Medieval Mysticism As a Platform for the Exploraton of Human Spirituality and Happiness

Albrecht Classen

Mystical Visions and Spiritual Health – Medieval Mysticism as a Platform for the Exploraton of Human Spirituality and Happiness

The Transcendence of the Body in the Quest for the Godhead – A Message for Us Today?

SUMMARY – Medieval mysticism is often identified as a unique and most fascinating religious phenomenon of highest personal qualities prevalent in the late Middle Ages. But we still can derive many insights from the mystical authors for our own modern quest for happiness and physical well-being because they described in often startling and powerful language how they were graced with the inner power to overcome their own bodily limits and to gain access to a new level of inner fulfillment in a spiritual manner, forming a mystical union with the Godhead. This can be observed in light of many medieval writers, three of whom are the focus of the present study, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porète, and Birgitta of Sweden.

1. The Human Quest for Happiness in the Middle Ages

All human beings desire to be healthy and happy. This constitutes life by and in itself and provides meaning, since we all want to have a good, enjoyable life and hope to depend on that, although the definitions regarding both values range widely from culture to culture, from group to group, from period to period, and even from individual to individual. What is the relationship between material goods and spirituality, for instance? By what measure can we claim to be happy, and what measures were used in the Middle Ages, or during other periods to determine happiness achieved by an individual? When hope disappears, by contrast, the human light goes out, so to speak.1 Consequently,

1 Bernard N. Schumacher, A philosophy of hope: Josef Pieper and the contemporary debate on hope (trans. D.C. Schindler), New York 2003 (Moral Philosophy and Moral Theology 5); Eric Severson, Levinas’s philosophy of time: Gift, responsibility, diachrony, hope, Pittsburgh (PA) 2013. For an intriguing argument why medieval romance and modern science fiction literature appeal so much to us today, see Flo Keyes, The literature of hope in the Middle Ages and

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the desire to achieve happiness, in its myriad of facets and meanings, is deeply rooted in human existence, if not in all beings and even objects in this world. St. Augustine was fully aware of this profound concern, insightfully observing: ‘when I seek you, my God, I seek the happy life’, following with the question: ‘How then do I seek the happy life? For I do not possess it until I can say, “Enough! It is there!”’.2 Happiness is possible only when the faithful turn toward God: ‘This is the happy life, to rejoice over you, to you, and because of you’.3 And finally, concluding his ruminations, Augustine states: ‘Happy, therefore, will it be, when no obstacle stands between and it shall find joy in that sole truth by which all things are true’.4 In a slightly different way, that is, approaching the topic from a philosophi- cal perspective, Boethius explored in his famous Consolatio philosophiae (ca. 525 C.E.) similar concerns, recognizing, ultimately, the meaning of divine goodness as the source of all happiness. But the concept of happiness, and even of health, prove to be highly challenging and have been discussed from many different perspectives throughout the ages, commonly associated with a discussion about the true nature of God and the relationship between the human individual and God.5 Hedonists, or materialists, focus on their physical existence only, while ascetics and spiritualists endeavor to free their spirit from the body and to allow it to ascend toward the other world (heaven, paradise, etc.). However, life always comes to an end, death awaits everyone, and the question regarding happiness has been predominantly answered throughout time from a spiritual perspective, the ultimate justification for all religions. Physical health enjoys prime prominence, of course, and bodily illness tends to affect deeply our sense of

today: Connections in medieval romance, modern fantasy, and science fiction, Jefferson (NC)- London 2006. He relies heavily on the teachings of C.G. Jung. I would disagree with his view that the Middle Ages were equally in distress as the modern world is right now; one could claim the same for the world of the Reformation and the Baroque, etc. 2 The Confessions of St. Augustine (trans. & ed. John K. Ryan), New York et al. 1960, Book 10, ch. 20, 248. 3 The Confessions, Book 10, ch. 22, 251. 4 The Confessions, Book 10, ch. 23, 253. See now Ryan N.S. Topping, Happiness and wisdom: Augustine’s early theology of education, Washington (DC) 2012. 5 peter Augustine Lawler, ‘The pursuit of happiness and the discontent of the West’, in: Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs 51 (2007) no.3, 543-556; Albrecht Classen, ‘Boethius’ “De conso- latione philosophiae”: Eine “explication du texte”’, in: Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 32 (2000) no.2, 44-61. For a good English translation, see Boethius, Consolation of philosophy (trans. & ed. Joel C. Relihan), Indianapolis (IN)-Cambridge 2001. For an excellent discussion of the various position by medieval philosophers, see Kurt Flasch, Das philosophische Denken im Mittelalter: Von Augustin bis Macchiavelli. Unter Mitarbeit von Fiorella Retucci und Olaf Pluta. 3rd rev. ed., Stuttgart 2013 (orig. publ. 1986), 46, 48-50, 79, 81-82, 191, 276, et passim.

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spiritual happiness. Nevertheless, as this paper will endeavor to show, the phenomenon of medieval mysticism was one major gateway through and away from the physical perception of human existence and a strong movement toward the establishment of happiness in a spiritual sense, transcending, above all, the material limitations and defining health in a mystical fashion. Mysticism proves to be, no doubt, a highly individual, personal, experience, and there is no way of recognizing this type of spiritual experience as a model for modern quests regarding happiness, or even health because we have no objective access to it or cannot simply reproduce it for ourselves. Nevertheless, as all the evidence from many different medieval mystical writers indicates, the visions that they reflect upon consistently convey a profound sense of whole- ness, fulfillment, satisfaction, and well-being because of an inner transformation. The mystical revelations has consistently meant for the individual graced by it a new level of self-realization in the spiritual sense of the word. Little wonder, hence, that mystics have always provoked either deep admiration or abject condemnation, so it behooves us to study their messages even today, trying to comprehend what constituted happiness and spiritual enlightenment for those medieval mystical authors and to grasp what their insights implied for themselves and for all their posterity.

2. Medieval Mystics go their Own Way

During the European Middle Ages, mystics gained great respect and enjoyed, if they did not clash with suspicious, envious authorities, wide-spread support and admiration, whether we think of such luminaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, or Bridget of Sweden. Others were victimized and died in the flames, such as Marguerite Porète or Joan of Arc. Research on medieval mysticism is legion by now, and it would be difficult to think of a mystical writer who would not yet have been recognized as a noteworthy spokesperson of and for this enigmatic but fascinating religious quest and experience. Mysti- cism has, in a way, actually continued until today, both in the Christian world and among other religious groups, so the focus on medieval texts is only a pragmatic decision allowing us to isolate particularly famous cases and to study them in light of our critical question.6

6 gertrud Jaron Lewis, Frank Willaert & Marie-José Govers, Bibliographie zur deutschen Frauenmystik des Mittelalters, Berlin 1989 (Bibliographien zur deutschen Literatur des Mittel alters 10); Bernard McGinn, The flowering of mysticism: Men and women in the new mysticism (1200-1350). Vol. 3, New York 1998; Otto Langer, Christliche Mystik im Mittelalter: Mystik und Rationalisierung – Stationen eines Konflikts, Darmstadt 2004. The list of other very solid introductions and overviews of medieval mysticism is very long.

