Teaching and Preaching with Patristic auctoritates – Meister Eckhart in France and Germany, past and present (TEAPREA)

Eckhart is a towering figure of the Middle Ages who in Teaching and Preaching with Patristic auctoritates joins Germany and France (Erfurt-Paris-Strasbourg-Cologne) bringing alive their common past. Many experts on Eckhart’s Latin exegetical works are French, on Eckhart's German and Latin homilies German, but there are specialists in the UK, in Italy, around the world. The present blog addresses them and likewise all people interested in reading Eckhart. It is the result of a specially dedicated project and its team, supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Agence Nationale de Recherche in France (ANR). 

One of the specific aims is to rediscover Eckhart’s Patristic sources which have never systematically been explored in their totality before. Through the exceptional cooperation of the French and German experts in the mentioned project on 'Teaching and Preaching with Patristic auctoritates – Meister Eckhart in France and Germany, past and present ' (TEAPREA), their constant interaction, combination of competences, giving access to resources, scattered in France and Germany, this webpage and blog will reveal the Patristic foundations of this important bridge builder. Interdisciplinarity, methodologies and the breadth of material make it a challenging, but fitting enterprise to overcome borders of language, disciplines, cultures and academic styles.

Following the model and previous experience when collecting Eckhart's Biblical sources, the aims are to recover Eckhart's Patristic sources, analyse those, and reflect methodologically upon the nature of them. Based on the 10 vols. of the critical edition of Eckhart's works, the blog here will provide insight into the progress of collecting the data of all of Eckhart's Patristic sources, look at their nature and use, the core topics inspired by these, at sources in sources, how early readers read sources through Eckhart, and Eckhart’s democratising of sources.

Finally, the website and blog will give access to the the long-awaited Index Patristicus of Eckhart’s German and Latin works, first in outline and two years after the printed edition (Peeters Publishers) also here online. We will add in-depth studies, a Digital Manuscript Library, and display the international exhibition that resulted from the project.