Questions on the Attributes of God

QUESTIONS ON THE ATTRIBUTES (OF GOD):FOUR REDISCOVERED PARISIAN

QUESTIONS OF MEISTER ECKHART

MARKUS VINZENT

King’s College [email protected]

AbstractAmongst his surviving works, Meister Eckhart’s Quaestiones Parisienses areregarded as ‘one of the most famous sets of texts that medieval thinkinghas produced’. Until recently, only five of such Quaestiones were known:three that were dated to Eckhart’s first magisterium in Paris in 1302/3, theother two from his second in 1311/12. Two years ago, the author of thisessay (re-)discovered four more Quaestiones Parisienses which had previ-ously been excluded as dubious or spurious texts and therefore did notenter the critical edition of Eckhart’s Latin works in the standardKohlhammer edition. This essay reports the story of their first discoveryby Martin Grabmann, traces the history and reasons for their being dis-puted, reinvestigates the problem of authenticity, and advances argumentsthat suggest that they are genuinely authored by Meister Eckhart anddate from his second stay in Paris.

A DISCOVERY AND ITS DECLINE

We owe two sets totalling five recognized Parisian Questions1 byMeister Eckhart, texts which form the ‘most contested chapter ofhis thinking’,2 to Martin Grabmann (1875–1949), who published

1 Critical edition by Bernhard Geyer in Meister Eckhart, Die LateinischenWerke, ed. E. Benz et al., 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1936 V.) (hereafterLW), vol. 5, pp. 27–83; Eng. trans. Master Eckhart: Parisian Questions andPrologues, translated with an introduction and notes by Armand A. Maurer(Toronto, 1974).

2 Werner Schussler, ‘Gott — Sein oder Denken? Zur Problematik derBestimmung gottlicher Wirklichkeit in den Quaestiones parisienses MeisterEckharts von 1302/03’, in L. Honnefelder and W. Schussler (eds.),Transzendenz: Festschrift K. Kremer (Paderborn, 1992), pp. 163–81, at 165;see also Burkhard Mojsisch, Meister Eckhart: Analogie, Univozitat u. Einheit(Hamburg, 1983); Gerhard Krieger, ‘Mystik und Scholastik: Zur Diskussionum Meister Eckhart im Blick auf seine Quaestiones parisienses’, TThZ 107

(1998), pp. 123–47, at 130–47; Stephan Grotz, ‘Meister Eckharts Pariser

The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 63, Pt 1, April 2012

� The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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doi:10.1093/jts/fls049

them in 1927. Without doubt, these Parisian Questions trans-formed our understanding of Eckhart during the twentiethcentury.3

In this essay I would like to add to Eckhart’s portfolio exactlythe same number—five—more Parisian Questions, again in twosets, one single Question, or rather an excerpt from a Question,derived from a manuscript preserved in France, found onlyrecently by my esteemed colleague Professor Walter Senner, OPand as yet unpublished,4 and four more Questions which Irediscovered last year while preparing my monograph The Artof Detachment (2011) for print.5 The latter four Questions werealready known through Grabmann’s previously mentioned edi-tion, although they were regarded as dubious and have not beenrecognized as coming from Eckhart’s pen. In this essay I hope topresent convincing new internal and external evidence for theauthenticity of these texts.

I begin with Grabmann’s discovery and recapitulate the famousand recognized five Parisian Questions, and then discuss the almostunknown further four Parisian Questions, before turning to theadditional Question from Troyes.

Martin Grabmann never pretended to be an Eckhart specialist.His acquaintance with Eckhart came about through his admiredteacher Heinrich Denifle (1844–1905) and grew during the timewhen he was working on his re-creation of Aristotelianism inmedieval thinkers. He is best known for his studies on Aristotle’sreception and, of course, for those on Thomas Aquinas, the figurewho overshadows all other Dominican theologians.

Grabmann’s family history links him with the Dominicans, arelationship that goes back to the fifteenth century.6 His home at

Quaestio I: Sein oder Nichtsein — ist das hier die Frage?’, FZPhTh 49 (2002),pp. 370–98.

3 Martin Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckhartsund ihre Stellung in seinem geistigen Entwicklungsgange: Untersuchungen undTexte’, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse 32/7 (Munich, 1927).

4 Walter Senner is preparing an edition and German translation, but he hasallowed me to present the text to the English-speaking world.

5 M. Vinzent, The Art of Detachment (Eckhart: Texts and Studies, 1;Leuven, 2011).

6 See Martin Grabmann, ‘Autobiographische Notizen’, in id., MittelalterlichesGeistesleben: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, vol. 3

(Munich, 1956), pp. 1–9; Philipp W. Rosemann, ‘Martin Grabmann’, in HelenDamico (ed.), Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of aDiscipline, vol. 3: Philosophy and the Arts (New York, 2000), pp. 55–74; ThomasPrugl (ed.), Credo ut intelligam: Martin Grabmann zum 50. Todestag (Schriften derUniversitatsbibliothek Eichstatt, 41; St. Ottilien, 1999); Hermann Kostler and

E C K H A R T ’ S PA R I S I A N QU E S T I O N S 157

Winterzhofen in Germany’s rural Upper Palatinate, a village of138 inhabitants today, still contains the same house no. 2 whichGrabmann ‘himself found a mention of . . . in a Dominican list forcollections from 1483’. One ancestor, Michael, made payments tothe Order. And there were further personal links. MartinGrabmann himself had joined the Dominicans in 1896 as anovice, although after six months he discovered that it was not hisvocation, and instead he went on to read philosophy and theologyat the College of Philosophy and Theology at Eichstatt. In 1898 inthe same town and diocese he was ordained a Catholic priest, butlater, in 1921, he became a Dominican tertiary.

I remember both the Upper Palatinate and Grabmann’sEichstatt, as I had the pleasure to attend the same College ofPhilosophy and Theology where 85 years earlier Grabmann hadbegun his first steps in academia. Grabmann’s aura was still vividlypresent, not only through his master student of medieval theology,Ludwig Ott (1906–85), who became known for both his biog-raphy of Grabmann7 and his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma(1952), but also through all the anecdotes he told about his teacher.

Grabmann was self-taught in medieval palaeography, which heregretted,8 consoled only by his admiration for his own self-taughtteachers,9 amongst others Denifle, the first editor of Eckhart’sLatin works.10 Looking back over his life, Grabmann noted thathis autodidacticism had led him along various detours and wrongtracks, causing him to spend unnecessary extra time, and leavinggaps.11 In the case examined here, the eVects went further—hisreliance on expert knowledge and advice made him change his

Ludwig Ott, Martin Grabmann: Nachlass und Schrifttum. Mit einem Nachlaßteil vonClemens Baeumker (VeroVentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes, 30; Paderborn,1980); Lydia Bendel-Maidl, Tradition und Innovation: Zur Dialektik von historischerund systematischer Perspektive in der Theologie. Am Beispiel der Transformationen inder Rezeption des Thomas von Aquin im 20. Jahrhundert (Religion – Geschichte –Gesellschaft, 27; Munster, 2004), pp. 177–301.

7 See Ludwig Ott, Martin Grabmann, sein Leben und sein Werk (Neumarkt/Oberpfalz, 1975); id., ‘Martin Grabmann und seine Verdienste um dieThomasforschung’, Divus Thomas 27 (1949), pp. 129–53; id., Nachruf, in id.(ed.), Martin Grabmann zum Gedachtnis (Eichstatt, 1949), pp. 8–21.

8 Grabmann, ‘Autobiographische Notizen’, p. 1 f.; the books on which herelied are mentioned in M. Grabmann, ‘Forschungsziele und Forschungswegeauf dem Gebiete der mittelalterlichen Scholastik und Mystik’, in id.,Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. 2 (Munich, 1926), pp. 1–49 (with furtherliterature).

9 See Bendel-Maidl, Tradition und Innovation, p. 183.10 Martin Grabmann, P. Heinrich Denifle O.P.: Eine Wurdigung seiner

Forschungsarbeit (Mainz, 1905), p. vi.11 Grabmann, ‘Autobiographische Notizen’, p. 2.