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Specifically, here I want to examine what the mystical messages and accounts might reveal about the concept of spiritual health and happiness, and why the mystics exerted such a fascination on their contemporaries and posterity, when their concern was, after all, primarily oriented toward the personal encounter with the divine, that is, how to turn away from this world and to find salvation for the soul. Since our quest for both aspects goes on perpetually and continuously challenges us, we heavily depend on historical models and approaches for possible alternatives to our mundane existence. To believe, for instance, that material goods or simply a healthy body can guar- antee happiness would be rather futile, as Boethius had explained already in full clarity. Happiness, however, is much too complex a term to be answered in a simplified manner. Many of the medieval mystics were deeply concerned with the very same questions, but their responses differed vastly compared both to those by their ordinary contemporaries and to those which we might commonly embrace today.7 Altogether, we are dealing with a rather surprising phenomenon, which car- ries great relevance also, if not much more so, for modern readers and scholars alike because the fundamental question raised by those medieval writers and visionaries remain the same in the modern world, though within a very different set of criteria determining our lives. In our quest for happiness surprisingly often we come across medieval comments about happiness achieved by the individual, both in the secular and the religious context, which invites us to consider that past world as an intriguing and much promising alternative to our modern epistemology. All mystics were deeply religious individuals who were graced in one way or the other with a spiritual vision, either of the Godhead or of a saint, or even of macrocosm itself (Hildegard). They subsequently turned to writing and transformed their visionary experience into a most stunning literary enterprise, as research has confirmed in unison. Some men, such as Henry Suso (ca. 1295-1366),8 Henry

7 Among the countless contributions to these topics, see, for instance, Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A history, New York 2006; Bent Greve, Happiness, Abingdon-Oxon-New York 2012. Already Epicurus (341-271 BCE) had endeavored to comprehend the ways how to achieve human happiness. In his ‘leading doctrines,’ he formulated, for instance, ‘Bodily pleasure is not enlarged once the pains brought on by need have been done away with; it is only diversified. And the limit of mental pleasure is established by rational reflection on pleasures themselves and those kindred emotions that once instilled extreme fear in human minds’. Quoted from Epicurus, The art of happiness (trans., introd. & comm. George K. Strodach; foreword Daniel Klein), London 2012, 175-176. 8 Albrecht Classen, ‘Literary autobiography and mystical vision: Heinrich Seuse’s contribution to the history of German literature’, in: Studies in Spirituality 10 (2000), 182-204.

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Tauler (1300-1361),9 and Richard Rolle (ca. 1300-1349),10 were also in the forefront of composing mystical literature based on their personal visions, but the majority of mystics were women.11 Although medieval society was deeply shaped by patriarchy, those women, acknowledged as mystics who were graced by God to receive their visions, hence were singled out as prophetesses according to their own testimony, were greatly admired and enjoyed tremendous respect both within the Church and outside, at least in many cases. In other words, when we look for medieval women’s literature, we always come across primarily mystical writers.12 These addressed, however, not only religious issues, but instead they commonly integrated their own bodies in the mystical discourse, as Caroline Walker Bynum has illustrated so powerfully in her engaging studies on Fragmentation and Redemption, among others.13

3. Happiness and Spiritual Health

To be more specific, our purpose is to focus on the question what medieval mystics experienced with respect to their physical and spiritual health and what it might have meant for them to go through those revelations and to share them with their audiences with respect to their own well-being. I do not aim for a psychological or a religious reading, as much as the question itself invites us to do so. Instead, in concrete terms I hope to gain deeper insights into the

9 700e anniversaire de la naissance de Jean Tauler: Sept centième anniversaire de la naissance de Jean Tauler, Strasbourg 2001; Markus Enders, Gelassenheit und Abgeschiedenheit: Studien zur deutschen Mystik, Hamburg 2008 (Schriftenreihe Boethiana 82); http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Johannes_Tauler (accessed Jan. 30, 2014). 10 carmel Bendon Davis, Mysticism and space: Space and spatiality in the works of Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich, Washington (DC) 2008. 11 though by now a little dated, the contributions to Paul E. Szarmach (Ed.), An introduction to the medieval mystics of Europe, Albany (NY) 1984, continue to be of great value for the entire history of mysticism. See also Peter Dinzelbacher, Mittelalterliche Frauenmystik, Pader- born etc. 1992. 12 See, for instance, Peter Dinzelbacher, Wörterbuch der Mystik, Stuttgart 1989 (Kröners Taschenausgabe 456); Albrecht Classen, ‘Mysticism’, in Encyclopedia of German Literature, ed. Matthias Konzett, Chicago and London 2000, 738-739; Idem, The power of a woman’s voice in medieval and early modern literature, Berlin-New York 2007 (Fundamentals of Medi- eval and Early Modern Culture 1). 13 caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and redemption: Essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion, New York-Cambridge 1991; Eadem, Jesus as mother: Studies in the spirituality of the high Middle Ages, Berkeley (CA) 1982 (Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA 16); see also Albrecht Classen, ‘The dialectics of mystical love in the Middle Ages: Violence/pain and divine love in the mystical visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porète’, in Studies in Spirituality 20 (2010), 143-160.

