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The Dialectics of Mystical Love in the Middle Ages

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The Dialectics of Mystical Love in the Middle Ages Studies in Spirituality 20, 143-160. doi: 10.2143/SIS.20.0.2061147 © 2010 by Studies in Spirituality. All rights reserved. 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 SUMMARY — As esoteric and incomprehensible as medieval mysticism proves to be, there are numerous ways to gain a critical, almost rational understanding of this phenomenon. One approach, above all, illustrates the deep essence of that phenomenon: mystics realized that the experi- ence of physical pain provided an essential gateway for spiritual vision. Both the Low German mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg and the French mystic Marguerite Porète powerfully experimented with the sensation of pain in order to find a new means to come to terms with the visionary union with the Godhead. For them, mystical love was simply the other side of the same coin, closely matched with the sensation of bodily pain. In close proximity they both endeavored to experiment with physical pain as the catalyst to spiritual epiphany. I. THE CULTURAL MEANING OF PAIN IN THE MIDDLE AGES No one has ever been able to figure out completely the meaning and signifi- cance of mysticism, a realization which in and by itself is probably, though paradoxically, the closest approximation we might achieve in a critical analysis of this phenomenon. The apophatic definition of mysticism might represent the best approach insofar as the phenomena formulated by the visionaries con- stituted a highly individual experience of a deeply religious kind. Mystics stand truly on their own and witness visions that cannot be truly shared with others, if that would require a rational approach. Literary attempts, musical composi- tions, and paintings, for instance, are nothing but faint attempts in this regard and can only hope to convey in human terms what is really apophatic.1 As a 1 Wolfgang Wackernagel, ‘Establishing the being of images: Master Eckhart and the concept of disimagination’, in: Diogenes 162 (1993), 77-98; Michael A. Sells, Mystical language of unsay- ing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 993799_SIS3799_SIS 220_2010_06.indd0_2010_06.indd 114343 113/01/113/01/11 008:548:54 144 ALBRECHT CLASSEN contemporary mystic reports about her loss of the sensation of self, ‘It was a journey through an unknown passageway that led to a life so new and different that, despite forty years of varied contemplative experiences, I never suspected its existence’.2 Some of the medieval mystics, such as Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260- 1328), who again stood in a long tradition extending at least to Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-after 394), Dionysius the Areopagite (late fifth to early sixth century), and John Scotus (Eriugena, 9th century), might have expressed best what they had witnessed when they resorted to negative theology, a philosoph- ical approach to the unfathomable, identifying God really as the absolute Nothing.3 But the true essence of mysticism also finds expression in a variety of other manifestations. Here I would like to focus on one curious dimension of the mystical dis- course that has not yet attracted sufficient attention, but which plays a rather significant role as well, providing the visionaries with an important literary instrument to come to terms with their extraordinary experiences: violence and pain, at least in linguistic terms. This violence, manifested through physical pain, at first proves to be of a highly concrete nature, if we consider how the mystical authors at least regularly described it in their extraordinary accounts, although it also seems to have found expression in actual exposure to self- inflicted pain, including fasting, sleep deprivation, exposure to cold tempera- tures, and actual physical wounds. Peter Dinzelbacher has already illustrated in great detail how much the medieval Church struggled with the profound con- flict between body and soul, utilizing the body as the platform for essential spiritual struggles.4 The entire world of early Christianity (late antiquity) with its plethora of martyrs and saints was deeply determined by this negative approach to the body which was to be overcome in favor of the spirit. Martha Easton has elucidated how much ‘the use of violence and death as signifiers of sainthood [had been] an established artistic tradition whose roots can be traced back to early Christian and Byzantine iconography’.5 This ‘philopassianism’, a 2 Bernadette Roberts, The experience of no-self: A contemplative journey, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 (rev. ed.), 9. 3 Bruce Milem, The unspoken word: Negative theology in Meister Eckhart’s German sermons, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002; see also Alois M. Haas, ‘Das Nichts Gottes und seine Sprengmetaphorik’, in: Idem, Mystik im Kontext, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2004 (orig. 1999), 89-104; see also Albrecht Classen, ‘Meister Eckhart’s phi- losophy in the twenty-first century’, in: Mystics Quarterly 29 (2003) no. 1-2, 6-23. 