M A R K U S V I N Z E N T158

scholarly judgement in a last-minute reversal. The change,however, as we will see, was made too hastily and out of anovercautious distrust in his own ability in palaeographical matters.This self-scepticism is surprising in a scholar whose life andscholarly output were overwhelmingly occupied with manuscriptsearches in European libraries, most notably in the BayerischeStaatsbibliothek in Munich and the Vatican Library, with editingand commenting on these findings, and with publishing ground-breaking studies on scholastic theologians and philosophers. Asthe newly appointed professor of dogmatics at Eichstatt in 1906,Grabmann had, at the age of 31, already published ‘three books,along with forty-five articles and reviews’—an impressive achieve-ment even by today’s standards. During the years 1909 and 1911

he added his two-volume chef-d’oeuvre, Die Geschichte derscholastischen Methode, which earned him his first honorarydoctorate of the ‘prestigious Institut Superieur de Philosophie atLouvain, in 1913’.12

Here follows the story of his discovery and its decline fromview. On 4 December 1926, Grabmann contributed a paper to the‘Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse’ of theBavarian Academy of Science. In this paper, published in arevised version in 1927 in the Academy’s ‘Abhandlungen’,Grabmann described his discovery of two sets of ParisianQuestions by Meister Eckhart, one set of three Questions whichhe had found in the Codex Avenionensis 1071, and one set withtwo Questions, found in the Codex Vaticanus latinus 1086.13 Alsoin 1927, the Franciscan Ephrem Longpre (1890–1965),14 who hadindependently come across the same codex from Avignon,presented to the public the three Questions from this manuscript.15

Only nine years later, in 1936, Antoine Dondaine (1898–1987)added his critical edition of all the Questions that Grabmann and

12 The work was dedicated to Heinrich Denifle; see Rosemann, ‘MartinGrabmann’, p. 56.

13 On Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1086 see nowWilliam J. Courtenay, ‘Reflections on Vat. Lat. 1086 and Prosper of ReggioEmilia, O.E.S.A.’, in Christopher David Schnabel (ed.), Theological Quodlibetain the Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century (Leiden, 2007), pp. 345–58, at 345:‘One of the most important documents for early fourteenth-century thought isthe Sentences commentary and ‘‘notebook’’ of the Augustinian Hermit Prosperof Reggio Emilia.’

14 Jean Hamelin, Les Franciscains au Canada: 1890–1990 (Quebec, 1990),pp. 297–316.

15 Ephrem Longpre, ‘Questions inedites de Maıtre Eckart, O.P., et deGonzalve de Balboa, O.F.M.’, Revue neo-scolastique de philosophie 29 (1927),pp. 69–85.


Longpre had brought to light, together with a short commentaryby Raymond Klibansky (1905–2005).16 This edition formed partof the planned Dominican series of Eckhart’s works, MagistriEckardi Opera Latina, which had been started shortly before.The ambitious new series did not last long, however, and wasdiscontinued because the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaftwithheld the necessary manuscript material, while starting itsown competing edition of Eckhart’s German and Latin works withKohlhammer in Nazi Germany: publishing Eckhart was morethan an academic endeavour.

Grabmann insisted that he had already come across thepotential new Questions in the Codex of Avignon beforeLongpre’s mention, in an article of 1924, of Gonsalvus’s refutationof Eckhart in this manuscript, pointing to his own previousannouncement of 1923.17 He reported his great luck whilestudying the codex, which had been sent from Avignon toMunich, in finding within it two Latin Questions of Eckhart:

(1) ‘Whether in God being and knowing are the same?’(Utrum in Deo sit idem esse et intelligere?)18

(2) ‘Whether the knowing of angels, insofar as one calls itaction, means their being?’ (Utrum intelligere angeli, utdicit actionem, sit suum esse?)19

Also present in the manuscript was a report of Eckhart’s views,embedded in a polemical reaction to Eckhart by Gonsalvus deVallebona:

(3) ‘Gonzalvus de Balboa, ‘‘Whether the praise of God athome is more noble than loving him on the way?’’’

16 Magistri Eckardi Quaestiones Parisienses, ed. Antonius Dondaine, commen-tariolum de Eckardi Magisterio adiunxit Raymundus Klibansky (MagistriEckardi Opera Latina, 13; Leipzig, 1936).

17 See Ephrem Longpre, ‘Gonzalve de Balboa et Duns Scot’, Etudes fran-ciscaines 36 (1924), pp. 641–5; 37 (1925), pp. 170–82; Martin Grabmann, DieKulturwerte der deutschen Mystik (Augsburg, 1923); Grabmann mentions thathe came across the indication of Eckhart’s treasure via M. L. H. Labande,Catalogue generale des manuscrits des bibliotheques publiques de France.Departements 27–9: Avignon (Paris, 1894); see Grabmann, ‘NeuaufgefundenePariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’, p. 268.

18 Fo. 113r–v; a critical re-edition in ‘Eckhart von Hochheim, Utrum in deo

sit idem esse et intelligere? Sind in Gott Sein und Erkennen miteinanderidentisch?’ Herausgegeben, ubersetzt und mit einer Einleitung versehen vonBurkhard Mojsisch, Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch fur Antike undMittelalter 4 (1999), pp. 179–97.

19 Fos. 116v–117

r.


(Utrum laus Dei in patria sit nobilior ejus dilectione invia?)20

In 1926, at Easter, only months before Grabmann gave hispaper to the Bavarian academy in December of that year, he hadcome across the other manuscript, Codex Vaticanus latinus 1086,where he found further Eckhart Questions.21 The first Question inthis Vatican codex is a shortened version or an excerpt from aQuestion, at the beginning of which the name ‘M. Ayerdus’ isinscribed in the margin:

(4) ‘Whether motion without end implies a contradiction?’(Utrum aliquem motum esse sine termino implicetcontradictionem?)22

Another shortened Question follows:

(5) ‘Whether in the body of the dying Christ on the crossthe forms of the elements remain?’ (Utrum in corporeChristi morientis in cruce remanserint forme elemen-torum?),23 with the name above it ‘M. Aycardus’(fo. 222

r).

Thereafter follow four more abbreviated Questions withoutauthor name in the margin, all discussing topics of God’sattributes: omnipotence, power, property, diversity, and relation:

1. ‘Does the omnipotence which is in God need to be con-sidered as absolute power or as directed power?’ (Utrumomnipotentia quae est in Deo debeat attendi secundumpotentiam absolutam vel secundum potentiam ordinatam?)24

2. ‘Is the essence of God more real than the property?’(Utrum essentia Dei est actualior quam proprietas?)25

3. ‘Whether diversity is a real or an intellectual relation?’(Utrum diversitas esset relatio realis vel rationis?)26

4. ‘Whether the diVerence with regard to the intellectis prior to the diVerence with regard to the thing?’

20 Fos. 120v–121

v.21 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,

pp. 17, 266.22 Fo. 143

r.23 Fo. 222

r–v.24 Fo. 222

v.25 Fos. 222

v–223r.

26 Fo. 223r–v.


(Utrum diVerentia secundum rationem sit prior quam dif-ferentia secundum rem?)27

After Grabmann had established, with the help of the learnedVatican scholar August Pelzer, who was preparing the relevantmanuscript catalogue, that M. Ayerdus and M. Aycardus bothmeant Meister Eckhart, our German scholar commented on theselatter four Questions: ‘I was of the opinion that these fourQuestions together with the previous Question of M. Aycardushave to be seen as part of the same work of one single author,namely of M. Aycardus, especially as these Questions are markedout by a line drawn above and below to distinguish them from theprevious and the following Questions of other authors clearlymarked in the manuscript.’28

In the meantime, however, Grabmann had received a note fromPelzer, who had spent one and a half months working on thiscodex to write the entry for the catalogue that subsequentlyappeared in 1931.29 Pelzer’s note, as Grabmann reports, ‘castserious doubts’ on his own view of the four last Questions.30 Thenote reportedly had the following content: the fact that severalQuestions are grouped under one name does not necessarily meanthat all the Questions belong to this one author.

At first sight, Pelzer’s observation is unsurprising and onewonders why it made Grabmann sceptical. Had Grabmann basedhis earlier judgement on external or internal grounds? Themessage does not endorse anything other than the generalscepticism towards external attributions. Hence, this manuscriptmakes no exception to the palaeographical rule that authorascriptions in texts, margins, subscriptions, and prefaces are nomore than hints for the critical reader and editor; sometimes theyare helpful, sometimes they are traps and deceits, but anyascription requires reservations and cautious checking againstthe content. How many manuscripts have been wrongly ascribedto Thomas, how many to other saints? The rule of thumb is—theholier an assumed author, the more widely known and acceptedan authority, the more an ascription has to be scrutinized.

27 Fos. 223v–224

r.28 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,

p. 21.29 A. Pelzer, Codices Vaticani Latini, vol. 2/i: Codd. 679–1134 (Bibliothecae

Apostolicae Vaticanae Codices manu scripti recensiti; Vatican City, 1931).30 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’, p. 21.

Grabmann had admiration for Pelzer, as one can see in his ‘Forschungsziele undForschungswege’, p. 4.


Even though in this case we are dealing with a disputed scholar —‘Aycardus’ in the top margin—which reduces the risk of a wrongascription, pseudonymity cannot be ruled out. On the other hand,neither the lack of any ascription nor even the presence of anothername next to these Questions would automatically excludeEckhart’s authorship. The argument has to be made on the basisof both external and internal grounds, especially content andlanguage.

In fact, Pelzer wrote in his catalogue of 1931 that for thisparticular section of Vat. lat. 1086, fos. 176

r–299v, ‘every author

has his own booklet for himself where his Questions are groupedtogether’.31 No surprise, as the normal procedure of Quaestionesdisputatae was a structured process in which four diVerentQuestions by a doctoral candidate were debated, with the firsttwo being the most substantial.32 Conversely, masters involved inthese doctoral processes always had to respond to four Questions.Questions, therefore, are by their very nature multiple rather thansingle products. According to Pelzer’s catalogue description, thebooklet in which Eckhart’s Question or Questions appear (fos. 221

r–228

v) formed one of several ‘exceptions’, insofar as the ‘booklet’was common to several masters; but even this booklet stillgrouped several questions for each of the masters included.33 It‘comprises four authors: the masters Jean du Val des Ecoliers,Amodeus (de Castello), Eckhart, and Gerard de Saint-Victor’.34

Now, if this external evidence was not the reason for Grabmannto move away from his own reading of these Questions, what wasthe cause of his scepticism?

