Making History: Elizabeth of Schonau

When Elizabeth of Schonau, a Benedictine nun and later abbess at Schonau in Germany, began to experience visions at the age of twenty-three, she immediately sent for her brother, Ekbert, who remained with her recording her experiences until her death. Her body of work, which included letters, individual visions, and entire books, circulated broadly in Europe, unlike (as far as we can tell) Christina's vita. (The Life of Yvette, to answer Sadie's question, has been mentioned as circulating at a few monasteries; however, Angela of Foligno, Elizabeth of Schonau, and Hildegarde of Bingen would have had far greater reception across Europe, and I hope to convince you of the idea of these women as "public intellectuals.") Elizabeth's work survives in 145 extant medieval manuscripts, and was translated into Icelandic and Provencal in the Middle Ages; in addition, chroniclers mention her renown even in her own lifetime (Clark 2). Anne Clark argues that the Middle Ages had a greater preference for the writings of Elizabeth, while today we hold a greater renown for Hildegard of Bingen. She was called a saint in the Middle Ages, but was never canonized (we always like to know this, as it tells us about "approved saints"; however, important to note that we may express too much disappointment when they didn't make the grade; that might be viewing them through the lens of the Church more than they truly were viewed within the context of their time; not all women were saints, or aspired to that). 

I'm writing a blog for the humanities right now that suggests that we need to move beyond master narratives to include those on the periphery, who were less peripheral than traditionally assumed. Remember that the field of women's history is still fairly new. Typically, women's devotion or women's writings have been marginalized as areas far from the center of theology or spirituality or the Church. This would be a difficult argument to make for anyone involved with serious study of the Middle Ages in 2014, because as we take knowledge of religion from text that they created, dictated, or wrote down themselves, we see the way in which the interior becomes externalized for all of Europe. It says something, I think, that women decided that what they were saying was important enough to be recorded for posterity. It's even more interesting that they, the "weak," saw themselves as divinely inspired and that they did this within a church whose historical power rested on the authority of male leadership. These are not women who were feminists and not women with whom we share a lot of similarities. However, they were women who achieved public renown and had an awareness of their femaleness. As the chronicles of the Premonstratensian  monastery of Pölde reveal when you look at the notice for 1158: "In these days, God showed signs of his power in the weak sex in two of his handmaids, namely, Hildegard in Rupertsberg near Bingen and Elisabeth of Schonau, whom he filled with the spirit of prophecy and he revealed many kinds of visions to them" (quted in Clark 5). For this reason, when Elizabeth wrote she could warn archbishops, comment on church schism, provide interpretations on God's world of salvation and saints that was not simply a diary but a forecast for the future. Some of her relics survive today, and so do her writings.