Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tauler, Johann

TAULER, Johann (c. 1300–1361), was born about the year 1300 in Strasburg, where his father was a wealthy burgher. It is probable that he entered the Dominican convent in his native city about the year 1313, while Meister Eckhart was still professor of theology (1312–1320) in the monastery school. From Strasburg he went to the Dominican college of Cologne, and some believe that his superiors sent him a few years later to St James’s College, Paris. After his theological education was finished he returned to Strasburg. In 1324 the pope placed under an interdict these parts of Germany, including Strasburg, which supported the excommunicated emperor Louis of Bavaria. It was one of the privileges of the Dominican and Franciscan orders to be allowed to perform religious services when the secular and all other regular clergy were silenced by an interdict. The Dominican order, however, had taken the side of Frederick, and in most places refused to say mass; but in Strasburg they remained in the deserted city, kept their churches open, and administered to the citizens the consolations of religion. It is supposed that this conduct of the Strasburg Dominicans was due to the influence of Tauler. In 1339 the heads of the order interfered, and commanded the monks to close their churches. The town council in return banished the Dominicans from the city, Tauler, with some of his brethren, found refuge in Basel, although that city, like Strasburg, sided with the emperor. During these years Basel was the headquarters of the “Friends of God” (Gottesfreunde, see Mysticism, vol. xvii. p. 133), and Tauler was brought into intimate relations with the members of that pious mystical fellowship. He returned to Strasburg probably in the year 1346. It is somewhat difficult to trace his later life. The Black Death came to Strasburg in 1348, and it is more than probable that, when the city was deserted by all who could leave it, Tauler remained at his post, encouraging by sermons and personal visitations his terror-stricken fellow-citizens. His correspondence with distinguished members of the Gottesfreunde, especially with Margaretha Ebner, and the fame of his preaching and other work in Strasburg, had made him known throughout a wide circle of pious people. He seems to have made preaching journeys, in the later years of his life, to Cologne and to other places in the Rhineland. He died in the year 1361.

It is somewhat difficult to form an estimate of the religious life and opinions of Tauler. For many years the chief modern authority upon the subject was the late Prof. C. Schmidt of Strasburg, whose views had been introduced into England in Miss Winkworth’s book upon Tauler. According to Schmidt, Tauler’s religious life divides into two parts, before and after what may be called his second conversion. In the first period Eckhart rules his religious life; in the second he is under the influence of the mysterious “Friend of God in the Oberland,” whom Schmidt asserts to be Nicholas of Basel. Denifle doubts the historical character of this episode and the genuineness of the book, while Preger admits the fact of the conversion, but refuses to identify the mysterious stranger with Nicholas of Basel.

It is still more difficult to determine the precise nature of the theological opinions of Tauler. Denifle maintains that the only genuine remains of Tauler are the eighty well-known Sermons included in the earliest edition and four others in two manuscripts, all of which bear Tauler’s name; Preger seems inclined to admit in addition the Sermons in the account of Tauler’s conversion; both critics exclude the famous Book of Spiritual Poverty, Schmidt, on the other hand, while admitting the authenticity of all the above-named sermons, calls the Book of Spiritual Poverty Tauler’s masterpiece.

If we take the Sermons by themselves, then Tauler’s teachers in theology were the Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, the two abbots of St Victor, Thomas Aquinas, and, above all, Theodoric of Freiburg and Meister Eckhart. His theology will represent the purest and highest type of German mysticism (see Mysticism), and, by insisting upon personal relationship to God, freedom from the thraldom of authority, and the worthlessness of mere good works without the renewal of the inward life, will represent a tendency in theology which found full expression in the reformation of the 16th century. If, on the other hand, the Book of Spiritual Poverty be included among the genuine writings of Tauler, then undoubtedly his views have more distinct connexion with that doctrine of the appropriation of the benefits of Christ’s work of redemption by an imitatio Christi finding expression in a life of evangelical poverty which is such a characteristic of the religious life of the century to which he belonged. The problem is a very difficult one, and it may be questioned whether we are yet in a position to solve it. Denifle is undoubtedly correct in his statement that we need critical texts of 14th-century mystical writers, and that very great uncertainty exists with reference to the authors of the individual mystical writings of that period. It may be added that it is very probable, when the organization and method, of work among the “Friends of God” are taken into consideration, that many mystical books of devotion were the work, not of one, but of several authors, and that the conditions of the problem concerning the authenticity of Tauler’s writings are not unlike those which exist among the books and tracts ascribed to Wickliffe. This at all events may be safely asserted, that Tauler’s sermons are among the noblest in the German language. They are not so emotional as Suso’s, nor so speculative as Eckhart’s, but they are intensely practical, and touch on all sides the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life.

Tauler’s Sermons were printed first at Leipsic in 1498, and reprinted with additions from Eckhart and others at Basel (1521, 1522) and at Cologne (1543). There is a recent edition by Julius Hamberger, Frankfort, 1864. See Denifle, Das Buch von geistlicher Armuth., 1877; Carl Schmidt, Johann Tauler von Strassburg, Hamburg, 1841; Miss Winkworth, Tauler' s Life and Sermons; R. A. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics., 3d ed., vol. i. pp. 214-307. The third volume of Preger’s Gesch. der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter., which will treat of Tauler, is in the press.