In 1927, at Easter, a year after his discovery of the Vaticanmanuscript as a source for Eckhart, Grabmann travelled to Romeand visited Pelzer. They jointly checked the codex again. Pelzerpointed out to the German scholar, in the margin of fol. 222

v (seeFig. 1), where the first of the debated Questions starts, what hebelieved to be an erasure, diYcult to make out as the margin ofthis folio is heavily filled by a hand of the fifteenth century.Grabmann had worked with photographs before and had not

31 A. Pelzer, ‘Prosper de Reggio Emilia, des Ermites de Saint-Augustin, etle Manuscrit Latin 1086 de la Bibliotheque Vaticane’, Revue neo-scolastique 30

(1928), pp. 316–51: ‘chaque personnage a son cahier a lui ou sont groupees sesquestions’.

32 Joseph Koch, Durandus de S. Porciano O.P.: Forschungen zum Streit umThomas von Aquin zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts (Munster i. W., 1927), p. 160 f.

33 Pelzer, ‘Prosper de Reggio Emilia’, p. 320.34 Ibid., p. 341.


FIG. 1. Vaticanus Latinus 1086, fo. 222v, with the opening of the first

of the ‘doubtful’ Questions at the beginning of the first column


noticed an erasure, but followed Pelzer’s suggestion. A recentclose inspection of the manuscript by myself, an independentintensive study of the codex and this particular folio by ProfessorWalter Senner, OP with the use of UV-light, and another byProfessor Loris Sturlese rendered a clear result: Pelzer was misledby the later hand(s) and had not come to the correct codicologicaldescription. In his catalogue entry, Pelzer had later noted: ‘Inmarg. librarius al?’,35 but he did not draw the conclusion thatthese potential two characters point to a particular scholar. Pelzerdoes not mention another master, for example Alanus, as author ofthese Questions.36 However, to Pelzer the assumed erasureeliminated Eckhart as author, and Grabmann conceded: ‘If therereally was the name of another scholar from the circle of authors ofthese Quaestiones then the Quaestio that started here did notbelong to M. Aycardus, nor are the further three Quaestiones hiswork.’37 In the light of the recent scrutiny of the codex, I can onlyconclude that Grabmann’s scepticism, based on external groundsalone, was due to his over-reliance on Pelzer.

Loris Sturlese, who will publish the rediscovered new Questionsin the forthcoming Supplement to volume five of Eckhart’s Latinworks, gives the following codicological description:

The Codex Vaticanus Latinus 1086 contains more than 500 Quaestioneswhich derive from the beginning of the second decade of the 14th c. ofthe theological faculty in Paris, collected by the Augustinian monkProsper de Reggio Emilia. . . . Like a running headline, Prosper wrotedown in the middle of the top of each page the name of the respectiveauthor of the Question. Only in the case of the Quaternio and Binio,where Eckhart’s name appears, something curious happened.Apparently, Prosper had started to attribute these to Questions byJohn Du Mont St. Eloi, hence he wrote down this name on allpages of this Quaternio (M. Io. de monte sancti elygii or M. Io. s. el.),and numbered the columns. Then he started writing down theQuestions of John. Having arrived at page 4, however, he had run outof material by this master. So he decided to use the remaining part ofthe booklet to bring together a miscellany, made up of four diVerentmasters (including Eckhart), none of whom alone would provideenough material to fill the rest of the booklet. For this reason and inthis case, the previous method of using a running headline with an author’sname no longer worked. Prosper, therefore, erased the previously writtenheadline (M. Io. s. el.) and the numbering of the columns (17 V.)

35 Pelzer, Codices Vaticani Latini, vol. 2/i: Codd. 679–1134, p. 670.36 Pelzer, ‘Prosper de Reggio Emilia’, p. 342.37 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,

p. 21.


and replaced both with a summarizing headline Communis and new num-bers (starting from 1), while the names of the diVerent authors were nolonger put on top of the page, but next to the line where the respectiveseries of Questions began. So we read M. Io. vall. scoll. at fo. 221

ra (col. 1),M. Amodeus at fo. 221

va (col. 3), M. Aycardus at fo. 222ra (col. 5), M. G.

de sancto victore at fo. 224ra (col. 13), and again M. Amodeus at fo. 224

vb

(col. 15) and M. Io. de vall. scoll. at fo. 227ra (col. 21). . . . In two cases, the

start of a new column coincided with the beginning of the Question of a newauthor (Meister Eckhart and John du Val) and Prosper wrote down theauthor’s name at the left of that line. . . . The note on Eckhart (Aycardus)gives the beginning of this section (l. 1 at the left of fo. 222

r) and carriesthrough to the next note on G. de sancto victore at l. 4 of fo. 224

ra. Prosperattributed to Meister Eckhart not only the Question ‘Utrum in corporeChristi morientis in cruce remanserint formae elementorum’, but also the fol-lowing four Questions ‘Utrum omnipotentia’ (fo. 222

v), ‘Utrum essentia dei’(fos. 222

v–223r), ‘Utrum diversitas’ (fo. 223

r–v), ‘Utrum diVerentia’(fos. 223

v–224r).38

With regard to Pelzer’s erasure, Sturlese adds:

It is diYcult to say which erasure Pelzer had in mind. Since there arefour places in the margins of fo. 222

v with an erasure and in three ofthese a new text has been inserted, which subsequently was erasedagain, we thus have a ‘second’ erasure. . . . [In addition to Prosper’scorrections of the running headline and the numbering of the col-umns, which account for three erasures] about a hundred years lateran anonymous user filled all the remaining empty pages and often themargins of this codex in a tiny handwriting . . . especially on the pagethat interests us. He filled the upper margin with four full lines; onthe left margins he wrote a dense text of 56 lines and continued onthe lower margin, adding eight more lines to the bottom of the page.Because he needed space, he ‘prepared’ the upper margin by erasingthe given information, the numbering, and copied the number of theQuestion in the middle of the upper margin, because he appreciatedthe running numbers of the Questions. The text which he wrote intothe ‘prepared’ margins runs over the erasures and makes it extremelydiYcult to read them. To sum up: The erasures relate to (1) thenumber 3 of the column; (2) the headline Communis; (3) thenumber 4 of the column; (4) the number 308 of the Question.There are no other erasures, none at the place where one wouldhave expected to find a potential ‘new Master’. . . . With regard to at-tribution and contrary to Bernhard Geyer, we therefore have to con-clude that the Questions of fos. 222

r–224r are ‘authenticated’ by the

name of Eckhart (Aycardus), and as far as Prosper’s attributions arereliable, to be reckoned as notes from Eckhart’s teaching.39

38 L. Sturlese, Einleitung, LW 1/ii (forthcoming).39 Ibid.


Nevertheless, Pelzer’s misleading observation and Grabmann’sprematurely negative conclusions should not be turned tooquickly into a positive argument, as if they guaranteedEckhart’s authorship. Having seen that the older external objec-tions are to be rejected, we need to consider the content of theQuestions as well.

As early as 1933, Palemon Glorieux (1892–1979), anotherspecialist in scholastic teaching and scholars in thirteenth-centuryParis, maintained against Pelzer’s and Grabmann’s scepticism thatEckhart was the author not only of the recognized five Questions,but also of the so-called ‘dubious’ questions.40 Contrary toGlorieux, however, the editor Dondaine and commentatorKlibansky remained with their colleagues Pelzer and Grabmannand cemented the view of the inauthenticity of these Questions.They edited both sets, the recognized and the ‘dubious’ ones, thelatter to allow scholars to make up their own minds, but with theaddition of some observations with regard to their likely in-authenticity. On the basis of their arguments Bernhard Geyer,however, excluded the ‘dubious’ Questions from the Kohlhammeredition of Eckharts Lateinische Werke, which resulted in thembeing locked up in the archives and not explored thereafter.

What were Klibansky’s further arguments against theirauthenticity? Raymond Klibansky, like Grabmann, was neveran Eckhart specialist, but made an eminent contribution toEckhart studies. Wheras Grabmann was a scholar ofAristotelianism in the Middle Ages, Klibansky became hisPlatonic counterpart. Because of his Jewish family backgroundKlibansky had to emigrate from Nazi Heidelberg in 1933;he found refuge as a lecturer at King’s College London41

40 P. Glorieux, ‘A propos de ‘‘Vatic. lat. 1086’’: Le personnel enseignant deParis vers 1311–1314’, Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 5 (1933),pp. 23–39, at 36; id., Repertoire des Maıtres en theologie de Paris aux XIIIe

siecle (Paris, 1933), vol. 1, p. 181.41 See Jill Kraye, ‘Professor Raymond Klibansky’, The Independent, 4 Nov.

