Jeroen Deploige & Veerle Fraeters
750 Years On. Beatrice of Nazareth Revisited
1200-1268: A Mulier Sancta’s Life and Literary Legacy
On the 29th of August 1268, the Cistercian nun Beatrice passed away at the convent of Nazareth near the Brabantine town of Lier, situated in the north of the diocese of Cambrai. She had served her community as prioress for more than thirty years. In the Vita Beatricis, written around 1275 at the request of her fellow sisters, the day of her bodily death is described in a hagiographical way as a joyful dies natalis or birthday, as the day her enlightened spirit was reborn in heaven and united with the divine bridegroom. Beatrice was one of many mulieres sanctae or ‘holy women’ who, in the thirteenth century, partook in the religious zeal that swept across some groups of laypeople and of the lower clergy in the southern Low Countries. The piety of these religious women was rooted in the vita apostolica, the wish to live in poverty as Christ and the apostles had done, and it was shaped by nuptial mysticism, the quest for spir- itual perfection by cultivating a mystical relationship of love with Christ. The protagonists of the new female religiosity opted for a variety of life paths. They could live as beguines, women who lived a spiritual life but did not adhere to an authorized religious rule; as recluses or anchoresses; or as Cistercian nuns, which was the case for Beatrice.1 For a good dozen of these women, a vita was written shortly after their death to commemorate their particular exemplary lives as well as to propagate the new models of religious life that they repre- sented.2
* We would like to thank all the participants of the Ghent expert meeting organized in January 2017 in the run-up to this publication: Eric Delaissé, Els De Paermentier, Rob Faesen, Suzan Folkerts, Anne-Laure Méril-Bellini delle Stelle, Stefan Meysman, Sara Moens, Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, Wybren Scheepsma, Nanouschka Wamelink-van Dijk, and Kris Van Put. The generous exchange of ideas and insights during and after this workshop has definitely enriched the contents of this final selection of peer reviewed essays. Kris Van Put deserves a special mention, being the one who first launched the idea for a special issue of Ons Geestelijk Erf on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Beatrice of Nazareth’s death. 1 See Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Anneke Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). As for the spread of the white nuns in the Low Countries, see in particular the study by Sara Moens (‘Beatrice’s World: The Rise of Cistercian Nunneries in the Bishoprics of Liège and Cambrai’) in the present special issue. 2 See the Lives of Mary of Oignies, Juetta of Huy, Ida of Nivelles, Christina Mirabilis, Margaret of Ypres, Odilia of Liège, Lutgard of Aywières, Alice of Schaarbeek, Ida of Gorsleeuw, Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Ida of Louvain. For a comprehensive introduction,
Ons Geestelijk Erf 89(3-4), 211-224. doi: 10.2143/OGE.89.3.3287355 © Ons Geestelijk Erf. All rights reserved. 212 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
Among these hagiographies, the one devoted to Beatrice stands out for a num- ber of reasons. While resistance from family members is a common topos in the vitae of holy women, Beatrice’s religious vocation and career, in contrast, was strongly supported and shaped by her father. Bartholomew was an affluent burgher of the town of Tienen who, after the death of his wife in 1207, devoted his fortune to the foundation of no less than three Cistercian nunneries – first Florival, then Maagdendaal and finally Nazareth.3 Along with three of his daugh- ters, including Beatrice, and one of his sons, he lived there himself as a lay brother, moving from one community to the other as each new community was founded. For this marked turn to religion and such generous investments in the blooming of the white nuns in Brabant, Bartholomew would, after his death, be honoured with a short vita which was included in that of his famous daughter.4 A second particularity of the Vita Beatricis lies in the fact that, in the pro- logue, the anonymous hagiographer presents himself as the translator rather than the author of the work: If someone challenges me to prove the things I am going to say, and as a curious investigator demands from me a witness to the truth, I answer him in all simplic- ity that I am only the translator of this work, not the author. Of my own I have added or changed little; rather I have only given a Latin colouring to the ver- nacular words (verba vulgaria) as they were given to me in diary-notes (in cedu- lis). She who is served by our work of translation rightly claims its authorship (auctoritatem). Moreover, she alone, by the brightness of her own vigorous spirit (proprii vivacitate spiritus), was able to penetrate the innermost depths of her mind and bring forth its own secrets and mysteries.5 Strikingly, Beatrice is not just the exemplary protagonist of the Vita, she is also emphatically staged as its author.6 In accordance with this image, she is presented as a gifted woman with a vigorous mind. Her striking intellectual capacities form a leitmotif throughout the narrative. As a child she received an see Walter Simons, ‘Holy Women of the Low Countries: A Survey’, in Medieval and Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c. 1100-c. 1500, ed. by Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden, Brepols Essays in European Culture, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 625-62. 