What did it mean to say "I saw"? The clash between theory and practice in medieval visionary culture

Speculum

Volumn 80, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 1-42

  Newman, Barbara ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950360070     PISSN: 00387134     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0038713400006643     Document Type: Article

References (172)

1. Constance B. Hieatt, The Realism of Dream Visions: The Poetic Exploitation of the Dream-Experience in Chaucer and His Contemporaries, De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Practica, 2 (The Hague, 1967)
2. Elizabeth D. Kirk, The Dream Thought of Piers Plowman, Yale Studies in English 178 (New Haven, Conn., 1972)
3. A. C. Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry (Cambridge, Eng., 1976)
4. Kathryn L. Lynch, The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form (Stanford, Calif., 1988)
5. Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 14 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992)
6. Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers (Athens, Ga., 1984)
7. Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York, 1986)
8. Catherine M. Mooney, "Women's Visions, Men's Words: The Portrayal of Holy Women and Men in Fourteenth-Century Italian Hagiography" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1991)
9. Edward Peter Nolan, Cry Out and Write: A Feminine Poetics of Revelation (New York, 1994)
10. Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion 8 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995)
11. Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart, Studies in Spirituality and Theology 1 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1995)
12. Sixten Ringbom, "Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions: Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Piety," Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 73 (1969), 159-70
13. David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989)
14. Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1990)
15. Jeryldene M. Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (New York, 1996)
16. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, 1998)
17. Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, Eng., 2002)
18. Richard Kieckhefer, "The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late Medieval Europe," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24 (1994), 355-85
19. Peter Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger Frauen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit (Zurich, 1995)
20. Rosalynn Voaden, God's Words, Women's Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (Woodbridge, Eng., 1999)
21. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003)
22. Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 2004)
23. Ernst Benz, Die Vision: Erfahrungsformen und Bilderwelt (Stuttgart, 1969)
24. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Scombining dot belowūfism of Ibn 'Arabī, trans. Ralph Manheim, Bollingen Series 91 (Princeton, N.J., 1969)
25. Karl Clausberg, Kosmische Visionen: Mystische Weltbilder von Hildegard von Bingen bis Heute, DuMont Taschenbücher 98 (Cologne, 1980)
26. Richard Noll, "Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism," and responses, Current Anthropology 26 (1985), 443-61
27. Eddie Ensley, Visions: The Soul's Path to the Sacred (Chicago, 2000)
28. For a contemporary example see Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Woman with the Pearl Necklace," Common Knowledge 8 (2002), 280-83
29. Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York, 1987)
30. John Coakley, "A Marriage and Its Observer: Christine of Stommeln, the Heavenly Bridegroom, and Friar Peter of Dacia," in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 99-117
31. See the debate between Peter Dinzelbacher and Ursula Peters over the role of convention in medieval vision texts, Dinzelbacher arguing for their value as witnesses to autobiographical experience, Peters for their literary constructedness: Peter Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 23 (Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 65-77
32. idem, "Zur Interpretation erlebnismystischer Texte des Mittelalters," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 117 (1988), 1-23
33. Ursula Peters, Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum: Zur Vorge schichte und Genese frauenmystischer Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts, Hermaea, n.s., 56 (Tübingen, 1988)
