The "Traktat von der Minne": A Chapter in the Reception of Meister Eckhart's Mysticism

Despite the condemnation of twenty-eight articles from Meister Eckhart's Latin and German works by Pope John XXII in 1329, the Dominican mystic continued to be read by a variety of German and Dutch writers for the next century and a half. Eckhart's reception is evident not only among the German Dominicans, but also among Franciscans and Augustinians. The Traktat von der Minne is a vernacular scholastic quaestio on 1 John 4:16 ("God is love"). This work, unusual both in form and content, has recently been ascribed to the Augustinian master John Hiltalingen of Basel (ca. 1332–1392). The treatise combines Augustinian illumination theory, the identification of the movement of love within the soul as the Holy Spirit and not a created form of grace, and Eckhart's teachings about the uncreated something in the soul. Hiltalinger's Traktat is one of the most original adaptations of Eckhart's thought in the fourteenth century.