Although Christianity Has Always Affirmed the Goodness Of
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WITH MY BODY I THEE WORSHIP EMBODIMENT THEOLOGY AND TRINITARIAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF FOUR MEDIEVAL WOMEN MYSTICS by LEE ANN PINGEL (Under the Direction of William L. Power) ABSTRACT Although Christianity has always affirmed the goodness of creation, historically, the Church has had an ambivalent attitude toward the body, often denigrating it in favor of the spirit. Only recently has embodiment theology begun to reaffirm the importance of the body in a faith whose central tenet is the Incarnation of God in human flesh. However, although embodiment theology addresses human beings’ creation in the image of God, little attention is paid to how humans might reflect in their bodies the image of a God who is triune. The twelfth-century visionary Hildegard of Bingen set out a framework that does suggest how humanity reflects the Trinity. This framework can then be expanded upon by examining the primary metaphors for God used by three other medieval women mystics: Julian of Norwich with God as Mother, Mechthild of Magdeburg with God as Lover, and Teresa of Avila with God as Friend. INDEX WORDS: Embodiment theology, Trinitarian anthropology, Medieval, Women, Mystics, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Teresa of Avila WITH MY BODY I THEE WORSHIP EMBODIMENT THEOLOGY AND TRINITARIAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF FOUR MEDIEVAL WOMEN MYSTICS by LEE ANN PINGEL B.A., University of California, San Diego, 1991 M.A., University of Georgia, 1996 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2004 © 2004 Lee Ann Pingel All Rights Reserved WITH MY BODY I THEE WORSHIP EMBODIMENT THEOLOGY AND TRINITARIAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF FOUR MEDIEVAL WOMEN MYSTICS by LEE ANN PINGEL Major Professor: William L. Power Committee: Carolyn Jones-Medine Jean E. Friedman Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2004 iv The body. What body? The uncharted body. The unexplored body. And how can one describe what is unexplored? Language contoured according to the lines of a map in which this territory is missing. The map creating the fiction that every possibility is drawn there. The uncharted never mentioned. And yet. Yet it is there in the borderlines, in cipher. —Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisory committee members, especially Dr. William L. Power, for the support and encouragement they have offered over several years of course work and thesis- writing. I am indebted to my good friend Karen Kassinger, who first asked the question that started me wondering what it means to be created in the image of a trinitarian Godde. My sincere and loving gratitude is also due to Jonathan Frye, who fed me many wonderful meals and provided welcome and much-needed fun, and to Shelly Ford, the Women’s Circle, the monthly lunch group, and many other friends who prove over and over that Godde is constantly incarnated in the bonds among women. Last but by no means least, my deep thanks go to my parents, Jack and Helen Pingel, whose love and support made all this possible in the first place, and to Maile Pingel, who embodies the particular grace that is a sister who is also a friend. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..........................................................v CHAPTER 1INTRODUCTION: The Call to Voice and Embodiment . 1 2EMBODYING THE TRINITY: Hildegard of Bingen .........................43 3GODDE AS MOTHER: Julian of Norwich................................62 4GODDE AS LOVER: Mechthild of Magdeburg ...........................78 5GODDE AS FRIEND: Teresa of Avila..................................104 6CONCLUSION: The Call to Prophecy and Wholeness . 128 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................143 CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Call to Voice and Embodiment We are asking what it means that we as body-selves participate in the reality of Godde1 and as body-selves reflect upon—theologize about—that reality. Why and how does the Word still become flesh?…Why and how does our flesh become words about the Word? —James B. Nelson There are no dirty words anymore, they’ve been neutered, now they’re only parts of speech; but I recall the feeling, puzzled, baffled, when I found out some words were dirty and the rest were clean. The bad ones in French are the religious ones, the worst ones in any language were what they were most afraid of and in English it was the body, that was even scarier than Godde. —Margaret Atwood In twelfth-century Germany, a tiny girlchild of three receives a vision of incomparable light. These visions continue, often accompanied by illness, throughout her childhood, but not understanding them and fearing that her family and townspeople would react negatively to them, she tells no one. At age eight she is given into convent life, where she grows into adulthood, eventually becoming an abbess. She routinely experiences profound visions, and she is instructed by Godde to write and say what she had been taught in them, but out of humility she refuses. She is subsequently stricken with an illness that does not abate until she begins to write down the content and meaning of her visions. At that point she becomes well and devotes the next ten years to the writing of the first of many books. 