3 All three communities were located in the Duchy of Brabant, Florival and Maagdendaal in the Diocese of Liège and Nazareth in the Diocese of Cambrai. 4 See Vita Beatricis: De autobiografie van de Z. Beatrijs van Tienen o. cist. 1200-1268, ed. by Leonce Reypens, Studiën en Tekstuitgaven van Ons Geestelijk Erf, 15 (Antwerp: Ruusbroec- Genootschap, 1964) (= hereafter refered to as VB), lib. I, cap. 1, pp. 17-21. This biography was also transmitted separately in an abbreviated version by Johannes Gielemans in his fifteenth- century work Historiologium Brabantinorum: Gesta venerabilis Bartholomei ciuis Thenensis postea conuersi cisterciensis (= appendix 11 to the VB, pp. 260-62). 5 VB, prologus, pp. 13-14 (§ 4, ll. 30-38). ET: The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1200-1268, trans. and ann. by Roger De Ganck, Cistercian Fathers Series, 51 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991), pp. 3-4. 6 See Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Beatrice of Nazareth: The First Woman Author of Mystical Texts’, in Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 49-66. 750 YEARS ON: BEATRICE OF NAZARETH REVISITED 213 excellent education, first from her mother, and after her mother’s death, from magisters – Latin trained schoolmen – in Zoutleeuw near Tienen, where she lived for some time in a community of beguines. At the age of ten, she joined the convent of Florival, south of Leuven, where she was professed at the unu- sually young age of sixteen. After her profession she was sent to the Cistercian convent La Ramée in Jauchelette, south of Brussels, in order to be trained as a scribe and an illuminator of Latin liturgical books. In this abbey, Beatrice met another well-known mulier religiosa, Ida of Nivelles, with whom she devel- oped a close spiritual friendship and who proved pivotal in Beatrice’s early development as a mystic. According to the Vita, it was at La Ramée, in January 1217, that Beatrice experienced mystical rapture for the first time.7 A few years after her return to Florival, she moved once more to the newly founded convent of Maagdendaal near Oplinter, along with her father and three of her siblings, and began to keep a spiritual diary. It is these diary notes, containing spiritual exercises and contemplative expe- riences, which the hagiographer reworked into a Latin hagiography that fitted the compositional demands of the genre and the doctrinal expectations of the ecclesiastical establishment.8 In doing so, he modified and omitted existing material, while adding new elements.9 In his text, he focuses particularly on Beatrice’s harsh asceticism, the different kinds of temptations she faced in her life, her Eucharistic devotion and inner experiences. In the conclusion, the hagiographer clarifies that he left out many of Beatrice’s observations on minne or mystical love as they were too lofty to be understood by his intended audi- ence.10 Regrettably, Beatrice’s spiritual notebook has not been preserved – it would have been the earliest autobiography in the vernacular in Europe.11 Given the low status of vernacular texts in the field of religion at that time, we can safely assume that her notes were neglected and went missing, or were even deliberately destroyed.12
7 See VB, Lib. I, cap. 11, pp. 45-49. 8 On this, see Amy Hollywood, ‘Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer’, in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. by Catherine M. Mooney, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 78-98; 220-29. 9 In this respect, it is worth noting that scholars have detected borrowings from at least two contemporary vitae, the Vita Arnulphi and the Vita Lutgardis. See Simone Roisin, L’hagiographie cistercienne dans le diocèse de Liège au XIIIe siècle, Recueil de travaux d’histoire et de philolo- gie. Série 3, 27 (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1947), pp. 97, 220; The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, pp. x n. 4, xxv n. 14; Hollywood, ‘Inside Out’, p. 222 n. 20; Erwin Mantingh, Een monnik met een rol: Willem van Affligem, het Kopenhaagse Leven van Lutgart en de fictie van een meerdaagse voorlezing, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 73 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), pp. 154-55. To the hagiographer’s credit, however, it should be added that he conscientiously makes his audience aware of this hagiographical inspiration: see VB, prologus, p. 13 (§ 2, ll. 15-18). 10 See VB, Lib. III, cap. 17, pp. 185-186 (§§ 275-76). 11 VB, p. 12*. 12 The loss of the original notes is discussed by Reypens in VB, pp. 43*-44* and by De Ganck in The Life of Beatrice, pp. xxviii-xxxii. 214 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