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ways how some of those mystics explored the relationship between spirituality and their material existence and how the experience of the Godhead here in this life influenced and shaped them so profoundly. What did these revelations mean for the mystics in term of happiness and well-being? In what sense might the medieval discourse on the visionary experience help us to gain new insights regarding the relationship between body and mind/soul?14 To what extent does medieval mysticism carry relevance for us today, still within the realm of schol- arly analysis, with respect to personal fulfillment and perfection, that is, simply put, happiness (see above)? Mysticism is not understandable, of course, if we ignore its primary foundation in twelfth-century theological discourse, pursued by such intellectuals as Peter Abelard († 1142) and Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153). Particularly the latter reintegrated the teaching of human affections into his religious concepts and outlined pathways toward a new form of self-recognition. Theoretical knowledge would achieve little in the human quest for identity; instead one had to return to the basic human affects such as fear of God, compassion, and self-discovery.15 The mystics, however, commonly went one step further and explored, empowered by their religious experiences and hence driven by very individual perspectives, mostly independent from theological issues, alternative forms of existence beyond the limitations of the body. Hildegard of Bingen’s central ideas, for instance, pertained to the correlation between macrocosm and microcosm, with the spirit being the relevant conduit between body and mind, or rather, the divine.16 As we commonly learn, for mystics the revelations were not without problems for their own psyche since these forcefully removed the soul out of its self and made it merge with a higher entity, whether they called it the Godhead, the Spirit, or Love. But despite some rhetorical complaints about having been overwhelmed and alienated, for the mystics it was a divine grace beyond all measure to be chosen as a mouthpiece of God. As basis for the subsequent investigations, I have selected the works of the German Mechthild

14 I have explored many of these aspects at great length in the introduction to Mental health, spirituality, and religion in the Middle Ages and early modern times: Alternative approaches to the construction of human existence, Berlin-Boston 2014 (Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 15). 15 Langer, Christliche Mystik im Mittelalter, 191-193. 16 It would amount to hubris to claim this observation as my own realization, considering the huge corpus of literature on Hildegard; see Marc-Aeilko Aris et al. (Eds.), Hildegard von Bin- gen: Internationale wissenschaftliche Bibliographie, Mainz 1998 (Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 84); see also the contributions to Rainer Berndt (Ed.), ‘Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst’: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Berlin 2001 (Erudiri Sapientia 2); most recently, Rainer Berndt and Maura Zátonyi, Glauben- sheil: Wegweisung ins Christentum gemäss der Lehre Hildegards von Bingen, Münster 2013 (Erudiri Sapientia 10), have offered a detailed and insightful reading of Hildegard’s teachings.

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of Magdeburg, of the French Marguerite Porète, and of the Swede Birgitta of Sweden, but many others could be included here as well.17

4. Mechthild of Magdeburg

The North-German beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg († ca. 1282/1294), for instance, one of the most powerful and best-known German voices of her time, illustrates this phenomenon well in her introductory debate between Lady Love and the soul in The Flowing Light of the Godhead. The latter praises the Lady Love for being perfect all by herself, standing even behind the Holy Trinity, but then she also criticizes her, probably just rhetorically, for having robbed her of everything she had ever wanted here on earth. The Lady Love defends herself, however, insisting that ‘in return I have given You heavenly freedom’.18 Subsequently, the exchange between both sides follows the same pattern; while the soul complains about having lost an important part of herself, such as her childhood innocence, youth, good friends and relatives, worldly honor and riches, the Lady Love retorts that she has provided the soul instead with true values, such as holy virtue, and the grace of spending one hour with the Holy Spirit. Then the soul continues, remarking that the visionary experience has meant that her body ‘has become afflicted with a strange disease’ (FLD, 6). But this means, according to the counterpart, that the soul gained higher, or rather true and deep, knowledge. The loss of flesh and blood is repaid with spiritual

17 See now the contributions to Judith M. Bennett & Ruth Mazo Karras (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of women and gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford 2013. 18 Mechthild von Magdeburg, Flowing light of the divinity (trans. Christiane Mesch Galvani; ed. & introd. Susan Clark, New York-London 1991 (Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series B 72), 6. Hereafter referred to as FLD in the text. I prefer the more literal translation ‘Godhead’. See also the translation by Frank Tobin (preface Margot Schmidt), New York- Mahwah 1998 (The Classics of Western Spirituality). For the historical-critical edition, see Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit (ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe), Frankfurt a.M. 2003 (Bibliothek des Mittelalters 19). Mechthild has been discussed already much, especially in theological terms; see, for instance, Katharina Bochsler, ‘Ich han da inne ungehoertú ding gesehen’: Die Jenseitsvisionen Mechthilds von Magdeburg in der Tradition der mittelalterlichen Visionsliteratur, Bern et al. 1997 (Deutsche Literatur von den Anfängen bis 1700, 23). For a stylistic analysis of the passage under discussion here, see Amy Hollywood, The soul as virgin wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart, Notre Dame (IN)-London 1995 (Studies in Spirituality and Theology 1), 57-86. For the rich recep- tion history of Mechthild’s Flowing Light, see Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and her book: Gender and the making of textual authority, Philadelphia (PA) 2004 (The Middle Ages Series).

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cleansing and with the proximity of God. Eventually, the soul burst out in a last complaint: ‘You are a robber, and for this, too, You shall repay me’ (FLD, 6). However, Lady Love only replies that she would give herself to the soul in compensation, which suddenly soothes all pain and sorrow, as the soul admits with great relief: ‘now You have repaid me a hundred times on earth’ (FLD, 6). The visionary experience meant for Mechthild, as for most of her contemporary or later mystics, that she replaced her physical well-being with a spiritual well-being, a realization of considerably higher importance because it readies her for the encounter with God. This is only possible if the body is deprived of all of its strength and by giving the soul all of the power it needs to recognize itself. The mystical vision is possible only if ‘the soul departs from the body with all its might, wisdom, love, and longing’ (FLD, 6). The true revelation, however, only occurs next when the soul can merge with the Godhead, who announces that He wants to play a game with her which is unknown to all people, and even to the Virgin Mary: ‘So they float onwards toward a wonderful place, of which I neither can nor want to speak. (…) The more the Infinite God uplifts the unfirm soul, the more this wondrous experience makes her lose sight of the earthly kingdom, and she forgets that she was ever a part of it’ (FLD, 7). Nevertheless, this utopian perspective – certainly an appropriate term for Mechthild’s description because of the ideal state in which the soul finds itself and where it wants to stay forever, although that is not possible19 – comes to a most unwelcome conclusion because the soul must return to the body, although the Godhead expresses His greatest love for the soul: ‘My beloved dove, your voice is like music to My ears, your words are like herbs in My mouth, your longing is the richness of My gift’ (FLD, 7). True happiness rests in the spiritual experience of being unified with the Godhead, while the return to the body causes much anxiety and pain, whom the soul berates harshly, telling him: ‘“Be silent, murderer; stop your lamenting. From now

19 Albrecht Classen, Utopie und Logos: Vier Studien zu Wolframs von Eschenbach ‘Titurel’ – Frag- menten, Heidelberg 1990 (Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte); Idem, ‘Die Suche nach der Utopie in der Gralswelt: Albrechts (von Scharfenberg) Der jüngere Titurel’, in: Berta Raposo Fernández (Ed.), Parzival: Reescritura y Transformación, Valencia 2000, 133-156; see also the contributions to Claude Thomasset & Danièle James-Raoul (Eds.), En quête d’Utopies, Paris 2005 (Cultures et Civilisations Médiévales); for a definitive discussion of the entire issue, see Heiko Hartmann, ‘Utopias/utopian thought’, in: Albrecht Classen (Ed.), Handbook of medieval studies: Terms – methods – trends, Berlin-New York 2010, vol. 2: 1400-1408. Most recently, the contributors to Heiko Hartmann & Werner Röcke (Eds.), ‘Utopie im Mit- telalter: Begriff – Formen – Funktionen’ (special issue of Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 18 [2013] no.2), offer further insights, but none deals with mysticism as utopia.

