Mysticism, Heresy, and Women in the Middle Ages

1
Mysticism, Heresy, and Women in the Middle Ages

• Permission and Persecution

2
Great Women Mystics of the Later Middle Ages

• Hadewijch,
• Gertude the Great
• Mechthild of Magdeburg
• Margery Kempe of England
• Julian of Norwich
• Marguerite of Porete

3
Importance as Writers

• Though many credit the Reformation with
  popularizing the use of the vernacular, it is
  interesting that the women mystics are important
  pre-reformation examples of effective writing in
  their respective native languages.
• Middle Low German for Mechthild, Flemish for
  Hadewijch, Old French for Marguerite, English for
  Kempe and Julian.

4
Place in History

• Many of these works were recovered by students
  of literature who were seeking examples of the
  early use of modern languages and published for
  that reason.
• Only in comparative recent times have these women
  mystics been taken with religious and theological
  seriousness.
• Many have noted that the Roman Church belatedly
  recognized both Theresa and Catherine in the
  1970s as Doctors of the Church in response to
  mounting pressure from women members.

5
Meaning of their Works

• Modern feminist theorists have been interested in
  these women as examples of people whose religious
  experiences gave them power in their societies.
• While clearly mystical language was did give many
  of these women much widely influence than most
  people in their time, they themselves yearned to
  be taken seriously for what they said about God
  and the human relationship to God.

6
Holy Virgins and the Virgin

• The Great Women Mystics were contemporaries with
  the great expansion of Marian devotion
• Francis and the Nativity
• Dominic and the Rosary
• Popularity of new Marian titles
• Our Lady
• The Star of Heaven
• The climate of opinion made many people more open
  to the words of these holy virgins.
• Not surprising, they often envisioned the Birth
  of Christ. Gertrude the Great had a vision in
  which she was the midwife of the Christ child.

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Two Contemporary Reactions

• Permission
• Persecution.

8
Permission

• Gender could be used to give women mystics
  unusual freedom. Because few of them had
  political or economic clot, they could given the
  freedom of the marginalized.
• One could allow women or fools or beggars to say
  and do outrageous things.

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Persecution

• For all the permission that the women mystics
  received from their position on the margins, they
  were in constant danger of running afoul of the
  authorities.
• Marguerite was burned, but others were silenced
  or forced into enclosed convents or had their
  laboriously produced books discarded or misfiled
  in monastic libraries.
• Often the history of these women mystics involves
  the recovery of lost texts.

10
Margery Kempe

• Since I plan to talk more about other women, I
  want to mention Margery Kemp first.
• Perhaps the best example of permission in the
  history.
• Kempe lived from c.1373-1438.
• Since she claimed not to be able to read and
  suffered much in her masterful autobiography, The
  Life of Margery Kempe, from this, she dictated
  her book. The voice is clearly, however, her
  own.

11
Childbirth

• Margery was a middle class wife of a businessman
  and the daughter of a businessman.
• In her life, she gives one of the classic
  descriptions of the pain of medieval childbirth.
• She suffered so much that she called for a priest
  to hear her last confession but she never got to
  confess the secret sin that she believed was
  behind her misery.

12
The Vision

• In the midst of that agony, she recorded
• our merciful Lord Christ Jesu, ever to be trusted
  (worshiped be his name) never forsaking his
  servant in time of need, appeared to his
  creature, which had forsaken him, in likeness of
  a man, most seemly, most beauteous, and most
  amiable that ever might be seen with man's eye,
  clad in a mantle of purple silk, sitting upon her
  bed's side, looking upon her with so blessed a
  cheer that she was strengthened in all her
  spirits, said to her these words "Daughter, why
  hast thou forsaken me, and I forsook never thee?"

13
Separation

• After several more children and several business
  failures, Margery bargained with her husband that
  she would use her inheritance to pay his debts,
  if he would release her from her martial
  obligation to have sexual relations.
• He did so, and she became a wanderer, living in
  immediate response to Christ.

14
Palestine and Norwich

• Margery in obedience to her inner voice, traveled
  to the Holy Land where she had an affecting
  vision of the crucifixion and to Norwich to visit
  Dame Julian. Along the way, she meet many of the
  most famous English mystics of the time and
  exchanged insights with them.

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The Women of the Rhine

• Hadewijch of Antwerp
• Mechthild of Magdeburg

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The Beguines

• A new form of religious life
• The Beguines formed religious communities of
  women that were not traditional monastic orders
  or new religious brotherhoods, like the
  Franciscans and the Dominicans.
• To live together in simplicity and service.

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The Beguines and the Church

• Always on the edge of the dialectic between
  permission and persecution.
• The Beguines had an interesting position in a
  western European Christianity that was increasing
  organized and bureaucratic they were loyal
  Christians in doctrine and devotion, but they
  were not clearly located in the hierarchy or
  under any clear authority.

18
Social Class

• The Beguines appear to have comparatively
  wealthy, either the daughters of nobles, or of
  the increasingly wealthy middle class.
• In that sense, they were very much like Margery
  Kemp, although most beguines could read and write
  at least their own language and often latin.

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Too Many Women?

• One common historical interpretation of the
  beguine movement is that it provided a place for
  some of the surplus women in a society where
  males often died young, either from war or the
  great killer of young men, accident.
• This explanation helps us to understand why so
  many nunneries, beguine houses, and other female
  establishments, but its flaw is obvious
• Why did it produce these remarkably free
  communities at this time?

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Growing Wealth and the Apostolic Life

• The origins of the beguines, it seems to me, are
  two separate developments
• Many women, including Margery Kempe, had more
  resources to support their own independent
  actions. We see a similar rise of freedom among
  middle and upper classed men. (Francis and
  Dominic)
• At the same time, many felt a need for what was
  called the apostolic life, a life in which a
  person lived with evangelical simplicity and
  abandoning themselves to God.

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Apostolic Life

• In other words, the great Beguine houses were
  similar to the Franciscan and Dominican
  establishments that were dotting Europe.
• This is very evident in the shared language of
  courtly love that can be found in all of the
  apostolic traditions.
• Remember that Francis was called Gods Jester and
  Gods Minstrel.
• Women, we should remember, tried to join the two
  great Apostolic Orders in large numbers only to
  have Rome confine the Second Orders of these
  movements to enclosure and traditional monastic
  rules. Much bitterness over this exclusion.

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Mechtild of Magdeburg

• She had her first religious experiences at age 12
• Became a Beguine at about age 23
• Like many other women mystics, a bitter critique
  of the corruptions of the church of her time.
• Forced to flee to a Dominican nunnery later
• She flourished in this community at Helfta where
  she lived with Mechtild of Hackeborn and Gertrude
  the Great.

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Mechtild of Magdeberg

• Her principal book was entitled The Flowing Light
  of the Godhead.
• She insisted that God was the author I cannot
  write nor do I wish to writebut I see this book
  with the eyes of my soul and hear it with the
  ears of my eternal spirit and feel it in every
  part of my body the power of the Holy Spirit. .
  .The writing of this book flowed out of the
  living Godhead into the heart of Sister Mechtild.

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The Flowing Light of the Godhead.

• The book is disjointed, even for mystical
  writers, and consists of spiritual poems, prose,
  songs of divine love, allegories, moral
  reflections, admonitions , and practical advice.
  (Egan 247). Also visions, revelations, and
  mystical experiences.
• The manuscript is a collection of loose pages
  arranged, it is believed, by her confessor,
  Heinrich of Halle.

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The Dance of PraiseMechtild

• Thus she goes into the woods, that is the company
  of holy people. The sweetest nightengales sing
  there day and night and she hears also many pure
  notes of the birds of the holy wisdom. But still
  the youth does not come. She sends her
  messengers, for she would dance. He sends her
  the faith fo Abraham, the chaste modesty of St.
  Mary, the sacred perfection of our Lord Jesus
  Christ and the whole company of the elect. Thus
  there is prepared a noble dance of praise.

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Dancing with Christ

• I cannot dance O Lord unless thou lead me.
• If thou wilt that I leap joyfully
• Then must Thou Thyself first dance and sing.
• Then I will leap for love

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On Creaturesslide 1

• Fish cannot drown in the water,
• Birds cannot sink in the air,
• Gold cannot perish
• In the refiners fire.
• This has God given to all creatures
• To foster and seek their own nature,
• How then can I withstand mine?

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Love

• Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often,
  love me long. For the more continuouslyYou love
  me, the purer I will be the more fervently You
  love me, the more beautifulI will be the longer
  You love me, the holier I will become here on
  earth.

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On Creatures

• I must to God
• My Father through nature,
• My brother through humility
• My bridegroom through Love,
• His am I forever!

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Hadewijch

• Early thirteenth century.
• Her life is known primarily thorough her works.
• Began her religious experiences at age 10.
• For her, the themes of courtly love are ever
  present. Many of her poems, if lifted from their
  religious context, would seem to be erotic verse.

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Truly Learned Woman

• wrote thirty-one letters,
• forty-five poems in stanzas,
• fourteen visions,
• sixteen poems in couplets.
• Knew Latin, rules of rhetoric, numerology,
  Ptolemaic astronomy, many of the Church fathers,
  and most of the canonical twelfth-century writers

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Hadewyck

• With that he came in the form and clothing of a
  Man, as he was on the day when he gave us his
  Body for the first time looking like a Human
  Being and a Man, wonderful, and beautiful, and
  with glorious face, he came to me as humbly as
  anyone who wholly belongs to another. Then he
  gave himself to me in the shape of the Sacrament,
  in its outward form, as the custom is and then
  he gave me to drink from the chalice, in form and
  taste, as the custom is. After that he came
  himself to me, took me entirely in his arms, and
  pressed me to him and all my members felt his in
  full felicity, in accordance with the desire of
  my heart and my humanity. So I was outwardly
  satisfied and fully transported.

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Hadewych

• How love, by Love, sees to the depths of the
  Beloved,
• Perceiving how Loves lives freely in all things.
• Yes, when the soul has this liberty,
• The liberty that Love can give,
• It fears neither death nor life.

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HadewychPoem continues following slide

• The madness of loveIs a rich fiefAnyone who
  recognized thisWould not ask Love for anything
  elseIt can unite OppositesAnd reverse the
  paradox.I am declaring the truth about thisThe
  madness of love makes bitter what was sweet,It
  makes the stranger a kinsman,And it makes the
  smallest the most proud.

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Hadewych

• To souls who have not reached such love,I give
  this good counselIf they cannot do more,Let
  them beg Love for amnesty,And serve with
  faith,According to the counsel of noble
  Love,And think 'It can happen,Love's power is
  so great!'Only after his deathIs a man beyond
  cure.

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