2005: ‘In a defiant letter explaining that he considered it incompatible with hisduties as a scholar and a teacher to fill out an oYcial form disclosing thereligious aYliation of his parents and grandparents, he nevertheless made apoint of declaring that his entire lineage, as far as he knew, had been Jewish.He caused further oVence with his work on the Latin writings of MeisterEckhart (published as Magistri Eckardi Opera Latina, 1934–6), in which hehighlighted the influence of medieval Arabic and Jewish thinkers. This chal-lenged the view of Nazi ideologues who presented Eckhart’s German works asa pure expression of Aryan philosophy. Klibansky’s position in Heidelbergrapidly became untenable (despite support from Wilhelm Furtwangler, thenew regime’s favourite conductor). He was locked out of his oYce and hisnotes were confiscated. In August 1933, having secured a diplomatic pouch in


before becoming Frotingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysicsat McGill University, Montreal.42

In his short commentary on the Parisian Questions whichaccompanies Dondaine’s 1936 edition, Klibansky asserts that inorder not to judge arbitrarily, one must scrutinize the content anddoctrine of these questions and compare them with authenticworks of Eckhart.43 According to his own reading there are fewsuch parallels, but on the other hand there are not suYcientdiscrepancies between these dubious Questions and Eckhart’sworks to reject their authenticity. His major scepticism derivesfrom the overall ‘colour’ of the Questions.44 Of course, this isa problematic argument against the benchmark of only fourother recognized Questions (plus the content of a fifth), and theremaining corpus of Eckhart’s Latin works comprises verydiVerent literary genres: homilies, exegetical commentaries, andapologetic refutations. In addition, the abbreviated Questions maybe of a diVerent ‘colour’ than those of full length, as we can seewhen we compare some of Eckhart’s lengthy Latin homilies withthe staccato notes of others.

More important, in my view, are a few remarks Klibansky addsregarding the content of these Questions. The discussion of‘relation’, for example, Klibansky recognizes as part of an ongoingdebate initiated by Henry of Ghent.45 That the author of the

which to carry his books, he left Germany, stopping for a few weeks in theNetherlands to do some manuscript research in the library of LeidenUniversity, before crossing the Channel to England. Arriving penniless inLondon, he set about improving his knowledge of English and learning itsphilosophical terminology by reading Hobbes and Hume. With support frominfluential scholars like Etienne Gilson, who wrote to the Academic AssistanceCouncil describing Klibansky ‘as one of the four or five greatest academics inthe world of medieval philosophy’, he obtained lectureships at King’s CollegeLondon, then Oriel College, Oxford, and Liverpool University.’

42 See Hommage a Raymond Klibansky (Montreal, 1991) (see pp. 10–17 forhis bibliography); see, for example, R. Klibansky, The Continuity of PlatonicTradition during the Middle Ages (London, 1939); id., ‘Plato’s Parmenides inthe Middle Ages and the Renaissance: A Chapter in the History of PlatonicStudies’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 1 (1943), pp. 281–330.

43 Klibansky, ‘Commentariolum de Eckardi Magisterio’, in Magistri EckardiQuaestiones Parisienses, ed. A. Dondaine (1936), p. xxvi: ‘At ne arbitrarium fiatiudicium, quaestiones ipsas scrutari, doctrinam perpendere et cum certis oper-ibus Magistri conferre oportet.’

44 Ibid.: ‘Maioris est momenti, quod via ratiocinandi, immo modus cogi-tandi, totus denique color quaestionum ab Eckardo prorsus alieni sunt.’

45 See e.g. Klibansky pointing to De praedicamento relationis e.g. Henricus deGandavo, Quodlib. III q. 4; V q. 2; IX q. 3; XV q. 5, Utrum relatio habeat debiliusesse ceteris praedicamentis (I fo. 84

v sq.; 228v sq.; 238

r sq.; II fos. 68v–75

v Zuccolius);Summa art. 35 q. 8; art. 55 q. 5 sq. (I fo. 230

v sq., II fo. 109r sq., ed. Ascensius, Paris,


dubious Questions reflects this discussion and makes use ofarguments by Durandus and his opponents to Klibansky is acounter-argument to Eckhart’s authorship.46 This is a surprise, asGrabmann points to precisely the same situation to root Eckhart’srecognized Questions—those from Avignon and the Vatican—inthe master’s contemporary discourses, engaged with exactly thesame scholars: Henry of Ghent, Scotus, Durandus, Godfried ofFontaine, Robert Cowton, Hervaeus Natalis, and others.47 Hence,what is regarded as typical of Eckhartian authorship by onescholar is taken as counting against him by another.

Moreover, Klibansky points to the example of the discussion of‘relation’ in the second of the dubious Questions and asserts thatEckhart wrote little on this topic, in writings scattered throughouthis works. However, we know that Eckhart’s style is markedprecisely by a scattering of systematic thoughts across his work—he rarely condenses a discussion into one systematic tract. Indeed,it was specifically the discussion of inner-divine ‘relation’ withregard to principle and paternity that first drew my attention tothese Questions and made me consider their potential authenticity.Why have the parallels escaped previous scholarship? The reasonis that more systematic and concise discussions of relation andpaternity in Eckhart are present only in vernacular texts, whichstill await publication in the critical edition of Eckhart’s Germanworks.48 In a written communication Georg Steer, editor ofEckhart’s vernacular works in the Kohlhammer edition, assuredme of the authenticity of these writings. Klibansky’s judgement,

1520); Thomas de Balliaco, Quodlib. I q. 4 (a. 1301–2), cod. avenion. 1071, fo. 2vb

sq.; Duns Scotus, e.g. Quodlib. q. 6 (a. 1306–7; fo. 16v sq., ed. Venice 1506; XII 142

Wadding); Ioannes de Polliaco, Quodlib. V q. 2 (a. 1312; v. Glorieux, La litteraturequodlibetique de 1260 a 1320 [Paris, 1935], p. 228); Guido Terreni, Quodlib. II 4 (v.ibid., p. 170); postea, c.1320, Guillelmus de Ockham, Comment. in Sent. I d. 30 q. 5

H, In quo diVerunt relatio realis et relatio rationis et d. 31 q. 1 A, Utrum identitas,similitudo et aequalitas in divinis sint relationes reales (sigs. ee IIrb–IIIvb, ed. Lyons,1495).

46 Klibansky, ‘Commentariolum de Eckardi Magisterio’, p. 41, 10 f.: cf.Durandus, Sent. I d. 30 q. 2 n. 12 et 17 (fo. 72

rb sq.); ad totam quaest. v. Sent. Id. 2 q. 3 n. 21–6 (fo. 16

rb sq.).47 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,

p. 90.48 See esp. Eckhart, Pr. LIV (p. 175, 14 f. PfeiVer): ‘Seht, alsus verstant

underscheit vater unde vaterlicheit, da man dise rede geistliche bringet uf diesele’; this highly complex and systematic homily has been accepted as an au-thentic text of Eckhart by the editor of Eckhart’s German works, Georg Steer(email to the author dated 18 Mar. 2010), and will appear in vol. 6 of thecritical edition; see for more M. Vinzent, ‘Meister Eckhart on Divine Essenceand the Trinity’ (forthcoming).


based on a more limited number of Eckhartian texts, thereforecannot be criticized; on the contrary, this case shows theimportance of the ongoing editorial work that has advanced ourknowledge of Eckhart over the past 70–80 years. I cannot show indetail here the extent to which the so-called dubious Questionsinterlink consistently with Eckhart’s other works, especially thoseforthcoming in the critical edition, but I should like to drawattention first to a few significant parallels which have so far notbeen noticed by the very few readers of the so-called dubiousQuestions, and second to what Grabmann called Eckhart’s ‘idio-syncratic teachings’ (‘Eigenartiges’), which can be found in theseQuestions.

GOD’S NATURE GENERATES, NOT THE FATHER’S FATHERHOOD

In his Exposition of the Book of Exodus,49 specifically in hiscommentary on Exod. 15:3, Eckhart discusses God’s omnipo-tence. The question of whether God’s omnipotence is absolute orrestricted was a key point of disagreement among scholars in thethirteenth century.50 In a passage that displays the closest parallelsto the first of the so-called dubious Questions, Eckhart addressesthe apparent discrepancy between God as almighty and ‘able to doeverything’, and the fact that ‘Scripture, the doctors, and thesaints say that certain things God cannot do’.51 Is God omnipo-tent, or is he restricted? We are in an ideal position to compare anauthentic text with what is being said in this dubious Question.

Eckhart solves the problem of omnipotence through hisessentialist agent theory. ‘Every agent’, he writes, ‘has naturalpower over those things and solely over those things through itselfwhich the form covers that is the principle of action in it. Being,however, is the principle of every divine action. Therefore, Godhas power over everything that is or can be.’52 Or in less scholasticEnglish: agents can act only on things which are in their remit.The remit is determined by what Eckhart calls ‘form’—theessential or natural quality of something without which it would

49 Eckhart, In Ex. 27–78 (LW 2, pp. 32–82), trans. in Meister Eckhart,Teacher and Preacher, trans. and ed. Bernard McGinn and Frank Tobin(New York and London 1987) (trans. altered).

