Abstract

The article investigates to what extent the university debates of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries had an impact on het content of contemporary vernacular sermons. The focus is on the collection Paradisus anime intelligentis, a set of more than sixty, mainly Dominican, sermons from various authors, written around 1300 and brought together in the first part of the fourteenth century. Of these sermons, all of which deal with the issue of how human beings can have knowledge of the divine essence, thirty-one were written by Meister Eckhart. As is shown in the course of the investigation, the results of academic debates were used to corroborate and exemplify the theological views expressed in the sermons, yet without engagement in the philosophical and theological debates themselves. Another striking point is that concerning the crucial issue of the role of the agent intellect. In different sermons, the conflicting views of Thomas Aquinas and Dietrich of Freiberg are represented, notwithstanding the fact that the collection was designed as a unity. Obviously, for the compiler of the ‘Paradisus anime intelligentis’, the notion of philosophical coherence played a role different from the employed in university circles.