1 Edwina Gately, in her book A Warm Moist Salty Godde: Women Journeying toward Wisdom (Source Books: 1993), relates running across this old spelling while visiting the Sisters of the Mission in New Zealand. Like Gately, I am delighted with this spelling, in that it suggests an encompassing of both masculinity and femininity. I use this spelling throughout and have taken the liberty of substituting it for the common spelling in quoted material. 1 A little girl in thirteenth-century Saxony receives her first “greeting from Godde” when she is eight years old, and these divine messages continue daily from that point on. When she comes of age she leaves home and family to begin a new life in religious community in a different city. Shortly after arriving, she becomes severely ill. Over the next fourteen years, her visions intensify, and Godde instructs her to write them down, which she does. A young woman in fourteenth-century England receives, as an answer to prayer, an illness so severe that she and everyone around her believe her to be at the point of death. During the debilitating sickness, she receives a series of sixteen visions centered around an intense experience of the passion of Jesus. When the visions cease, her illness leaves her. She immediately records the visions, then spends the next twenty years in seclusion, thinking about and meditating on the revelations. She then writes a longer, more detailed, and intricately thoughtful second version of her book. In sixteenth-century Spain, a vibrant teenager decides to enter a convent in order to escape what she views as the danger and drudgery of married life. However, woefully conflicted over whether her vocation is genuine, she despairs and becomes so ill that eventually she falls into a death-like coma for four days, after which is paralyzed for eight months. The paralysis gradually leaves her, but over two years pass before she is able to walk. She re-enters the convent, has an intense conversion experience, and devotes herself to contemplative prayer, which leads to many ecstatic mystical experiences. She then goes on to write an autobiography and a book of guidance and instruction in the spiritual life. There seems to be a pattern here. 2 These stories belong, in sequence, to Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210?–1297?), Julian of Norwich (1342–1416?), and Teresa of Avila (1515–1582). Nearly all of these women mystics seed their writings with denigrations of their sex, intellect, understanding, state of grace, and ability to communicate, which at face value seem to indicate an utter lack of self-worth.2 Such belittlements were, in part, truly rooted in pious humility, but they were also designed to deflect the criticism sure to greet any assertion of themselves as teachers and writers. All of the women lived in cultures that observed an “almost universal proscription against women speaking outside of the personal context,” and it was frequently the case that what these women had to say was in conflict with Catholic doctrine or was otherwise critical of the Church and its leaders. None of these women was condemned, but it did happen that women mystics were executed, so they had to be extremely careful not to run afoul of the religious authorities.3 Mechthild and Teresa were in particular danger of their lives. Mechthild’s book was threatened with burning, and near the end of her life she was forced to leave her ministry with the Beguines in Magdeburg to take refuge in a convent in Helfta.4 Teresa lived and worked under the close scrutiny of the Inquisition and wrote her autobiography to comply with a command that she clarify her beliefs so that the Inquisitors might determine whether they were heretical. Teresa wrote, “without doubt I fear those who have such great fear of the devil more than I do the devil himself” (quoted in Flinders, 157). 2 I say “nearly all” because Julian did so in her first book, known as the Short Text: “But Godde forbid that you should say or assume that I am a teacher, for that is not what I mean, nor did I ever mean it; for I am a woman, ignorant, weak, and frail” (Short Text, 10–11). However, she removed the disclaimer in the second book, or Long Text.