34. I have developed my own views on the relationship between visionary experience and literary production in God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2003), pp. 26-31 and 294-304
35. For unwilling prophets see Exod. 4.10-13
36. Amos 7.14-15
37. Jer. 1.6-7 and 20.7-9; and the Book of Jonah
38. Not all clerics accepted this prevalent stereotype. For a range of views see Mooney, ed., Gendered Voices, and now Alcuin Blamires, "Women and Creative Intelligence in Medieval Thought," with response by Barbara Newman, "More Thoughts on Medieval Women's Intelligence: Denied, Projected, Embodied," in Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages, ed.Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame, Ind., forthcoming)
39. For a case study in such denial and its motives see Barbara Newman, "Three-Part Invention: The Vita S. Hildegardis and Mystical Hagiography," in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, Warburg Institute Colloquia 4 (London, 1998), pp. 189-210
40. Johannes de Caulibus (?), Meditaciones vite Christi, ed. M. Stallings-Taney, CCCM 153 (Turnhout, 1997). On this work and its contested attribution see below, n. 81
41. Frank Tobin, "Medieval Thought on Visions and Its Resonance in Mechthild von Magdeburg's Flowing Light of the Godhead," in Vox mystica: Essays on Medieval Mysticism in Honor of Professor Valerie M. Lagorio, ed. Anne Clark Bartlett (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), p. 42
42. The much rarer examples of visio intellectualis include certain moments in Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love, such as her vision of "God in a point" (chap. 11), and Thomas Aquinas's experience of 6 December 1273, after which he abandoned his Summa because all he had written appeared to him "like straw" in comparison with what he had seen: The Writings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park, Pa., forthcoming)
43. James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work (Garden City, N.Y., 1974), pp. 321-23
44. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim 12.12, ed. Joseph Zycha, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 28/1 (Vienna, 1894), pp. 395-97
45. Epistolae 9 and 159
46. De divinatione daemonum 5.9
47. De civitate Dei 4.26 and 11.2. But none of these discussions matched the influence of his systematic treatment in De Genesi ad litteram
48. Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis 1.3.2-10, ed. Mario Regali, Biblioteca di Studi Antichi 38 and 58 (Pisa, 1983-90), 1:46-48
49. see also E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, Sather Classical Lectures 25 (Berkeley, Calif., 1951), pp. 102-34
50. "Dormiens in contemplatione somniat Deum; per speculum siquidem et in aenigmate, non autem facie ad faciem interim intuetur": Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 18.6, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, 8 vols. (Rome, 1957-77), 1:107
51. Opera, 6/1:392
52. Dionysius the Areopagite, De diuinis nominibus 4.13, PG 3:712A
53. "Ea enim teipso et omnibus immensurabili et absoluto pure mentis excessu ad superessentialem divinarum tenebrarum radium, omnia deserens et ab omnibus absolutus ascendes": Dionysius, De mystica theologia 1, trans. John Scotus Eriugena, PL 122:1173A
54. "Ab hoc spiritualis jucunditatis excessu et ebrietate sobrium fieri, et propter fraternas necessitates ab alienatione mentis temperare, quid nisi vultum in diversa mutare est?" Gilbert of Hoyland, Sermones in Canticum Salomonis 10.1, PL 184:56B
55. Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 4-9
56. John Donne, "Holy Sonnet 14" ("Batter my heart, three-personed God"). The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th ed., glosses "ravish" as "rape, also overwhelm with wonder" (New York, 2000), 1:1271
57. Remigius of Auxerre, Expositio super Genesim 2.23, ed. Burton Van Name Edwards, CCCM 136 (Turnhout, 1999), p. 51
58. Rupert of Deutz, De sancta Trinitate et operibus eins, in Gen. 2.23, ed. Hrabanus Haacke, CCCM 21 (Turnhout, 1971), pp. 228-32
59. "Habent quippe sacri huiusmodi excessus gratam quandam ignorantiae caliginem, et prae stupendae nouitatis admiratione nubilum quoddam interdum piae obliuionis incurrunt, ut nec sui nec eorum quae in manibus uidentur habere meminerint": John of Ford, Sermones super extremam partem Cantici canticorum 46.3, ed. Edmund Mikkers and Hilary Costello, CCCM 17 (Turnhout, 1970), pp. 327-28
60. "Multa enim, dilectissimi fratres, mira, suavia, iucunda, luce plenissima, vident, gustant, sentiunt, in oratione et contemplatione sua raptim, et quasi in excessu mentis, quae sibi redditi nullatenus dicere possunt, immo et vix meminisse, viri spirituales, et qui per consuetudinem exercitatos habent sensus": Isaac of Stella, Sermons 4.10, ed. Anselm Hoste, Sources Chrétiennes 130 (Paris, 1967), p. 136
