TAULER (TAULER), JOHANNES. - Dominican preacher and mystic, born in Strasbourg ca. 1300 (Auer) or 1304 (Théry), died there on 16 June 1361. His tomb slab is in the Neuen Kirche. He entered the Dominicans between the ages of 15 and 18, while his sister became a Dominican nun at St Nicholas in Undis.
Though frail, Tauler began a life of religious zeal and study in Strasbourg, which he perfected in Cologne at the *Studium generale* under Master Eckhart (q.v.), of whom Tauler was one of the most devoted disciples. Returning to Strasbourg, he distinguished himself as a preacher and in the care of souls. Out of respect for the interdict of John XXII, Tauler and his brethren moved to Basel (1339–43), where he became a central figure among the Friends of God, showing great charity toward Henry of Nördlingen, who had also taken refuge there. From Basel he went to Cologne (June–Autumn 1339), visited Medingen (1346), and returned to Strasbourg in 1346–47, where he led a group of Friends of God and was confessor to Rulman Merswin. Between 1350 and 1360 he made a final journey to Cologne and may have visited Ruysbroeck at Groenendael. Nineteenth-century criticism stripped away the apocryphal accretions to Tauler’s memory, especially in the Meisterbuch. H. S. Denifle likewise rejected as untrue the claim of the chronicler Daniel Specklin (d. 1589) that two anti-papal writings were attributed to Tauler.
Held in high esteem by contemporaries and posterity, Tauler is described by the chronicler John Meyer (d. 1485) as *homo Dei*, a preacher and man of outstanding learning. When Luther invoked certain of Tauler’s ideas—albeit not well understood—on the lesser importance of external works, the polemicist John Eck too lightly cast the suspicion of heresy upon Tauler. Yet St Peter Canisius, L. Surius, and L. Blosius vindicated his doctrinal purity; they were followed in this by H. Spondanus, Sixtus of Siena, St Robert Bellarmine, and Bossuet, who called him one of the most solid orthodox mystics. In 1550 the *Institutiones*, falsely attributed to Tauler, were placed on the Spanish Index; the Jesuits (1578) and the Capuchins (1597) condemned the so-called Taulerian writings under the pretext of Quietism. Nevertheless, Tauler was effectively rehabilitated in the teaching of St John of the Cross, John of the Angels, and Michael de la Fuente. Even St John of the Cross depends substantially on Tauler in key concepts. Tauler’s influence was also notable on the French school of the 17th century and later on St Paul of the Cross.
Tauler’s doctrine, sometimes called that of the “illuminated doctor,” built upon the Gospel and tested in pastoral experience, blends Neoplatonic-Augustinian, Pseudo-Dionysian, Thomist, and Eckhartian elements with great cohesion and originality. It is eminently spiritual and anticipates the teaching of St John of the Cross, especially regarding the purifications of the senses and the spirit. Tauler’s preaching leads souls to union with God, to be attained through renunciation of all that is sensible and of one’s own will by mortification and stripping away every attachment, image, and created idea, so that God may be reflected in the human mind. Man in his total nature embraces three layers: the sensible-animal, the rational, and the spiritual, which manifests itself in two functions; the ground of the soul is a passivity dissolved for God’s action, while the *Gemüt* empowers the faculties toward the infinite. The path of ascent is one, yet it passes through three stages: the purgative, illuminative, and unitive life, in which souls receive both general and special invitations. The means to attain union are silence, prayer and mental prayer, imitation of Christ, sufferings, crosses, exercise of virtue, submission and abandonment to the holy and sovereign will of God, use of the sacraments, attention to inspirations, correspondence to gifts by which the will experiences transformation at its depths; the effect must endure longer than the experience itself. Tauler warns souls against a misconceived contemplative life and insists on unceasing application to good works.
Tauler left no writings of his own; he preached and even improvised. A preacher of integrity and zeal, of original and powerful intellect, he opposed the Brethren of the Free Spirit and their arbitrariness, and more than once—much to the displeasure of some hierarchical circles—defended Eckhart. Practical and ethical, he commends sincerity, docility, and moderation; he is uncompromising against every kind of Pharisaism, against any form of sin, seduction, and enjoyment of creatures.
Of Tauler there survive Sermons (ca. 83), a few letters (at least one to the Friends of God, Elizabeth Stagel herself and the nun Margaret Ebner in Medingen, of 1346), and three instructions (G. Hugueny, H. Théry, A.-L. Corin [q.V. BIBLICA.], I, pp. 57–59; E. W. Wentzleff-Egger, [q.V. BIBLICA.], pp. 307–308). Scholars deny Tauler authorship of *Das Buch der geistlichen Armut*, the *Divinae institutiones*, and the *Exercitia super vitam et passionem Iesu Christi*.