Johannes Tauler

Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361) was a Dominican friar and preacher active in the Rhineland, widely regarded as one of the most gifted vernacular mystics of the medieval Latin West. Trained in the tradition of Meister Eckhart — whom he likely encountered during Eckhart's Strasbourg period (c. 1313–1326) and possibly also at the Cologne studium generale — he delivered German-language sermons that guided lay people and religious women toward interior surrender (Gelassenheit, or self-abandonment to God) through purification of the soul rather than external observance alone. His surviving corpus consists almost entirely of sermons, which circulated widely in manuscript and influenced later mystical and devotional currents. Luther read and praised Tauler's sermons highly, and later Pietist writers drew heavily on his vocabulary of inner transformation, making him a significant bridge between medieval Dominican spirituality and early modern Protestant piety.