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on I will be on my guard against you. The wounding of my foe does not disturb me; it delights me”’ (FLD, 7). Obviously, for Mechthild, like for most other mystics, the true source of happiness and well-being rested in the God- head Himself, hence only the soul could achieve that desired state of enrap- ture, leaving the body behind. The mystic, in other words, pursued a very different concept of health than most other people would in the secular world because her deepest intention aims at the liberation of the soul, the very true essence of her own being. Intriguingly, however, in this context Mechthild falls back to traditional courtly love poetry in trying to express her experience and her inner desire to be unified with the Godhead, and she creates, with her lengthy treatise, an amazing amal- gamation of love poetry, dialogues, meditations, prayers, and hymns.20 In a later chapter Mechthild takes up once again the question of what constitutes true health and happiness, clearly identifying the body as the locus of pain and suffering, while the soul is privileged to experience ‘intense joy, for she has beheld and embraced her love one many times’ (FLD, 9). Intriguingly, there is no free choice for the mystic between body and soul. By contrast, when the Godhead calls her soul, ‘it flows to Him. She cannot contain herself, and He takes her to Himself’ (FLD, 10). Because of the mystical vision, the author details how much she is forced to leave her own physical existence behind and search for the spiritual one where she will be united with the Godhead: ‘So great is her longing for His praise that she loses her own will’ (FLD, 10). In fact, during the mystical moment, all physical sensation cease and a new level of life begins for her, while the body knows nothing about all this, as reflected in the subsequent section where we find a dialogue between body and soul after the latter has returned to its previous existence. The body does not know where the soul had gone and only feels exhausted now. The soul rejects all attempts by the body to establish a friendly relationship because she has reached already a much higher level of spiritual epistemology, a kind of epiphany, in the union with the Godhead. Mechthild expresses this, as is so often the case, in terms of courtly love both here and in many other mystical texts, although she goes beyond that as well in confessing boldly and unswervingly her transgressive behavior which has allowed her to achieve the highest degree of happiness: ‘I have been with my loved one; / May you never recover, / I am His joy; He is my suffering’ (FLD, 10). As scholars have already recognized both with regard to this and many other passages of mystical writing, Mechthild refers to the phenomenon of affective piety, especially when she claims that through her revelation she was privileged

20 Albrecht Classen, ‘Binary oppositions of self and God in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s mystical visions’, in: Studies in Spirituality 7 (1997), 79-98.

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to partake in Christ’s suffering, which she welcomes as an extraordinary grace.21 The mystics do not ignore the body as such, but they replace the bodily experience by Christ during His Passion with that of their own bodies. Of course, we know that in the Christian tradition the struggle against the body in favor of the spirit has always been fundamental, and deeply determined, above all, the early Church, with its long history of martyrdom.22 For our purposes, what matters most is that the mystic experiences supreme happiness and achieves a sense of inner fulfilment, that is, love, when she can dismiss the body and pursue her lover, the Godhead, through her soul alone. Mechthild formulates this quite poignantly hin her poem ‘He Who Loves God Beholds Three Things: The person who vanquishes the world, / Who deprives his body of all useless self-will / And triumphs over the Devil: / That is the soul whom God loves’ (FLD, 11-12). Most significantly, physical pain does not affect her, rather there is no suffering at all in spiritual terms, and the devil has no power to seduce the soul because ‘She merely loves and loves; / She knows no other beginning’ (FLD, 12). Here we encounter, indeed, one of the most important contributions by the mystics to the medieval discourse on love, injecting, however, a fundamental religious message and yet drawing from the imagery and language of courtly love to express their apophatic experience.23 The degree of happiness and joy- fulness in Mechthild’s account is virtually incomparable, so when she breaks out in jubilation about her unique opportunity to encounter the Godhead herself: ‘O joyous vision! Oh lovely greeting! O loving embrace! Lord, the wonder of You has wounded me; Your mercy has overwhelmed me! You elevated rock, You are so well hollowed out that only the dove and the nightingale may nest in You’ (FLD, 12). Significantly, however, it is not only the mystic herself who goes through this experience, but the Godhead as well, and both chime into a kind of erotic dialogue or musical duo of supreme happiness: ‘You are My pil- low, My lovely bed, My secret resting place, My deepest desire, My highest honor. You are joy in My Divinity, solace to My Humanity, a cooling brook to My fervor’ (FLD, 13).

21 See the parallel examples in Anne Clark Bartlett & Thomas H. Bestul (Eds.), Culture of piety: Medieval English devotional literature in translation, Ithaca (NY)-London 1999. See also Ber- nard McGinn (Ed.), Meister Eckhart and the Beguine mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, New York 1994; Heather M. Flaherty, The place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis in the rise of affective piety in the later Middle Ages (Ph.D. diss. University of Michigan 2006). 22 See, for instance, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of their sex: Female sanctity and society ca. 500-1100, Chicago-London 1998. 23 Bruce Milem, The unspoken word: Negative theology in Meister Eckhart’s German sermons, Washington (DC) 2002.