50 See e.g. Bonaventura, Comm. in Sent. I d. 7 a. 1 q. 1.51 Eckhart, In Ex. 27 (LW 2, p. 32, 5): in scriptura et a doctoribus et sanctis

dicatur deus quaedam non posse.52 Eckhart, In Ex. 28 (LW 2, p. 32, 9–12): omne agens potest naturaliter in

omnia illa et sola illa per se, quae continentur sub forma, quae in ipso est princi-pium actionis. Sed esse est principium omnis actionis divinae. Igitur deus potestomnia quae sunt et quae esse possunt.


not be what it is. For example the form, the essential quality, offire is heat. The remit of fire, therefore, is everything that can beburned, but fire cannot act on something that cannot be burnedand does not produce heat. It is similar, but only similar, withGod. God, too, acts like an agent, but because God’s form isbeing, his remit is not limited or restricted like that of fire, but heis omnipotent in the absolute sense (excluding only its opposite:nothingness), so that he can do ‘everything that is or can be’,hence excluding only what is not and cannot be.

In the first of the so-called dubious Questions the authoraddresses the same problem of whether God is omnipotent in anabsolute or restricted sense. His answer is the same as in Eckhart’scommentary on Exodus: God can do not only what it suits him todo in a restricted manner; he is omnipotent in an absolute sense.He does what suits him, but because ‘omnipotence encompassesall that does not entail the contrary, and this is more than whatis directed’, he has ‘absolute power because one has to attributeit to what can itself be extended to all that does not implythe contrary, . . . being directed to what is possible. Otherwise, thepower of God would be limited.’ As in Eckhart’s commentary, theanswer in the Question does not refer to God’s will—as if Godcould do anything that he wishes to do—but to God’s being; hecan do whatever is and can be, ‘because he can do anything that ispossible’.53

In his commentary on Exod. 15:3 Eckhart continues todiVerentiate between essential form and action with regard towhat the agent can do and cannot do, moving from exampleto example, first ‘fire’ as mentioned, then ‘sight’ and ‘architect’.He then adds his prime example of paternity and divinegeneration. He explains: ‘The power of generating in the Fatheris in the essence rather than in paternity.’54 Hence, the divineFather does not beget his Son through fatherhood or because theFather is father, but because the Father’s form or essential

53 Translations are based on the forthcoming edition by Loris Sturlese.54 Eckhart, In Ex. 28 (LW 2, p. 34, 1): potentia generandi in patre est essentia

potius quam paternitas, and he refers to Thomas Aquinas, S. theol. I q. 41 a. 5:potentia generandi significat in recto naturam divinam, sed in obliquo relationem(scilicet paternitatem). The Divine essence as the power or potentiality forfatherhood of the Father, with the simple and clear diVerence between onthe one side ‘the essence and its potentiality without personality’, and onthe other the divine ‘person’, is expressed in another complex but highly im-portant homily which stems with all likelihood from Eckhart’s pen; seeEckhart, On Romans 11:33 (Meister Eckhart und seine Junger, ed. F. Jostes[Freiburg, 1895], n. 19, p. 15, 28–32).


characteristic is God. Instead, fatherhood expresses the relationbetween Father and Son. Hence, the Father generates insofar ashe is God, which is the reason why God as the agent alsocommunicates his power of generating to the Son without turningthe Son into the Father, the Son being not only the generated, butalso the generating God.

Already in his Sermones et Lectiones super Ecclesiastici, homiliesand lectures written in his role as Prior Provincial to address hisProvincial Chapter of the German Dominican Province Saxoniashortly after returning from his first Parisian stay, Eckhart hadnoted that the ‘saints and doctors say rightly that in the Godheadthe essence does not generate. Unanimously, the doctors also saythat the power to generate is not an absolute power, but an essencetogether with a relation.’55 He had earlier expounded theargument that there are only two categories in the Godhead,namely essence and relation, and that ‘the essence as essence doesnot diVuse itself, because it is directed towards its inner self, nottowards something else, and because it belongs to itself and isthrough itself, is namely always one in the Godhead’. Hence,essence and relation, as the two categories in God, make God theone who generates. But he adds that it is a ‘tricky question’ whichof the two, the essence or the relation, comes first.56 In his work onEcclesiastes he seems to agree with tradition, saying that ‘it seemsnecessary that the relation is the reason for bearing fruits and fordiVusion in the Godhead . . . namely the Father does not speak theWord, nor generates the Son insofar as he is essence or substance,but insofar as he is principle . . . and the principle, as the term‘‘first’’ indicates, implies relation of order and origin.’57 A closereading of this passage, however, indicates that Eckhart is alreadymoving beyond the saints and masters. He does not assert that theFather generates the Son, insofar as he is Father, the relative to therelated Son, but insofar as he is principle. He endorses thisdiVerence by adding that according to the Liber de causis it is notsaid that the first (in masculine form, primus) ‘is rich in itself ’, but

55 Eckhart, In Eccl., n. 11 (LW 2, p. 241, 1–3): Propter quod optime dicuntsancti et doctores quod in divinis essentia non generat. Dicunt etiam doctorescommuniter quod potentia generandi non est absolute, sed essentia cum relatione.

56 Eckhart, In Eccl., n. 11 (LW 2, p. 241, 3 f.): Quid autem principalius,nodosa quaestio est.

57 Eckhart, In Eccl., n. 12 (LW 2, pp. 241, 5–242, 1): Oportet igitur neces-sario quod relatio sit, ratione cuius est fecunditas et diVusio in divinis . . . paterenim non dicit verbum nec generat filium, in quantum essentia sive substantia,sed in quantum principium . . . Principium autem, sicut et li primum, relationemimportat ordinis et originis.


that the neuter ‘first (primum) is rich in itself ’,58 so that it is God—and not the Father—who with regard to the relation in himgenerates, just as it is God in his essence, not in his essence quaessence, but in his essence with relation, that generates the Sonand creates all creatures. And in this regard he is correct in solvingthe tricky question in his Commentary on John that in theGodhead, wherein are only essence and relation, ‘the power ofgenerating in the Godhead directly and more principally belongsto the essence rather than to the relation that is paternity’.59

In this Eckhart has developed a clear counter-position to, forexample, Bonaventura, who maintained that ‘the power ofgenerating signifies as much a relation as a substance, but rightlya relation’, but also radicalizes Thomas Aquinas, who in principlemaintained the essential character of divine generation, butallowed for a middle position, the relational power being themedium through which the essence becomes active and acommunication of divine power to the Son which in the Son isonly passive: while the Father has the active power to generate, theSon has the power only passively, as the one who is generated.60

Without going into further detail here, which would openanother barrel of questions, which I have addressed elsewhere,61

let me draw attention to the second of the dubious Questions.The author of this Question addresses the topic of power andpaternity. The problem is whether ‘the Father generates throughfatherhood, because’, as some say, ‘through it [fatherhood] he[the Father] is constituted in his being’, or whether the Fathergenerates his Son through his divine essence, his nature, because itis not fatherhood that is the principle, but divine essence ornature. The answer is given with reference to John Damascene—‘Generating is the work of nature’—the same reference used inThomas Aquinas and in the authentic Eckhart.62 The author ofthis Question deduces from Damascene the same anti-Bonaventuraand anti-Thomas solution that we encounter in Eckhart: it is

58 Eckhart, In Eccl., n. 12 (LW 2, p. 242, 1–3): In De causis enim dicitur:‘primum est dives per se’. ‘Primum’ ait, non primus, quia ratione relationis siveordinis habet deus diVusionem sive fecunditatem tam in divinis quam in creaturis.

59 Eckhart, In Ioh., n. 43 (LW 3, p. 36, 4 f.): potentia generandi in divinis inrecto et principalius convenit essentiae quam relationi, quae est paternitas; id., Pr.103 (p. 336 PfeiVer).

