# The Mediaeval Mind/Chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX
MYSTIC VISIONS OF ASCETIC WOMEN
ELIZABETH OF SCHÖNAU; HILDEGARD OF BINGEN; MARY OF OGNIES; LlUTGARD OF TONGERN; MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG
We pass to matters of a different complexion from anything presented in the last few chapters. Thus far, besides Bernard and Francis, matchless examples of monastic ideals, there have been instances of contemplation and piety, with much emotion, and a sufficiency of experience having small part in reason; also hallucinations and fantastic conduct, as in the case of Romuald. The last class of phenomena, however, have not been prominent. Now for a while we shall be wrapt in visions, rational, imitative, fashioned with intent and plan; or, again, directly experienced, passionate, hallucinative. They will range from those climaxes of the constructive or intuitive imagination, which are of the whole man, to passionate or morbid delusions representing but a partial and passing phase of the subject's personality. Moreover, we have been occupied with hermits and monks, that is to say, with men. The present chapter has to do with nuns; who are more prone to visions, and are occasionally subject to those passionate hallucinations which are prompted by the circumstance that the Christian God was incarnate in the likeness of a man.
Besides the conclusions which the mind draws from the data of sense, or reaches through reflection, there are other modes of conviction whose distinguishing mark is their apparent immediacy and spontaneity. They are not elicited ​from antecedent processes of thought, as inferences or deductions; rather they loom upon the consciousness, and are experienced. Yet they are far from simple, and may contain a multiplicity of submerged reasonings, and bear relation to countless previous inferences. They are usually connected with emotion or neural excitement, and may even take the guise of sense-manifestations. Through such convictions, religious minds are assured of God and the soul's communion with Him. While not issuing from argument, this assurance may be informed with reason and involve the total sum of conclusions which the reasoner has drawn from life.
In devout mediaeval circles, the consciousness of communion with God, with the Virgin, with angels and saints, and with the devil, often took on the semblance of sense-perception. The senses seemed to be experiencing: stenches of hell, odours of heaven, might be smelled, or a taste infect the mouth; the divine or angelic touch was felt, or the pain of blows; most frequently voices were heard, and forms were seen in a vision. In these apparent testimonies of sight and hearing, the entire spiritual nature of the man or woman might set the vision, dramatize it with his or her desires and aversions, and complete it from the store of knowledge at command.
The visions of an eleventh-century monk named Othloh have been observed at some length. Intimate and trying, they were also, so to speak, in and of the whole man: his tastes, his solicitudes, his acquired knowledge and ways of reasoning, joined in these vivid experiences of God's truth and the devil's onslaughts. One may be mindful of Othloh in turning to the more impersonal visions of certain German nuns, which likewise issued ​from the entire nature and intellectual equipment of these women.
On the Rhine, fifteen miles north-east of Bingen, lies the village of Schönau, where in the twelfth century flourished a Benedictine monastery, and near it a cloister for nuns. At the latter a girl of twelve named Elizabeth was received in the year 1141. She lived there as nun, and finally as abbess, till her death in 1165. Like many other lofty souls dwelling in the ideal, she was a stern censor of the evils in the world and in the Church. The bodily infirmities from which she was never free, were aggravated by austerities, and usually became most painful just before the trances that brought her visions. Masses and penances, prayer and meditation, made her manner of approach to these direct disclosures of eternity, wherein the whole contents of her faith and her reflection were unrolled. Frequently she beheld the Saints in the nights following their festivals; her larger visions were moulded by the Apocalypse. These experiences were usually beatific, though sometimes she suffered insult from malignant shapes. What humility bade her conceal, the importunities of admirers compelled her to disclose: and so her visions have been preserved, and may be read in the Vita written by her brother Eckbert, Abbot of Schönau. Here is an example of how the saint and seeress spoke:
"On the Sunday night following the festival of St. James (in the year 1153), drawn from the body, I was borne into an ecstasy (avocata a corpore rapta sum in exstasim). And a great flaming wheel flared in the heaven. Then it disappeared, and I saw a light more splendid than I was accustomed to see; and thousands of saints stood in it, forming an immense circle; in front were some glorious men, having palms and shining crowns and the titles of their martyrdoms inscribed upon their foreheads. From these titles, as well as from their pre-eminent splendour, I knew them to be the Apostles. At their right was a great company having the same shining titles; and behind these were others, who lacked the signs of martyrdom. At the left of the Apostles shone the holy order of virgins, also adorned with the signs of martyrdom, and behind them}} ​another splendid band of maidens, some crowned, but without these signs. Still back of these, a company of venerable women in white completed the circle. Below it was another circle of great brilliancy, which I knew to be of the holy angels."
"In the midst of all was a Glory of Supreme Majesty, and its throne was encircled by a rainbow. At the right of that Majesty I saw one like unto the Son of Man, seated in glory; at the left was a radiant sign of the Cross.… At the right of the Son of Man sat the Queen of Kings and Angels on a starry throne circumfused with immense light. At the left of the Cross four-and-twenty honourable men sat facing it. And not far from them I saw two rams sustaining on their shoulders a great shining wheel. The morning after this, at terse, one of the brothers came to the window of my cell, and I asked that the mass for the Holy Trinity might be celebrated.
"The next Sunday I saw the same vision, and more: for I saw the Lamb of God standing before the throne, very lovable, and with a gold cross, as if implanted in its back. And I saw the four Evangelists in those forms which Holy Scripture ascribes to them. They were at the right of the Blessed Virgin, and their faces were turned toward her."
And Elizabeth saw the Virgin arise and advance from out the great light into the lower ether, followed by a multitude of women saints, and then return amid great praise. In another vision she saw the events of the Saviour's last days on earth: saw Him riding into Jerusalem, and the multitude throwing down branches; saw Him washing the disciples' feet, then the agony in the garden, the betrayal, the crowning with thorns, the spitting, the Lord upon the Cross, and the Mother of God full of grief; she saw the piercing of His side, the dreadful darkness,—all as in Scripture, and then the Scriptural incidents following the Resurrection. Upon this, her vision took another turn, and words were put in her mouth to chastise the people for their sins.
Apparently more original was Elizabeth's vision of the Paths of God (the Viae Dei). In it three paths went straight up a mountain from opposite sides, the first having the hyacinthine hue of the deep heaven; the second green, the third purple. At the top of the mountain was a man, clad with a hyacinthine tunic, his reins bound with a white girdle; his face was splendid as the sun, his eyes shone as stars, and his hair was white; from his mouth issued a two-edged ​sword; in his right hand he held a key and in his left a sceptre. Elizabeth interprets: the man is Christ; and the mountain represents the loftiness of celestial beatitude; the light at the top is the brightness of eternal life; the three paths are the diverse ways in which the elect ascend. The hyacinthine path is that of the vita contemplativa; the green path is that of the religious vita activa; and the purple path is the way of the blessed martyrs.
There were also other paths up the mountain, one beset with brambles until half way up, where they gave place to flowers. This is the way of married folk, who pass from brambles to flowers when they abandon the pleasures of the flesh; for the flowers are the virtues which adorn a life of continence. Still other ways there were, for prelates, for widows, and for solitaries. And Elizabeth turns her visions into texts, and preaches vigorous sermons, denouncing the vices of the clergy as well as laity. In other visions she had seen prelates and monks and nuns in hell.
The visions of this nun appear to have been the fruit of the constructive imagination working upon data of the mind. Yet she is said to have seen them in trances, a statement explicitly made in the account of those last days when life had almost left her body. Praying devoutly in the middle of the night before she died, she seemed much troubled; then she passed into a trance (exstasim). Returning to herself, she murmured to the sister who held her in her arms: "I know not how it is with me; that light which I have been wont to see in the heavens is dividing." Again she passed into a trance, and afterwards, when the sisters begged her to disclose what she had seen, she said her end was at hand, for she had seen holy visions which, many years before, God's angel had told her she should not see again until she came to die. On being asked whether the Lord had comforted her, she answered, "Oh! what excellent comfort have I received!"
A more imposing personality than Elizabeth was Hildegard of Bingen, whose career extends through nearly ​the whole of the twelfth century; for she was born in 1099 and died in 1179. Her parents were of the lesser nobility, holding lands in the diocese of Mainz. A certain holy woman, one Jutta, daughter of the Count of Spanheim, had secluded herself in a solitary cell at Disenberg—the mount of St. Disibodus—near a monastery of Benedictine monks. Drawn by her reputation, Hildegard's parents brought their daughter to Jutta, who received her to a life like her own. The ceremony, which took place in the presence of a number of persons, was that of the last rites of the dead, performed with funeral torches. Hildegard was buried to the world. She was eight years old. At the same time a niece of Jutta also became a recluse, and afterwards others joined them.
On the death of Jutta in 1136, Hildegard was compelled to take the office of Prioress. But when the fame of the dead Jutta began to draw many people to her shrine, and cause a concourse of pilgrims, Hildegard decided to seek greater quiet, and possibly more complete independence;
​for the authority of the new abbot at the monastery may not have been to her liking. She was ever a masterful woman, better fitted to command than to obey. So in 1147 she and her nuns moved to Bingen, and established themselves permanently near the tomb of St. Rupert. From this centre the energies and influence of Hildegard, and rumours of her visions, soon began to radiate. Her advice was widely sought, and often given unasked. She corresponded with the great and influential, admonishing dukes and kings and emperors, monks, abbots, and popes. Her epistolary manner sometimes reminds one of Bernard, who was himself among her correspondents. The following letter to Frederick Barbarossa would match some of his:
This is the whole letter. Hildegard's communications were not wont to stammer. They were frequently announced as from God, and began with the words "Lux vivens dicit."
Hildegard was a woman of intellectual power. She was also learned in theology, and versed in the medicine and scanty natural science of an epoch which preceded the reopening of the great volume of Aristotelian knowledge in the thirteenth century. Yet she asserts her illiteracy, and seems always to have employed learned monks to help her express, in awkward Latin, the thoughts and flashing words which, as she says, were given her in visions. Her many gifts of grace, if not her learning, impressed contemporaries, who wrote to her for enlightenment upon points of doctrine and biblical interpretation; they would wait patiently until she should be enabled to answer, since her answers were not in the power of her own reflection, but had to be seen or heard. For instance, a monk ​named Guibert, who afterwards became the saint's amanuensis and biographer, propounded thirty-eight questions of biblical interpretation on behalf of the monks of the monastery of Villars. In the course of time Hildegard replies: "In visione animae meae, haec verba vidi et audivi," and thereupon she gives a text from Canticles with an exposition of it, which neither she nor the monks regarded quite as hers, but as divinely revealed. At the end of the letter she says that she, insignificant and untaught creature, has looked to the "true light," and through the grace of God has laboured upon their questions and has completed the solutions of fourteen of them.
In some of Hildegard's voluminous writings, visions were apparently a form of composition; again, more veritable visions, deemed by her and by her friends to have been divinely given, made the nucleus of the work at length produced by the labour of her mind. Guibert recognized both elements, the God-given visions of the seeress and her contributory labour. In letters which had elicited the answers above mentioned, he calls her speculativa anima, and urges her to direct her talents (ingenium) to the solution of the questions. But he also addresses her in words just varied from Gabriel's and Elizabeth's to the Virgin:
"Hail—after Mary—full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the word of thy mouth.… In the character of thy visions, the logic of thy expositions, the orthodoxy of thy opinions, the Holy Spirit has marvellously illuminated thee, and revealed to babes divers secrets of His wisdom."
In answer to more personal inquiries from the deeply-interested Guibert, Hildegard (who at the time was venerable in years and in repute for sanctity) explains how she saw her visions, and how her knowledge of Scripture came to her:
"From infancy, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old, my soul has always beheld this visio, and ​in it my soul, as God may will, soars to the summit of the firmament and into a different air, and diffuses itself among divers peoples, however remote they may be. Therefore I perceive these matters in my soul, as if I saw them through dissolving views of clouds and other objects. I do not hear them with my outer ears, nor do I perceive them by the cogitations of my heart, or by any collaboration of my five senses; but only in my soul, my eyes open, and not sightless as in a trance; wide awake, whether by day or night, I see these things. And I am perpetually bound by my infirmities and with pains so severe as to threaten death, but hitherto God has raised me up.
"The brightness which I see is not limited in space, and is more brilliant than the luminous air around the sun, nor can I estimate its height or length or breadth. Its name, which has been given me, is Shade of the living light (umbra viventis luminis). Just as sun, moon, or stars appear reflected in the water, I see Scripture, discourses, virtues and human actions shining in it.
"Whatever I see or learn in this vision, I retain in my memory; and as I may have seen or heard it, I recall it to mind, and at once see, hear, know; in an instant I learn whatever I know. On the other hand, what I do not see, that I do not know, because I am unlearned; but I have had some simple instruction in letters. I write whatever I see and hear in the vision, nor do I set down any other words, but tell my message in the rude Latin words which I read in the vision. For I am not instructed in the vision to write as the learned write; and the words in the vision are not as words sounding from a human mouth, but as flashing flame and as a cloud moving in clear air.
"Nor have I been able to perceive the form of this brightness, just as I cannot perfectly see the disk of the Sun. In that brightness I sometimes see another light, for which the name Lux vivens has been given me. When and how I see it I cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it, all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and then I have the ways of a simple girl and not those of an old woman."
