Woman mysticism
The woman mysticism was a Christian mystical movement of the 12th and 14th century in Central Europe.
While wearing the wounds of Christ and the ecstatic experience of the Eucharist connects them with other forms of Christian mysticism , women's mysticism can be narrowed down in its time by an alleged physical experience of Christ as the mother or bride of Jesus . Women's mysticism emerged shortly before the so-called German mysticism and shares some elements with it.
Beginning of women's mysticism in the High Middle Ages
Hildegard von Bingen is considered to be the first German mystic , who says she received prophetic visions and wrote them down. She also spread her ideas while traveling and with public sermons.
In the 12th and early 13th centuries, the clergy in Liège , Brabant and Italy increasingly observed and described clergy women who practiced new forms of devotion to Christ and Mary. This included vows of virginity , asceticism and poverty , as well as ecstasies and extreme worship of the Eucharist . These pious women were increasingly described by hagiographers in Heiligenvitae . These included women religious , such as the Cistercians Lutgard von Tongern , Ida von Léau, Ida von Löwen, Adelheid von Scharbecke, Ida von Nivelles and Beatrijs von Nazareth ; but also other women like Juliana von Cornillon , who was excluded from the Benedictine order , the miracle-working Christine von St. Trond , Juliana von Lüttich , Jutta von Huy and Christina von Retters .
In contrast to male orders, to which secular and spiritual deeds such as the founding of monasteries, convent organization or the fight against heretics, the Low German women, especially the Beguines and Cistercians, developed their own spirituality, which revolved around inner worlds of experience. This resulted in visions, intense experiences of union with Christ and an ecstatic experience of the Eucharist. The Christ experiences included feeling the heart of Jesus as well as direct encounters with the baby Jesus , the boy Jesus or the suffering Jesus .
Although it can be assumed that these pious women ( mulieres sanctae or religiosae ) were educated and literate, with the exception of a treatise by Beatrijs von Nazareth there are no more personal testimonies from the beginning of women's mysticism, only the vitae written by hagiographers .
Beguines and mysticism outside the monastery
In the course of the 13th century the Beguines, who, together with the above-mentioned peculiarities of women's mysticism, also took up and disseminated elements of German mysticism , increasingly exposed themselves to the ecclesiastical suspicion of heresy because they worked in lay communities that were difficult to control and set up their own teachings. Few of their ranks have left written testimonies:
- The author Hadewijch (13th century) based her works on existing, partly courtly poetic models. It has been suggested that she wrote her writings as a teacher from exile to her followers.
- In Thuringia, Mechthild von Magdeburg (1207–1282) put together a collection of religious-mystical writings that did not fit into a literary tradition with The Flowing Light of God . The partially formulated criticism in her work caused a sensation, so that the Beguines withdrew to the Cistercian monastery of Helfta after years of hostility .
- Margareta Porete (mid-13th century - 1310), who first taught in Hainaut and later in Paris and whose theological views were close to her contemporary Meister Eckhart , was burned as a relapsed heretic in 1310 for the continued dissemination of her main publication Spiegel der Simple Seelen .
Apart from the tradition of a mystical experience of closeness to Christ and God, there is no consistent picture of a beguine's mysticism in German-speaking countries, especially when one takes into account beguine's visions, such as Christina von Stommeln's . What the authors mentioned had in common was a mystical speculation about God's direct love for people who believe in God, directly and without the influence of church institutions. In this way they differed from the Low German mulieres sanctae of the 12th century, who lived strictly orthodox within the church hierarchy. For this reason, the Beguine movement was openly opposed from the beginning of the 14th century. Their followers were urged to join monastic communities.
Woman mysticism in the late Middle Ages
In Helfta, after Mechthild von Magdeburg, her pupil Gertrud von Helfta worked as abbess, supported by Mechthild von Hackeborn . In the books Liber specialis gratiae ( Book of Special Grace ) and Legatus divinae pietatis ( Messenger of Divine Love ), in addition to everyday life and the strict rites of the monastery, they graphically reported on diverse and recognizable female Christ experiences, visions and divine salvation from illness. Among other things, death was allegorically celebrated as the otherworldly marriage to Jesus Christ . The revelations, which expanded an image centered on fellowship with Jesus Christ, concentrated heavily on teaching fellow sisters in monastic virtue. Caroline Walker Bynum noted the difference to Mechthild von Magdeburg, who wrote as a folk lone fighter against the church hierarchy. But also the two following Helfta mystics would have assumed, as a matter of course, a church authority that, as women, according to church doctrine of the time, would not have been granted to them.
