The Women in Orders (Hildegard) Against the Beguines (Mechthild)

(This image of Hildegard of Bingen shows her recording her visions, the image comes from Scivias, her first written work.)

From our discussions in class on Wednesday and Friday, I have been thinking a lot about mystics and their individualized nature. We mentioned that many women may share a few common ideas or facts, but largely stood separately from one another. One thing we did not discuss in class but was in the reading refers to the differences between early mystics and beguine mystics. The quote itself reads, “in Hildegard’s writings, ‘the soul, at the summit of the vision, becomes similar to God,’ while for beguines ‘the soul is annihilated to become ‘what God is’’” (CP 132). The reason this is so interesting is that it offers two very distinct ideas concerning the soul during a vision. One suggests becoming like God, in the other the soul is destroyed.

Within such a dichotomy it is not surprising that women mystics tended to act differently whether beguine or not. For those of you who cannot remember beguines were women who led lives of religious devotion, without joining a religious order. The reason this distinction is needed is that these women had a little more freedom than their counterparts who took vows with an order. The reason the above quote interested me so much centers on the differences. For those women tied to an order the soul becomes similar to God, but retains its separation. The beguines lost their souls to become the same as God. Could this be due to the beguines not being tied to an order, so they believe their ability to become like god instead of just a soul that offers a similar understanding to what God is? The similar language but distinct differences between becoming similar to God and to becoming God make these women understand their visions very differently. Another thought is the beguines because they were not tied to an order sought to more fully recognize the power of God in annihilating their souls to give them information through these visions. By placing all the power in God, the beguines may have received better acceptance in to culture, instead of saying they held on to a level of agency.

Asceticism in Female Mystics in the Middle Ages

One of the questions that was brought up in class and that’s been in the back of my mind for a while now is why mystics decided to go to extreme lengths to prove their devotion to God. While many scholars state that they practiced asceticism in order to fully understand the holy Lord, one (undergraduate) scholar that I found on the internet, Sarah E. Hanson, proposes the idea that these extreme measures may have linkage to notions about the female sex. According to Hanson, “If religious women could circumvent their perceived physical inferiorities through fasting and other ascetic practices, perhaps they could release some of the restrictions placed on them because of their sex” (33). As we know from class, women practiced asceticism far more than men did in the Middle Ages. This might possibly be a theory as to why. Through hagiographical accounts, the emphasis on body-soul relationships can be seen in these female mystics. Hanson states that “the increase of documentation describing the soul’s power over the body, as displayed in the accounts of Christina the Astonishing and Catherine of Siena, suggest that the understanding of the soul as having power to influence the body” (33). It is highly possible to believe that Middle Age religious persons believed that, while women may have been inferior physically, in the soul, they were equal with men in the eyes of God. So while mystics may have emulated scenarios similar to what Christ endured to fully understand His sacrifice, the suggestion that they practiced asceticism in order to be equal to their male counterparts is just as equally compelling.  And this theory may also answer the second question I've been thinking about: did these mystics really practice asceticism, or did they just write/imagine about it? I would think that if they were truly concerned with achieving the same level of devotion as their male counterparts had in the eyes of God, these women would go to extreme measures to ensure that equality. Through asceticism, women could shed the shackles that limited them from fully embracing God.

If you’re interested reading Hanson’s article, here’s the pdf link: ww.urop.uci.edu/journal/journal09/03_hanson.pdf

Here's an image of Angela, who, as we discussed in class, practiced asceticism: 

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.