The Geistbuch is an anonymous vernacular theological treatise from the first half of the 14th century that circulated in Middle High German and Middle Dutch. Based on the biblical injunction of Jesus to Peter, Sequere me (“Follow me”, John 21:19), the text describes the Christian path of perfection. The present volume offers for the first time a critical edition of the Geistbuch in its original Middle High German. It also includes a commentary on the sources, a reconstruction of the text’s history and tradition, an analysis of its structure and method of argumentation and a word index. The edited text gives us insights into vernacular theological debates concurrent with the trial of Meister Eckhart, and into the dynamic of their circulation along the Rhine valley from southwest Germany to Dutch Brabant.

For the sake of simplicity, scholars refer to German sermons, treatises, and aphorisms which are either transmitted anonymously or else ascribed to Eckhart in some manuscripts, and which are regularly given a place in codices scattered among authentic texts by Eckhart as "Pseudo-Eckhart". Usually this material offers secondary textual attestations of writings by Meister Eckhart and is therefore a kind of reception of Eckhart. This essay presents and discusses a representative selection of the most important textual material which compilers of the days of Meister Eckhart to the beginning of the 20th century have gathered together, either under Eckhart's name or anonymously and for which older scholarship claimed the authorship of Meister Eckhart.

The paper compares Konrad von Megenberg's and Cecco d'Ascoli's Comments on the Tractatus de sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco and examines the similiarities of the two scholars in spreading their teaching in the vernacular and in its dealings with the European University Culture of the 14th century. In te Annex, Konrad von Megenberg's Digression for astro medical prognosis in the Expositio super speram (clm 14687, fol. 24vb-27rb) is edited.

The article presents the late medieval manuscript tradition of the "Geistbuch" (Book of the Spirit) as an example of anonymous mystical-ascetic treatise literature in the wake of Meister Eckhart.

numero monografico "Meister Eckharts Erfurter Reden in ihrem Kontext", hrsg. von Dagmar Gottschall, Dietmar Mieth