The obscure Latin of this letter gives the impression of one trying to put in words what was unintelligible to the writer. And the same sense of struggle with the inadequacies of speech comes from the prologue of a work written many years before:
"Lo, in the forty-third year of my temporal course, while I, in fear and trembling, was intent upon the celestial vision, I saw a ​great splendour in which was a voice speaking to me from heaven: Frail creature, dust of the dust, speak and write what thou seest and hearest. But because that thou art timid of speech and unskilled in writing, speak and write these things not according to human utterance nor human understanding of composition; but as thou seest and hearest in the heavens above, in the marvels of God, so declare, as a hearer sets forth the words of his preceptor, preserving the fashion of his speech, under his will, his guidance and his command. Thus thou, O man (homo) tell those things which thou seest and hearest, and write, not according to thyself or other human being, but according to the will of Him who knows and sees and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.
"And again, I heard a voice saying to me from heaven: Tell these marvels and write them, taught in this way, and say: It happened in the year one thousand one hundred and forty-one of the incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God, when I was forty-two years old, that a flashing fire of light from the clear sky transfused my brain, my heart, and my whole breast as with flame; yet it did not burn but only warmed me, as the sun warms an object upon which it sheds its rays. And suddenly I had intelligence of the full meaning of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other books of the Old and New Testaments, although I did not have the exact interpretation of the words of their text, nor the division of syllables nor knowledge of cases and moods."
The writer continues with the statement:
"The visions which I saw, I did not perceive in dreams or sleeping, nor in delirium, nor with the corporeal ears and eyes of the outer man; but watchful and intent in mind I received them according to the will of God."
Hildegard spoke as truthfully as she could about her visions and the source of her knowledge, matters hard for her to put in words, and by no means easy for others to classify in categories of seeming explanation. Guibert may have read the work in question. At all events, his interesting correspondence with her, and her great repute, led him to come to see for himself and investigate her visions; for he realized that deceptions were common, and wished to follow the advice of Scripture to prove all things. So he ​made the journey to Bingen, and stayed four days with Hildegard. This was in 1178, about a year before her death. "So far as was possible in this short space of time, I observed her attentively; and I could not perceive in her any invention or untruth or hypocrisy, or indeed anything that could offend either us or other men who follow reason."
Springing from her rapt faith, the visions of this seeress and anima speculativa disclose the range of her knowledge and the power of her mind. The visions all were allegories; but while some appear as sheer spontaneous visions, in others the mind of Hildegard, aware of the intended allegorical significance, constructs the vision, and fashions its details to suit the spiritual meaning. This woman, fit sister to her contemporaries Hugo of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux, was ancestress of him who saw his Commedia both as fact and allegory, and with intended mind laboured upon that inspiration which kept him lean for twenty years.
Let us now follow these visions for ourselves, and begin with the Book of the Rewards of Life revealed by the Living Light through a simple person.
"When I was sixty years old, I saw the strong and wonderful vision wherein I toiled for five years. And I saw a Man of such size that he reached from the summit of the clouds of heaven even to the Abyss. From his shoulders upward he was above the clouds in the serenest ether. From his shoulders down to his hips he was in a white cloud; from his hips to his knees he was in the air of earth; from the knees to the calves he was in the earth; and from his calves to the soles of his feet he was in the waters of the Abyss, so that he stood upon the Abyss. And he turned to the East. The brightness of his countenance dazzled me. At his mouth was a white cloud like a trumpet, which was full of all sounds sounding quickly. When he blew in it, it sent forth three winds, of which one sustained above itself a fiery cloud, and one a storm-cloud, and one a cloud of light. But the wind with the fiery cloud above it hovered before the Man's face, while the two others descended to his breast and blew there.
"And in the fiery cloud there was a living fiery multitude all one in will and life. Before them was spread a tablet covered ​with quills (pennae) which flew in the precepts of God. And when the precepts of God lifted up that tablet where God's knowledge had written certain of its secrets, this multitude with one impulse gazed on it. And as they saw the writing, God's virtue was so bestowed upon them that as a mighty trumpet they gave forth in one note a music manifold.
"The wind having the storm-cloud over it, spread, with that cloud, from the south to the west. In it was a multitude of the blessed, who possessed the spirit of life; and their voice was as the noise of many waters as they cried: We have our habitations from Him who made this wind, and when shall we receive them? But the multitude that was in the fiery cloud chanted responding: When God shall grasp His trumpet, lightning and thunder and burning fire shall He send upon the earth, and then in that trumpet shall ye have your habitation.
"And the wind which had over it the cloud of light spread with that cloud from the east to the north. But masses of darkness and thick horror coming from the west, extended themselves to the light cloud, yet could not pass beyond it. In that darkness was a countless crowd of lost souls; and these swerved in their course whenever they heard the song of those singing in the storm-cloud, as if they shunned their company.
"Then I saw coming from the north, a cloud barren of delight, untouched by the Sun's rays. It reached towards the darkness aforesaid, and was full of malignant spirits, who go about devising snares for men. And I heard the old serpent saying, 'I will prepare my men of might and will make war upon mine enemies.' And he spat forth among men a spume of things impure, and inflated them with derision. Then he blew up a foul mist which filled the whole earth as with black smoke, out of which was heard a groaning; and in that mist I saw the images of every sin."
These images now speak in their own defence, and are answered by the virtues, speaking from the storm-cloud, Heavenly Love replying to Love of this World, Discipline answering Petulance, Shame answering Ribaldry (the vice of the jongleours) after the fashion of such mediaeval allegorical debates. The virtues are simply voices; but the monstrous or bestial image of each sin is described:
"Ignavia (cowardly sloth) had a human head, but its left ear was like the ear of a hare, and so large as to cover the head. Its body and limbs were worm-like, apparently without bones; and it spoke trembling."
Then Hildegard sees the punishments of those who die in their sins impenitent. They were in a pit having a bottom of burning pitch, out of which crawled fiery worms; and sharp nails were driven about in that pit as by a wind.
"I saw a well deep and broad, full of boiling pitch and sulphur, and around it were wasps and scorpions, who scared but did not injure the souls of those therein; which were the souls of those who had slain in order not to be slain.
"Near a pond of clear water I saw a great fire. In this some souls were burned and others were girdled with snakes, and others drew in and again exhaled the fire like a breath, while malignant spirits cast lighted stones at them. And all of them beheld their punishments reflected in the water, and thereat were the more afflicted. These were the souls of those who had extinguished the substance of the human form within them, or had slain their infants.
"And I saw a great swamp, over which hung a black cloud of smoke, which was issuing from it. And in the swamp there swarmed a mass of little worms. Here were the souls of those who in the world had delighted in foolish merriment (inepta laetitia).
"And I saw a great fire, black, red, and white, and in it horrible fiery vipers spitting flame; and there the vipers tortured the souls of those who had been slaves of the sin of uncharitableness (acerbitas).
"And I saw a fire burning in a blackness, in which were dragons, who blew up the fire with their breath. And near was an icy river; and the dragons passed into it from time to time and disturbed it. And a fiery air was over both river and fire. Here were punished the souls of liars; and for relief from the heat, they ​pass into the river, and again, for the cold, they return to the fire, and the dragons torment them. But the fiery air afflicts only those who have sworn falsely.