61. "Attamen adhuc restat quartus qui superior est, id est anagogeticus, qui fit in excessu mentis, quando animus hominis audit Dei Filium uenisse in carne et pro se mortuum fuisse et sepultum ac resurrexisse et ad caelum ascendisse, et ad dexteram patris consedisse, rapitur cum Paulo usque ad tertium caelum, id est ad contemplationem sanctae Trinitatis, ingrediturque locum tabernaculi admirabilis usque ad domum Dei in uoce exsultationis et confessionis, ut admiretur, iucundetur, gratuletur, epuletur, inebrietur ab ubertate domus Dei, et torrente uoluptatis eius potetur, et satietur ab uberibus consolationis eius, audiatque ibi archana uerba quae non licet homini loqui, ubi est Beniamin adulescentulus, id est filius dexterae, in mentis excessu, uideatque Dominum sedentem super solium excelsum et eleuatum, cuius maiestate plena est omnis terra. Iubilet quoque cum astris caeli, id est cum angelis decantantibus et dicentibus: Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! Dominus Deus Sabaoth! Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua! Amen! Alleluia! Et iterum dicat: Plateae tuae Hierusalem, sternentur auro mundo et cantentur [sic] in te canticum laetitiae et per omnes uicos tuos ab uniuersis dicetur: Amen! Alleluia!": Gerard of Grandmont, "Sermo uel tractatus ad fratres de confirmatione seu enucleatione 'Speculi Grandimontis'" 17, in Scriptores ordinis Grandimontensis, ed. Jean Becquet, CCCM 8 (Turnhout, 1968), pp. 363-64 (punctuation altered)
62. "Est enim duodenarius numerus abundans, in quo insinuatur spiritualium charismatum exuberantia, quibus fruitur et delectatur anima sancta; et tunc est homo ad contemplationem idoneus et ad aspectus et amplexus sponsi et sponsae, qui fieri habent secundum sensus spirituales, quibus videtur Christi sponsi summa pulcritudo sub ratione Splendoris; auditur summa harmonia sub ratione Verbi; gustatur summa dulcedo sub ratione Sapientiae comprehendenris utrumque, Verbum scilicet et Splendorem; odoratur summa fragrantia sub ratione Verbi inspirati in corde; astringitur summa suavitas sub ratione Verbi incarnati, inter nos habitantis corporaliter et reddentis se nobis palpabile, osculabile, amplexabile per ardentissimam caritatem, quae mentem nostram per ecstasim et raptum transire facit ex hoc mundo ad Patrem": Bonaventure, Breuiloquium 5.6.6, ed. Jean-Pierre Rezette, 7 vols. (Paris, 1967), 5:72-74
63. Denise Despres, Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature (Norman, Okla., 1989), pp. 19-54
64. Ellen M. Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (New York, 1997), pp. 15-40
65. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics 1 (Berkeley, Calif., 1987). I do not mean to imply that medieval theologians ascribed to the Eucharist any miraculous power to induce visions or ecstasy. But the phenomenon of eucharistic visions does suggest that even when known hallucinogens, such as peyote and mescalin, are used in religious rites, their efficacy is enhanced by ritual performance and cultural expectations
66. On this theme see Carlos Castañeda's anthropological fiction, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Berkeley, Calif., 1968), and its sequels. On other cross-cultural techniques for inducing visionary experience see Noll, "Mental Imagery Cultivation"
67. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, "Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotion," in Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang, ed. Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Tübingen, 2000), pp. 353-408
68. Ritamary Bradley, "Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature," Speculum 29 (1954), 100-115
69. "Item, cum scriptum sit quia inuisibilia Dei, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciuntur, inde manifeste colligitur quia ad inuisibilium cognitionem nunquam ratio assurgeret, nisi ei ancilla sua, imaginatio uidelicet, rerum uisibilium formam repraesentaret": Richard of Saint-Victor, Benjamin minor 5, ed. Jean Châtillon and Monique Duchet-Suchaux, Sources Chrétiennes 419 (Paris, 1997), p. 102
70. Alan of Lille, "Rhythmus alter," PL 210:579A (punctuation altered). Harold McCurdy's evocative translation begins: "All creation, every creature / Faithfully reflects our nature, / Is a painting, book, or sign / Where our present is depicted / And our future state predicted / With precision, line on line": "Omnis mundi creatura (Alain of Lille, c. 1128-1202)," Theology Today 44 (1987), 371
71. Edouard Dumoutet, Le désir de voir l'hostie et les origines de la dévotion au Saint-Sacrement (Paris, 1926)
72. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), pp. 55-60, 131-34, and 155-56
73. Charles Caspers, "The Western Church during the Late Middle Ages: Augenkommunion or Popular Mysticism?" in Bread of Heaven: Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion, ed. Charles Caspers, Gerard Lukken, and Gerard Rouwhorst, Liturgia Condenda 3 (Kampen, The Netherlands, 1995), pp. 83-97
74. On the beatific vision see Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (Princeton, N.J., 1997), pp. 129-39
75. and Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the History of Religions, n.s., 15 (New York, 1995), pp. 283-91
76. Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park, Pa., 1997)
77. Rachel Fulton, "The Virgin in the Garden, or Why Flowers Make Better Prayers," Spiritus 4 (2004), 1-23
78. Thomas Lentes, "Die Gewänder der Heiligen: Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zum Verhältnis von Gebet, Bild und Imagination," in Hagiographie und Kunst: Der Heiligenkult in Schrift, Bild und Architektur, ed. Gottfried Kerscher (Berlin, 1993), pp. 120-51
79. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), p. 75
80. Quintilian, Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim 6.2.29-32, ed. Michael Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1970), 1:335
81. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 34 (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), pp. 130-33
82. See also, Mary Carruthers, eadem, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990)
83. Chap. 48, "On the Daily Manual Labor," says that monks should devote at least two hours to sacred reading every weekday and more on Sundays. In addition, each monk is to be given a book from the library at the beginning of Lent, to be read straight through from beginning to end: The Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. Leonard Doyle (Collegeville, Minn., 2001), pp. 109-12
84. Guigo II, Scala claustralium, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, Sources Chrétiennes 163 (Paris, 1970)
85. trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, The Ladder of Monks, Cistercian Studies Series 48 (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1981). There is a fifteenth-century Middle English version entitled A Ladder of Four Rungs
86. Ladder of Monks 13, p. 80
87. Richard of Saint-Victor, Benjamin major 5.5, PL 196:174
88. trans. Grover A. Zinn, The Mystical Ark, in Richard of St. Victor: The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of the Trinity (New York, 1979), p. 316
89. "Therefore, think how beneficial it is to reconsider often the mysteries of our faith and to have them frequently in memory, since from such effort we shall be able to obtain a multitude of divine showings. Therefore if we can neither see [the divine mysteries] by ecstasy of mind nor comprehend by means of pure and clear understanding . . . nevertheless, insofar as it is possible for us, let us draw into frequent consideration those things which we receive from the Catholic tradition and hold by faith. . . . I think that the consolation of divine showings will not be completely foreign to those who both often and willingly behold by the eye of faith the hidden secrets of divine mysteries": Mystical Ark 4.21, trans. Zinn, p. 301; PL 196:163D-164A
90. Peter of Limoges, De oculo morali (Viterbo, 1655)
91. Kathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England, 1350-1500 (New York, 2002), pp. 150-54
92. David C. Lindberg, "The Science of Optics," in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. Lindberg (Chicago, 1978), pp. 338-68
93. David C. Lindberg, idem, "Roger Bacon on Light, Vision, and the Universal Emanation of Force," in Roger Bacon and the Sciences, ed. Jeremiah Hackett, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 57 (Leiden, 1997), pp. 243-75
94. and Robert Podgurski, "Where Optics and Visionary Metaphysics Converge in Dante's 'Novella vista,'" Italian Quarterly 35 (1998), 29-38
95. On the circumstances of its composition see Rachel Koopmans, "The Conclusion of Christina of Markyate's Vita," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000), 663-98
