Tauler, Johannes

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TAULER, JOHANNES

TAULER, JOHANNES (c. 1300–1361), German Dominican and mystic. Born at Strasbourg, Tauler entered the convent of the Strasbourg Dominicans as a young man and was probably a student, and certainly a disciple, of Meister Eckhart. Living at a time of political upheaval, aggravated by the social excesses that came in the wake of the Black Death, Tauler was distinguished by a remarkable sobriety of language and thought, a refusal of extremism, and a profound understanding of human nature, which did not keep him from being a demanding spiritual guide. His surviving sermons, all in German, were preached to Dominican nuns, written down, copied, and sent to other convents eager for spiritual nourishment, then often in scarce supply.

Primarily a pedagogue and a "master of life," Tauler takes as his starting point a carefully defined conception of "man as being really like three men (Menschen), though remaining one": the sensible man, with sensations, perceptions, imagination, action, and sensible will; the rational or intellectual man, capable of abstract thought, conceptualization, and deduction; and the higher, or interior and essential man, the "depth" (Grund) from which the spark emerges and in which the birth of God takes place.

The spiritual life starts with sensible devotion (images of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ) and a love that is felt strongly at the time of the first "conversion" of the heart, often with a degree of exaltation that approaches intoxication. But such devotion and love, though useful, remain "in nature," and there follows a lengthy period in which the person advances with difficulty, under the guidance of reason as it exercises discernment, often amid obscurity and aridity when reduced to its own powers and sustained by naked faith. If the person perseveres, this period brings a detachment that will do away with all obstacles to the unmediated encounter with God. In this process an experienced teacher is needed. If God wills it, the person will attain supernatural contemplation, a pure gift that cannot be merited.

In addition to Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, and Meister Eckhart, Tauler drew on Christian (Dionysius the Areopagite) and non-Christian (Proclus) Neoplatonism. Tauler exercised an extensive influence in the Germanic countries (as a young man, Luther read and reread him) and also—through Latin translations and complex channels—on Spanish and French spiritual writers.

Bibliography

An exhaustive bibliography of works published before 1961 is in Johannes Tauler: Ein Deutscher Mystiker, edited by Ephrem Filthaut (Essen, 1961), pp. 436–479. A bibliography of works from 1961 until 1969 is in Bibliographisches Handbuch der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 1, edited by Clemens Köttelwesch (Frankfurt, 1973). For 1969 through 1973 there is Bibliographie der Deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Hildegard Huttermann, Clemens Köttelwesch, and Heinz-Georg Halbe (Frankfurt, 1973). The original texts of Tauler's sermons are published as Sermons de Tauler, 2 vols., edited by A. L. Corin (Liège, 1924–1929). A critical edition was produced by Ferdinand Vetter as Die Predigten Taulers, "Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters," vol. 11 (Berlin, 1910). A. L. Corin has translated the sermons into French in three volumes, Sermons de Tauler (Paris, 1927–1935), and Georg Hofmann has produced a German edition in two volumes, Sämtliche Predigten (Freiburg, 1983). An English translation by Maria Shrady is available as Johannes Tauler: Sermons (New York, 1985). Selections from Tauler have been translated and edited by Eric Colledge and Sister M. Jane, O.P., as Spiritual Conferences (Saint Louis, 1961). A brief secondary source on Tauler is James M. Clark's The Great German Mystics (Oxford, 1949), pp. 36–54, with bibliography, pp. 114–117.