"I saw a hollow mountain full of fire and vipers, with a little opening; and near it a horrible cold place crawling with scorpions. The souls of those guilty of envy and malice suffer here, passing for relief from one place of torment to the other.
"And I saw a thickest darkness, in which the souls of the disobedient lay on a fiery pavement and were bitten by sharp-toothed worms. For blind were they in life, and the fiery pavement is for their wilful disobedience, and the worms because they disobeyed their prelates.
"And I beheld at great height in the air a hail of ice and fire descending. And from that height, the souls of those who had broken their vows of chastity were falling, and then as by a wind were whirled aloft again wrapped in a ligature of darkness, so that they could not move; and the hail of cold and fire fell upon them.
"And I saw demons with fiery scourges beating hither and thither, through fires shaped like thorns and sharpened flails, the souls of those who on earth had been guilty bestially."
After the vision of the punishment, Hildegard states the penance which would have averted it, and usually follows with pious discourse and quotations from Scripture. Apparently she would have the punishments seen by her to be taken not as allegories, but literally as those actually in store for the wicked.
It is different with her visions of Paradise. In Hildegard, as in Dante, descriptions of heaven's blessedness are pale in comparison with the highly-coloured happenings in hell. And naturally, since Paradise is won by those in whom spirit has triumphed over carnality. But flesh triumphed in the wicked on earth, and hell is of the flesh, though the spirit also be agonized. Hildegard sees many blessed folk in Paradise, but all is much the same with them: they are clad in splendid clothes, they breathe an air fragrant with sweetest flowers, they are adorned with jewels, and many of them wear crowns. For example, she sees the blessed virgins standing in purest light and limpid splendour, ​surpassing that of the sun. They are clad "quasi candidissima veste velut auro intexta, et quasi pretiosissimis lapidibus a pectore usque ad pedes, in modum dependentis zonae, ornata induebantur, quae etiam maximum odorem velut aromatum de se emittebat. Sed et cingulis, quasi auro et gemmis ac margaritis supra humanum intellectual ornatis, circumcingebantur."
This seems a description of heavenly millinery. Are these virgins rewarded in the life to come with what they spurned in this? What would the saint have thought of virgins had she seen them in the flesh clad in the whitest vestment ornamented with interwoven gold and gems, falling in alluring folds from their breasts to their feet, giving out aromatic odours, and belted with girdles of pearls beyond human conception? Could it be possible that the woman surviving in the nun took delight in contemplating the blissful things forbidden here below? However this may be, the quasi-s and velut-s suggest the symbolical character of these marvels. This indication becomes stronger as Hildegard, in language wavering between the literal and the symbolical, explains the appropriateness of ornaments and perfumes as rewards for the virtues shown by saints on earth. At last all is made clear: the Lux vivens declares that these ornaments are spiritual and eternal; gold and gems, which are of the dust, are not for the eternal life of celestial beings; but the elect are spiritually adorned by their righteous works as people are bodily adorned with costly ornaments. So one gains the lesson that the bliss of heaven can only be shown in allegories, since it surpasses the understanding of men while held in mortal flesh.
​These visions from Hildegard's Book of the Rewards of Life may be supplemented by one or two selected from the curious and lengthy work which she named Scivias, signifying Scito vias domini (know the ways of the Lord). In this work, on which she laboured for nine years, the seeress shows forth the Church, in images seen in visions, and the whole dogmatic scheme of Christian polity. The allegories form the texts of expository sermons. For example, the first vision in the first Book is of an iron-coloured mountain, which is at once explained as an image of the stability of God's eternal kingdom. The third vision is of a fiery, egg-shaped object, very complicated in construction, and devised to illustrate the truth that things visible and temporal shadow forth the invisible and eternal, in the polity of God. In the fourth vision, globes of fire are seen to enter the human form at birth, and are then attacked by many whirlwinds rushing in upon them. This is an allegory of human souls and their temptations, and forms the text for a long discourse on the nature of the soul.
The fifth vision is of the Synagogue, the Mater incarnationis Filii Dei:
"Then I saw as it were the image of a woman, pale from the top to the navel, and black from the navel to the feet, and its feet were blood-colour, and had about them a very white cloud. This image lacked eyes, and kept its hands under its arm-pits. It stood by the Altar that is before the eyes of God, but did not touch it."
The pale upper part of this image represents the prescience of the patriarchs and prophets, who had not the strong light of the Gospel; the black lower portion represents Israel's later backslidings; and the bloody feet surrounded by a white cloud, the slaying of Christ, and the Church arising from that consummation. The image is sightless—blind to Christ—and stands before His altar, but will have none of it; and its slothful hands keep from the work of righteousness.
​The sixth vision is of the orders of celestial spirits, and harks back to the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite. In the height of the celestial secrets Hildegard sees a shining company of supernal spirits having as it were wings (pennas) across their breasts, and bearing before them a face like the human countenance, in which the look of man was mirrored. These are angels spreading as wings the desires of their profound intelligence; not that they have wings, like birds; but they quickly do the will of God in their desires, as a man flees quickly in his thoughts. They manifest the beauty of rationality through their faces, wherein God scrutinizes the works of men. For these angels see to the accomplishment of the will of God in men; and then in themselves they show the actions of men.
Another celestial company was seen, also having as it were wings over their breasts, and bearing before them a face like the human countenance in which the image of the Son of Man shone as in a mirror. These are archangels contemplating the will of God in the desires of their own intelligences, and displaying the grace of rationality; they glorify the incarnate Word by figuring in their attributes the mysteries of the Incarnation. This vision, symbolizing the angelic intelligence, is consciously and rationally constructed.
Perhaps the same may be said of the second vision of the second Book:
"Then I saw a most glorious light and in it a human form of sapphire hue, all aflame with a most gentle glowing fire; and that glorious light was infused in the glowing fire, and the fire was infused in the glorious light; and both light and fire transfused that human form—all inter-existent as one light, one virtue, and one power."
This vision of the Trinity, in which the glorious light is the Father, the human form is the Son, and the fire is the Holy Spirit, may remind the reader of the closing "vision" of the thirty-third canto of Dante's Paradiso.
The third Book contains manifold visions of a four-sided edifice set upon a mountain, and built with a double (biformis) wall. Here an infinitude of symbolic detail illustrates ​the entire Christian Faith. Observe a part of the symbolism of the twofold wall: the wall is double (in duabus formis). One of its formae is speculative knowledge, which man possesses through careful and penetrating investigation of the speculation of his mind; so that he may be circumspect in all his ways. The other forma of the wall represents the homo operans.
