Which is the Greatest: Knowledge, Love, or Enjoyment of God? A Comparison Between Christina of Hane and Meister Eckhart

Abstract

This paper deals with the medieval theological debate on the primacy of knowledge, love, or enjoyment of God by comparing the biography of the Premonstratensian nun Christina of Hane with the German mystical writings of the Dominican preacher and scholar Meister Eckhart. It shows the ways in which female vernacular thought engaged with a primarily scholastic and male-dominated debate and suggests a performative understanding of the female mystical account. Challenging existing presumptions about Christina’s mystical biography as being inconsistent and composed by several authors, the results of this research demonstrate to what extent the text can still be considered cohesive when discarding gender specified authorial conceptions which cannot be determined in this case.