96. "Nam cum aliquando lacrimis in oracione maderet pre desiderio celestium, subito rapitur ultra nubes usque ad celum ubi conspicata reginam celesti in trono sedere vidit et angelos illi gloriosos assistere. . . . Nec tamen lumini quo circumdabatur ilia que genuit altissimum potuit comparari lumen angelorum. . . . Cum tamen vicissim intenderer, nunc in angelos nunc in dominam angelorum, miro modo facilius penetrabat candentis obtutus splendorem circumfusum domine quam qui circumfulgebat angelos, cum infirmitas humane visionis habeat egrius inspicere clariora": The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth Century Recluse 42, ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 39 (Toronto, 1998), pp. 108-10 (punctuation altered here and in the following note; both translations are my own)
97. "Nocte quadam cum dormiret, videbatur sibi quod in quoddam pulcherimum [sic] templum cum aliis mulieribus introducta fuisset. Et ecce stabat ad altare quidam indutus vestimentis sacerdotalibus quasi ad solemnia missarum celebranda paratus. . . . Post hec visa evigilavit et cervical suum multis lacrimis maduisse reperit, ut sicut verum flere fuit quod sompniasse putabat, ita de reliquorum eventu non ambigeret, que per idem somnium viderat": ibid. 24-25, pp. 74-76
98. Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut, trans. Martinus Cawley, Medieval Women 6 (Turnhout, 2003)
99. "Contrahebantur palpebre, turbabatur oculus, sub ipso oculo videres cutem ita sine intervallo moveri, ac si eam intus latens avicula iugi volatu percuteret": Life of Christina 48, pp. 122-23
100. Gertrud Jaron Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany, Studies and Texts 125 (Toronto, 1996)
101. Rebecca L. R. Garber, Feminine Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers, 1100-1375, Studies in Medieval History and Culture 10 (New York, 2003), chap. 3
102. This Gertrude is not to be confused with Mechthild's natural sister, Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn (1232-91)
103. Mechthild of Hackeborn, Liber specialis gratiae, ed. Louis Paquelin, in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, 2 (Poitiers, 1877)
104. This edition by the monks of Solesmes is quite rare. A complete edition of the Middle English text is available in microfiche: The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn, ed. Theresa A. Halligan, Studies and Texts 46 (Toronto, 1979). Gostlye grace translates an erroneous Latin title, Liber spiritualis gratiae, which is explained by the very similar abbreviations of specialis and spiritualis
105. Mary Jeremy Finnegan, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics (Athens, Ga., 1991), p. 53
106. Booke of Gostlye Grace, London, British Library, MS Egerton 2006, fols. 116-17, ed. Alexandra Barratt, in Women's Writing in Middle English (London, 1992), pp. 55-57
107. Cf. Liber specialis gratiae 2.17, ed. Paquelin, pp. 151-52
108. Edition and commentary in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520 (University Park, Pa., 1999), pp. 288-91
109. "Et quamvis his et similibus, quae humanam placentiam incitare soient, abundaverit, nequaquam arbitrandum est quod ea quae sequuntur ex ingenio aut ex agilitate intellectus ipsa sibi ad placitum suum imaginata fuerit, sive ex industria sermonis aut ex habilitate eloquentiae composuerit, quod absit; sed firmiter absque omni haesitatione credendum est quod vere omnia de ipso fonte divinae sapientiae sibi gratuito dono sint infusa a Spiritu. . . . Et quia invisibilia et spiritualia nullatenus ad intellectum humanum aliter quam per rerum corporalium et visibilium similitudines exprimi non possum, oportet ea humanis et corporeis imaginationibus adumbrare": Legatus divinae pietatis 1.1.3-4, in Gertrude of Helfta, Œuvres spirituelles, 2.
110. ed. Pierre Doyère, Sources Chrétiennes 139 (Paris, 1968), p. 124
111. In his prologue to the Lux divinitatis, a translation of Mechthild of Magdeburg's Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, Heinrich suppresses the name of "the woman through whom this writing was made public" in a "primitive tongue" in order to represent the text's real author as "the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit": Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, 2:435-37
112. The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin (New York, 1998), pp. 31-33. The translator Heinrich of Halle should not be confused with the Heinrich of Halle who had been Mechthild's confessor
113. This seems to have been true especially of the fourteenth-century German Dominican convents that compiled Schwesternbücher or collective hagiographies; in such communities a non-visionary nun might be seen as anomalous. See Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women, and Garber, Feminine Figurae, chap. 3 (see above, n. 63)
114. Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg are the most celebrated visionary beguines, but see also Agnes Blannbekin of Vienna (d. 1315), Life and Revelations, trans. Ulrike Wiethaus (Woodbridge, Eng., 2002)
