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ABSTRACT
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) devoted Sermones 55 and 71 to considering the episode in Luke’s Gospel on Mary having chosen the better part instead of her sister Martha (Luke 10. 38–42), though those sermons were preached on 15 August, the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption (1445–46). He also considered that episode within two other sermons: Sermon 5 on the feast of John the Baptist (24 June) and Sermon 8 for Mary’s Assumption, both preached earlier in his career in 1431. This essay also engages Meister Eckhart’s German Predigten 2 and 86. Eckhart (c. 1260–1328) broke with the conventional wisdom that Mary chose the better part by saying Martha enjoyed greater freedom and fulfilment than Mary because the older sister married prayer and service. Thus he offered an untraditional exegesis. While most patristic and medieval exegetes focused on the words good, better, best, or the vita mixta, Eckhart and Cusanus emphasized the action of choosing: the free human will of reviewing options and then choosing wisely from among a variety of paths. For Eckhart, it is Martha who chooses well. For Cusanus, it is her sister Mary. Though Eckhart likely had no Greek and Cusanus only some, their exegesis was more in line with the Koine tēn agathēn merida exelexato (τὴν ἀγαθὴν μϵρίδα ἐξϵλέξατο) than the Vulgate optimam partem eligit.
Notes
1 My thanks go to this journal’s two anonymous reviewers, Peter Antoci, Elizabeth Brient, Peter Casarella, and Jean-Pierre Ruiz as well as to the librarians at Princeton Theological Seminary.
2 Biblia Latina cum Glossa ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps (Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81), 4 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), iv, at Luke 10. Here the commentary follows the standard interpretation of ‘best’ (optima). Mary’s contemplation on earth presages eternal heavenly contemplation where there will be no hunger or need for labour once this world passes away. Indeed, it is the part that Martha, not Mary, has chosen that should be taken from her because labour passes away but the love of unity remains.
3 Pauline M. Watts, ‘Renaissance Humanism’, in Introducing Nicholas of Cusa: A Guide to a Renaissance Man, ed. by Christopher M. Bellitto, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Gerald Christianson (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), pp. 169–204 (p. 175), states that that, like Petrarch, Cusanus did not achieve Greek fluency. John Monfasani believes Cusanus had enough Greek, obtained later in his life, that he could leave marginalia in a Latin translation of Plato’s Parmenides. See John Monfasani, ‘Nicholas of Cusa, the Byzantines, and the Greek Language’, in Nicolaus Cusanus zwischen Deutschland und Italien: Beiträge eines deutsch-italienischen Symposiums, ed. by Martin Thurner, Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes zur Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie, 48 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), pp. 215–52. For a wider context, see also John Monfasani, ‘Cardinal Bessarion’s Greek and Latin Sources in the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the 15th Century and Nicholas of Cusa’s Relation to the Controversy’, in Knotenpunkt Byzanz: Wissensformen und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen, ed. by Andreas Speer and Philipp Steinkrüger, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 469–80.
4 Joseph A. Fitzmyer offers a complication: ‘[T]he positive degree of the adj[ective] is often used in Hellenistic Greek for either the superlative or comparative, both of which were on the wane’: see The Gospel According to Luke x–xxiv: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, Vol 28A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), p. 894.
5 Luke Timothy Johnson suggests that Luke 10. 42 should be rendered, ‘Mary chose the good part’, adding, ‘Or perhaps better, “Mary made the right choice” of what was necessary’. See Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series, 3 (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), p. 174.
6 Patrologia Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne (Paris: 1863), 38, cols 613–18 (especially 618).
7 Patrologia Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne (Paris: 1854), 165, col. 392A.
8 Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–141, with Augustine cited at p. 18 and Bruno of Segni at pp. 42–43. See also Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 330–40; A.-M. la Bonnardière, ‘Marthe et Marie, figures de l’Église d’après saint Augustin’, La vie spirituelle, 86 (1952), 404–27; and P. Th. Camelot, ‘Action et contemplation dans la tradition chrétienne’, La vie spirituelle, 78 (1948), 272–301. By way of contrast to this nuance, see Peter C. Erb, ‘The Contemplative Life as the Unum Necessarium: In Defense of a Traditional Reading of Luke 10:42’, Mystics Quarterly, 11 (1985), 161–64. For a modern reading, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘A Feminist Critical Interpretation for Liberation. Martha and Mary: Luke 10:38–42’, Religion and Intellectual Life, 3 (1986), 21–36.
9 George E. Demacopoulos, Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor and First Man of Rome (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), pp. 28–30, 59–78; Carole Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 14 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 191–93, 248–51; and Barbara Müller, ‘Gregory the Great and Monasticism’, in A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. by Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 83–108.