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The mystic approaches the same topic over and over again, but resorts, each time, to a different imagery and method of describing what is ultimately not describable, so when she tries to illustrate what the vision had been all about: ‘The Bride has become drunk at the sight of the noble countenance. She takes leave of herself in her moment of greatest strength, and she sees most clearly in her moment of severest blindness’ (FLD, 14). Amazingly, next she offers the most dialectical perspective possible, outlining the state of revelation itself: ‘In this moment of great clarity she is both dead and alive. The longer she lives, the more she experiences. The more she needs love, the more love flows to her’ (FLD, 14). In other words, she witnessed, or participated, in a deeply dramatic fashion, the transcendence of herself in physical and spiritual terms. Ultimately, Mechthild sings a paean on love itself and defines the mystical vision in those terms: ‘The more her pleasure grows, the greater her nuptial enjoyment becomes. The closer she embraces, the sweeter the kisses on her mouth taste. (…) The more excited she remains, the sooner she is enkindled. The more feverish she is, the more she glows’ (FLD, 14-15). Significantly, as Elisabeth A. Andersen has pointed out, ‘Mechthild presents the mystical path to God as a way that is accessible to all loving souls, even if it does not always culminate in mystical union’.24 Mechthild realizes that the human soul is the desired object of the Godhead who did no longer want to be by Himself. At the same time she underscores that the soul is actually the product of love and constitutes happiness itself: ‘You have spoken of my beginning, and I honestly tell you: I was created in the same condition as Love’ (FLD, 15). Through the mystical union the fall of Adam is finally overcome, and universal happiness can spread, on the basis of love: ‘And so the Son chose me for a Mother, and the Holy Ghost received me as a love. Then I alone became the Bride of the Holy Trinity and the Mother of orphans, and brought them before the eyes of God, so that they might not sink, though many of them did’ (FLD, 15). But Mechthild does not completely ignore the physical dimension, but translates it into the spiritual dimension by correlating Christ’s wounds and His bleeding with her own emanation of milk from her breasts: ‘As he poured the bright red wine into her red mouth, she was born out of the open wounds and quickened; she was childlike and very young’ (FLD, 15). As Caroline Walker Bynum has observed, by the late Middle Ages blood symbolism gained tremen- dously in weight and allowed the visionaries to combine the bodily aspect with the spiritual. Contemporary to Mechthild, Beatrice of Nazareth († 1268), for instance, formulated very similar images: ‘It seemed to her that all the blood which flowed from his wounds was poured into her soul, and that all the drops

24 Elizabeth A. Andersen, The voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Oxford et al. 2000, 186.

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of that precious liquid were so sprinkled on it that it was wholly washed by these drops and most perfectly cleansed from all the dust of sin’.25 Mysticism constituted, in other words, a kind of rebirth through the spirit and in the spirit, providing a newly defined form of health, freed from the constraints of the physical body, which was actually regarded as a hindrance and barrier to the ultimate goal of divine happiness. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Mechthild refers to the metaphorical motherly breasts that are so full with milk that they burst forth with the divine liquid: ‘“Lady, now you must suckle us, for your breasts are still so full that you cannot suppress it. If you no longer wished to suckle, the milk would cause you much pain. For I have truly seen your breasts so full that seven streams poured out of them, especially from the breast above my body and my soul”’ (FLD, 16). However, it would be inac- curate to claim, as Margaret R. Miles does, that during the Middle Ages the female breasts were not erotically connoted, while they gained in erotic qualities only in the Renaissance.26 But in our context, Mechthild integrates the image and symbolism of the breast, in line with many contemporary artists of religious iconography, into the spiritual discourse, allowing her to reintegrate the body once again and to recognize how much even the material dimension can be translated into something deeply spiritual. This inner happiness and fulfillment can be achieved, for the mystic, even by way of suffering in physical terms because ‘God leads His chosen children on strange paths. It is a strange path, a noble path, and a holy path, which God Himself has walked, when a man suffered pain without sin and without fault’ (FLD, 16-17). The more pain the individual here on earth would experience, the closer s/he would get to Christ who was ‘tortured by pagans, martyred by the Jews without any fault of his own’ (FLD, 17). Pain thus turns into an important, even critical epistemological tool for the mystic to gain access to the Godhead by way of imitating Christ’s suffering.27 As Caroline Walker Bynum has recognized, the

25 Quoted from Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful blood: Theology and practice in late medieval northern Germany and beyond, Philadelphia (PA) 2007, 4. See also Mary Lou Shea, Medieval women on sin and salvation: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Margaret Ebner, and Julian of Norwich, New York 2010 (American University Studies. Series VII: Theology and Religion 304); Roger De Ganck, Beatrice of Nazareth in her context, Kalamazoo (MI) 1991 (Cistercian Studies Series 121-122). 26 Margaret R. Miles, A complex delight: The secularization of the breast 1350-1750, Berkeley- Los Angeles (CA)-London 2008. 27 the same observation has already been made in the context of secular and religious literature; see, for instance, Katharina Mertens Fleury, Leiden lesen: Bedeutungen von Compassio um 1200 und die Poetik des Mit-Leidens im ‘Parzival’ Wolframs von Eschenbach, Berlin-New York 2006 (Scrinium Friburgens 6); Esther Cohen, ‘The animated pain of the body’, in: American His- torical Review 105 (2000), 36-68; Eadem, ‘Towards a history of European physical sensibility:

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voluntary embrace of pain by medieval women was not an attempt simply to escape this world, but rather a deliberate strategy to approximate Christ and to gain a new degree of inner happiness based on their physical existence.28 While Scott Pincikowski concentrates in his study on pain in the Middle Ages on ‘the movement between the physical and the social body’,29 the mystical response to pain was to welcome it as a catalyst to repress the body and to allow the soul to depart for the waiting bridegroom, the Godhead. Mechthild accordingly coins the most beautiful erotic love poem ‘In Your Pain, You Should be a Lamb, a Turtledove, and a Bride’: ‘In your pain, you are My lamb. / In your sighs, you are My turtledove. / In your waiting, you are My Bride’ (FLD, 19). Mechthild also resorts to highly metaphorical language in describing the new level of happiness and spiritual health when she describes the travel of the soul toward the Godhead: ‘“Behold, how she, who has wounded Me, ascends! / She has thrown off the ape of the world. / She has vanquished the bear of unchastity. / She has tread on the lion of pride”’ (FLD, 20). It almost seems an irony that, as hard as Mechthild works to move her soul away from the body trying thus to pave the way for her spiritual happiness, as much does she then return in her writing to the material world of the courts, for instance, in order to establish a comprehensible analogy for her actual visions of things beyond all human comprehension. In preparation for her visit of the court, and hence of the Godhead, ‘she dresses in the shirt of gentle humility, such humility that she cannot tolerate anything beneath her. Over that she wears a white dress of pure chastity, so pure that she cannot tolerate thoughts, words, or contacts that might soil her…’ (FLD, 22). And once she has met her beloved, she is invited to join the courtly festivities: ‘“Maiden, you shall dance as well as my chosen ones have danced”’ (FLD, 23). For her, like for most other mystics, this unique encounter constituted happiness and a sense of fulfillment, hence these impressively joyful images. Surprisingly, perhaps, the subsequent exchange between the Godhead and soul gains so much in erotic tension that it almost seems impossible for a mystic to formulate such ideas in human language, but they represent, after all, her true experience in the most profound fashion: ‘“Lord, now I am a naked soul, / And You, in Yourself, a beautifully adorned God. / Our communion / Is eternal life without death”’ (FLD, 25). Even though Mechthild draws extensively from the

Pain in the later Middle Ages’, in: Science in Context 9 (1995) no.1, 47-74; Eadem, The modulated scream: Pain in late medieval culture, Chicago 2010. 28 caroline Walker Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast: The religious significance of food to medieval women, Berkeley (CA) 1987, 294; Eadem, Fragmentation and redemption; see also Giles Con- stable, Attitudes toward self-inflicted suffering in the Middle Ages, Brookline (MA) 1982. 29 Scott Pincikowski, Bodies of pain: Suffering in the works of Hartmann von Aue, New York- London 2002 (Studies in Medieval History and Culture), xxv.

