Meister Eckhart’s Use of the Vulgate

Abstract

Although Meister Eckhart’s thought is commonly referred to as speculative mysticism, the Biblical text is constantly present, not only in his German sermons and treatises but also in his scholastic writings. Thanks to the newly founded University of Paris, the 13^th century saw a renewed effort at emendating the Latin Bible by purging both the subsisting parts of the Vetus Latina and St. Jerome’s Vulgate of bad readings. Considering the fact that Eckhart had studied and taught in Paris in the late 13^th and early 14^th century, his way of dealing with the Biblical text seems rather peculiar. By analysing his way of quoting certain verses from the Book of Wisdom, this paper intends to show that, if Eckhart’s does indeed often change the wording or the word order of the Vulgate version, he never does so for philological but only for philosophical and theological reasons. To him, the text of the Old and New Testament is never “just words” but has to be quoted so as to mirror the metaphysical subtext of reality, which is the divine Logos himself.