If we turn from these thinkers of the Neo-Latin race, who in spite of their undeniable mysticism were completely under the dominion of the Church--to German mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find above and beyond love, a new principle: The soul of man is the starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the religious consciousness is the soul's road to God. The nativity of Christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth of the divine principle in the soul of man. In passing I will mention a German nun, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212-1277), who anticipated some of the great thoughts of Eckhart, although she was incapable of grasping their mutual connection. "The Holy Trinity and everything in heaven and earth must be subject to me" (the soul), were words in the true spirit of Eckhart, leaving St. Bernard far behind. Mechthild found metaphors of true poetical grandeur when she spoke of the union of the soul with God. "The dominion of the fire has yet to come. That is Jesus Christ in Whose hands the Heavenly Father has laid the salvation of the world and the Last Judgment. On the Day of Judgment He shall fashion cups of wondrous beauty out of the crackling sparks; therein the Father will drink on His festival all the holiness which through His dear Son He has poured into human souls."
Emotional mysticism was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; even Eckhart's pupil, Suso, belonged to this class of mystics. This vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid dogmas of the Church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted in more than one way, it caused very little offence; but these visions and ecstasies, which are so often mistaken for true mysticism, have done much to bring the latter into contempt with the seriously minded. Eckhart did not acknowledge it as genuine mysticism and directly condemned it in many of his writings; and as he rejected mystic sentimentalism, clearly divining its pathological cause, so he also rejected asceticism and all religious ceremonies. The evangelical poverty of the Franciscan monks was an object of loathing to him. St. Francis (and thirty years before him Peter Valdez) had naïvely interpreted the imitation of Christ as a life of absolute poverty, and had been relentless in his denunciation of worldly wealth, which every monk of his order had to renounce. He himself never touched money, seeing in it the source of all evil. His transcendent treasure was "Holy Poverty"; Jacopone wrote an ardent hymn to "Queen Poverty," and even Thomas, the representative of Dominican erudition, theoretically took up the cudgels on its behalf. But even in the primitive Church the principle of worldly and spiritual poverty was widely spread and encouraged. In the defence of poverty, which was practically nearly always synonymous with idleness and begging, and therefore roused much hostility among the people, Bonaventura pointed out (in his treatise, _De Paupertate Christi_) that Jesus Himself had never done any manual work. The universal preference for a contemplative life encouraged the tendency, and the extreme charitableness of the Middle Ages made its realisation possible. Work was frequently looked upon as a punishment--a view which could easily be upheld by reference to Adam's expulsion from Paradise--and inflicted upon the monks for offences against the rules. Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti, expressed the natural sentiment that poverty is a distressing condition, in a canzone which bristles with insults hurled at the Queen of the Franciscans: