Mechthild of Madgeberg

The Flowing Light of the Godhead, tr. Lucy Menzies, Parts 1 and 2

This is not an ideal translation, but I cannot get a hold of a more complete copy before class early Thursday morning. The only evident problem is that of omissions, which the author explains as a cost-saving measure. And of course the scholar in me hates when someone else determines for me that something is unimportant. If I were reading for pleasure alone, then I'd not mind so much.

Anyway, observations! Since there isn't a much better away to approach the text.

It is a combination of prose visions, poetic dialogues between figures like the "Soul" and Godly "Love," seemly epistles between God and Mechthild, and so on. Most of the sections are short, with a few extended ones happening especially near the end of a part.

She is a Catholic mystic from the thirteenth century, writing in a Low/Middle German dialect. It's tough to know exactly what, since her works only come to us in a Latin and High German translation. She was a beguine (and possibly an abbess) for a while, before joining the nuns in Helfla in her old age. The Church often didn't like her for the criticisms she made about its worldliness. Many scholars think Dante was influenced by her imagery of death. She was never canonized, and forgotten for a long time until the late 19th century. So that's the official detail.

Her theology is one that, for the most part, I've seen before. The soul must renounce life and castigate the bodily senses in order to attain oneness with God as personified in the figure of love. The soul is occasionally lifted with God into high contemplation, the body utterly burned away so that the soul remains a mirror to reflect the Father's glory.

After flying high like a dove, though, she must inevitably descend back into the body she abhors. Such separation is necessary. As Jesus describes in part two, there are two cups from which she can drink. The first is red wine, signifying sorrow. The second is white wine, signifying consolation. The white wine is the better wine. However, the soul is best when it drinks from both. The soul best feels the healing and oneness with God when it also knows the solitude of an earthly life, though she is never parted from God, only separated.

Of course there are what we'd call sexual tones, since so much is put into the love poem form. Mary is the Bride to the Bridegroom, the Father. She is the Mother to the Son. And she is Friend to the Spirit. Even Mechthild is often called bride, though, and there is a certain tension between the earthly tropes of love, and the spiritual level it attains:

"Lord! Thy blood and mine is one unstained;
Thy love and mine is one and undivided;
Thy robe and mine is one, unspotted,
Thy lips and mine are one, unkissed..." (2.25).

They are so close in union that their lips do not merely touch, as in a kiss soon to be separated, but they are actually one. Fruitful study could be made of other images, such as Mary's overflowing milk to the glory of the Father and the love of man.

There are also other images that demand further study, such as the prolific uses of the color white to designate purity, or the frequent use of flowers, to the point where they seem a pagan appendation upon her worship. "I come to my love / As dew on the flowers" (1.13).

Perhaps to contrast with the abundance of the flower, she is frequently in a desert. It could be a reference to Jesus's trial in the desert (1.29), but appears frequently on its own. It could refer to the ascetic ideal that many saints hold, or perhaps to the sparseness and temptations of this world to a flower grown for God.

Finally, I should pay attention to when she talks to or about other saints, especially women ones, and especially those near her own time. Hildegund of Schonau, for example.

More to come, as I read the third part for Thursday as well.