liquefactio, till we attain raptus or ecstasy. The writings of the
scholastic mystics are so overweighted with this pseudo-science,
with its wire-drawn distinctions and meaningless classifications,
that very few readers have now the patience to dig out their
numerous beauties. They are, however, still the classics of mystical
theology in the Roman Church, so far as that science has not
degenerated into mere miracle-mongering.

Sect. 2. MEISTER ECKHART

It was in 1260, when Mechthild of Magdeburg was at the height of her
activity, that Meister Eckhart, next to Plotinus the greatest
philosopher-mystic, was born at Hocheim in Thuringia. It seems that
his family was in a good position, but nothing is known of his early
years. He entered the Dominican Order as a youth, perhaps at
sixteen, the earliest age at which novices were admitted into that
Order. The course of instruction among the Dominicans was as
follows:--After two years, during which the novice laid the
foundations of a good general education, he devoted the next two
years to grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and then the same amount
of time to what was called the Quadrivium, which consisted of
"arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy, and music." Theology, the queen
of the sciences, occupied three years; and at the end of the course,
at the age of twenty-five, the brothers were ordained priests. We
find Eckhart, towards the end of the century, Prior of Erfurt and
Vicar of Thuringia, then Lector Biblicus at Paris, then Provincial
Prior of Saxony. In 1307 the master of the Order appointed him
Vicar-General for Bohemia, and in 1311 he returned to Paris. We find
him next preaching busily at Strassburg,[4] and after a few more
years, at Cologne, where the persecution of the Brethren of the Free