115. Starhawk [Miriam Simos], The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, 20th anniversary ed. (San Francisco, 1999), p. 94
116. "Cum igitur mens tua ab omni fuerit cogitationum sorde uirtutum exercitatione purgata, iam oculos defaecatos ad posteriora retorque, ac primum cum beata Maria, ingressa cubiculum, libros quibus Virginis partus et Christi prophetatur aduentus euolue. Ibi aduentum angeli praestolare ut uideas intrantem, audias salutantem, et sic repleta stupore et extasi dulcissimam dominam tuam cum angelo salutante salutes, clamans et dicens: Aue, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus. Haec crebrius repetens, quae sit haec gratiae plenitudo . . . contemplare": Aelred of Rievaulx, De institutione inclusarum 29, in Opera omnia, ed. A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, CCCM 1 (Turnhout, 1971), pp. 662-63
117. "[E]x sanguine eius fiant sicut uitta coccinea labia tua, et eloquium tuum dulce. . . . Hic quamdiu potes, uirgo, morare. Non has delicias tuas somnus interpoler, nullus exterior tumultus impediat": Aelred, De institutione 31, pp. 671-73
118. See above, n. 12. For challenges to the attribution see Jaime Vidal, "The Infancy Narrative in Pseudo-Bonaventure's 'Meditationes vitae Christi': A Study in Medieval Franciscan Christ Piety (c. 1300)" (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1984)
119. and Sarah McNamer's review of the Stallings-Taney edition in Journal of Theological Studies 50 (1999), 378-85. I am also indebted to McNamer's unpublished paper, "Franciscan Affect and the Two Crucifixions of the Meditationes vitae Christi," delivered at the Medieval Academy meeting in Minneapolis, April 2003
120. uolueris, ipsum Dominum Iesum de quo loquimur Magistrum habebis. Non autem credas quod omnia que ipsum dixisse uel fecisse meditari possimus scripta sint. Ego uero ad maiorem impressionem ea sic ac si ita fuissent tibi narrabo prout contingere uel contigisse pie credi possunt, secundum quasdam imaginarias representaciones quas animus diuersimode percipit. Nam circa diuinam Scripturam meditari, exponere et intelligere multifarie, prout expedire credimus possumus: dummodo non sit contra ueritatem uite, iusticie aut doctrine, id est non sit contra fidem uel bonos mores. Cum ergo me narrantem inuenies: Ita dixit uel fecit Dominus Iesus, seu alii qui introducuntur, si id per Scripturam non possit probari, non aliter accipias quam deuota meditacio exigit. Hoc enim inde accipe ac si dicerem: Mediteris quod ita dixit uel fecit Dominus Iesus. Et sie de similibus. Tu autem si ex his fructum sumere cupis, ita presentem te exhibeas his que per Dominum Iesum dicta et facta narrantur ac si tuis auribus audires et oculis ea uideres, toto mentis affectu diligenter, delectabiliter et morose, omnibus aliis curis et sollicitudinibus tunc omissis": Meditaciones vite Christi, prologue, p. 10
121. Nicholas Love, Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, proem, ed. Michael G. Sargent, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1233 (New York, 1992), pp. 12-13
122. Dion Fortune, Moon Magic (New York, 1972), pp. 81-82
123. The Book of Margery Kempe 3, ed. Lynn Staley (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1996), p. 26
124. On the top-down introduction of St. Joseph's cult see Newman, God and the Goddesses (see above, n. 8), pp. 284-87
125. Kathleen Ashley, "Historicizing Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe as Social Text," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998), 378
126. For this term I am indebted to Elaine Scarry, Dreaming by the Book (New York, 1999). Scarry gives a fascinating account of how the mind uses the instructions contained in prose fiction to construct visual imagery that mimics the vivacity of actual perception. The process envisaged in medieval texts is more conscious and deliberate than the semiautomatic responses Scarry describes
127. "And pou also by deuoute ymaginacion as pou were pere bodily present, confort oure lady & pat felawshipe praiyng hem to ete sumwhat, for zit pei bene fastyng": Love, Mirror 48, p. 190
128. Cf. Book of Margery Kempe 81, p. 186
129. Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989), p. 51
130. Book of Margery Kempe 5-6, pp. 31-32
131. Kempe skips Love's "prologue in heaven," a meditation on the four daughters of God, since she had no use whatsoever for allegory
132. Book of Margery Kempe 7, p. 33
133. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection 1.10, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, Mich., 2000), p. 40