In addition to Helfta, Dominican convents in southern Germany and Switzerland emerged as centers of women's mysticism. Dominican nuns presented the vitae of the convent members in so-called sister books. In addition to the type of short vita within the monastery community, there was also that of the detailed hagiographic testimony of grace , comparable to the early Brabant and Liège mystics. In precise descriptions, the nuns gave testimony about their ascetic practice, the spiritual test of the disease and the associated encounter with God, as well as about the usually physical experiences of Christ. The latter included, among other things, the confrontation with the wounds of Christ, "sweet" taste and sensory experiences, pregnancy sensations of Mary and a more than just allegorical approach to the bridegroom Jesus Christ through embracing, kissing and union. Important representatives of these mystical experiences were probably Margareta Ebner and Christine Ebner , as well as Anna von Munzingen , Adelheid Langmann and Lukardis von Oberweimar . These mystics were also influenced by male pastors such as Heinrich Seuse , Heinrich von Nördlingen and Friedrich Sunder - the latter, who was the chaplain of a Dominican convent, also has a vita in the style of women's mysticism.
More mystics
In addition to the Low German region, there were also female mystics in France and Italy who, however, cannot be clearly classified in a movement; such as Alpais , Margaret of Cortona and Clare of Montefalco , who is said to have planted his cross in the heart of Jesus. Similar mystical experiences are also said to Maria Franziska of the five wounds of Christ , St. Birgitta of Sweden and Caterina de 'Ricci . In later centuries and in other regions, too, women appeared whose mystical experiences are related to the schema of medieval women's mysticism: stigmatization , the exclusive nourishment of the body of Christ (e.g. in the form of hosts ) or the mystical experience of the heart of Jesus are in this Context frequently reported features of mysticism in Catholic regions.
reception
Many contemporaries were skeptical or even negative about revealing women's mysticism, not only because of the disparaging opinion that was held against self-educated women in the Middle Ages. Knowing that they would not be taken seriously, spiritual women often appealed to divine direction in their teachings instead of venturing into theological dispute with male theologians. The pretensions of authority were often only tolerated or supported by the clergy (and not condemned as heresy) if the women represented views of the church hierarchy. The pious mystic David von Augsburg already warned against the wrong paths of mystical visions and revelations, which should not serve to gain new knowledge, but only for spiritual purification.
The report by the Austrian beguin Agnes Blannbekin that she tasted the Holy Foreskin at the Eucharist led to its indexing in the 18th century .
Historical as well as theological research was for a very long time extremely critical of the self-testimony of the monastic life of grace. The texts of the late medieval sister books in particular were seen as superficial testimony to a mysticism of experience which clumsily transferred theological metaphors to one's own body and thus testified to spiritual ignorance. Occasionally it was seen as a decline in culture, a fall from monastic discipline and a flattening of education. According to Herbert Grundmann's thesis , the widespread expansion of women's mysticism was due to an increase in popular religious edification literature for women, with the mystifying women merely interpreting theological texts (written by male church teachers) (too) literally. More recent studies, on the other hand, put the description of the physical experience in following Christ in the foreground and portrayed this as an achievement of women's mysticism or examined the literary character of the texts, which may very well have been meant purely metaphorically.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Overview in: Peter Dinzelbacher : Medieval women mysticism . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993.
- ↑ a b c d e f Ursula Peters: Vita religosa and spiritual experience. Woman mysticism and woman mystic literature in the 13th and 14th centuries. In: Gisela Brinker-Gabler (ed.): German literature by women. Volume 1, CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33118-1 , pp. 88-109.
- ↑ Caroline Walker Bynum: Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. University of California Press, Berkeley 1984, ISBN 0-520-05222-6 .
- ↑ a b The grace life of Friedrich Sunder, monastery chaplain to Engelthal. In: Siegfried Ringler: Life and revelation literature in women's monasteries in the Middle Ages. Sources and Studies. Artemis, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-3372-1 , pp. 391-444 (text), pp. 144-331 (commentary).
- ^ Wilhelm Preger: David of Augsburg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, pp. 782-784.
- ↑ Herbert Grundmann: Religious Movements in the Middle Ages. Dr. Emil Ebering, Berlin 1935, p. 439 ff., 457.