60 Thomas Aquinas, S. theol. I q. 32 a. 3, resp.; I q. 30 a. 2, ad 1; I q. 42,a. 6, ad 3; I q. 41, a. 5, resp.

61 Vinzent, ‘Meister Eckhart on Divine Essence and the Trinity’(forthcoming).

62 See Eckhart, In Gen. II (LW 1, p. 512, 4 f.; p. 656, 11 f.), where it iseven applied to the generation of creatures.


divine essence that is the principle and, as principle is essence, theessence makes the Father a father with his fatherhood. Notfatherhood or paternity, but God’s nature (qua relation, of course)is the principle of generation; paternity is only the property, theFather the expression of an essential relation. And the authordraws exactly the same conclusion as Eckhart: because the Fathergenerates out of divine essence, God communicates the power ofgenerating to his Son without turning the Son into the Father.63

In Eckhart’s further comments on Exod. 15:3, after a longerdigression, he engages in a discussion of what ‘relation’ in God isand how both substance and relation can be thought of in Godwho is only one. He comes back to the premiss that he had set outbefore, the above-mentioned thesis:

where we said that God is and does all things by his substance, it isclear that in God there is only one category, namely the substance bywhich he is, by which he is powerful, by which he is wise, by whichhe is good, and the like, which in creatures belong to the nine cate-gories of accident. But then comes the question of how Augustine,Boethius, and the saints and the doctors in harmony say that thereare two categories, substance and relation, in the Godhead?64

In his answer, Eckhart makes the distinction between an intellec-tual, hermeneutical idea, the category, and the very existence ofsomething within an entity or a thing. True predication does notrefer to the thing, but to the intellectual concept, hermeneutics.This very topic provides a further parallel, as it is developed in thenext, the third of the so-called dubious Questions on ‘whetherdiversity is a real or an intellectual relation’, and where the authoranswers the question ‘how do we understand the term ‘‘relation’’?’with reference to precisely the same diVerentiation between anintellectual, hermeneutical idea, the abstract term, and its exist-ence in a thing, as Eckhart does in his commentary. Even theexample used in both the second and the third Question, of thediVerence between ‘whiteness’ and ‘white’,65 is the same as that

63 Eckhart, of course, goes even further and thinks of God communicatingthis power to his creation; see Pr. 100 (DW 4/i, pp. 277, 47–278, 61).

64 Eckhart, In Ex. 62 (LW 2, pp. 66, 14–67, 5): Ex praemissis, ubi dictum estquod deus est et operatur omnia sua substantia, patet quod in deo est unicumpraedicamentum, scilicet substantia, qua est, qua potens est, qua sapiens est, quabonus est et huiusmodi, quae in creaturis pertinent ad praedicamenta novem acci-dentis. Sed tunc restat quaestio, quomodo Augustinus, Boethius, sancti et doctoresconcorditer dicunt in divinis esse duo praedicamenta, substantiae scilicet etrelationis.

65 Ibid. (LW 2, p. 67, 11): de albedine et albo.


used by Eckhart in his commentary on Exodus. In his commen-tary, Eckhart writes:

Although ‘whiteness’ is in a subject and is an accident or rather some-thing inhering in a subject, the term, however, does not signify theway whiteness is inhering. Just as the word ‘white’ signifies the qual-ity alone, so does ‘whiteness’ also co-signify or rather connote thesubject, and for this reason signifies itself as an accident and some-thing inhering. This is why Avicenna is said to have thought that theterm ‘white’ principally signified the subject and secondarily theaccident.66

With regard to his definition of ‘relation’, Eckhart concludesthat we must diVerentiate between ‘relation’ as an intellectualabstract, the category, which means ‘the way in which somethingrefers to something else’ or ‘what comes from another and isdirected to another’, and the existing relation itself between tworelatives. The intellectual category as such does not ‘positanything at all in the subject and does not say that anythingexists or inheres’.67 Hence, the relation as intellectual category(secundum modum significandi sive praedicandi) can be placed in theGodhead.68

Similarly, the author of the second Question writes that‘whiteness is always understood as the foundation prior to therelation’ and in the third Question he makes the same distinction asin Eckhart’s commentary, using the example of the white Socratesand Plato, to distinguish between ‘the relation according to what Isay or according to reason’, hence the hermeneutical or intellectualone, and ‘a relation . . . according to existence’, maintaining that areal relation, or a relation according to existence cannot be placedin the Godhead.

66 Eckhart, In Ex. 63 (LW 2, pp. 67, 11–68, 3): Albedo enim quamvis sit insubiecto et accidens sive inhaerens subiecto, non tamen significat albedinem permodum inhaerentis, sicut hoc nomen ‘albus solam quidem qualitatem significat’(Aristotle), sicut albedo et subiectum consignificat sive connotat, et propter hocsignificat ipsam per modum accidentis et inhaerentis. Unde et Avicenna dicitursensisse li album significare principalius subiectum et posterius accidens.

67 Eckhart, In Ex. 64 (LW 2, p. 68, 4–10): Sciendum igitur quod ‘in relationesunt duo: respectus scilicet relationis quo refertur ad alterum, et in hoc consistitpraedicamentalis ratio ipsius relationis’. Est etiam in relatione considerare ‘ipsumesse relationis’ ‘secundum quod fundatur in aliquo rei’, puta qualitate, ‘quantitateaut huiusmodi’. Relatio igitur secundum genus suum et secundum id, quod estrelatio, non ponit aliquid prorsus in subiecto nec dicit aliquod esse nec inesse, sedid quod est ex altero et ad alterum est.

68 See Eckhart, In Ex. 64 (LW 2, p. 69, 4–7): Secundum modum significandisive praedicandi, qui modus genus praedicamentale relationis constituit, manet indivinis.


The fourth Question takes this topic one step further, asking‘whether the diVerence with regard to the intellect is prior to thediVerence with regard to the thing?’—or, what comes first, thediVerence between relatives or the diVerentiation made by theintellectual concept of relation? The author of the Question onlyconfirms what a reader of Eckhart would have assumed: if we takediVerence in the sense of existing, real diVerence, then it is prior tothe intellectual diVerentiation, whereas, if we think of diVerenti-ation in the intellectual sense, ‘the intellectual diVerence followsthe intellectual act’, because the intellect is the principle ofeverything.

From this comparison alone, it becomes clear not only thatthe Eckhart of the commentary on Exodus and the author of theseQuestions express similar views, develop similar topics, and comeup with identical solutions, but what is even more compelling,the order of the series of the so-called dubious Questions, whichtaken per se is diYcult to explain, finds its parallel in Eckhart’scommentary on Exod. 15:3. Against the background of thiscommentary, both the content and the order of the four dubiousQuestions suddenly become clear; at the same time, some of thecommentator’s digressions and shortcuts are clarified against thebackground of the scholastic debate carried out in the Questions.

GOD CAN MAKE WHAT IS NOW INDECENT

The first of the so-called dubious Questions leads to thefollowing daring statement: ‘Out of absolute power God canmake what is not decent now. If, nevertheless, these things weremade, they would be decent and just.’

Grabmann noted the ‘sharp contrast’ between this position, thatGod can make even something that is not decent, and that ofThomas Aquinas and the general opinion of the thirteenthcentury.69 Henry of Ghent asked the same question: ‘whetherGod can do something that is not decent or rather that does notseem to fit him to do’.70 Henry’s answer, however, was theopposite of that given to our first Question: God cannot dosomething indecent:

In God’s work good, honest, and expedient are the same. So becauseGod cannot do what is not good, he cannot do what is not decent,appropriate, or honest. And to put it precisely, he can make nothing

69 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,p. 358.

70 Henry of Ghent, Quodlib. XI 2.


which it would be inappropriate or disorderly for him to make.Whatever he makes is appropriate for him to make and whatever hemakes and is able to make, if it were appropriate for him to make it,would be made decently and in order.71

Whereas Henry—even with regard to God’s absoluteness—doesnot allow God to make anything indecent, our author endorses aradical absoluteness of God’s power which also entitles him to dosomething that ‘is not decent now’. Of course, the author addsthat if God made something indecent, it ‘would be decent andjust’. This addition, however, does not diminish the sharp edgeof the principle stated that God’s power does everything.

It was again Grabmann who pointed to Eckhart as the onlyparallel he knew of for this idiosyncratic deviance from Thomas,Henry, and the mainstream scholastic position. Grabmann men-tions specifically Eckhart’s Latin Sermo XXVIII, ‘Good iseverything he made’ (Mark 7:37).72 This homily, forthcoming inan English translation with a commentary,73 is a key text thatrelates directly to the topic of omnipotence, discussed above.74

Eckhart’s interpretation of Mark 7:37 is simple, as so often, and atthe same time highly provocative. He first gives two explanationsfor homiletic purpose, as he terms it (praedicabilia), and thenmoves to a further explanation of disputational character(disputabilia), the section within which the parallel to ourso-called dubious Questions occurs. Eckhart writes in his sermon:

God alone, as first, universal cause makes everything: ‘everything ismade through him’, etc. (John 1:3). Again, he alone makes everythinggood, as the universal End of all things. And further, because Godmakes something he makes it good, and it is good. See [the homily onJames 1:17] ‘(All) best gifts’.75 Further, however, only the final End

71 Henry of Ghent, Quodlib. XI 2: In Dei opere idem sunt bonum, honestum etexpediens. Quare quia Deus nullo modo potest facere quod non est bonum, nullomodo potest facere, quod non sit decens sive decorum sive honestum. Et sic absolutedico, quod Deus nullo modo potest facere aliquid, quod nullo modo et secundumnullum ordinem deceret eum facere. Immo quicquid facit, decet eum facere etquicquid facit et quicquid facere potest, si faceret deceret eum facere et non nisisecundum ordinem decentem faceret. (I am grateful to an anonymous reader forsuggestions about the translation of this text.)

72 LW 4, pp. 252–62.73 See my contribution to Lectura Eckhardi 4 (2011–12).74 The two section do not, as indicated in the critical edition, form two

diVerent sermons, as can be seen from the transitional remark: Vel fiat talisdivisio et introitus (LW 4, p. 254, 1).