"This speculative knowledge shines in the brightness of the light of day, that through it men may see and consider their acts. This brightness is of the human mind carefully looking about itself; and this glorious knowledge appears as a white mist permeating the minds of the peoples, as quickly as mist is scattered through the air; it is light as the light of day, after the brightness of that most glorious work which God benignly works in men, to wit, that they shun evil and do the good which shines in them as the light of day.… This knowledge is speculative, for it is like a mirror (speculum) in which a man sees whether his face be fair or blotched; thus this knowledge views the good and evil in the deed done."
The Scivias closes with visions of the Last Judgment, splendid, ordered, tremendous, and rendered audible in hymns rising to the Virgin and to Christ. Apostles, martyrs, saints chant the refrains of victory which echo the past militancy of this faithful choir.
The visions of Elizabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen set forth universal dogmas and convictions. They show the action of the imaginative and rational faculties and the full use of the acquired knowledge possessed by the women to whom they came. Such visions spring from the mind—quite different are those born of love. Emotion dominates the latter; their motives are subjective; they are personal experiences having no clear pertinency to the lives of others. If the visions of Hildegard were object lessons, the blissful ecstasies of Mary of Ognies and Liutgard of Tongern were specifically their own, very nearly as the intimate consolation of a wife from a husband, or a lady from her faithful knight, would be that woman's and none other's.
One cannot say that there was no love of God before ​Jesus was born; still less that men had not conceived of God as loving them. Nevertheless in Jesus' words God became lovable as never before, and God's love of man was shown anew, and was anew set forth as the perfect pattern of human love. In Christ, God offered the sacrifice which afore He had demanded of Abraham: for "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." That Son carried out the Father's act: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." So men learned the final teaching: "God is love."
A new love also was aroused by the personality of Jesus. Was this the love of God or love of man? Rather, it was such as to reveal the two as one. In Jesus' teachings, love of God and love of man might not be severed: "As ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." And the love which He inspired for himself was at once a love of man and love of God. Think of that love, new in the world, with which, more than with her ointment or her tears, the woman who had been a sinner bathed the Master's feet.
This woman saw the Master in the flesh; but the love which was hers was born again in those who never looked upon His face. Through the Middle Ages the love of Christ with which saintly women were possessed was as impulsive as this sinner's, and also held much resembling human passion. Their burning faith tended to liquefy to ecstatic experiences. They had renounced the passionate love of man in order to devote themselves to the love of Christ; and as their thoughts leapt toward the Bridegroom, the Church's Spouse and Lord, their visions sometimes kept at least the colour of the love for knight or husband which they had abjured.
​At the height of the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade, in the year 1212, Fulco, Bishop of Toulouse, was driven from his diocese by the incensed but heretical populace. He travelled northward through France, seeking aid against these foes of Christ, and came to the diocese of Liége. There he observed with joy the faith and humility of those who were leading a religious life, and was struck by the devotion of certain saintly women whose ardour knew no bounds. It was all very different from Toulouse. "Indeed I have heard you declare that you had gone out of Egypt—your own diocese—and having passed through the desert, had reached the promised land—in Liége."
Jacques de Vitry is speaking. His friend the bishop had asked him to write of these holy women, who brought such glory to the Church in troubled times. Jacques was himself a clever Churchman, zealous for the Church's interests and his own. He afterwards became Bishop and Cardinal of Tusculum; and as papal legate consecrated the holy bones of her whom the Church had decided to canonize, the blessed Mary of Ognies, the paragon of all these other women who rejoiced the ecclesiastical hearts of himself and Fulco. Jacques had known her and had been present at her pious death; and also had witnessed many of the matters of which he is speaking at the commencement of his Vita of this saint.
Many of these women, continues Jacques, had for Christ spurned carnal joys, and for Him had despised the riches of this world, in poverty and humility clinging to their heavenly Spouse.
But what need to say more of these, as all their graces are found in one precious and pre-excellent pearl—and Jacques proceeds to tell the life of Mary of Ognies. She was born in a village near Namur in Belgium, about the year 1177. She never took part in games or foolishness with other girls; but kept her soul free from vanity. Married at fourteen to a young man, she burned the more to afflict her body, passing the nights in austerities and prayer. Her husband soon was willing to dwell with her in continence, himself sustaining her in her holy life, and giving his goods to the poor for Christ's sake.
There was nothing more marvellous with Mary than her ​gift of tears, as her soul dwelt in the passion of her Lord. Her tears—so says her biographer—wetted the pavement of the Church or the cloth of the altar. Her life was one of body-destroying austerities: she went barefoot in the ice of the winter; often she took no food through the day, and then watched out the night in prayer. Her body was afflicted and wasted; her soul was comforted. She had frequent visions, the gift of second sight, and great power over devils. Once for thirty-five days in silent trance she rested sweetly with the Lord, only occasionally uttering these words: "I desire the body of our Lord Jesus Christ" (i.e. the Eucharist); and when she had received it, she turned again to silence. Always she sought after her Lord: He was her meditation, and example in speech and deed. She died in the year 1213, at the age of thirty-six. She was called Mary of Ognies, from the name of the town where a church was dedicated to her, and where her relics were laid to rest.
Emotionally, another very interesting personality was the blessed virgin, Liutgard of Tongern, a younger contemporary of Mary of Ognies. In accordance with her heart's desire, she was providentially protected from the forceful importunities of her wooers, and became a Benedictine nun. After some years, however, seeking a more strenuous rule of life, she entered the Cistercian convent at Aquiria, near Cambray.
Liutgard's experiences were sense-realizations of her faith, but chiefly of her love of Christ. Sometimes her senses realized the imagery of the Apocalypse; as when singing in Church she had a vision of Christ as a white lamb. The lamb rests a foot on each of her shoulders, sets his mouth to hers, and draws out sweetest song. Far more frequently she realized within her heart the burning words of Canticles. Her whole being yearned continually for the Lord, and sought no other comfort. For five years she received almost daily visits from the Mother of Christ, as ​well as from the Apostles and other saints; the angels were continually with her. Yet in all these she did not find perfect rest for her spirit, till she found the Saint of saints, who is ineffably sweeter than them all, even as He is their sanctifier. Smitten as the bride in Canticles, she is wounded, she languishes, she pants, she arises; "in the streets" she seeks the Saints of the New Dispensation, and through "the broad places" the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. Little by little she passes by them "because He is not far from every one of us"; she finds Him whom her soul cherishes. She finds, she holds Him, because He does not send her away; she holds Him by faith, happy in the seeking, more happy in the holding fast.
