The Power of Books and the Practice of Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century

Heinrich of Nördlingen and Margaret Ebner on Mechthild'sFlowing Light of the Godhead

Bibliographic Data

ID3589986
AuthorsPatricia Zimmerman Beckman
Year2007
Volume76
Issue1
Pages61-83
Publication date2007-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009640700101416
OpenAlexW2045414900
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited21

In 1345 a manuscript accompanied by a letter arrived at the Dominican convent of Maria Medingen in southern Germany. The sender, a secular priest named Heinrich of Nördlingen, and the primary recipient, the Dominican visionary nun Margaret Ebner, had already enjoyed an extended correspondence, interspersed with a few intense face-to-face visits in the convent. Because the manuscript arriving that day was a thirteenth-century woman's mystical treatise (the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg'sFlowing Light of the Godhead), and because Margaret and her sisters in the convent Maria Medingen used this woman's text in what could initially seem peculiar and dynamic ways, this manuscript and these letters can tell us much about the authority and performance of women's mysticism in medieval religion. Mechthild's and Heinrich's texts serve as key examples, which reveal how women's mystical texts were authoritative in the history of Christianity. Namely, medieval audiences assessed mystical authority on the basis of the text's ability to produce the experience in them, and mystical texts required proper performance in order to unleash their generative power

Art · Art history · Christianity · Face (sociological concept) · Literature · Mysticism · Order (exchange) · Power (physics) · Classics · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub