Peregrine Identity: Introduction and Conclusion from an Early Version of Wandering Joy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Published here, for the first time in any language, are excerpts from an early, markedly different version of Schürmann’s celebrated book Wandering Joy: Meister Eckhart’s Mystical Philosophy (1972). Schürmann submitted this early version to the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir as a final thesis in 1969, titling it Peregrine Identity: The Concept of Detachment in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons. In it, Schürmann focuses on Eckhart’s preaching of detachment as an imitation of Christ’s self-emptying on the way of the Cross. The detached thereby undergo a practical transformation of existence that Schürmann calls ‘peregrine identity with the origin,’ i.e. with the Godhead at the source of the Trinity. This early version also contains valuable remarks on conversion, on letting-be as a solution to the violent, ‘Promethean attitude’ of our age, and on St. Francis as the one who ‘most visibly put into practice the doctrine of detachment.’