William of Saint-Thierry's Legacy

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Chapter 8 William of Saint-Thierry’s Legacy: Progress toward Trinitarian Participation in the Unio Mystica in Johannes Tauler’s Sermons

Glenn E. Myers

1 Introduction

William of Saint-Thierry (c. 1085–1148) helped to shape the understanding of spiritual formation from his day to our own. Especially through his Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei (Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu), known as the Epistola aurea (Golden Epistle), William’s thought was carried far and wide. By the end of the 12th century, manuscripts of the Golden Epistle were spread- ing across Europe—in monastic collections as well as city libraries—as has been traced by Volker Honemann.1 By the 14th century it was published ex- clusively in collected works under the name of William’s close friend, Bernard of Clairvaux.2 One notable example of William’s influence is found in the 14th-century German preacher, Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361). The Dominican’s eighty- some extant sermons show evidence of the Cistercian’s influence regarding both the process of spiritual formation and the framing of the unio mystica

1 See Volker Honemann, Die ‘Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei’ des Wilhelm von Saint-Thierry: Lateinische Überlieferung und mittelalterliche Übersetzungen, Münchener Texte und Unter- suchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 61 (Zürich, München: Artemis, 1978); Honemann, “Eine neue Handschrift der deutschen ‘Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei,’” in Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Editionen und Studien zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, (eds.) Konrad Kunze, Johannes Mayer, Bernhard Schnell (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989), 332– 49; and Honemann, “The Reception of William of St Thierry’s Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei during the Middle Ages,” in Cistercians of the Middle Ages, CS 64, (ed.) E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 5–18. See also Jean-Marie Déchanet, “Les manuscrits de la Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu du Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et le prob- lème de la ‘Preface’ dans Charleville 114,” Scriptorium 8 (1954): 236–71. 2 See Jean-Marie Déchanet, “Introduction,” The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu, trans. Theodore Berkeley, CF 12 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980), ix–x. The German Preacher cites Bernard throughout his sermons; see Louise Gnädinger, “Der minnende Bernhardus: Seine Reflexe in den Predigten des Johannes Tauler,” Cîteaux – Commentarii Cistercienses 31 (1980): 387–409.

William of Saint-Thierry’s Legacy 197 as the culmination of that growth in terms of participation in Trinitarian communion. For some years, Tauler’s acquaintance with the Golden Epistle has been postulated—especially regarding the three-person paradigm that presents not only three states of the spiritual life but also three persons, as it were, within each person—although not all scholars have been convinced of William’s influence.3 This chapter seeks to demonstrate Tauler’s dependence on William, offering passages from the Dominican’s sermons that so closely follow the Golden Epistle as to be difficult to explain otherwise. Moreover, it highlights the influence that the Cistercian Father had on Tauler’s theological synthesis. The first section presents the manuscripts of the Golden Epistle to which Tauler most likely had access. The second shows William’s stamp on Tauler’s concept of spiritual progress, demonstrating the German Preacher’s direct reliance on various passages of the Golden Epistle. The final section describes the Golden Epistle’s influence on Tauler’s understanding of the unio mystica as the culmination of spiritual formation. In that union with the divine, referred to as the “unity of spirit,” the spiritual person is not only deified but also participates in the very Intra-Trinitarian communion of the Godhead. Such a Trinitarian understanding of the apex of the spiritual life is William’s most profound imprint on Tauler’s theology.

3 Alois Haas attributes Tauler’s paradigm to William (Haas, Nim din Selbes war: Studien zur Lehre der Selbsterkenntnis bei Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler und Heinrich Seuse [Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1971], 134–39). Bernard McGinn maintains it is likely that Tauler is follow- ing William (McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 4 [New York: Crossroad, 2005], 252, 590, n. 54). Louise Gnädinger asserts that Tauler was probably acquainted with William’s work and adds the names of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of Saint-Thierry as potential sources for the German Preacher’s “Christian-Neoplantonic imprinted mystical theology” (Gnädinger, Johannes Tauler: Lebenswelt und mystische Lehre [München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1993], 122, n. 29, 368). Regarding Tauler’s three-person paradigm, however, she lists William as only one of many potential sources (Gnädinger, Johannes Tauler, 135–36). Marie-Madeleine Davy claims that William influenced Tauler (Davy, Un traité de la vie solitaire: Lettre aux frères du Mont- Dieu de Guillaume de St-Thierry, Études de philosophie médiéval 29, part 2 [Paris: Traduction Française, 1940], 42–48). Georg Steer follows Davy’s attribution of Tauler’s thought to Wil- liam, finding the foundation for both in Bernard’s Sermon 20 on the Song of Songs (Steer, “Bernhard von Clairvaux als theologische Autorität für Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler und Heinrich Seuse,” in Bernhard von Clairvaux: Rezeption und Wirkung im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, (ed.) Kasper Elm [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994], 246–47). I agree with Dietrich Schlüter who wonders whether this three-person paradigm might serve as a prevail- ing feature in Tauler’s thought, despite the fact that the terminology is in a limited number of sermons; see Schlüter, “Philosophische Grundlagen der Lehren Joahnnes Taulers,” in Johannes Tauler, ein deutscher Mystiker: Gedenkschrift zum 600. Todestag, (ed.) Ephrem Filthaut (Essen: Hans Driewer Verlag, 1961), 126.