The subject of passion (15)

The first hour addressed the theme of kenosis in Master Eckhart, and the relationship he establishes between the Incarnation and the inner Inhabitation of the Word. After a series of considerations on the notions of "detachment",(Abegescheidenheit), and "abandonment",(Gelazenheit), presented as the German names forapatheia - and not onlyapatheia, but in their articulation, "impassible suffering" or "suffering impassibility", from Cyril of Alexandria's pathoi apathos. On this basis, two paths have been distinguished in the so-called "Rhenish mysticism" of the ^14th century: detachment with Eckhart; compassion with Suso, or, in patristic terms: the path ofapatheia and the path of pathos. For Eckhart, detachment is the supreme virtue, impassive and/or immutable, superior to love, humility and mercy, supreme freedom. It was in Christ in Gethsemane. To make his point, Eckhart takes up the distinction between the inner man and the outer man, using the image of the door and the hinge: the outer man moves or is moved: he acts or suffers; the inner man remains immutable and detached, like the hinge around which the door swings. Eckhart's path is not centered on the suffering experienced by Christ in the Passion. This is not the case with his disciple Heinrich Seuse, known as "Suso" (1295-1366). Some of Suso's theses have been reconstructed by examining theExemplar, containing in particular The Book of Life: an autobiography written four-handed by Suso and Elsbeth, his "spiritual daughter". As Suso's method in theExemplar is based on an original use of iconography: accessing the "imageless" through the image, "chasing the image through the image"(bild mit bilden us triben), we analyzed the images contained in folios 119, 139 and 169 of manuscript ms. 2929 at Strasbourg's Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, representing the stages traversed on the path of suffering. We concluded by underlining the paradigmatic aspect of the difference in position between Eckhart and Suso: the Susian passion-compassion couple is matched by the Eckhartian incarnation-inhabitation couple. At the end of the Middle Ages, there were three theological paths open to us: Glory, the Cross and detachment. Since the imitation of Jesus Christ is one of the figures of "compassion", we return to the Problemata of the pseudo-Aristotle, to the notions of synalgia and the sharing of pain at a distance, according to Pietro d'Abano, and to the role of the imagination in this process. In so doing, we arrived at the theme of stigmatization, the highest form of compassion.