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erotic discourse prevalent in courtly circles and audiences, describing the God- head as her bridegroom and herself, that is, her soul, as the bride, both accom- panied with all the courtly trappings worthy of a king and a queen, the spiritual happiness and fulfilment rest in the mystical union only, whereas the imagery proves to be nothing but the external material for the ideas: ‘He gives her the crown of truth, which may be worn by no one but clerics. In the crown four virtues can be seen: wisdom and sorrow, longing and moderation’ (FLD, 28).

5. Marguerite Porète

In Marguerite Porète’s Mirror of Simple Souls (1310), which became the crucial evidence in the trial leading to her fiery death that same year in Paris,30 we hear of very similar images, with the mystic searching for an erotic union with the Godhead, which is only possible if human rationality is left behind in favor of Love and Faith.31 Indeed, true happiness rests in ‘exalted love of the Soul’ (MSS, 10). Nevertheless, the soul complains of being too far away from its homeland where the loved ones reside (MSS, 11). Reading this Mirror, however, will provide the necessary spiritual nourishment for the aspiring mystic or faithful person to gain insight and make progress toward the divine goal of the mystical revelation. Human understanding proves to be insufficient to come to terms with this spiritual experience, and Marguerite can only resort to an apophatic expression trying to formulate what she has seen in her vision: ‘this is a gift given by the Most High, into whom this creature is ravished through full- ness of knowledge, and in her understanding she remains nothing’ (MSS, 17). As we commonly hear, and which is reemphasized in Maguerite’s text many times, Love underscores that the soul has lost all of its connections with the body and has turned completely to the divine: ‘all her external longings and inward feelings and all affections of the spirit’ (MSS, 18) have been brought to nothing, ‘for the will which prompted longing in her is dead’ (MSS, 18). How- ever, this does not result in melancholy or sorrow. Instead, the realization sets in that this visionary experience frees the soul from all of its previous material

30 Sean L. Field, The beguine, the angel, and the inquisitor: The trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart, Notre Dame (IN) 2012; Emily A. Holmes, Flesh made word: Medieval women mystics, writing, and the incarnation, Waco (TX) 2013. See also http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Marguerite_Porete (accessed Jan. 30, 2014). 31 Margaret Porette, The mirror of simple souls (trans., introd. & ed. Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler & Judith Grant), Notre Dame (IN) 1999 (Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture 6), 9. Hereafter referred to as MSS in the text. For the historical-critical edition, see Romana Guarnieri & Paul Verdeyen (Eds.), Le mirouer des simples âmes / Speculum simplicium animarum, Turnhout 1986 (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 69).

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bonds. As Love explains: ‘This Soul neither longs for nor despises poverty or tribulation. Mass or sermon, fasting or prayer; and gives to Nature all that it requires, with no qualm of conscience; but this Nature is so well ordered through having been transformed in the union with Love, to whom this Soul’s will is joined, that it never asks anything wich is forbidden’ (MSS, 20). Epistemologically speaking, this mystic author projects a new perception of being beyond all material dimensions, even beyond human will. But the full understanding of such a transformation is not really possible, especially not for teachers or learned people in the outside world. Instead, as Marguerite out- lines, the mystical union implies that the ‘Soul is learning in the school of Divine Knowledge, and is seated in the valley of Humility, and upon the plain of Truth, and is at rest upon the mountain of Love’ (MSS, 21). True happiness, or rather spiritual fulfillment through the mystical union, takes place when ‘the Soul brought to Nothing has no will at all, and cannot want to have any at all, and in this the divine will is perfectly accomplished, and the Soul does not have its fill of divine Love, nor does divine Love have its fill of the Soul, until the Soul is in God and God is in the Soul, and when the Soul is in such a state of divine rest, from God and through God, then she has all her fill’ (MSS, 27).32 Even though it has proven to be rather problematic to claim Marguerite for modern-day feminist agendas, since she embraced firmly the concept of physical self-annihilation (in a metaphorical sense) in order to join a union with the Godhead, we still can recognize in her a major voice in the complex and mul- tifold efforts during the late Middle Ages among countless mystics to reach a new level of understanding regarding the essence of human existence and the ideal of the soul joining with the Godhead, thus gaining a true sense of happiness and well-being beyond all material limitations. As Suzanne Kocher insightfully observes, strongly critiquing much of previous research, Marguerite ‘disembodies her characters, not in order to resist a literary norm of embodied mysticism, but better to express Love’s primacy over Raison’.33 As we find throughout her text, indeed, her major struggle pertained to the liberation and dissolution of her own self and to allow her soul to merge with the divine in the mystical moment: ‘the Soul brought to Nothing wants for nothing to be compared with what she would want to wish for, and that she cannot have, for God wants her to wish that she should wish for nothing, compared with what could be her fill, and what she wishes for shall on this account never be given to her’ (MSS, 27).

32 classen, ‘The dialectics of mystical love in the Middle Ages’. 33 Suzanne Kocher, Allegories of love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Turnhout 2008 (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 17), 183.

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Considering this most fascinating theological approach pursued by Marguerite, which leads to the soul’s profound fulfillment and happiness, although she does not use these words explicitly, it comes as little surprise that scholars have correctly suggested a direct line of influence between this mystic and the Dominican teacher, philosopher, and also mystic, Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260- ca. 1327).34 As Marguerite argues, based on her visions, ‘everything which this Soul has within her from God through the gift of divine grace seems nothing to her, and it is nothing, too, in comparison with what she loves, which is in God and which he will not give to anyone except only to himself’ (MSS, 31). Ultimately, and this might well have been one of the major reasons for Marguerite’s persecution as a heretic, she insists on love as the fundamental source of all happiness and spiritual experiences, allowing the individual to merge with the Godhead: ‘this Soul is God through its condition of Love, and I am God through my divine nature, and this Soul is God by Love’s just law’ (MSS, 41). The further we enter into Marguerite’s discourse on her mystical experience, the more we recognize how much she advocated for love as the fundamental engine of all human sensations, ideals, and values. All love is turned to God and stays completely removed from anything physical: ‘Such a Soul no longer loves anything in God or will love it, however noble it may be, except only for God and because he wishes it, and she loves God in all things, and things for love of him’ (MSS, 45). Wherever we turn in this astounding mystical reflections, here in this literary ‘mirror’ of the spiritual vision we consistently come across the same realization that true happiness rests in the divine dimension, and that the soul can reach out for the Godhead when it is completely free of the qualms of conscience, free of will (or selfhood), when it is completely con- vinced of being loved the most by the Godhead, and when it longs for being in sink with divine will (MSS, 106). Marguerite’s highest provocation of the official Church might have been that she identified as the greatest sort of happiness the experience of the Soul of being within the divine life, sharing completely with the Godhead the ultimate delight: ‘she lives divinely, for to this extent God has sanctified her by himself; and there no-one who is opposed to goodness can force his way in’ (MSS, 108). Moreover, she no longer suggests that the Soul moves to the God- head, but that the latter has entered her and has become part of her: ‘God is in me, he must be mindful of me, and his goodness cannot have me lost’ (MSS, 109).

