Meister Eckhart and Thomas of Erfurt: Modism and the Philosophy of Grammar

Meister Eckhart and Thomas of Erfurt lived streets away from one

another. Thomas was the last great figure of the Modistae, the

speculative grammarians who were concerned with the relationship between

grammar and ontology, the structure of the sentence mirroring the

structure of the world. Thomas’ major work - the Grammatica

speculativa - was deeply influential in the medieval period. But

does Thomas’ geographical proximity to Eckhart suggest a concomitant

influence of modism on his thought? What of modism’s legacy after the

rapid demise of the grammatical theory in the early-mid fourteenth

century? The contributions to this volume deal with these matters, and

were originally presented at the ‘Meister Eckhart and Thomas of Erfurt’

conference at the Max-Weber-Center at the University of Erfurt, 14-15

November 2013.