There are three couches in Canticles: the first signifies the soul's state of penitence; the second its state of warfare; the third the state of those made perfect in the vita contemplativa. On the first couch the soul is wounded, on the second it is wearied, on the third it is made glad. The saintly Liutgard sought her Beloved perfectly on the couch of penitence, and watered it with her tears, although she never had been stung by mortal sin. On the second couch she sought her Beloved, battling against the flesh with fasting and endeavour; with poverty and humility she overcame the world, and cast down the devil with prayer and remedial tears. On the third couch, which is the couch of quiet, she perfectly sought her Beloved, since she did not lean upon the angels or saints, but through contemplation rested sweetly only upon the couch of the Spouse. This couch is called flowery (floridus) from the vernal quality of its virtues; and it is called "ours" because common to husband and wife: in it she may say, "My Beloved is mine and I am His," and, "I am my Beloved's, and His desire is towards me." Why not say that? exclaims the biographer, quoting the lines:
"Nescit amor Dominum; non novit amor dominari,
Quamlibet altus amet, non amat absque pari."
Thenceforth her spirit was absorbed in God, as drops of water in a jar of wine. When asked how she was wont to ​see the visage of Christ in contemplation, she answered: "In a moment there appears to me a splendour inconceivable, and as lightning I see the ineffable beauty of His glorification; the sight of which I could not endure in this present life, did it not instantly pass from my view. A mental splendour remains, and when I seek in that what I saw for an instant, I do not find it."
A little more than a year before her death the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to her, with the look as of one who applauds, and said: "The end of thy labour is at hand: I do not wish thee longer to be separated from me. This year I require three things of thee: first, that thou shouldst render thanks for all thy benefits received; secondly, that thou pour thyself out in prayer to the Father for my sinners; and thirdly, that, without any other solicitude, thou burn to come to me, panting with desire."
The religious yearning which with Liutgard touches sense-realization, seems transformed completely into the latter in the extraordinary German book of one Sister Mechthild, called of Magdeburg. The authoress probably was born not far from that town about the year 1212. To ​judge from her work, she belonged to a good family and was acquainted with the courtly literature of the time. She speaks of her loving parents, from whom she tore herself away at the age of twenty-three, and entered the town of Magdeburg, there to begin a life of rapt religious mendicancy, for which Francis had set the resistless example. Sustained by love for her Lord, she led a despised and homeless life of hardship and austerity for thirty years. At length bodily infirmities brought her to rest in a Cistercian cloister for nuns at Helfta, near Eisleben, where ruled a wise and holy abbess, the noble Gertrude of Hackeborn. Here Mechthild remained until her death in 1277. For many years it had been her custom to write down her experiences of the divine love in a book which she called The Flowing Light of God, in which she also wrote the prophetic denunciations, revealed to her to be pronounced before men, especially in the presence of those who were great in what should be God's holy Church.
"Frau Minne (Lady Love) you have taken from me the world's riches and honour," cries Mechthild. Love's ecstasy came upon her when she abandoned the world and cast herself upon God alone. Then first her soul's eyes beheld the beautiful manhood of her Lord Jesus Christ, also the Holy Trinity, her own guardian angel, and the devil who tempted her through the vainglory of her visions and through unchaste desire. She defended herself with the agony of our Lord. For Mechthild, hell is the "city whose name is eternal hate." With her all blessedness is love, as her book will now disclose.
Cries the Soul to Love (Minne) her guardian: "Thou hast hunted and taken, bound and wounded me; never shall I be healed."
Love answers: "It was my pleasure to hunt thee; to take thee captive was my desire; to bind thee was my joy. I drove Almighty God from His throne in heaven, and took His human life from Him, and then with honour gave Him ​back to His Father; how couldst thou, poor worm, save thyself from me!"
What then will love's omnipotence exact from this poor Soul? Merely all. Drawn by yearning, the Soul comes flying, like an eagle toward the sun. "See, how she mounts to us, she who wounded me"—it is the Lord that is speaking. "She has thrown away the ashes of the world, overcome lust, and trodden the lion of pride beneath her feet—thou eager huntress of love, what bringest thou to me?"
"Lord, I bring thee my treasure, which is greater than mountains, wider than the world, deeper than the sea, higher than the clouds, more beautiful than the sun, more manifold than the stars, and outweighs the riches of the earth."
"Image of my Divinity, ennobled by my manhood, adorned by my Holy Spirit, how is thy treasure called?"
"Lord, it is called my heart's desire: I have withdrawn it from the world, withheld it from myself, forbidden it all creatures. I can carry it no farther; Lord, where shall I lay it?"
"Thou shalt lay thy heart's desire nowhere else than in my divine heart and on my human breast. There only wilt thou be comforted and kissed with my spirit."
Love casts out fear and difference, and lifts the Soul to equality with the divine Lover. Through the passion of love the Soul may pass into the Beloved's being, and become one with Him: "He, thy life, died from love for thy sake; now love Him so that thou mayest long to die for His sake. Then shalt thou burn for evermore unquenched, like a shining spark in the great fire of the Living Majesty."
These are passion's vision-flights. But God himself points out the way by which the Soul that loves shall come to Him: she—the Soul—shall come, surmounting the need of penitence and penance, surmounting love of the world, conflicts with the devil, carnal appetite, and the promptings ​of her own will. Thereupon, exhausted, she shall yearn resistlessly for that beautiful Youth (Christ). He will be moved to come to meet her. Now her guardians (the Senses) bid her attire herself. "Love, whither shall I hence?" she cries. The Senses make answer: "We hear the murmur; the Prince will come to meet you in the dew and the sweet-bird song. Courage, Lady, He will not tarry."
The Soul clothes herself in a garment of humility, and over it draws the white robe of chastity, and goes into the wood. There nightingales sing of union with God, and strains of divine knowledge meet her ears. She then strives to follow in festal dance (i.e. to imitate) the example of the prophets, the chaste humility of the Virgin, the virtues of Jesus, and the piety of His saints. Then comes the Youth and says: "Maiden, thou hast danced holily, even as my saints."
The Soul answers: "I cannot dance unless thou leadest. If thou wouldst have me spring aloft, sing thou: and I will spring—into love, and from love to knowledge, and from knowledge to ecstasy, above all human sense."
The Youth speaks: "Maiden, thy dance of praise is well performed. Since now thou art tired, thou shalt have thy will with the Virgin's Son. Come to the brown shades at midday, to the couch of love, and there shalt thou cool thyself with Him."
Then the Soul speaks to her guardians, the Senses: "I am tired with the dance; leave me, for I must go where I may cool myself." The Senses bid her cool herself in the tears of love shed by St. Mary Magdalen.
"Hush, good sirs: ye know not what I mean. Unhindered, for a little I would drink the unmixed wine."
"Lady, in the Virgin's chastity the great love is reached."
"That may be—with me it is not the highest."
"You, Lady, might cool yourself in martyr-blood."
"I have been martyred many a day."
"In the counsel of Father Confessors, the pure live gladly."
"Good is their counsel, but it helps not here."
"Great safety would you find in the Apostles' wisdom."
​"Wisdom I have myself—to choose the best."
"Lady, bright are the angels, and lovely in love's hue; to cool yourself, be lifted up with them."
"The bliss of angels brings me love's woe, unless I see their lord, my Bridegroom."
"Then cool you in the hard, holy life that John the Baptist showed."
