Johannes Tauler

The Rhineland Mystics Teacher: Eckhart Students: Suso & Tauler

Johannes Tauler Johannes Tauler OP (c in Strasbourg – 15 June 1361) was a German mystic, a Catholic preacher and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order. Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland Mystics. He promoted a certain neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time.

He was born about the year 1300 in Strasbourg, entered the Dominican order (probably at the age of about fifteen) and was educated at the Dominican convent in that city. From Strasbourg he went to the Dominican college of Cologne, and perhaps to St James's College, Paris, ultimately returning to Strasbourg. In 1324 Strasbourg, along with other cities, was placed under a papal interdict, and so all Dominican friars left the city. Tauler went to Basel.

Around 1330 Tauler began his preaching career in Strasbourg. The city contained eight convents of Dominican nuns and perhaps seventy smaller beguine communities. It seems likely that (as with Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso), much of his preaching was directed to holy women. Most of Tauler's nearly eighty sermons seem to reflect a convent situation, although this may partly reflect the setting in which such sermons were most likely to be written down and preserved. In 1338 or 1339 the Dominicans were exiled from Strasbourg as a result of the tensions between Pope John XXII and King Lewis of Bavaria. Tauler spent his exile (c ) in Basel. Here, he became acquainted with the circles of devout clergy and laity known as the Friends of God. Tauler mentions the Friends of God often in his sermons.

Tauler worked with the Friends of God, and it was with them that he taught his belief that the state of the soul was affected more by a personal relationship with God than by external practices. Tauler returned to Strasbourg around 1343, but the following years brought various crises. Strasbourg experienced a devastating earthquake and fire in From late 1347 until 1349, the city was ravaged by the Black Death. It is said that when the city was deserted by all who could leave it, Tauler remained at his post, encouraging his terror- stricken fellow-citizens with sermons and personal visits. Tauler travelled fairly extensively in the last two and a half decades of his life. He made several trips to Cologne. A number of his sermons were clearly delivered there, as indicated by their survival in the Cologne dialect of Middle High German. According to tradition, Tauler died on 16 June 1361 in Strasbourg. He was buried in the Dominican church in Strasbourg.

Little is known about Tauler, except that he made people open their ears. They liked to listen to him and to his sermons which claimed they could live close to God if they wanted to. He gained such a reputation for himself that authors who came after him attached his name to their own writings to give them prestige. He believed that a soul could spend its time with God even while here on earth. It took real spiritual discipline, of course, and he gave some practical suggestions for that. He recognized that mankind is steeped in sin and that it takes God's grace to overcome it. He believed that we can prepare our hearts for that grace. He suggested detachment from earthly things in order to be open to this grace. John also urged "resignation," that is, accepting whatever happens as coming from the hand of God and giving up our own will. John did stress the importance of doing loving deeds and said it was good to work. He was against spending one's whole life in meditation. One means John saw for allowing God to act upon the soul was by suffering like Christ with patient endurance. He placed great emphasis on the cross of Christ in his spirituality. There are passages in John's writing as in the writing of many of the German mystics which sound pantheistic. However, he did not endure the opposition that his teacher, Eckhart, endured by Church authorities. HIS THEOLOGY

Tauler left us around eighty sermons. Tauler was famous for his sermons, which were considered among the noblest in the German language —not as emotional as Henry Suso's, nor as speculative as Eckhart's, but rather intensely practical, and touching on all sides the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life. He was not as speculative or poetic as his contemporaries. Tauler emphasized the "blessed contemplation" of God. However, his emphasis on divine contemplation was always tempered with practical advice for daily Christian living. Tauler was less “heady” or “scholarly” and more practical than Eckhart, and his teaching was built on the devotional habits of his day. As a result he was able to transmit much of Eckhart's basic teachings when Eckhart himself was branded as heretical. Some of Eckhart's sermons were preserved under Tauler's name and found their way into print in the 1521 Basel edition of Tauler's works.