THE DOMINICAN MYSTICS of fourteenth-century Germany are usually viewed as distrustful of ascetic practices and affective expressions of religious devotion. Understood to be characteristic of this trend is the earliest vernacular treatise which Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260– 1328) composed for the Dominican brethren of Erfurt, where the famed mystic and theologian was prior from 1294 to 1303, in which the fraternity is instructed to avoid excessive attention to religious works and practices (uebunge, in Mittelhochdeutsch). In these Reden der unterscheidunge (“Counsels on Discernment”), delivered to the brothers as part of the spiritual instruction that accompanied their nightly meal, the Meister outlines his doctrine of “detachment” (abgescheidenheit) or “letting be” (gelâzenheit). The truly detached, for Eckhart, are those who, in “living without a why,” deny their own wills and seek union with the pure ineffable Godhead in the ground of their souls by avoiding all attachments. The Meister, in the Reden, thus opines that:

It was impossible, the Meister believed, to achieve union with divinity when locked into a pattern of egoistical devotions and ascetic practices. For God himself is neither “this” nor “that” and cannot be approached through particular ways. To attempt to do so, Eckhart claims, is like wrapping God in a mantle and shoving him beneath a bench. Ultimately, Eckhart preaches, those committed to outward displays of penitential and pious devotion may appear perfect, but inwardly they are nothing more than ignorant donkeys.