"I have tried that painful toil; my love passes beyond that"
"Lady, would you with love cool yourself, approach the Child in the Virgin's lap."
"That is a childish love, to quiet children with. I am a full-grown bride and will have my Bridegroom."
"Lady, there we should be smitten blind. The God-head is so fiery hot. Heaven's glow and all the holy lights flow from His divine breath and human mouth by the counsel of the Holy Spirit."
But the Soul feeling its nature and its affinity with God, through love, makes answer boldly: "The fish cannot drown in the water, nor the bird sink in the air, nor gold perish in the flame, where it gains its bright clarity and colour. God has granted to all creatures to follow their natures; how can I withstand mine? To God will I go, who is my Father by nature, my Brother through His humility, my Bridegroom through love, and I am His forever." Not long after this the Soul's rapture bursts forth in song:
"Ich sturbe gern von minnen, moehte es mir geschehen,
Denn jenen den ich minnen, den ban ich gesehen
Mit minen liehten ougen in miner sele stehen."
Mechthild's book is heavy with passion—with God's passionate love for the Soul, and the Soul's passionate response. No speech between lovers could outdo the converse between them. God calls the Soul, sweet dove, dear heart, my queen; and with like phrase the quivering Soul responds upward, as it were, to the great countenance glowing above it. Throughout, there is passion and impatient yearning—or satisfaction. The pain of the Soul severed, not yet a ​bride, is deeper than the abyss, bitterer than the world; but her joy shall exceed that of seraphs, she, Bride of the Trinity.
The Soul must surrender herself, and become sheer desire for God. God's own yearning has begotten this desire. As glorious prince, as knight, as emperor, God comes; also in other forms:
"I come to my Beloved
As dew upon the flowers."
For each other are these lovers wounded, for each other these lovers bleed, and each to the other is joy unspeakable and unforgettable. From the wafer of the holy Eucharist, the Lamb looks out upon me "with such sweet eyes that I never can forget."
"His eyes in my eyes; His heart in my heart,
His soul in my soul,
Embraced and untroubled."
No need to say that in the end love draws the Soul to heaven's gate, which the Lord opens to her. All is marvellous; but, far more, all is love: the Lord kisses her—what else than love can the soul thereafter know or feel.
Mechthild, of course, is what is called a "mystic," and a forerunner indeed of many another—Eckhart, Suso, Tauler—of German blood. With direct and utter passion she realizes God's love; also she feels and thinks in symbols, which, with her, never cease to be the things they literally are. They remain flesh and blood, while also signifying the mysteries of God. Jesus was a man, Mechthild a woman. Her love not only uses lovers' speech, but actually holds affinity with a maid's love for her betrothed. If it is the Soul's love of God, it is also the woman's love of Him who overhung her from the Cross.
* ↑ The mediaeval term apex mentis is not inapt.
* ↑ Assurance of the soul's communion, and even union, with God is the chief element of what is termed mysticism, which will be discussed briefly in connection with scholastic philosophy, post, Chapter XXXVI. $_{II}$. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries those who experienced the divine through visions, ecstasies, and rapt contemplation, were not as analytically and autobiographically self-conscious as later mystics. Yet St. Theresa's (sixteenth century) mystical analysis of self and God (for which see H. Delacroix, Études d'histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme, Paris, 1908) might be applied to the experiences of St. Elizabeth of Schönau or St. Hildegard of Bingen.
* ↑ Ante, Chapter XIII. $_{II}$.
* ↑ Neither Othloh's visions, nor those to be recounted, were narratives of voyages to the other world. The name of these is legion. They begin in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and continue through the Middle Ages—until they reach their apotheosis in the Divina Commedia. See post, Chapter XLIII.
* ↑ Migne, Pat. Lat. 195.
* ↑ The works of St. Hildegard of Bingen are published in vol. 197 of Migne's Pat. Lat. and in vol. viii. of Pitra's Analecta sacra, under the title Analecta Sanctae Hildegardis opera Spicilegio Solesmensi parata (1882). Certain supplementary passages to the latter volume are published in Analecta Bollandiana, i. (Paris, 1882). These publications are completed by F. W. E. Roth's Lieder und die unbekannte Sprache der h. Hildegardis (Wiesbaden, 1880). The same author has a valuable article on Hildegard in Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft, etc., 1888, pp. 453-471. See also an article by Battandier, Revue des questions historiques, 33 (1883), pp. 395-425. Other literature on Hildegard in Chevalier's Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen ǻge, under her name. Her two most interesting works, for our purposes at least, are the Scivias (meaning Scito vias Domini), completed in 1151 after ten years of labour, and the Liber vitae meritorum per simplicem hominem a vivente luce revelatorum (Pitra, o.c. pp. 1-244), begun in 1159, and finished some five years later. Extracts from these are given in the text. Other works show her extraordinary intellectual range. Of these the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis (Migne 197, col. 741-1038) is a vision of the mysteries of creation, followed by a voluminous commentary upon the world and all therein, including natural phenomena, human affairs, the nature of man, and the functions of his mind and body. It closes with a discussion of Antichrist and the Last Times. The work was begun about 1164, when Hildegard finished the Liber vitae meritorum, and was completed after seven years of labour. She also wrote a Commentary on the Gospels, and sundry lives of saints, and there is ascribed to her quite a prodigious work upon natural history and the virtues of plants, the whole entitled: Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum libri IX. (Migne 197, col. 1118-1351); and probably she composed another work on medicine, i.e. the unpublished Liber de causis et curis (see Pitra, o.c., prooemium, p. xi.). Preger's contention (Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, i. pp. 13-27, 1874) that the works bearing Hildegard's name are forgeries, never obtained credence, and is not worth discussing since the publication of Pitra's volume.
* ↑ Analecta Sanctae Hildegardis opera Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, p. 523; cf. ibid. p. 561; also Ep. 27 of Hildegard in Migne 197, col. 186.
* ↑ These questions and Hildegard's solutions are given in Migne 197, col. 1038-1054, and the letter in Pitra, o.c. 399-400.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. 394, 395.
* ↑ By visio as used here, Hildegard refers to the general undefined light—the umbra viventis lucis, in which she saw her special visions.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. 332.
* ↑ This is from the prologue to the Scivias, Pitra, o.c. 503, 504 (Migne 197, 483, 484). Guibert in his Vita speaks of Hildegard as indocta and unable to penetrate the meaning of Scripture nisi cum vis internae aspirationis illuminans eam juvaret, Pitra, o.c. 413. Compare Hildegard's prooemium to her Life of St. Disibodus (Pitra, o.c. 357) and the preface to her Liber divinorum operum (Migne 197, 741, 742).
* ↑ Guibertus to Radilfus, a monk of Villars (Pitra, o.c. 577) apparently written in 1180.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. pp. 1-244.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. pp. 8-10. The translation is condensed, but is kept close to the original.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 13.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. p. 24.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 51 sqq.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. p. 92 sqq.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 131 sqq. Of course, one at once thinks of the punishments in Dante's Inferno, which in no instance are identical with those of Hildegard, and yet offer common elements. Dante is not known to have read the work of Hildegard.