Fortunately, another text attributed to Beatrice escaped that fate. Van seven manieren van heileger minnen, or Seven Manners of Love, was presumably written after her transfer, in May 1236, from Maagdendaal to the new convent of Nazareth near Lier, where she was prioress until her death. The text is not a biographical notebook but a mystagogical treatise on minne or mystical love. Preserved anonymously in three manuscripts, it was rediscovered in 1923 by the Jesuit philologist Leonce Reypens, who proclaimed it to be ‘a hidden pearl of mysticism’.13 Two years later, Reypens and his colleague Jozef van Mierlo were proud to announce their discovery of the author: Bea- trice of Nazareth.14 They had detected striking similarities between the Seven Manners and chapter fourteen of the third book of the Vita Beatricis, entitled: ‘The love of God and its seven degrees’ (De caritate Dei et .vij. eius gradibus).15 Obviously, the hagiographer had translated Beatrice’s text and integrated it into the Vita, a conclusion now shared by the majority of Bea- trice scholars.16 In the Seven Manners Beatrice describes seven modes of experiencing minne, mystical love. Despite its brevity – modern editions count less than 500 lines – the text offers a comprehensive reflection on mystical love. The introductory first mode of love expounds on the innate active desire of the human soul, created ‘in the image and likeness of God’ (Gen. 1, 26), to live up to its lofty nature. In the following six chapters, Beatrice describes the experiences of minne in the active life (manners two and three), in the inner life (four and five) and in the contem- plative life (six and seven).17 While Beatrice’s mystical theology of love does build on twelfth-century Latin monastic mysticism, it is, in its vernacularity and its fusion of religious and courtly modes of expression, a typical representative of thirteenth-century female love mysticism. Beatrice’s key motifs and vocabu- lary are strongly reminiscent of Hadewijch (c. 1240). Together, the two religious women figure at the dawn of Dutch literary history.18
13 See Leonce Reypens, ‘Een verdoken parel der mystiek: de “Seven manieren van heileger min- nen”’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort, 23 (1923), 717-30. 14 See Reypens and Van Mierlo Jr., ‘Een nieuwe Schrijfster uit de eerste helft der dertiende eeuw: De Gelukzalige Beatrijs van Nazareth (1200(?)-1268)’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort, 25 (1925), 352-67. 15 See VB, pp. 157-179. 16 For a survey of the various studies that have analyzed the many differences and anomalies between the Latin and the Middle Dutch versions since then, see Scheepsma, ‘Beatrice of Naza- reth’, p. 57, n. 28. Scheepsma, however, continues to question Beatrice’s authorship of the Seven Manners: see Ibid., pp. 56-58. 17 For a more elaborate synopsis of the contents, see Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven manieren van minne, trans. by Rob Faesen (Kapellen: Uitgeverij Pelckmans), 1999, pp. 38-40; Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200-1350, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, 3 (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 171-73. 18 Frits van Oostrom, ‘Gesluierde schrijfster: Beatrijs van Nazareth’, in Idem, Stemmen op schrift: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur vanaf het begin tot 1300 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006), pp. 404-14. 750 YEARS ON: BEATRICE OF NAZARETH REVISITED 215
Rediscovery and The Emergence of Beatrice Studies
Religious woman, Cistercian saint, vernacular author, teacher of love mysti- cism: Beatrice has several profiles and her life and work can therefore be approached from different angles. Consequently, Beatrice studies today are multidisciplinary in nature. Scholarship on Beatrice, however, is fairly young, due to the fact that both the Vita and the Seven Manners had a discontinuous transmission history. The Vita Beatricis first appeared in print in 1603, in a reworked translation into French by the Cistercian historian Jean d’Assignies.19 The Latin text only became known in print in 1630 thanks to the Spanish Cistercian Crisóstomo Henriquez. He included the Vita Beatricis in his book Quinque prudentes Vir- gines, a collection of five Lives of mulieres religiosae, while omitting the prologue and a few paragraphs.20 However, this editio princeps never circulated widely outside Beatrice’s own Cistercian Order. The Vita Beatricis was never included in the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum series, in contrast to the Lives of most of the other holy women of the southern Low Countries. The Vita could have found its place in the series’ seventh volume of July, dealing, amongst others, with the saints venerated on 29 July (then still considered to be the day of her death).21 However, the Bollandists decided merely to make mention of Beatrice as one of the praetermissi et in alios dies reiecti (saints that are neglected or that will be dealt with at a later date), explaining that she was a virgo praeclarissima of whom an admirable Vita was known but who could well be neglected since she had never enjoyed a saint’s cult.22 As a matter of fact, while Beatrice appears to have been recognized by her contemporaries and promoted by her hagiographer as an example of ‘living sainthood’, she has never been officially canonized.23 Beatrice’s vernacular treatise fell into oblivion as well, only to resurface in the early 1920s, when Reypens discovered the three remaining manuscripts and iden- tified Beatrice as its author. Together with Van Mierlo, he provided the first crit- ical edition of the Seven Manners in 1926.24 Reypens also provided the first criti- cal edition of the Vita Beatricis. It was published in 1964, in the series ‘Studiën en tekstuitgaven’ of Ons Geestelijk Erf, the quarterly journal which he had founded in 1927, together with his fellow Jesuit scholars of the Antwerp-based Ruusbroec