134. Book of Margery Kempe 83, p. 191
135. A trend first noted by Johan Huizinga in The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, trans. F. Hopman (London, 1924; repr. Garden City, N.Y., 1954)
136. Cf. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven, Conn., 1992)
137. For example, Johannes Tauler warns devotees who "choose their own techniques in prayer and meditation, or perhaps imitate what other people are doing" in the hope of being "drenched with sweet consolations," that the peace they obtain by these means is false, for true peace comes only through obedience and detachment: Sermons 5 and 21, trans. Maria Shrady (New York, 1985), pp. 47 and 75
138. Dyan Elliott, "True Presence/False Christ: The Antinomies of Embodiment in Medieval Spirituality," Mediaeval Studies 64 (2002), 256-57
139. Frank Klaassen, "Dream Manipulation in the Later Middle Ages: Surveying the Manuscript Evidence," paper read at the Thirty-Eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Mich., 9 May 2003
140. "Si autem cor integrum operantis in ipsa applicetur et ponatur, tunc oratio, figure, ymaginatio optatum Dei donum consequitur effectum": John of Morigny, Liber visionum, prologue, chap. 45, ed. and trans. Claire Fanger and Nicholas Watson, Esoterica 3 (2001), 108-217, online at www.esoteric.msu.edu/ VolumeIII/Morigny.html, pp. 160 and 202
141. Angela of Foligno, Memorial 8, in Complete Works, trans. Paul Lachance (New York, 1993), p. 200
142. Book of Margery Kempe 18, ed. Staley, p. 52. Her adviser in this case was William Southfield, a Carmelite friar of Norwich who was himself a noted visionary
143. William of Ockham, quodlib. 5, q. 5, resp. ad obj. 1, in Quodlibetal Questions, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1991), 2:416
144. This discussion is indebted to Elliott, "True Presence," pp. 258-63
145. "Preterea quod ita est de facto quod omnis rei deus est prima et summa causa, secundum Augustinum, iii De Trinitate cap. vi. Deus est inquit prima causa omnium rerum atque motionum. Sed error est una res atque operatio, ergo de facto omnis error est a deo sicut a prima causa et summa": Robert Holkot, Super quatuor libros Sententiarum questiones, bk. 3, q. 1, art. 8, ad 2, 2 (Lyons, 1497)
146. The Cloud of Unknowing 65, ed. Patrick J. Gallacher (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1997), p. 92
147. "Natura est enim phantasmatum et specierum fortiter impressarum recurrere ad originem sensuum exteriorum et maxime cum res sicut praesentes voluntarie finguntur. Tunc visus phantasiae quasi in rei praesentiam reducit et cadit phantasma ad organum sensuum exteriorum, sicque homo simplex credit Christum vel aliquem sanctum, cuius tale est phantasma, praesentem secundum corporalem sensum sentire, ut secundum visum videre eum vel secundum auditum audire, vel secundum tactum tangere sibi videatur. Et talis deceptio non est sine periculo": Geert Grote, Il trattato "De quattuor generibus meditabilium," ed. Ilario Tolomio, Pubblicazioni dell'Istituto di Storia della Filosofia e del Centro per Ricerche di Filosofia Medioevale, n.s., 18 (Padua, 1975), p. 60
148. trans. John Van Engen, "A Treatise on Four Classes of Subjects Suitable for Meditation: A Sermon on the Lord's Nativity," in Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings (New York, 1988), p. 102
149. Lynn Staley cites this lack of corroborating evidence, even for such significant events as Kempe's heresy trial in York, to support her radical view of The Book of Margery Kempe as a work of "prose fiction": Book, ed. Staley, p. 10
150. Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe's Dissenting Fictions (University Park, Pa., 1994)
151. For Birgitta's life and the controversies surrounding her see Bridget Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, Studies in Medieval Mysticism 1 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1999)
152. Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy, Studies in Medieval Mysticism 3 (Woodbridge, Eng., 2001)
153. and Ulla Williams and Werner Williams-Krapp, "Expertis crede! Birgitta von Schweden als Maßstab für wahre Heiligkeit," in Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur: Festschrift für Konrad Kunze zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Václav Bok, Ulla Williams, and Werner Williams-Krapp, Studien zur Germanistik 10 (Hamburg, 2004), pp. 211-32
154. The most important defense of Birgitta is Alfonso of Jaén, Epistola solitarii ad reges. For the Latin text see Arne Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works, Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia 1 (Lund, 1989)