* ↑ Pitra, o.c. pp. 230-240. I am not clear as to Hildegard's ideas of Purgatory, for which she seems to have no separate region. In the case of sinners who have begun, but not completed, their penances on earth, the punishments described work purgationem, and the Souls are loosed (ibid. p. 42). In Part III. of the work we are considering, the paragraphs describing the punishments are entitled De superbiae, invidiae, inobedientiae, infidelitalis, etc., poenis purgatoriis (ibid. p. 130). But each paragraph is followed by one entitled De poenitentia superbiae, etc., and the poenitentia referred to is worked out with penance in this life. Consequently it is not quite clear that the word purgatoriis attached to poenis signifies temporary punishment to be followed by release. In a vision of the Last Times (ibid. p. 225) Hildegard sees "black burning darkness," in which was gehenna, containing every kind of horrible punishment. She did not then see gehenna itself, because of the darkness surrounding it; but heard the frightful cries. Cf. Aeneid, vi. 548 sqq.
* ↑ This is the view expounded so grandly by Hugo of St. Victor in his De sacramentis, post, Chapter XXVIII.
* ↑ Migne 197, col. 433. All this is interesting in view of the many figures of the Church and Synagogue carved on the cathedrals, most of them later than Hildegard's time. The "Synagogue" of sculpture has her eyes bound, the sculpturesque expression of eyelessness. The rest of Hildegard's symbolism was not followed in sculpture.
* ↑ Migne 197, col. 437 sqq. Cf. St. Bernard, Sermo xix. in Cantica.
* ↑ Migne 197, col. 449.
* ↑ Notice the supra-terrestrial term, which can hardly be translated so as to fit an actual wall.
* ↑ Migne 197, col. 583. Compare this vision with the symbolic interpretation of the cathedral edifice, post, Chapter XXIX.
* ↑ Cf. St. Bernard's treatment of this matter, ante, Chapter XVII.
* ↑ In a Middle High German Marienleben, by Bruder Phillips (13th century) the young virgin is made herself to say to God: "Du bist min lieber priutegam (bridegroom), Dir gib ich minen magetuom (maidenhood), Du bist min vil schoener man. "Du bist min vriedel (lover) und min vriunt (ami); Ich bin von diner minne entzundt." Bobertag, Erzählende Dichtungen des späteren Mittelalters, p. 46 (Deutsche Nat. Litt.).
* ↑ Vita B. Mariae Ogniacensis, per Jacobum de Vitreaco, Bollandi, Acta sanctorum t. 21 (June t. iv. pp. 636-666). Jacques had good reason to canonize her bones, since one of them, in his saddle-bags, had saved his mule from drowning while crossing a river in Tuscany.
* ↑ Cant. ii. 5. The translation in the English Revised Version is: "Stay me with cakes of raisins, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love." The phrases of Canticles, always in the words of the Latin Vulgate, come continually into the minds of these ecstatic women and their biographers. The sonorous language of the Vulgate is not always close to the meaning of the Hebrew. But it was the Vulgate and not the Hebrew that formed the mediaeval Bible, and its language should be observed in discussing mediaeval applications of Scripture.
* ↑ "Dum esset Rex in accubitu suo," Cant. i. 11, in Vulgate; Cant. i. 12, in the English version, which renders it: "While the King sitteth at His table."
* ↑ Vita B. Mariae, etc., par. 2–8. Since we are seeing these mediaeval religious phenomena as they impressed contemporaries, it would be irrelevant to subject them to the analyses which pathological psychology applies to not dissimilar phenomena.
* ↑ It is reported of St. Catharine of Siena that she would go for weeks with no other food than the Eucharist.
* ↑ I am drawing from her Vita by her contemporary, Thomas of Cantimpré, Acta SS., Bollandi, t. 21 (t. 3 of June), p. 234 sqq.
* ↑ Cf. Canticles iii. 2.; Vita, lib. iii. par. 42.
* ↑ Cant. iii. 1, 7; i. 16.
* ↑ Vita, lib. iii. pars. 9, 11. It is well known how great a love of her Lord possessed St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and how she sent her children away from her, that she might not be distracted from loving Him alone. The vision which came to her upon her expulsion from the Wartburg, after the death of her husband, King Louis of Thuringia, is given as follows, in her own words, according to the sworn statement of her waiting-women: "I saw the heaven open, and that sweet Jesus, my Lord, bending toward me and consoling me in my tribulation; and when I saw Him I was glad, and laughed; but when He turned His face, as if to go away, I cried. Pitying me, He turned His serene countenance to me a second time, saying: 'If thou wishest to be with me, I wish to be with thee.' I responded: 'Thou, Lord, thou dost wish to be with me, and I wish to be with thee, and I wish never to be separated from thee'" (Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum, Mencken, Scriptores Rerum Germ. ii. 2020 A-C, Leipzig, 1728). The German sermon of Hermann von Fritzlar (cir. 1340) tells this vision in nearly the same words, putting, however, this phrase in Elizabeth's mouth: "Our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me, and when He turned from me, I cried, and then He turned to me, and I became red (blushed?), and before I was pale" (Hildebrand, Didaktik aus der Zeit der Kreuzzüge, p. 36, Deutsche Nat. Lit.).
* ↑ Offenbarungen der Schwester Mechthild von Magdeburg oder das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. by P. G. Morel, Regensburg, 1869. See Preger, Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, i. 70, 91 sqq. Preger points out that the High-German version of this work, which we possess, was made from the Low-German original in the year 1344. Extracts from Mechthild's book are given by Vetter, Lehrhafte Literatur des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, pp. 192-199; and by Hildebrand, Didaktik aus der Zeit der Kreuzzüge, pp. 6-10 (Deutsche Nat. Lit.).
* ↑ We pass over these portions of Mechthild's book which exemplify the close connection between ecstatic contemplation and the denunciation of evil in the world.
* ↑ Mechthild constantly uses phrases from the courtly love poetry of her time.
* ↑ Das fliessende Licht, etc., i. cap. 3. Hildebrand, o.c. p. 6, cites this apposite verse from the thoughtful and knightly Minnesinger, Reimar von Zweter: "Got herre unuberwundenlich, Wie uberwant die Minne dich! Getorste ich, so spraech ich: Si wart an dir so sigerich."
* ↑ Das fliessende Licht, etc., i. 38-44.
* ↑ "I would gladly die of love, might that be my lot; for Him whom I love I have seen with my bright eyes standing in my soul" (ibid. ii. cap. 2).
* ↑ Cf. ii. 22.
* ↑ See i. 10; ii. 23.
* ↑ i. 13.
* ↑ ii. 4.
* ↑ iii. 1, 10.