Unfortunately for Meister Eckhart, church officials found his defense unconvincing. Charged with heresy by Pope John Paul XXII, Eckhart died before the investigation could be completed. Sometime before his death, Eckhart abandoned his effort to refute the charges. Succumbing to the pressure applied by his inquisitors, he “absolutely and totally revoked” the objectionable passages in his writings and sermons. Nonetheless, on March 27, 1329, Pope John XXII issued the papal bull In agro dominico, a scathing condemnation of Eckhart’s teachings. As you read this excerpt from the bull, pay particular attention to the pope’s characterization of the dangers posed by Eckhart’s ideas. How did he justify the church’s aggressive prosecution of this Dominican monk and doctor of theology?

In agro dominico (March 27, 1329)

John, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to perpetual memory.

In the field of the Lord over which we, though unworthy, are guardians and laborers by heavenly dispensation, we ought to exercise spiritual care so watchfully and prudently that if an enemy should ever sow tares over the seeds of truth (Matthew 13:28), they may be choked at the start before they grow up as weeds of an evil growth. Thus, with the destruction of the evil seed and the uprooting of the thorns of error, the good crop of Catholic truth may take firm root. We are indeed sad to report that in these days someone by the name of Eckhart from Germany, a doctor of sacred theology (as is said) and a professor of the order of Preachers, wished to know more than he should, and not in accordance with sobriety and the measure of faith, because he turned his ear from the truth and followed fables. The man was led astray by that Father of Lies who often turns himself into an angel of light in order to replace the light of truth with a dark and gloomy cloud of the senses, and he sowed thorns and obstacles contrary to the very clear truth of faith in the field of the Church and worked to produce harmful thistles and poisonous thornbushes. He presented many things as dogma that were designed to cloud the true faith in the hearts of many, things which he put forth especially before the uneducated crowd in his sermons and that he also admitted into his writings. . . .

Now we saw to it that all the above articles were examined by many doctors of sacred theology, and we ourselves have carefully examined them along with our brethren. Finally, both from the report of the doctors and from our own examination we have found the first fifteen articles in question as well as the two final ones to contain the error or stain of heresy as much from the tenor of their words as from the sequence of their thoughts. The other eleven, the first of which begins “God does not properly command, etc.,” we have found quite evil-sounding and very rash and suspect of heresy, though with many explanations and additions they might take on or possess a Catholic meaning. Lest articles of this sort and their contents further infect the hearts of the simple among whom they were preached, and lest in any way whatsoever they should gain currency among them or others, on the advice of our brethren mentioned above we condemn and expressly reprove the first fifteen of these articles and the other two at the end as heretical, the other eleven as evil-sounding, rash and suspect of heresy, and likewise any books or writings of this same Eckhart that contain the above-mentioned articles or any one of them.

If anyone should presume to defend or approve the same articles in an obstinate manner, we desire and order a process of heresy against those who would so defend or approve the fifteen articles and the two last, or any one of them, as well as a process of suspicion of heresy against those who would defend or approve the other eleven articles according to their literal sense.

Further, we wish it to be known both to those among whom these articles were preached or taught, and to any others to whose notice they have come, that the aforesaid Eckhart, as is evident from a public document drawn up for that purpose, professed the Catholic faith at the end of his life and revoked and also deplored the twenty-six articles, which he admitted that he had preached, and also any others, written and taught by him, whether in the schools or in sermons, insofar as they could generate in the minds of the faithful a heretical opinion, or one erroneous and hostile to the true faith. He wished them to be considered absolutely and totally revoked, just as if he had revoked the articles and other matters severally and singly by submitting both himself and everything that he had written and preached to the judgment of the Apostolic See and our own judgment.

Given at Avignon, on March 27, in the thirteenth year of our pontificate.

Source: Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, trans., Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 77, 80–81.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER