Margareta Ebner

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Grave of Margareta Ebner in the monastery church Maria Medingen

Margareta (or Margarete) Ebner (* around 1291 in Donauwörth in Bavaria ; † June 20, 1351 in Mödingen in Bavaria) was a mystic of the Middle Ages.

Life

Originally from a wealthy family Margareta Ebner has performed with 15 years in the Dominican Monastery Maria Medingen near Dillingen one. In 1311 she received a second conversion. From this time on she had many visions in which she felt personally addressed by Jesus Christ (for the spread and history of this religious trend, see mysticism ). From 1312 to 1326 she was bedridden due to a serious illness. In 1332 she met the priest Heinrich von Nördlingenwho became her soul guide and encouraged her to record her revelations, which she began in 1344. She describes her relationship with Christ in the form of the medieval Hochminne. However, she did not experience Jesus exclusively as an adult bridegroom, but also as a child or baby. Margaretha had a wooden doll of the Baby Jesus with which she had dialogues in her ecstatic states. She experienced this doll as the Jesus child, who she nursed. She wrote:

“But my desire and my lust is in the suckling, that I am purified from his pure humanity and kindled from him with his fervent love and I am infused with his presence and with his sweet grace that I am drawn into the true Enjoyment of his divine being with all loving souls who have lived in the truth. "

She also pressed a crucifix to her chest, so tightly that it created bruises. The revelations contain abundant depictions of visions or religiously tinted hallucinations in which she has direct contact with Jesus. Many of these hallucinative-psychosomatic experiences are extremely painful for this mystic. She writes about a state of screaming and crying on April 15, 1340:

“But since the loud cries and cries of the mild goodness of God were given to me [when she hears of the suffering of Jesus], it shot into my heart and then parted into all my members, and I was bound and caught with silence . (...) Then it shoots into my heart like a bullet with an unknown force, and it hits my head and all my limbs and breaks them forcefully, and I am then forced by the same force that I loud scream and shout. And then I am not in control of myself and cannot withdraw from the calls until God has taken it from me. Sometimes I feel so strong that it breaks my red blood, and then it hurts me so much that I think I can never get away with life. "

Heinrich von Nördlingen's correspondence with Magaretha Ebner is the oldest surviving collection of letters in the German language. Margareta Ebner was also in contact with other important mystics of her time, e. B. with Johannes Tauler and with Christine Ebner (with whom she was not related).

Remembrance Day and Adoration

Regionally, there are still pilgrimages to the grave of Margareta Ebner in the Maria Medingen monastery church in Mödingen. Her feast day is June 20th. Margareta Ebner was beatified on February 24, 1979 by Pope John Paul II .

literature

Edition of the letters

Articles in encyclopedias

Monographs and articles in compilations

in order of appearance

  • Peter Lechner: The mystical life of St. Margareth of Cortona . With an attachment: Report from the mystical life of the godly nuns Christina and Margareth Ebner from Nuremberg . Manz, Regensburg 1862.
  • Peter Dinzelbacher : Christian Mysticism in the Occident. Your story from the beginning to the end of the Middle Ages . Schöningh, Paderborn 1994, ISBN 3-506-72016-3 , pp. 324-329.
  • Ralph Frenken: Childhood and Mysticism in the Middle Ages (= supplements to Mediaevistics, Volume 2). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-631-38467-X , pp. 169-184.
  • Susanne Bürkle: The revelations of Margareta Ebner. Femininity rhetoric and the autobiographical pact . In: Doerte Bischoff, Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (ed.): Female speech - rhetoric of femininity. Studies on the relationship between rhetoric and gender difference . Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2003, ISBN 3-96821-194-4 , pp. 79-102.
  • Dorothea Keuler: The pure pleasure of Margareta Ebner . In: this: courageous sisters of south-west German nuns from six centuries . Silberburg Verlag, Tübingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8425-1499-7 , pp. 46–61.

A historical novel also deals with her life:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ebner (1882), p. 87; New High German transmission from Frenken (2002), p. 174.
  2. ↑ See Ebner (1882), p. 87; Dinzelbacher (1994), p. 327.
  3. ↑ Ebner (1882), p. 54; New High German transmission from Frenken (2002), p. 179.

Web links

Wikisource: Margareta Ebner  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Ebner, Margareta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ebner, Margarete
SHORT DESCRIPTION Catholic mystic of the Middle Ages
DATE OF BIRTH around 1291
PLACE OF BIRTH Donauwörth
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1351
PLACE OF DEATH Mödingen