Benedict XII, 1334-1342

524. (24) Every distinction is foreign to God, either in nature or in person; it is proved that nature itself is one and this oneness, and any person is one and the oneness which is nature.

525. (25) When it is said: "Simon, do you love me more than these?" [I John 21:15 f.], the sense is: That is, more than those and indeed well but not perfectly. For in the first and the second and more and less there is both a degree and a rank; in oneness, however, there is no degree nor rank. Therefore, he who loves God more than his neighbor, (loves) indeed well but not yet perfectly.

526. (26) All creatures are one pure nothing; I do not say that they are something ordinary or anything, but that they are one pure nothing.

In addition there is an objection against the above said Eckart, because he preached two other articles under these words:

527. (1) Something is in the soul which is uncreated and incapable of creation; if the entire soul were such, it would be uncreated and incapable of creation, and this is the intellect.

528. (2) That God is not good nor better nor best; so I speak badly whenever I call God good, as if I should call white black.

529. . . . We condemn and expressly disapprove the first fifteen articles and also the two last ones as "heretical," but the eleven others already mentioned as "evil-sounding, rash, and suspected of heresy," and no less any books or works of this Eckart containing the above mentioned articles or any one of them.

BENEDICT XII 1334-1342

The Beatific Vision of God and the Last Days¹

[From the edict "Benedictus Deus," Jan. 29, 1336]

530. By this edict which will prevail forever, with apostolic authority we declare: that according to the common arrangement of God, souls of all the saints who departed from this world before the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ; also of the holy apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, virgins, and the other faithful who died after the holy baptism of Christ had been received by them, in whom nothing was to be purged, when they departed, nor will there be when they shall depart also in the future; or if then there was or there will be anything to be purged in these when after their death they have been purged; and the souls of children departing before the use of free will, reborn and baptized in