4 Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Über die Körperlichkeit der mittelalterlichen Frömmigkeit’, in: Idem, Körper und Frömmigkeit in der mittelalterlichen Mentalitätsgeschichte, Paderborn-Munich et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007, 11-49. 5 Martha Easton, ‘Pain, torture and death in the Huntington Library Legenda aurea’, in: Samantha J.E. Riches & Sarah Salih (Eds.), Gender and holiness: Men, women and saints in late medieval Europe, London-New York: Routledge, 2002 (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture), 9-64: here 49. 993799_SIS3799_SIS 220_2010_06.indd0_2010_06.indd 114444 113/01/113/01/11 008:548:54 THE DIALECTICS OF MYSTICAL LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 145 brilliantly fitting term coined by Esther Cohen,6 also extended to mysticism where it actually played a considerable, if not critical, role, as I will discuss in the following pages. After all, pain belongs to one of the fundamental sensations in human exist- ence, deeply dreaded, yet basically unavoidable because it serves as the essential medium for the nervous system to communicate with the brain. Specifically, pain constitutes an essential function in our lives because, as medical research has often shown, pain signals danger/s, prepares us to prevent future dangers, and also prevents us from certain activities and actions.7 It would be extremely problematic to claim, as was commonly done in the nineteenth and early twen- tieth centuries, that people in the Middle Ages suffered less from pain than we do today because they had a less developed sense of physical perception. Nev- ertheless, pain, or rather the approach to pain, is culturally conditioned and codified, hence each society evaluates and deals with pain in different manners, accepting or rejecting it to a varying degree, which allows us to treat pain as an important and meaningful gauge for the cultural-historical evaluation of indi- vidual societies at specific moments in time. In Mark Zborowski’s words: The only universal feeling about pain is that no normal human likes it. This feel- ing of dislike is universal because it is part of the biological heritage of the entire human race (…) Everyone, regardless of his race or culture, will tend to manifest similar reflex reactions to a painful stimulus. However, human societies differ greatly in their attitudes of expectancy and acceptance of a particular pain experi- ence or of its symbol.8 From a medievalist’s perspective, Scott E. Pincikowski observes, The medieval individual ‘read’ and understood pain signs differently from today because the social significance and cultural understanding of pain were also dif- ferent. Yet, there is a certain affinity between each epoch concerning the process of interpreting pain. What has remained a constant is the communicative nature of pain. One can safely assume that each member of the social body, in any time period, learns through personal experience and socialization to recognize, inter- pret, and then react to pain signs that appear on the body of the sufferer. What separates the two eras is the overwhelming influence of religion on the medieval individual approaching the problem of suffering.9 6 Esther Cohen, ‘Towards a history of European physical sensibility: Pain in the later Middle Ages’, in: Science in Context 8 (1995) no. 2, 47-74: here 51. 7 The complex of pain is well discussed by Scott E. Pincikowski in his Bodies of pain: Suffering in the works of Hartmann von Aue, New York-London: Routledge, 2002 (Studies in Medieval History and Culture 11) 3-7. 8 Mark Zborowski, People in pain, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1969, 32. 9 Pincikowski, Bodies of pain, 8. See also Roselyne Rey, The history of pain, transl. Elliott Wal- lace, J.A. Cadden, & S.W. Cadden, Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 993799_SIS3799_SIS 220_2010_06.indd0_2010_06.indd 114545 113/01/113/01/11 008:548:54 146 ALBRECHT CLASSEN Suffering and pain, by their very nature, transport the individual into another dimension, normally a very unpleasant, if not torturous, one, of course, but it challenges the human creature to come to terms with the very premises of all existence. Once again, we cannot regard this as a timeless phenomenon; instead, pain is always historically grounded in a set of values and concepts. Curiously, heroic poetry and early-medieval literature at large do not seem to know of clear examples of pain, even though we regularly read of individuals who are killed, whose limbs are cut off, whose eyes are gouged, etc. By contrast, the very victims at times only respond to this suffering by laughing about the fragmented bodies.10 Only by the twelfth century, with the rise of courtly literature and a new realization of the emotional dimension reflecting Christ’s Passion which medieval Christians wanted to imitate out of a deep sense of piety, did pain gain a powerful, almost positive value.
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