19 Jean d’Assignies, Les vies et faits remarquables de plusieurs saints et vertueux Moines, Moni- ales, et Freres Conuers du sacré Ordre de Cysteau etc. (Mons: Charles Michel, 1603). 20 Crisóstomo Henriquez, Quinque prudentes virgines, sive B. Beatricis de Nazareth, B. Aleydis de Scharenbecka, B. Idae de Nivellis, B. Idae de Lovanio, B. Idae De Lewis, ordinis cisterc. praeclara gesta: ex antiquis M.S. eruta (Antwerp: Cnobbaert, 1630). 21 The correct day of Beatrice’s death is 29 August 1268. This is argued by Reyens in VB, p. 55*. 22 See Acta Sanctorum Julii, 7 (1731), p. 3. 23 See Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 24 See Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven Manieren van Minne, ed. by L. Reypens and J. Van Mierlo, Leuvense Studieën en Tekstuitgaven, 12 (Leuven: De Vlaamsche Boekenhalle, 1926). 216 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
Society.25 The ground breaking work of Reypens and Van Mierlo provided the foundation for the later scholarship on Beatrice. Translations of their editions facilitated the international popularity of Beatrice studies. The Seven Manners of Love was translated into modern Dutch in 1965 and appeared in French and Eng- lish in 1972 and 1984 respectively.26 The Latin Vita was likewise made more accessible thanks to translations into English (1991), Modern Dutch (1993) and French (2009).27 Today, both the Vita and the Seven Manners are part of the canon of medi- eval sources, studied in a variety of scholarly disciplines. The Latin Vita Beat- ricis is an important source for hagiographical and monastic studies.28 The Seven Manners of Love, on the other hand, has been studied by literary histo- rians as an early – if not the earliest – specimen of Dutch prose, and by theo- logians as an important contribution to vernacular mystical theology.29 More over, since the rise of gender studies in the last decades of the twentieth century, Beatrice has often figured in the kind of interdisciplinary research – at the intersection of theology, cultural history and literary studies – that focuses on female literacy and on gender roles.30 The current special issue Beatrice of
25 See note 4. 26 Translations of the Seven Manners: Béatrice de Nazareth, Sept degrés d’amour, trans. by J.-B. M. P[orion], Ad Solem, (Genève: Claude Martingay, 1972), pp. 229-49; Beatrice of Nazareth: There are Seven Manners of Loving, trans. by E. Colledge, in Mediaeval Netherlands Religious Literature (Leyden: Sythoff, 1965), pp. 17-29 (repr. in Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, ed. by Elizabeth Avilda Petroff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 200-06); Beatrice of Nazareth: The Seven Steps of Love, trans. by S. M. Carton, Cistercian Studies, 19 (1984), 31-42. 27 Translations of the Vita: The Life of Beatrice, trans. and ann. by De Ganck; Hoezeer heeft God mij bemind: Beatrijs van Nazareth (1200-1268), trans. by Herman W. J. Vekeman, Mystieke teksten en thema’s, 7 (Kampen: Kok, 1993); La vie de Béatrice de Nazareth, trans. by Benoît Standaert, Pain de Cîteaux. Série 3, 29 (Saint-Jean-de-Matha: Abbaye Val Notre-Dame, 2009). 28 For a general overview in English of the monastic and theological context in which Beatrice lived, see Roger De Ganck, Beatrice of Nazareth in Her Context, Cistercian Studies Series, 121 (Kalama- zoo: Cistercian Publications 1991); Idem, Towards Unification with God: Beatrice of Nazareth in Her Context Part Three, Cistercian Studies Series, 122 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991). 29 See, for example, Scheepsma, ‘Beatrice of Nazareth’; Rob Faesen, ‘La mystique christocent- rique de Béatrice de Nazareth’, Collectanea Cisterciensia, 66 (2004), 97-109; Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, ‘Can God Speak in the Vernacular? On Beatrice of Nazareth’s Flemish Exposition of the Love for God’, in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson and Nancy Bradley Warren, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 185-208. 30 See, for example, Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, ‘Image of God – Image of Mary – Image of Woman: On the Theology and Spirituality of Beatrice of Nazareth’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 29 (1994), 209-20; Idem, ‘The In-carnation of Beatrice of Nazareth’s Theology’, in New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact, ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 61-79; Hollywood, ‘Inside Out’; Jessica Barr, ‘The Secret Chamber of Her Mind: Interpreting Inner Experience in the “Vita” of Beatrice of Nazareth’, Exemplaria, 23 (2011), 221-43; Michelle M. Sauer, ‘Divine Orgasm and Self-Blazoning: The Fragmented Body of the Female Medieval Visionary’, in Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts, ed. by Jennifer N. Brown and Marla Segol, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 123-43; Kris Van Put, ‘“About Which We Want to Speak Now”: Beatrice 750 YEARS ON: BEATRICE OF NAZARETH REVISITED 217
Nazareth. Milieu—Mysticism—Influence contributes to the existing scholarship by offering a multidisciplinary view on Beatrice as a historical figure, theo- logical thinker and vernacular author. As such it aims both to open up new avenues for future Beatrice studies and to show how the richness of Beatrice’s case can further the development of larger research agendas.
