Another little bit of evidence may be given for what it is worth. Any one who has read the discourses of Meister Eckhart, the founder of the school of German mystics, will be struck by the frequent and close resemblances, not of thought only, but of expression and illustration, which exist between him and Dante. So frequent and so close are these, that the reader can hardly conceive the possibility of their being due to mere coincidence.[25] But Eckhart preached and wrote (if he wrote) in German, a language which we have no reason to think that Dante knew; so that the exchange of ideas between them, if any, must have taken place by word of mouth, and in French or Latin. Now, Eckhart was for a long time in Paris--so long that he seems to have been known as “Master Eckhart of Paris”--and left that city in 1302. If he and Dante ever met, it must have been in Paris (for though Eckhart went to Italy in 1302, it appears to have been only on a journey to Rome, the last place save Florence where Dante would then have cared to show himself), and that at some time before 1300. Lastly, we may question if Dante would have chosen Paris as a place of residence while Philip the Fair was on the throne of France. If, then, he did visit France before his exile, we can date the visit with some certainty. It can hardly have been before 1290, the year of Beatrice’s death, nor after 1294, the year in which Carlo Martello came to Florence. Dante’s marriage, again, in all probability took place somewhere about the latter year. We know nothing directly of Dante’s doings in this interval; nothing, at any rate, inconsistent with his having been for some considerable period away from Florence.