Meister Eckhart and the Church Fathers - First workshop of the joint French-German Project at Metz

On 16./17. May 2018, the two groups of French and German researchers met for their first workshop as part of the joint project, financed by the French ANR and the German DFG to explore the sources and traditions on which Meister Eckhart based his works.

The workshop questioned the anachronistic concepts of 'quotation' or 'citation', of 'reception' and 'transmission', as Eckhart shows an enormous variety of dealing with older traditions and authorities that can hardly been captured by the existing nomenclature. The project is run under the leadership of Marie-Ann Vannier (University of Lorraine, Metz) and Markus Vinzent (King's College London and Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt).

The project that is running for three years will develop conceptual tools in understanding the different ways Eckhart appropriates and makes his own Patristic authorities, publish the papers of conferences, monographs on specific authors who have a particular importance in Eckhart (Origen, Augustine, Pseudo-Chrysostom, Jerome, Maximus Confessor, John of Damascus, Albertus Magnus) or for Eckhart (Nicolaus Cusanus and Henry Suso). Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of all speakers - so here the few snapshots:

Silvia Bara Bancel (Université de Madrid) and Elisabeth Boncour (Université catholique de Lyon)

 Jacques Elfassi (Université de Lorraine) on Eckhart and Isidore of Seville

 Jana Ilnicka (mid) on Eckhart and Boethius

 Dietmar Mieth on Eckhart and the tradition of action and contemplation

 Jean-Claude Lagarrigue (ERMR Strasbourg) and Julie Casteigt (Université de Toulouse II)

The project will also create the Patristic Index for the critical edition of Eckhart's works in the Kohlhammer edition (to follow the first volume of the Bibleindex, published by Loris Sturlese and Markus Vinzent in 2015).
And, of course, we celebrated being together with typical French conviviality (for which we thank the French team and the University of Lorraine for all their hard work, preparation, organisation and finance):

Markus Vinzent presents a working paper on 'Retrospections – A History of early Christians'

The project develops first a new approach to the writing of history in terms of retrospections to then test it by using several case studies. These cover the two earliest ‘Christian’ monuments (the ‘Abercius’ inscription; the Hippolytus statue), the first preserved apology (Aristides); the first collection of non-canonical letters (Ignatius); the first catechism (Didache); the first ‘Christian’ iconography (Dura-Europos); the first Gospel (Marcion); the first ‘Christian’ witness (Paul).

In this first methodological chapter I reflect upon the paradoxical nature of writing history. Though we cannot but approach the past by retrospection and reflecting upon what we think we perceive, most historiographical narratives proceed in a chronological way, as if we were able to first jump into the period we are looking at, and then, once arrived there, start following the lives of our protagonists. This, as I think, clouds the fact of the hiatus between than and now, it also gives the impression of a neutral, contemporary observer who is capable of following the events described and the fact that what the historian is doing is anachronistic creation. Furthermore, the initial leap obscures the initial stages through which I have come to be informed of the past. Instead, retrospection, as will be developed here, reveals that perspectivity is a core notion that is linked with ephemeral individual insights. Retrospection also re-evaluates the objects that are targeted. Instead of the idea of sources that were handed down through history – explicated in the fashionable new historicity, new philology, reception history or Überlieferungsgeschichte – retrospection highlights that all targets are actively appropriated, isolated and shaped by the viewers. It then reveals that such appropriations continuously happens, but that major steps of appropriation in history took place (the early 20^th and second half of the 19^th centuries; the High Middle Ages; the fifth and the fourth century; the late second century). Until we can target the evidence of the second and first century, we have to make a long journey backwards through layers of such appropriations to be discovered in retrospection.