2018: New Directions
The issue opens with two historical contributions that shed new light on the Cistercian world in which Beatrice lived. Since the 2000s, medieval studies have witnessed a growing interest in the rise and development of women’s communities in the Cistercian Order. While previous research often saw the presence of women within the Order in the late twelfth and thirteenth century as a logistical burden for the Order’s development, that needed to be encapsu- lated and limited by legislative efforts, more recent research pioneered by Con- stance Berman has started to revisit the white nuns’ share in the early history and success of the Cistercian movement.31 More emphasis is now also placed on the openness of the Cistercian monks towards women religious and on the ideals of apostolic reform which the latter often embodied, as well as on the lived experiences that were highly valued in these women’s communities. This approach has already resulted in a number of regional case studies focusing, for example, on Champagne, Flanders and Hainaut, and the archdiocese of Sens.32 Yet it is somewhat surprising that the dioceses of Liège and Cambrai have never been the object of serious study, especially since they counted so many women’s communities as well as an important male Cistercian convent, Villers, that took a keen interest in the cura monialium. Sara Moens now opens this issue with a new, pivotal contribution in which she seizes the case of the
of Nazareth’s Reason for Uan seuen manieren van heileger minnen’, Journal of Medieval Reli- gious Cultures, 42 (2016), 143-63. 31 See Constance Hoffman Berman, ‘Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?’, in Medi- eval Religion. New Approaches, ed. by Constance Hoffman Berman (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 217-48. 32 See Anne E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011); Erin L. Jordan, Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2006); Idem, ‘Female Founders: Exercising Authority in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Church History and Religious Culture, 88 (2008), 535-61; Idem, ‘Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns, and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thir- teenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 62-94; Idem, ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities: The Claustralisation of Religious Women in the Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42 (2012), 597-614; Idem, ‘“Pro Remedio Anime Sue”: Cistercian Nuns and Space in the Low Countries’, in Women in the Medieval Monastic World, ed. by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, Medieval Monastic Studies, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 279-98; Constance Hoffman Berman, The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 218 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS richly documented life of Beatrice to deliver the first actual in-depth study of the rise of Cistercian nunneries in this region. Her rich analysis in ‘Beatrice’s World: The Rise of Cistercian Nunneries in the Bishoprics of Liège and Cam- brai’ is supported by original archival research and focuses on the spiritual ideals of white nuns, on the motives behind the foundations of their communi- ties, and on their integration into the Order. As such, Moens’ paper offers us an insightful and well-documented understanding of the milieu and context of Beatrice and many of her fellow white nuns. In the second contribution, ‘Le rire dans l’hagiographie cistercienne: l’éclairage de la Vita Beatricis’, Eric Delaissé connects with another recent trend in cultural history, namely the history of emotions. Pioneered about a century ago by Johan Huizinga and successfully reinitiated since the late 1990s in medieval studies by scholars such as Barbara Rosenwein, the study of the emotions of the people of the past has currently become one of the most popu- lar and sophisticated branches of historical study.33 The topic has not only inspired English-speaking scholars. In France, for example, the work of Dam- ien Boquet and Piroska Nagy has been trendsetting.34 Whereas Piroska Nagy has studied the role of tears in the emotional life of the past, Eric Delaissé now focuses on laughter, a topic that had earlier been touched upon by Jacques Le Goff.35 Starting from the rich testimony of the Vita Beatricis, Delaissé offers an overview and categorizes the roles of joy and laughter – often disapproved of as constituting a loss of self-control and yet nonetheless omnipresent and unavoidable – in Cistercian life and spirituality. The next two articles focus on Beatrice’s mysticism from a theological point of view. Obviously, Beatrice’s theology is best represented in her mystical treatise the Seven Manners. And yet, just as the anonymous writer of the Vita Beatricis made use of other vernacular texts by Beatrice (now lost), the Vita, too, can be considered a source of her theological ideas, albeit a multi-layered one in which the religious views of the hagiographer intersect with Beatrice’s own. Subsequently, a privileged topic in Beatrice studies has been the com- parison between the two texts. In her seminal article ‘Inside Out’, Amy Hol- lywood has shown how, in line with the demands of the genre, the male-authored hagiography emphasizes the outer life and ascetic behaviour that is observable to others, while the Seven Manners exclusively focuses on interiority and on
