Johannes Tauler c. 1300 – 1361

Johannes Tauler was a German Dominican preacher and mystic and one of the principal figures of the Rhineland mystical tradition along with Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso. After years of study at Strasbourg under Eckhart, he became one of the most influential vernacular preachers of his age, addressing congregations of nuns and lay believers across the upper Rhine in plain German. His sermons, gathered after his death, carry the central themes of Eckhartian mysticism into a more pastoral and accessible form, stressing the ground of the soul, abandonment to God, and the spiritual fruitfulness of suffering. He shaped Luther and the wider Devotio Moderna.