MASTER ECKART. 35,9 enough to justify the development of mysticism. Yet it is rather a question of the mental characteristics of a race than of external circumstances. Bonaventura was the father of the mystics, yet he founded no sect at home ; France, in the hundred years' war with England, had ample experience of trial, and yet mysticism never flourished on her soil. In Germany, however, the mystic tendency of religious sentiment during the fourteenth century is the most marked spiritual phenomenon of the period. Few names in the first quarter of the century were more respected than that of Master Eckart, who stood high in the ranks of the great Domin- ican Order. I have already (Yol. I., p. 360) related how he fell under suspicion of participating in the errors of the Beghards, how his brethren vainly strove to save him, and how the Archbishop of Cologne won a decided victory over the feeble and unorganized Dominican Inquisition by vindicating the subjection of a Domin- ican to his episcopal Inquisition. If the twenty-eight articles finally condemned by John XXII. as heretical be correctly ex- tracted from Eckart's teachings, there can be no doubt that he was deeply infected with the pantheistic speculations of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, that he admitted the common divin- ity of man and God, and shared in the dangerous deductions which proved that sin and virtue were the same in the eyes of God. To a hierarchy founded on sacerdotalism, moreover, nothing could be more revolutionary than the rejection of external cult, which was the necessary conclusion from the doctrine that there is no virtue in external acts, but that only the internal operations of the soul are of moment ; that no man should regret the commission of sin or ask anything of God.* ' The importance of Eckart's views lies not so much in his own immediate influence as in that of his disciples. He was the founder of the school of German mystics, through whom the speculations
- Altmeye.r, Les Precurseurs de la Rgforme aux Pays-Bas, I 94 — Ravnald
ann. 1329, No. 71. ^ ' • .y ciiu. For the relations of Master Eckart with the Brethren of the Free Spirit see Preger, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der deutschenMTStik (Zeit?=chriftfur die hist. Theol. 1869, pp. 68-78). The fact that the bull of John XXII ^^ In agro Dominico^^ (Ripoll VII. 57; cf Herman. Corneri Chron. ap. Eccard. Corp. Hist. XL 1036-7), condemning Master Eckart's errors, has until within a few years passed as a general bull against the Brethren, sufficiently shows the connection.
