Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart was a German Dominican theologian and mystic, one of the greatest speculative minds of the medieval period. He preached a radical vision of the soul's unity with God — not merely as a moral relationship but as an identity at the deepest ground of being — and developed an apophatic theology that pushed language to its limits.

His German sermons, addressed to lay audiences and religious communities alike, gave vernacular theology a philosophical depth it had never had before. Condemned posthumously by Pope John XXII on charges of heresy, Eckhart's influence endured through the Rhineland mystical tradition, shaped figures from Tauler and Suso to Hegel and Heidegger, and continues to resonate in contemporary spirituality and philosophy of religion.