75 We do not know of a Latin homily on James 1:17, but a direct parallelargument can be found in the vernacular homily on this scriptural verse,entitled ‘All best gifts’ (Omne datum optimum), Eckhart, Pr. 4 (DW 1,


which is also the first End itself makes something good, both becauseonly that one is properly the End, because an end is not the End, andbecause anything that is in whatever way conceived as being not dir-ected [towards this End] is not a good in itself, and things are goodin themselves only if they are in whatever way redirected [towards it]again.76

Eckhart develops an understanding of good and bad with regardto the primary and ultimate end. God doing everything gooddoes not mean that everything that he makes is good now, be-cause what something is now is not its real essence. Conversely,what is indecent now is not indecent by its nature, but if it isdirected towards the good end it becomes good and just.

Eckhart’s theory leads him in this sermon to disagree explicitlywith Thomas and to side tacitly with Scotus, Bonaventura,Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta, John Pecham, and others whenhe accepts that the precepts of the second part of the decalogue aredispensable, the topic of a specific ethics which I cannot follow uphere.

Despite Grabmann’s initial scepticism with regard to these fourQuestions, when writing about the first Question he thought againabout the possibility of Eckhart’s authorship of it and commentedon the parallels to Eckhart. We can add one more importantelement which even Grabmann missed, and which makesEckhart’s authorship of the first Question very likely.

pp. 60–74, esp. pp. 61, 1–62, 2), which is also quoted in RS 2 n. 102 (LW 5,pp. 342, 21–343, 7).

76 Eckhart, Sermo XXVIII/2 n. 289–90 (LW 4, p. 259, 8–15): Solus deusomnia facit, utpote causa prima universalis, Ioh. 1: ‘omnia per ipsum facta sunt’etc. Item solus bene facit, utpote finis universalis omnium. Et iterum, quia hoc ipsoquod aliquid facit deus, bene facit et bonum est. Vide super ‘5Omne4 datumoptimum’. Rursus autem solus finis ultimus sive etiam primus ipsum facit bonum,tum quia ille solus proprie est finis, quia finis non est finis, tum quia quocumqueposito praeter ordinem in ipsum non est res bona, et quocumque amoto stante ordinein ipsum res sunt bonae. As the anonymous reviewer (above, n. 71) noted, thelatter part of this quote is quite diYcult to translate. Her/his suggestion was,relying on the emendation of LW 4, p. 259, 13 which adds 5qui non estultimus finis4: ‘Again, only the final End which is also the First creates theGood, both because he alone is properly the End, because an end 5which isnot the final end4 is not an end, and because anything out of order is not agood in itself, and [such] things are good in themselves only if they are ren-dered orderly again.’ The German translation of LW 4, p. 259 reads: ‘Fernermacht allein das letzte oder erste Ziel etwas als solches gut. Denn erstens istdieses allein im eigentlichen Sinne Ziel, weil ein Ziel, das nicht das letzte ist,nicht Ziel ist. Zweitens, mag man sich ein Ding noch so vollkommen denken,so ist es nicht gut, wenn ihm die Hinordnung auf das letzte Ziel fehlt; und(umgekehrt), mag man sich Dinge noch so unvollkommen denken, bleibt ihnenaber diese Hinordnung, so sind sie gut.’


In Eckhart’s Latin Sermo XXVIII, we read in the openingsection a literal parallel to one of the recognized ParisianQuestions: ‘being pertains to the whole, not to a part; but thewhole and the perfect are the same according to the third book ofAristotle’s Physics’ (esse autem totius est, non partis. Sed totum etperfectum idem, III Physicorum).77 In the Parisian QuestionEckhart says: ‘being pertains to the whole and only the whole’(esse est totius et solius totius).78 What we need to notice is that theparallel between our Latin Sermo XXVIII and Eckhart’s ParisianQuestion does not derive from one of the three Questions of theAvignon Codex, hence from the Questions held by Eckhart in theyears 1302–3, but from the fifth of the Questions, from Vat. lat.1086, from the years 1311–13. It is precisely the second of the tworecognized Questions in this codex which carries in the margins‘M. Aycardus’, and is immediately followed by the so-calleddubious Questions. Interestingly, in the first of these dubiousQuestions we find a second parallel to the same Latin SermoXXVIII of Eckhart. Moreover, both the Latin Sermo and ournon-recognized Question, but none of the recognized ones, refer tothe same passages in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics.79

We can summarize the parallels that have been identified in twotables.

As one can deduce from Table 2, the parallels and the order ofthe parallels between, on the one hand, the last of the recognizedQuestions from Cod. Vat. lat. 1086 and the first following so-called‘dubious’ Question, and, on the other, Eckhart’s Sermo XXVIII,prove that both questions, contained in the same booklet in theVatican manuscript, derive from Eckhart’s hand. The ordering ofthe first so-called ‘dubious’ Question after Parisian Question 5 inthis booklet finds its logical explanation in the sequence ofarguments in Eckhart’s Latin Sermo. Hence, Parisian Question 5

and the first ‘dubious’ Question not only follow each other in themanuscript, but their arguments belong together as well.

Similarly, we can deduce from Table 1 that the so-called‘dubious’ Questions are neither randomly collected into thisbooklet, nor do they derive from diVerent disputations, but they

77 Eckhart, Sermo XXVIII/1 n. 279 (LW 4, p. 253, 11 f.); see Arist., Dephys. III (G c. 6 207

a13); see id., Metaph. VII (F c. 6 1033

b17).

78 Eckhart, Qu. Par. V (LW 5, p. 79, 11).79 Joseph Koch, the editor of the Latin Sermo, notes correctly that Eckhart

is hinting more directly at Aristotle, Metaphysics VII chapter 6, the book andchapter that is used by the first of the so-called dubious Questions; he should,however, also have retained Eckhart’s correct reference to Aristotle’s Physics.


have a coherent, logical structure which is elucidated by Eckhart’scommentary on Exodus.

Together, the tables show that the hitherto non-recognizedQuestions are not only intrinsically linked with one another, theyare logically connected with the fifth of the already recognizedQuestions. In addition, and not unimportant for further Eckhartstudies, they provide clues as to the potential dating of both SermoXXVIII and the section of the Exposition of the Book of Exodus, asthese Parisian Questions can be dated to the years 1312–13.80 TheQuestions would indicate that the Latin Sermones preserved in the

TABLE 1. The parallels between Eckhart, Exposition of the Book of Exodus

and the so-called dubious Questions of Cod. Vat. lat. 1086

Eckhart, Exposition of the Bookof Exodus

Cod. Vat. lat. 1086, dubiousQuestions

n. 27 on Exod. 15:3—God’s om-nipotence: he can do ‘everythingthat is or can be’.

Question 1—God’s omnipotence:‘he can do anything that ispossible’.

n. 28 on Exod. 15:3—‘The powerof generating in the Fatheris in the nature rather than inpaternity’; God communicatesthe power of generating to theSon without turning him intothe Father (see ibid., nn. 68–70).

Question 2—with regard to pater-nity: ‘Generating is the work ofnature.’ Therefore, nature is theprinciple, not the property (pa-ternity). God communicates thepower of generating to the Sonwithout negating the diVerencebetween Son and Father.

n. 62 on Exod. 15:3—what is ‘re-lation?’ True predication doesnot refer to the thing, but tothe intellectual concept, hermen-eutics. Example of whiteness andwhite.

Question 3—‘How do we under-stand the term ‘‘relation’’?’ It isthrough the diVerentiation be-tween an intellectual, hermen-eutical idea, the abstract term,and its existence in a thing.Example of whiteness and white(Questions 2 and 3).Question 4—continues the dis-cussion of relation with regardto ‘the intellectual diVerence’that ‘follows the intellectualact’, because the intellect is theprinciple of everything.

80 I am grateful to Professor Pater Walter Senner, OP for his view on thedating.


manuscript from Cues may date from Eckhart’s secondMagisterium in Paris and that the commentary on Exodusfound its final redaction during this time. The proximity ofuniversity life and preaching would fit the character of sermonswhich, in Eckhart’s own view, displayed ‘preaching’ and ‘dispu-tation’ or, as he qualifies Sermo XXVIII in his commentary on theBook of Wisdom, ‘preaching’ and ‘exegesis’.81

Taken together these parallels and the daring, idiosyncraticpropositions not only confirm the Eckhartian origin of theso-called dubious Questions, but the Questions themselves alsoadd significant elements to our growing understanding ofEckhart’s philosophy and theology. Moreover, it is very likelythat they are the Questions to which Eckhart himself refers in

TABLE 2. The parallels between Eckhart, Sermo XXVIII, and the accepted

fifth and the ‘dubious’ first Questions of Cod. Vat. lat. 1086

Eckhart, Sermo XXVIII Cod. Vat. lat. 1086, Questions

n. 279—‘being pertains to thewhole, not to a part; but the wholeand the perfect are the same accord-ing to the third book of Aristotle’sPhysics’.

accepted Question 5—‘beingpertains to the whole andonly the whole’.

n. 288—God in his omnipotence isthe ‘only one who gives, who givesbeing, and, therefore, everything isgiven through him. Hence, Godalone made everything insofar as heis the first principle.’