33 See Johan Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1919). Among the many publications by Rosenwein, see especially Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) and Idem, Gen- erations of Feeling: A History of Emotions, 600-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 34 See Damien Boquet, Piroska Nagy, Sensible Moyen Âge: Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval, L’univers historique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015). 35 See Piroska Nagy, Le don des larmes au Moyen Âge: Un instrument en quête d’institution (Ve-XIIIe siècle), Bibliothèque Albin Michel. Histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000); Jacques Le Goff, ‘Une enquête sur le rire’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 52 (1997), 449-55. 750 YEARS ON: BEATRICE OF NAZARETH REVISITED 219 the mystical relationship of the soul and God in minne.36 As mentioned above, the biographer was hesitant to elaborate on the direct encounter with God as he thought his readers would not be able to understand such a lofty matter. Since the coinage in the mid-1990s of the category ‘vernacular theology’ to refer to a corpus of medieval writings on religion which, in contrast to scholas- tic and monastic theological discourses, are in some way marked by vernacular- ity, Beatrice has been considered a prime case for the study of vernacular mys- ticism.37 Bernard McGinn, in part III of his influential multi-volume study The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, entitled The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200-1350, gave his chapter on Beatrice the telling title ‘The First Author’, suggesting that Beatrice is the first female representative of the new mysticism in the tradition of vernacular theology.38 With ‘new mysticism’ McGinn refers to the shift of traditional monastic contemplation to new views on the encounter between the soul and God which imply experiences of participatory mystical union.39 In their respective articles in the current Beatrice issue, both John Arblaster and Rob Faesen critically engage with this received opinion, advocating a less binary and more fluid view on the assumed borders between the traditional and the new, the monastic and the vernacular. In his contribution ‘The Mystical Ful- fillment of a Spiritual Ideal: Common Love in Baldwin of Forde, Beatrice of Nazareth, and the Vita Beatricis’, John Arblaster examines Beatrice’s doctrine of ‘common love’ (gemeine minne), which has influenced the later Middle Dutch mystics, John of Ruusbroec in particular. Though this notion is used only once in the Seven Manners, it does offer a deepened insight in Beatrice’s theology of union as not merely a momentary participation in the divine but rather a trans- formation into God’s love, the love with which He commonly loves all. Arblaster elucidates Beatrice’s use of the concept against the backdrop of the notion of communio in the Cistercian tradition, specifically in Baldwin of Forde’s Spiritual Tractate XV. The comparative analysis markedly reveals the newness of Beatrice. While for Baldwin common love is a spiritual ideal, for Beatrice it is the fulfil- ment of the soul’s mystical encounter with God. Moreover, Arblaster shows that the author of the Vita Beatricis must have understood the importance of ‘common love’ for Beatrice’s religious views and life, as he carefully wove the theme throughout his hagiographical account of Beatrice’s life.
36 See Hollywood, ‘Inside Out’. 37 See Bernard McGinn, ‘Introduction: Meister Eckhart and the Beguines in the Context of Ver- nacular Theology’, in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, ed. by Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 1-14. For a history of the concept from the perspective of literary studies, esp. Middle English studies, see Vincent Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English, ed. by Paul Strohm, Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 401-20. 38 See McGinn The Flowering of Mysticism, pp. 166-174. 39 McGinn discusses the notion ‘new mysticism’ in the introduction of The Flowering of Mysti- cism, pp. 1-30. 220 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
In ‘Beatrice as a Theologian of Deification in the Vita Beatricis’, Rob Faesen studies the ways in which the hagiographer, whom we can safely assume to be a Cistercian theologian, consciously constructs an image of Beatrice as theologian. Rather than recurring to present-day scholarly typologies and distinctions, such as ‘scholastic – monastic – vernacular theology’ or ‘speculative versus experien- tial theology’, Faesen brings the medieval concept of theology into play. In Bea- trice’s time, the term ‘theology’ was simply defined as ‘the knowledge of God’, simultaneously and inclusively meaning ‘about God’ and ‘given by God’. The hagiographer portrays Beatrice as a theologian who gained exceptional knowl- edge about God through three avenues: intellectual formation, illumination through grace, and the transformative process of deification through mystical union. The hagiographer explicitly places Beatrice’s view of deification as ‘being what God is’ in the monastic tradition, particularly Augustine and Haymo. Faesen argues that Beatrice’s new vernacular mysticism has little to do with the contem- porary scholastic misinterpretation of the notion of deification as ontological fusion – a highly contested view in the middle of the thirteenth century. Rather, her theology of union as participation in the Trinity and communion of life with Christ is in close harmony with the monastic tradition. The last essay of this special issue focuses on a hitherto unknown instance of textual influence of the Seven Manners, particularly on Hadewijch. From the start of Beatrice studies, the obvious parallels in mystical thought and vocabu- lary between the Seven Manners and the oeuvre of Hadewijch have been not- ed.40 Obviously, such kinship is to be expected given the close geographical and chronological vicinity of these two female pioneers of Middle Dutch mys- tical literature. It has brought a number of scholars, among which Van Mierlo, to hypothetically yet credibly identify one of the figures mentioned in Hade wijch’s List of the Perfect, ‘my lady Nazareth’ (mijn vrouwe Nazaret), with Beatrice.41 Yet, while evidence of direct textual and theological influence of Beatrice’s treatise on other mystical authors, such as Marguerite Porete and John of Ruusbroec, has been established, traces of intertextual relations between the Seven Manners and Hadewijch remain to be found.42 In ‘The Seven Man- ners of Love as a Source of Hadewijch’s Tenth Epistolary Poem’, Kris Van Put investigates the many terminological and phraseological parallels and plausibly
