Johannes Tauler

Writer, born in Strasbourg, Alsace, of a prosperous bourgeois family. After entering the Dominican order, he became a pupil of Meister Eckhart. Some 80 mystical sermons (1339–61) remain from his career in Strasbourg and Basel which made their mark on the devotional literature of the time. Couched in relatively plain language, they are didactic and ethical in tone, and favour the active over the contemplative life. He had come to turn away from the speculative mysticism of Eckhart and Seuse towards more practical pastoral matters.

He was born about the year 1300 in Strasbourg, and was educated at the Dominican order convent in that city, where Meister Eckhart, who greatly influenced him, was professor of theology (1312 - 1320) in the monastery school. From Strasbourg he went to the Dominican college of Cologne, and perhaps to St James's College, Paris, ultimately returning to Strasbourg. Legend says that Tauler nevertheless continued to perform religious services for the people, but though there may be a germ of historical truth in this story, it is probably due to the desire of the Sixteenth century Reformers to enroll the famous preachers of the Middle Ages among their forerunners.

From 1338 - 1339 Tauler was in Basel, then the headquarters of the "Friends of God", and was brought into intimate relations with the members of that pious mystical fellowship. The Black Death came to that city in 1348, and it is said 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.

The well-known story of Tauler's conversion and discipline by "The Friend of God from the Oberland" cannot be regarded as historical. Tauler was famous for his sermons, which were considered among the noblest in the German language -- not so emotional as Henry Suso's, nor so speculative as Eckhart's, but intensely practical, and touching on all sides the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life.

Tauler's sermons were printed first at Leipzig in 1498, and reprinted with additions from Eckhart and others at Basel (1522) at Cologne (1543) and Lisbon (1551).