10 Joachim Theisen, Predigt und Gottesdienst: liturgische Strukturen in den Predigten Meister Eckharts, Europäische Hochschulschriften: Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 1169 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 252–54. As Bruce Milem observed, ‘It is not always clear what Eckhart is talking about in his sermons’. See ‘Meister Eckhart’s Vernacular Preaching’, in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. by Jeremiah H. Hackett, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 358.
11 Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart: die deutschen Werke, ed. by Josef Quint, 5 vols (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1958–63) [hereafter DW], i (1958), 24–45 (pp. 28–29). The English translation of Predigt 2 is followed here from Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, The Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 177–81 (p. 178).
12 Reiner Schürmann, Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher. Translation with Commentary, Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 15–19.
13 Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, trans. by Colledge and McGinn, pp. 285–94 (p. 285); DW, v (1963), 400–34 (p. 401).
14 Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing (New York: Crossroad, 2001), pp. 139, 255–56 n. 141. See also Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 145–55, and Bruce Milem, The Unspoken Word: Negative Theology in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), pp. 52–65.
15 Frank Tobin’s translation of Predigt 86 is found in Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. by Bernard McGinn, The Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), pp. 338–45 (DW, iii (1958), 481–92). See also Theisen, Predigt und Gottesdienst, pp. 293–96, and Blake R. Heffner, ‘Meister Eckhart and a Millennium with Martha and Mary’, in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. by Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 127–30.
16 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. by McGinn, p. 342 (DW, iii (1958), 489).
17 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. by McGinn, pp. 343–44 (DW, iii (1958), 491).
18 Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, pp. 166–72; McGinn, Mystical Thought, pp. 158–61.
19 Latin texts of Cusanus’ sermons may be found at the Cusanus Portal, www.cusanus-portal.de/ [accessed 21 August 2022] which utilizes the critical editions of his Opera Omnia published through the Heidelberg Academy by Felix Meiner Verlag in Hamburg. Translations are my own, though I have consulted those by Jasper Hopkins for Sermones 5, 8, and 71 at jasper-hopkins.info [accessed 21 August 2022].
20 Stefanie Frost, Nikolaus von Kues und Meister Eckhart: Rezeption im Spiegel der Marginalien zum Opus Tripartitum Meister Eckharts, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, n.s. 69 (Münster: Achendorff, 2006); Andrea Fiamma, ‘Nicholas of Cusa and the So-Called Cologne School of the 13th and 14th Centuries’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 84 (2017), 105–09.
21 Elizabeth Brient, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Influence on Nicholas of Cusa: A Survey of the Literature’, in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. by Jeremiah H. Hackett, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 553–85. For Duclow’s seminal study of Eckhart’s influence on Cusanus via this manuscript, see Donald F. Duclow, ‘Nicholas of Cusa in the Margins of Meister Eckhart: Codex Cusanus 21’, in Nicholas of Cusa: In Search of God and Wisdom, ed. by Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 45 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), pp. 57–69.
22 Sermo 5:25–26, especially at 25.
23 Sermo 8:12.
24 Sermo 71:5–7.
25 Sermo 8:9; Sermo 55:2, 4–6.
26 Sermo 55:4–5, 8–9, especially 55:9. In Sermo 207 (November 1455), Cusanus exegeted the feeding of the 5,000 to say that bread represented the active life of the laity and fish the contemplative life of the clergy: see Richard J. Serina Jr., Nicholas of Cusa’s Brixen Sermons and Late Medieval Church Reform, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 182 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 172–75.
27 Sermo 71:10–11. See Brient, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Influence on Nicholas of Cusa’, pp. 562–65.
28 Sermo 71:22, 30.
29 Sermo 5:1, 23; Sermo 55:6, 10–11; Sermo 71:21, 27. See Isabelle Mandrella, Viva imago: Die praktische Philosophie des Nicolaus Cusanus, Buchreihe der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, 19 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), pp. 200–05.
30 Sermo 55:7.
31 Cusanus can perhaps be forgiven for the confusion — if, in fact, he was as confused as Hopkins believes him to have been: see Hopkins’ translation of Sermo 71, nn. 3 and 24.
32 Sermo 71:2.
33 Sermo 71:19–20, 31.
34 Sermo 55:7; Sermo 71:32.
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Christopher M. Bellitto
Christopher M. Bellitto is Professor of History at Kean University in New Jersey, where he teaches courses in ancient and medieval history. A specialist in church history and reform, his latest book is Humility: The Secret History of a Lost Virtue (Georgetown University Press, 2023). He has twice won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (2019) and Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary (2021–2022). He is series Editor in Chief of Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition and Academic Editor at Large for Paulist Press.