155. Sahlin, Birgitta, pp. 222-23
156. Politics frequently played a role in the discernment process: thus the Frenchman Gerson, despite his normative skepticism, accepted the revelations of Joan of Arc. See Dyan Elliott, "Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc," American Historical Review 107 (2002), 26-54
157. for further examples see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, "Constance de Rabastens: Politics and Visionary Experience in the Time of the Great Schism," Mystics Quarterly 25 (1999), 147-68
158. Birgitta of Sweden, Sermo angelicus, prologue, in Opera minora, 2, ed. Sten Eklund, Samlingar Utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet 2/8 (Uppsala, 1972), pp. 75-76
159. trans. John E. Halborg, The Word of the Angel: Sermo angelicus (Toronto, 1996), pp. 13-14
160. "Filius Dei loquebatur ad sponsam dicens: 'Ego sum similis carpentario, qui prescindens ligna de silua deportat in domum et inde fabricat ymaginem pulchram et ornat eam coloribus et liniamentis. Cuius amici videntes ymaginem, quod adhuc pulchrioribus coloribus ornari posset, apposuerunt et ipsi colores suos depingendo super eam. Sic ego Deus prescidi de silua deitatis mee verba mea, que posui in cor tuum. Amici vero mei redegerunt ea in libros secundum graciam eis datam et colorauerunt et ornauerunt illa'": Birgitta, Reuelaciones extrauagantes 49, ed. L. Hollman, Samlingar Utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet 2/5 (Uppsala, 1956), p. 165
161. "Inter haec itaque difficulter cognoscere et distinguere potest mortalis homo, quid sibi inspiretur supernaturaliter, et quid aliunde . . . ei naturaliter occurrat. Patet ergo non esse cito et leviter credendum homini spirituali, qui laborat continue phantasiando et contemplando, quod in omnibus impulsibus quos sentit vel in omnibus, quae ei quasi inopinate occurrunt, a bono vel malo spiritu supernaturaliter moveatur. Qui igitur in talibus levis inveniretur esse credulitatis, videtur esse quasi vane cupidus supernaturalium revelationum et circa se miraculosarum motionum": Henry of Langenstein, De discretione spirituum 2, in Heinrichs von Langenstein "Unterscheidung der Geister," lateinisch und deutsch, ed. Thomas Hohmann, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 63 (Munich, 1977), pp. 58-60
162. "[P]raesertim unius quae Brigitta nominatur, assueta visionibus quas nedum ab angelis, sed a Christo et Maria et Agnete et caeteris sanctis, familiaritate jugi, sicut sponsus ad sponsam loquitur, se asserit divinitus suscepisse. . . . Approbare enim falsas et illusorias aut frivolas visiones pro veris et solidis revelationibus, quid indignius, quid alienius ab hoc sacro Concilio?": Jean Gerson, De probatione spirituum 5, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Palémon Glorieux, 10 vols. (Paris, 1961-73), 9:179
163. "Quaeritur ergo si persona sit novitia in zelo Dei, qui novitius fervor cito fallitur si regente caruerit; praesertim in adolescentibus et foeminis, quarum est ardor nimius, avidus, varius, effrenis, ideoque suspectus": ibid. 7, 9:180
164. "Postremo sexus muliebris ab apostolica prohibetur auctoritate ne palam doceat; doctrinam intellige, seu verbo seu scripto, nomine suo publicatam, maxime si fuerit ad viros, nec qualescumque, sed sapientes, sed eruditos, sed status in devotione et religione praecellentis. . . . [N]ullum vir vel mulier efficacius habet remedium pro illusionibus evitandis quam visiones cum humilitate sedula fugere": Jean Gerson, De examinatione doctrinarum 2.2-3, ed. Glorieux, 9:467 and 469
165. Benedict XIV, Opus de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, 7 vols. (Prati, 1839-42), 2:32
166. Benedict XIV, Opus de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, 1839-42, 3:53
167. "What is singular and not in keeping with the common teaching of spiritual and theological writers must inspire caution and distrust. . . . A desire for private revelations is generally unhealthy and, as history shows, leads to pitiful or disastrous deviations": P. de Letter, "Revelations, Private," New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., 2003), 12:202
168. See also Michael O'Carroll, "Apparitions," in Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Wilmington, Del., 1982), pp. 47-48
169. William A. Christian, Jr., "Holy People in Peasant Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History 15 (1973), 106-14
170. idem, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, N.J., 1981)
171. Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje (Princeton, N.J., 1991), pp. 8-9
172. Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary, pp. 55-56