Ein meister sprichet. Dicta (Sprüche) come strumento didattico nella mistica tedesca del XIV secolo

The present essay raises the question whether the so-called ‘mystical saying’ (Mystikerspruch), a widespread phenomenon in spiritual German literature and flourishing in the fourteenth century, is the minimum unit of the treatise and the sermon from a purely formal aspect – i.e., a quotation attributed to various authorities who reportedly pronounced it – or if the saying corresponds, for its content, to the literary genre of the dictum (Spruch) and therefore deserves, with good reason, to be considered part of gnomic literature together with sentences and proverbs. The essay first challenges the category of the ‘saying’ in modern scientific literature, then examines the use of the quotation in medieval manuscripts, and finally traces the presence of sayings in Eckhart’s German sermons and in texts by Tauler and Seuse. It ends with the analysis of two sayings attributed to Meister Eckhart.