‘dubious’ Question 1—God’somnipotence: ‘he can do any-thing that is possible’.

n. 288—about the question ofwhere evil comes from: ‘Everythingthat is, is of God, of himself aloneand immediately . . . God alonemakes (everything), because theone who gives being, alone givesand gives everything.’ ‘Next, healone as universal end of everythingmakes everything good.’

‘dubious’ Question 1—‘notethat God is not called om-nipotent because in him isthe power for everything,but because he can do every-thing that is possible. One hasto add to this argument thatout of absolute power Godcan make what is not decentnow. If, nevertheless, thesethings were made, theywould be decent and just.’

81 Eckhart, In Sap. n. 216 (LW 2, p. 551, 1 f.): De hoc diVuse valde prae-dicando et exponendo notavi super illo: ‘bene omnia fecit’.


another of his Latin Sermones, Sermo II. This Sermo deals withthe power of generating and the Father communicating hisproperties to the Son, and shows literal parallels to the abovediscussed Sermo XXVIII and to our Questions. In Sermo IIEckhart writes: ‘See below the Questions on the attributes (ofGod)’.82 Evidently Eckhart had attached the one recognized andour so-called dubious Questions on the attributes (of God) to thepublished version of these Sermones.

If these arguments are convincing, our observations allow us toagree with one of the very few scholars who have looked again atthese Questions, the specialist in Thomas Aquinas, AntonKrempel,83 who upheld (like Glorieux before him) Eckhart’sauthorship as late as the 1950s. On the basis of the above findings,which I first presented at the International Medieval Congress,Leeds 2010, Professor Loris Sturlese, the editor of Eckhart’s Latinworks in the Kohlhammer edition, is now preparing the (no longer)dubious Questions for publication and Professor Walter Senner isworking on their edition and German translation (together with thepreviously accepted Questions) for Reclam, Stuttgart.

In addition to these nine Questions we can add another recentfinding, made by Professor Senner a few months ago.

THE NEWLY DISCOVERED EXCERPT OF AN ECKHART QUESTION

IN TROYES, BIBLIOTHEQUE MUNICIPALE, MS 269

Professor Senner came across a note in this codex whichcontains the following sections on fos. 1–197

v: Thomas de Aquino,OP, Quaestiones de potentia; Jacobus Capocci de Viterbo, OESA,Quodlibeta I–II; and Petrus de Alvernia, Quodlibeta. Folio 85

v isillustrated in Fig. 2, with the note below the main text in Fig. 3.Professor Senner’s transcript of this footnote is as follows:

.i.ekardus T fo. 85v

– Item quolibet creato nec producto aliud producendum estnon ens etsi 5quid4 producatur habebit rationem entis.Sed potentia Dei se extendit super omne ens et super omnenon ens, quia 5contrarium omne / contradictio484 /

marg inf. 1

nec est ens neque non ens, quia homo non est non homo,et non homo non est homo. Queritur etc. /

82 Eckhart, Sermo II/1 n. 8 (LW 4, p. 10, 5): Vide Quaestiones de attributisinfra.

83 A. Krempel, La Doctrine de la relation chez Saint Thomas: Expose histor-ique et systematique (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1952), p. 407.

84 No longer legible.


FIG. 2. Troyes, Bibliotheque municipale, MS 269, fo. 85v

FIG. 3. Detail of bottom margin of Figure 2


– Item cuilibet finito si addatur finitum totum erit finitumet nunquam infinitum. Sed omne creatum est finitum etomne creabile. Ergo etc. Immo ex hoc quod aliquid /uadit in infinitum ex hoc sequitur quod nunquam erit actuinfinitum, quia si esset infinitum, ulterius non procederetin infinitum. /– Item secundum Anselmum solus deus est quo maiuscogitari non potest.85 Ergo omni creato dato maius cogitaripotest. Sed deus potest plus facere quam aliqua creaturacogitare 5potest4. Queritur etc.

marg inf. 5

Eckhart’s text refers to James of Viterbo’s first QuodlibetDisputation, here the second Question: ‘Whether God can makeinfinite species of any sort, namely superiors, inferiors, equal ones,and lateral ones?’ My translation:

Eckhart:Next, to whatever has been created or produced, another can beproduced, a non-being, even if that 5which4 might be producedhas a reason to be. But the power of God extends itself on allbeing and all non-being, because 5anything contrary4 would beneither being nor non-being, because man would be non-man, andnon-man would be man. One will ask, etc.

Next, if to any finite thing is added another finite thing, the totalwould be finite, but never infinite. But everything created and every-thing creatable is finite. Therefore, etc. Therefore, it follows evenmore from the fact that something moves into infiniteness, that itwill never be really infinite, because if it were infinite, it could notfurther proceed into infiniteness.

Next, according to Anselm, God alone is the one than whom nothinggreater can be thought. Therefore to every given created thing some-thing greater can be thought of. But God can do more than anycreature 5can4 think of. One will ask, etc.

Without going into detail here, I would just like to add that theQuestion of this excerpt, too, could belong to the collection ofQuestions on the attributes (of God).86 The clue is given by thequote from Anselm’s Proslogion. A comparison with otherinstances where Eckhart quotes or implicitly uses Anselm’s text

85 Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion c. 2–3 in Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus S.Schmitt, vol. 1 (Seckau, 1938, repr. Edinburgh, 1946), pp. 101–3.

86 The dating depends, naturally, on the codicological evidence, as James ofViterbo’s text points to the beginning of the fourteenth century, but the mar-ginal note with the Eckhart text could have been added after 1311–13. WalterSenner believes that the excerpt comes from an Eckhart Question that datesback to his first Magisterium.


reveals that he is discussing God’s power of generating andcreating.87 We know from Anselm of Como, who heard ourMaster (Magister Aycardus) viva voce in Paris in the years 1311–13 taking part in a disputation, that he gave views on Aristotle’sPhysics and others, not found even in our now enlarged portfolioof Parisian Questions.88 Hence, there is still the prospect andhope that we might be lucky again and find more in the near ordistant future.

CONCLUSION

At present we have the following list of Parisian Questions (orexcerpts) from the hand of Eckhart:

From 1302/3Codex Avenionensis 1071

1. ‘Whether in God being and knowing are the same’2. ‘Whether the knowing of angels, insofar as one calls it

action, means their being’

The reported views within Gonsalvus’ refutation of Eckhart:

3. ‘Gonzalvus de Balboa, ‘‘Whether the praise of God athome is more noble than loving him on the way’’’

From 1311/12Codex Vaticanus lat. 1086

4. ‘Whether motion without end implies a contradiction’5. ‘Whether in the body of the dying Christ on the cross

the forms of the elements remain’6. ‘Does the omnipotence which is in God need to be con-

sidered as absolute power or as directed power?’7. ‘Is the essence of God more real than the property?’8. ‘Whether diversity is a real or an intellectual relation’9. ‘Whether the diVerence with regard to the intellect is

prior to the diVerence with regards to the thing’

87 See e.g. Eckhart, Sermo VI n. 53 (LW 4, pp. 51, 6–52, 6); In Ex. n. 80

(LW 2, pp. 83, 3–84, 9); Sermo XXIX, nn. 295–6 (LW 4, pp. 263, 5–264, 3)(on simplicitas and infinitas); however, the discussion of ‘end’ and ‘finitude’ inthe known Question 4 indicates that Eckhart may already have discussed suchtopics at his first stay at Paris.

88 A Quaestio disputata in vernacular language is preserved as Pr. 105 (DW4/i, pp. 633–54).


From 1302/3 or 1311/1289

Troyes, Bibliotheque municipale, MS 269

10. ‘Whether God can make infinite species of any sort,namely superiors, inferiors, equal ones, and lateral ones’

Although the Parisian Questions are no more than glimpses ofEckhart’s intensive teaching in Paris, Grabmann’s hope that thetexts would shed some new light on Eckhart’s development, helpclarify debated thoughts, and lead to new Latin works by Eckharthas not been entirely disappointed.90 With the two plus oneQuestions from the Avignon Manuscript, Eckhart’s first, strictlyspeaking, scholarly contributions from his first stay in Paris, andnow with the six texts from the Vatican manuscript plus theSenner excerpt, we gain focused insights into topics with whichEckhart occupied himself during his first and second stay at Paris.They will, I hope, provide further clues to the reading, interpret-ing, and even dating of Latin and German texts. ‘Given theimportance and the highly disputed nature of Eckhart’s person-ality’, Grabmann wrote, perhaps a little too over-excitedly, ‘everysentence that he wrote and can be unearthed is worthpublishing.’91

89 The dating of this excerpt is not yet clear. As noted above, ProfessorSenner inclines to the earlier date, but there are arguments that make meconsider the later date, too.

90 Grabmann, ‘Neuaufgefundene Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts’,p. 267 f.

91 Ibid., p. 268.


Questions on the Attributes of God

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