34 See the contributions to McGinn, Meister Eckhart and the Beguine mystics.

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6. Birgitta of Sweden

We could draw from many other medieval examples concerning mystical visions and the experience of the mystic’s soul, yet we would not come across too many major differences. One interesting example, however, deserves to be included here to round off our investigations. More than other mystical writers, Birgitta of Sweden (1302/1303-1373) was dedicated to hospital care and treating the sick and old. After her husband’s death in 1344, shortly after their return from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, Birgitta joined the Franciscan Order, and in 1350 she traveled to Rome to obtain from the Pope the authorization of the new Order of the Brigittines, although the papacy at that time resided in Avignon. Only in 1370, however, Pope Urban V, during a brief visit of Rome, confirmed the rules of the Order. Brigitta went to Jerusalem in 1373, and died shortly after her return to Rome. ‘She was canonized in the year 1391 by Pope Boniface IX, which was confirmed by the Council of Constance in 1415. Because of new discussions about her works, the Council of Basel confirmed the orthodoxy of the revelations in 1436’.35 In her case it is clearer than usual that some of her accounts were copied down by her confessors, especially here Life, but this does not change our ana- lytic approach regarding her interpretation of those visions that she had experienced already since childhood. After she had married, Birgitta experienced help from the Virgin Mary during her childbirth insofar as the latter appeared to her at night and touched all her limbs. As a consequence, ‘Lady Birgitta gave birth so easily that it was a thing of wonder and not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, who gave birth without pain, was that person who mitigated the labors, the pains, and the peril of her handmaid’ (BS, 76). Even though we often hear of mystics, including Birgitta, turning to self-flagellation, fasting, causing pain to their own bodies, here the vision makes possible a much easier and pain free delivery. Even her marriage, of which she reports slightly later, is characterized as dedicated to God, and not as a matter of worldly convenience and joy. When her husband fell ill on their way home from Santiago de Compostella, she again received a vision, this time of Saint Denis, who promised her that her husband would not yet die (BS, 77).

35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_of_Sweden (accessed Jan. 29, 2014). See also the web- page dedicated only to her: http://www.umilta.net/birgitta.html (accessed Jan. 29, 2014). Here I will draw from Marguerite Tjader Harris (Ed.), Birgitta of Sweden: Life and selected revelations (trans. & notes Albert Ryle Kezel; introd. Tore Nyberg), New York-Mahwah 1990, further abbreviated as BS in the main text; see now Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the voice of prophecy, Woodbridge 2001; and the contributions to Claes Gejrot (Ed.), Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena. Papers from a symposium in Stockholm 4-6 october 2007, Stockholm 2010.

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Her mystical experiences at first deeply frightened her, and she took all precautions to protect herself from the devil’s temptations, until she was enrap- tured and encountered the Godhead who charged her with being His bride and channel (BS, 78). In contrast to other approaches pursued by contemporary mystics, Birgitta was reported as experiencing also negative sensations when she said something in offense to God: ‘by this she knew at once that she had offended God; and, bringing that word back into her memory, at once and without delay she confessed it to her confessor with great sorrow and tears’ (BS, 81). Her happiness and well-being hence depended very much on her inti- macy and accordance with the Godhead. However, with respect to her physical existence, she was also alerted through a vision that excessive fasting, hence hurting her own body, was not what God had conceived of for people. Fasting served not to destroy the body, but ‘to be humbled and not grow insolent in opposition to its soul. Our Christ does not ask for things impossible to nature but for moderation’ (BS, 90). At the same time, Birgitta did not hesitate to cause herself painful wounds on Fridays, either with hot wax dropped on her skin, or scratching healing wounds open with her fingers, which ‘she did for the sake of the memory of the passion of Christ’ (BS, 96). We know of many parallels among other mystics, such as Henry Suso (see above), or Beatrice of Nazareth (see above), since pain served in this context not only to humble the devout mystic, but also to allow her/him to imitate Christ’s suffering.36 And as alien, if not even upsetting as this might sound to modern ears, the wounds inflicted by herself on her own body actually created a higher degree of happiness in her because the pain con- nected her more closely with the Godhead and thus intensified her spiritual experience subsequently. In her Fifth Book of Revelations37 from 1349 we learn, for instance, ‘As to why infirmity comes to the body, I answer: This happens as a major warning and also because of the vices of incontinency and excess, in order that man may learn spiritual moderation and patience by bridling his flesh’ (BS, 107). At the same time Birgitta relays to us the infinite difference between God and the human individual, and thus she emphasizes how much the material existence has to be overcome in order to establish a pathway of the soul toward the God- head (BS, 113). By the same token, as the mystic later conveys to us, God humbled Himself so that He ‘would take on the sackcloth of humanity, except

36 Jessica Barr, ‘Reading wounds: Embodied mysticism in a fourteenth century codex’, in: Magistra 19 (2013) no.1, 27-39. 37 here I quote also from Birgitta of Sweden, but for the historical critical edition and a full discussion of the historical background of this text, see Birger Bergh (Ed.), Sancta Birgitta, Revelaciones, Book V: Liber Questionum, Uppsala 1971.

