By Bernard McGinn
The nice German mystic Meister Eckhart is still probably the most attention-grabbing figures in Western notion. Revived curiosity in Eckhart's mysticism has been matched, or even passed, via the research of the ladies mystics of the late13th century. This e-book argues that Eckhart's notion can't be absolutely be understood till it truly is seen opposed to the history of the breakthroughs made by way of the ladies mystics who preceded him.
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Extra info for Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete
Sample text
But no one will sing there with me Who mingles with creatures. Naked love (blote minne) who spares nothing In her wild death (welde oueruaeri) Stripped of all accident (toeuals) Recovers her simple unity. In Love's pure abandon No created good can subsist: For Love strips of all form Those she receives in her simplicity. Free from all modes (wiseri), Strangers to every image, This is the true life Of the poor in spirit. True poverty is not simply Exile and begging for bread. The poor in spirit must live Without notions in a vast simplicity.
Rather it is comparable with that discussed above in relation to Mengeldicht 19 that only one who is as though dead to the world is able to concentrate his love and desire sufficiently on God to see him. Eckhart s definition of poverty is similarly radical. In his Predigt 87 Eckhart describes true poverty as having not even a will with which to want to do God's 14 The biblical source for this concept is John 12:32. " 28 Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics will. " [vol. 2: 270]. The absolute loss of individual will as both a necessary condition and a consequence of union is a corollary to the need to be impassive to personal fate in Hadewijchs work also.
Mechthild craved immediate personal experience. Today we would say that she had a hunger for life. In line with the traditions of Augustine, both she and her contemporaries would interpret this hunger as a desire to possess God. Certainly, as a term to express Mechthild s longing, hunger is an appropriate Mechthild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart 45 expression, as are other metaphors of the body and its needs. She had to see, hear, taste, and touch God. Eckhart, with a resdessness no less intense, craved to know God, the only object that could satisfy his intellect.