40 See the seminal study by J. Van Mierlo, ‘Beatrijs en Hadewych’, in Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven Manieren van Minne, 1926, pp. 82*-108*, especially pp. 89*-101*. 41 Ibid., pp. 104*-105*. 42 For Marguerite Porete, see John Arblaster and Rob Faesen, ‘The Influence of Beatrice of Nazareth on Marguerite Porete: The “Seven Manners of Love” Revised’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 64 (2013), 41-88; for John of Ruusbroec, see P. Mommaers, ‘Introduction’, in Jan van Ruusbroec, Die geestelike brulocht, ed. by J. Alaerts, Studiën en Tekstuitgaven van ons Geestelijk Erf, 20.3 (Tielt: Lannoo, 1988), p. 44 n. 2; Guido de Baere, The Complete Ruusbroec (2014), Jan van Ruusbroec: Opera omnia (1981-2006): Sources and Parallel Passages, Index of Sources, Version 1.0 (25 November 2014), p. 32
Bibliography
Primary Sources Acta Sanctorum Julii, 7 (1731) Assignies, Jean d’, Les vies et faits remarquables de plusieurs saints et vertueux Moines, Moniales, et Freres Conuers du sacré Ordre de Cysteau etc. (Mons: Charles Michel, 1603) Beatrice of Nazareth: There are Seven Manners of Loving, trans. by E. Colledge, in Mediaeval Netherlands Religious Literature (Leyden: Sythoff, 1965), pp. 17-29 (repr. in Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, ed. by Elizabeth Avilda Petroff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 200-06) Beatrice of Nazareth: The Seven Steps of Love, trans. by S. M. Carton, Cistercian Stud- ies, 19 (1984), 31-42 Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven Manieren van Minne, ed. by L. Reypens and J. Van Mierlo, Leuvense Studiën en Tekstuitgaven, 12 (Leuven: De Vlaamsche Boeken- halle, 1926) Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven manieren van minne, trans. by Rob Faesen (Kapellen: Uitgeverij Pelckmans), 1999 Hadewijch d’Anvers, Lettres spirituelles; Béatrice de Nazareth, Sept degrés d’amour, trans. by J.-B. M. P[orion], Ad Solem, (Genève: Claude Martingay, 1972) Henriquez, Crisóstomo, Quinque prudentes virgines, sive B. Beatricis de Nazareth, B. Aley- dis de Scharenbecka, B. Idae de Nivellis, B. Idae de Lovanio, B. Idae De Lewis, ordinis cisterc. praeclara gesta: ex antiquis M.S. eruta (Antwerp: Cnobbaert, 1630) Hoezeer heeft God mij bemind: Beatrijs van Nazareth (1200-1268), trans. by Herman W. J. Vekeman, Mystieke teksten en thema’s, 7 (Kampen: Kok, 1993) La vie de Béatrice de Nazareth, trans. by Benoît Standaert, Pain de Cîteaux. Série 3, 29 (Saint-Jean-de-Matha: Abbaye Val Notre-Dame, 2009) The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1200-1268, trans. and ann. by Roger De Ganck, Cis- tercian Fathers Series, 51 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991) Vita Beatricis: De autobiografie van de Z. Beatrijs van Tienen o. cist. 1200-1268, ed. by L. Reypens, Studiën en Tekstuitgaven van Ons Geestelijk Erf, 15 (Ant- werp: Ruusbroec-Genootschap, 1964) 222 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
Secondary Sources
Arblaster, John and Rob Faesen, ‘The Influence of Beatrice of Nazareth on Marguerite Porete: The “Seven Manners of Love” Revised’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cister- cienses, 64 (2013), 41-88 Barr, Jessica, ‘The Secret Chamber of Her Mind: Interpreting Inner Experience in the “Vita” of Beatrice of Nazareth’, Exemplaria, 23 (2011), 221-43 Berman, Constance Hoffman, ‘Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?’, in Medieval Religion: New Approaches, ed. by Constance Hoffman Berman (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 217-48 Berman, Constance Hoffman, The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medi- eval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) Boquet Damien and Piroska Nagy, Sensible Moyen Âge: Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval, L’univers historique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015) De Baere, Guido, The Complete Ruusbroec (2014), Jan van Ruusbroec: Opera omnia (1981-2006): Sources and Parallel Passages, Index of Sources, Version 1.0 (25 November 2014) https://www.uantwerpen.be/images/uantwerpen/container2726/ files/Ruusbroec_Sources-1.pdf De Ganck, Roger, Beatrice of Nazareth in Her Context, Cistercian Studies Series, 121 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications 1991) De Ganck, Roger, Towards Unification with God: Beatrice of Nazareth in Her Context Part Three, Cistercian Studies Series, 122 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications 1991) Faesen, Rob, ‘La mystique christocentrique de Béatrice de Nazareth’, Collectanea Cis- terciensia, 66 (2004), 97-109 Gillespie, Vincent, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English, ed. by Paul Strohm, Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2007), pp. 401-20 Hollywood, Amy, ‘Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer’, in Gen- dered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. by Catherine M. Mooney, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 78-98; 220-29 Huizinga, Johan, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1919) Jordan, Erin L., Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2006) Jordan, Erin, ‘Female Founders: Exercising Authority in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Church History and Religious Culture, 88 (2008), 535-61 Jordan, Erin L., ‘Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns, and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 62-94 Jordan, Erin L., ‘Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities: The Claustralisation of Reli- gious Women in the Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42 (2012), 597-614 Jordan, Erin L., ‘“Pro Remedio Anime Sue”: Cistercian Nuns and Space in the Low Countries’, in Women in the Medieval Monastic World, ed. by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, Medieval Monastic Studies, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 279-98 Kleinberg, Aviad M., Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 750 YEARS ON: BEATRICE OF NAZARETH REVISITED 223
Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Une enquête sur le rire’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 52 (1997), 449-55 Lester, Anne E., Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 2011) Mantingh, Erwin, Een monnik met een rol: Willem van Affligem, het Kopenhaagse Leven van Lutgart en de fictie van een meerdaagse voorlezing, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 73 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000) McGinn, Bernard, ‘Introduction: Meister Eckhart and the Beguines in the Context of Vernacular Theology’, in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, ed. by Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 1-14 McGinn, Bernard, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200-1350, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, 3 (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998) Mulder-Bakker, Anneke, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl- vania Press, 2005) Nagy, Piroska, Le don des larmes au Moyen Âge: Un instrument en quête d’institution (Ve-XIIIe siècle), Bibliothèque Albin Michel. Histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000) Pedersen, Else Marie Wiberg, ‘Image of God – Image of Mary – Image of Woman: On the Theology and Spirituality of Beatrice of Nazareth’, Cistercian Studies Quar- terly, 29 (1994), 209-20 Pedersen, Else Marie Wiberg, ‘The In-carnation of Beatrice of Nazareth’s Theology’, in New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact, ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Medi- eval Women: Texts and Contexts, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 61-79 Pedersen, Else Marie Wiberg, ‘Can God Speak in the Vernacular? On Beatrice of Nazareth’s Flemish Exposition of the Love for God’, in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson and Nancy Bradley Warren, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 185-208 Reypens, L., ‘Een verdoken parel der mystiek: de “Seven manieren van heileger min- nen”’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort, 23 (1923), 717-30. Reypens and Van Mierlo Jr., ‘Een nieuwe Schrijfster uit de eerste helft der dertiende eeuw: De Gelukzalige Beatrijs van Nazareth (1200(?)-1268)’, Dietsche Warande en Belfort, 25 (1925), 352-67 Roisin, Simone, L’hagiographie cistercienne dans le diocèse de Liège au XIIIe siècle, Recueil de travaux d’histoire et de philologie. Série 3, 27 (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1947) Rosenwein, Barbara H., Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) Rosenwein, Barbara H., Generations of Feeling: A History of Emotions, 600-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) Sauer, Michelle M., ‘Divine Orgasm and Self-Blazoning: The Fragmented Body of the Female Medieval Visionary’, in Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts, ed. by Jennifer N. Brown and Marla Segol, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 123-43 224 JEROEN DEPLOIGE & VEERLE FRAETERS
Scheepsma, Wybren, ‘Beatrice of Nazareth: The First woman Author of Mystical Texts’, in Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 49-66 Simons, Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Simons, Walter, ‘Holy Women of the Low Countries: A Survey’, in Medieval and Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c. 1100-c. 1500, ed. by Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden, Brepols Essays in European Culture, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 625-62 Van Oostrom, Frits, Stemmen op schrift: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur vanaf het begin tot 1300 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006) Van Put, Kris, ‘“About Which We Want to Speak Now”: Beatrice of Nazareth’s Rea- son for Writing Uan seuen manieren van heileger minnen’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 42 (2016), 143-63
Abstract
This introductory essay to the special issue Beatrice of Nazareth (1200-1268). Milieu – Mysticism – Influence first offers a brief presentation of the life and literary legacy of the famous Cistercian nun, mystic and author who takes centre stage in the present volume. It then elucidates the emergence and subsequent international popular- ity of Beatrice studies, and discusses the diverse approaches that can be discerned in the current multidisciplinary scholarship on Beatrice. Finally, it explains how the five essays which are collected in this volume open up new avenues for research into the thirteenth-century Cistercian world and for future Beatrice studies.
Address of the authors: Jeroen Deploige, History Department, Ghent University, Sint- Pietersnieuwstraat 35, B–9000 Gent ([email protected]) –– Veerle Fraeters, Ruusbroec Institute, Universiteit Antwerpen, Prinsstraat 13, B–2000 Antwerpen (veerle. [email protected])