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for the fact of my incomprehensible love, because of which I willed to live visibly with man’ (BS, 121). The crucial point, both here and elsewhere, proves to be approximation and ultimate union of the soul with the Godhead, beyond the bodily limitations, and the experience of a new love combining both in a mystical fashion. Apart from physical pain, Birgitta also discusses the nature of material objects and has the Godhead inform us that riches are only temporary and transitory, that they can easily be lost, that tribulations easily occur in this world, especially because they are the welcome gateway toward the Godhead, that scorn and insults easily happen, and that honor and pride tend to diminish humility and make the individual forget God (BS, 124). The other concern that matters here is that God teaches Birgitta about His own being which would be completely overwhelming for the individual and would immediately destroy the body: ‘If any human’s body were to see the Godhead, it would melt like wax before a fire’ (BS, 125). In other words, humans would not even be capable of perceiving God, perishing right away at His sight, wherefore true happiness and the mystical exultation rests in the mystical union of soul and the Godhead, hence only in the spiritual dimension. But we also find striking passages in the Book of Revelations in which Christ’s Passion is described in most gruesome terms, making the reader/listener to a virtual voyeur of greatest intensity: Indeed, his skin and the virginal flesh of his most holy body were so delicate and tender that, after the infliction of a slight blow, a black and blue mark appeared on the surface. At times, however, he tried to make stretching motions on the cross because of the exceeding bitterness of the intense and most acute pain that he felt. For at times the pain from his pierced limbs and veins ascended to his heart and battered him cruelly with an intense martyrdom; and thus death was prolonged and delayed amidst grave torment and great bitterness. (BS, 189) The subsequent pietà scene closes the amazing cinematographic episode, combining the feelings of pain with profound empathy and compassion. The imagery, however, does not simply serve to move the mystic to feel pity, but, more than that, to help Birgitta to carry Christ’s message to the princes of this world and to teach them, by means of these horrific images of greatest intensity, to change their ways and to reform, turning away from the worldly temptations and the neglect of their own and their people’s spiritual needs.38

38 For further reflections on pain in the Middle Ages, see Larissa Tracy, Torture and brutality in medieval literature: Negotiations of national identity, Cambridge-Rochester (NY) 2012. See also Roselyne Rey, The history of pain (trans. Louise Elliott Wallace, J.A. Cadden & S.W. Cadden), Cambridge (MA) 1995.

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Of course, we have seemingly moved far away from the initial concern about happiness and well-being, so it seems, but only on the surface. Ultimately, if we combine the various aspects raised by Birgitta, parallel to those addressed by Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porète, we recognize that all their purposes remained the same, though the strategy to pursue those changed from visionary to visionary. Human life, as it appears to normal eyes, was regarded by these mystics and many others only as a screen keeping the divine truth, that is, the numinosum, hidden from view. The mystical experience allowed them, by contrast, to gain much deeper insight into the true condition of divine life, the spiritual sphere, than most other people of their time, which explains the great respect and even admiration which many of them enjoyed, and the deep hatred they encountered under special circumstance. Aiming toward the transformation of their own self and the liberation of their souls, the mystics struggled in many different ways to overcome their own bodies and to free their souls, thus making sure that the joining of the soul with the Godhead was possible, although we encounter them today only through their writings, hence their material heritage to us. Even Birgitta’s depiction of the Passion scene added to this efforts by evoking most intense compassion and empathy. In essence, of course, we have not examined the pedestrian notion of happiness and physical well-being. But we have recognized a fundamental connec- tion between these mystical voices and the remarks by some of the Church Fathers and medieval philosophers, all of them striving for the same goal achiev- ing a spiritual form of happiness. While courtly love poets utilized the theme of erotic passion, the mystics explored the dialectics of body and soul, combined the aspects of pain and suffering with spiritual illumination, and thus they also, perhaps even more intensively than anyone else at their time, gained the highest insight into divine epiphany and self-fulfillment through the unio mystica. This also empowered the mystics to stand up as major critics of the social and religious conditions of their time and to alert their contemporaries to God’s demands. Birgitta of Sweden, for instance, addresses the entire Church, the kings, and other mighty individuals and warns them of their wrong-doings, giving voice to the Godhead: ‘You have abandoned my commandments and you follow the will of the devil and you obey his suggestions’ (BS, 216). But she knows, at the same time, of her own deep inner happiness and glorification, identifying herself as ‘bride of Christ’ (BS, 218). Marguerite Porète focuses, by contrast, on herself and the book of her visions only, though she then also reveals the meaning of spiritual love as the foundation for her epiphany: ‘in this book Love applies to souls the touch of his divine works, secretly hidden in mysterious language, so that they may taste and drink more deeply the draughts of his love,

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and also to give them clearer insight in a divine understanding of divine love’ (MSS, 179). All this does not imply that these mystics were healthier in a physical sense (probably on the contrary because of their long fasting, nightly vigils, hence regular sleep depravation, etc.), but their mental outlook was profoundly different from that of their secular contemporaries in that they had been graced with visions that allowed them to transcend the material reality and to comprehend themselves as recipients of divine grace.

7. Conclusion

Mechthild, to grant her the last word here, continued exploring the relationship of body and soul to the very end, and has the latter say to the former: ‘I thank you for all the ways / In which you have followed me. / Although I am very disappointed in you, / You have so often to my aid’ (FLD, 270). Happi- ness proves to be the outcome of the mystical discourse, giving the longing soul the opportunity to experience the presence of the Godhead and to witness the fundamental transformation of the human individual into an integral part of divinity. For the mystics the divine was not a distant entity, but an integral part of themselves because it had entered their bodies via the spirit, allowing them to witness a holistic self-realization based on the material and the spiritual existence combined, or at least interacting with each other. As Patricia Dailey has recently observed, one of the most significant contributions by the mystics, which continue to speak to us today in many different ways, might well be their ability to share the experience of the divine in their mystical visions and thus to overcome the binary opposition of body and soul. Resorting subsequently to writing down these visions, they have offered a most powerful medium for our own efforts to comprehend the actual presence of the numinosum in human existence: ‘the interpretive process becomes a template for understanding how works reflect the divine and how one should read, understand, and feel works from the inside out, as individuals and as communal beings’.39 Even more poignantly, she adds: ‘Experience of the world is structured as one experiences a text, hence interpretation – reading the outer according to an inner invisible meaning – becomes a means for the experience of inner and outer to come together in thought, affect, and practice’.40

39 patricia Dailey, Promised bodies: Time, language, & corporeality in medieval women’s mystical texts, New York 2013 (Gender, Theory, & Religion), 170. 40 Dailey, Promised bodies, 170.

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Happiness, as indirectly defined by the mystics, aims for the liberation of the soul, readying it for the spiritual union with the Godhead, which subsequently makes possible the true realization of the meaning of human existence. Little wonder that Mechthild of Magdeburg, for instance, resorted so intensively to the imageries and metaphors of wedding and courtly love. The mystical vision commonly and critically facilitated the building of bridges between the body and the soul, hence between the outside and the inside. Moreover, mystical visions were epiphanic and injected the recipient with endless energy, creating happiness of an extraordinary kind.

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