqq., Wackernagelin "Altdeutsche Predigten" (1876), 156 sqq., 172 sqq.; Berlinger in "Alemannia", III, 15 sqq.; Bech in "Germania", VIII, 223 sqq.; X, 391 sqq.; Jundt in "Histoire du Panthéisme" (1875), 231 sqq. There is a translation in High German by Landauer, "Meister Eckharts mystiche Schriften" (1903). Eckhart's Latin works bore the title "Opus Tripartitum". In the first part (Opus propositionum) there are over one thousand theses, which are explained in the second part (Opus quæstionum), and proved in the third part (Opus expositionum). Of these only the three prologues are known. Denifle discovered also a portion of the third part, part of an explanation of Genesis, a commentary on Exodus, Sirach, xxiv, Wisdom, and other fragments.
1 -[Meister Eckhart]
2 -[Meister Eckhart : Eckhart's activity]
3 -[Meister Eckhart : Eckhart's works]
Source : A.L. MCMAHON, Transcribed by Paul Knutsen in http://www.newadvent.org/
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