The Thirst of God

Contemplating God's Love with Three Women Mystics

Wendy Farley

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780664259860
• eBook ISBN: 9781611646108
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"There is a rich tradition of wonderful women and other contemplatives who are great resources for thinking differently about Christianity. They emphasized divine love, human compassion, and the radical possibilities of contemplative practices. They were not afraid to criticize the church and indeed thought of their challenge as crucial to their faith. We do not have to lose faith with the beautiful wisdom of this story of intimate and compassionate love, dwelling among us and within us, if we do not want to."
from the acknowledgments and note to readers

To those seeking a more open, progressive approach to Christian faith, the Christian past can sometimes seem like a desert, an empty space devoid of encouragement or example. Yet in the latter years of the Middle Ages a quiet flowering of a more accessible, positive approach to Christian belief took place among a group of female mystics, those who emphasized an immediate, nonhierarchical experience of the divine.

In this enlightening volume, Wendy Farley eloquently brings the work of three female mysticsMarguerite Porete, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Julian of Norwichinto creative conversation with contemporary Christian life and thought. From alternatives to the standard, violent understandings of the atonement, to new forms of contemplation and prayer, these figures offer us relevant insights through a theology centered on God's love and compassion. Farley demonstrates how these women can help to refresh and expand our awareness of the depth of divine love that encompasses all creation and dwells in the cavern of every human heart.

PART 1

Contemplating Love with Three Women Mystics

1

“Serve Nobly, … and Fear Nothing Else”

A Door Opens and Closes: Reigniting Practices of Compassion

“Serve nobly, wish for nothing else, and fear nothing else: and let Love freely take care of herself!”¹

Perhaps not entirely unlike our own time, the Middle Ages was a period of religious creativity and rapid social and technological change. Opposite impulses flowed through Europe as church and secular leaders struggled for primacy. As Franciscans, beguines, and others fought for the right to practice apostolic poverty, popes, bishops, and kings vied for access to newly created wealth. The church became more authoritarian even as numerous religious movements expanded theological vistas. The threat of purgatory and hell intensified while contemplative women envisioned a theology of love.

The beguines and other contemplative women were among those energized by their ardor for the Holy Beloved to develop new forms of community and practice. Their enthusiasm reflected the sense of possibility that animated this period. But by the turn into the fourteenth century, they became entangled by counterforces that have made “medieval” a watchword for ideological violence.

The beguine movement was surprisingly popular. From a few scattered houses here and there, cottages began to clump together as women were drawn to pray, work, and serve in community with one another. First appearing in Belgium and the Netherlands, this new opportunity for spiritual practice quickly spread to Germany and France. In the early decades of the thirteenth century, the beguinage in Ghent numbered in the thousands. Soon there was hardly a community in the Low Countries without one or more beguinages. But “beguine” does not capture the fluidity of women’s religious practices, which included Benedictine or Cistercian convents, enclosed convent-like beguine communities, unenclosed beguines, anchoresses, widows, celibate wives, and women who inhabited different identities at different times. In these informal crosscurrents, women carved out theological insights and spiritual practices that never became fully integrated into the official story of Christianity, but neither did they ever die out completely. Just as a small portion of yeast feeds the whole loaf, the writings of these women witness to God’s invitation to humanity to dwell in her divine love and goodness.

Beginnings

Historians can identify the emergence of the beguine way of life as a distinctive vocation. But it appears on the scene without a founder, rule, or beginning moment. Elizabeth of Thuringia’s harp player, Aleid, left her position to live a life of penance and contemplation on God’s love in 1211. Soon afterward a small community joined her, asking her to act as their spiritual guide.² But before Aleid, Mary of Oignies had convinced her husband to live with her celibately. Jacques Vitry relates her story in 1215, indicating she joined an already existing community of women and so evidently did not initiate the movement. Features of beguine life can be recognized in the story of her life. Mary’s intoxicating love of Christ was seasoned by visions and ecstasies, ascetical practices and work among the outcast, sick, and dying. A group of men and women gathered around her as their teacher. Her combination of contemplative devotion and active ministry became characteristic of many beguines.

Like many men who tell women’s stories, Jacques emphasizes her obedience, orthodoxy, and masochistic assaults on her body.³ He was fascinated by her capacity for visions and ecstasy; her emotional tone was a complement to his own rationalism. Jacques was attracted to these signs of divine nearness but remained preoccupied with harsh penitential practices as the way of accessing this intimacy. We know about the religious life of women mostly through men’s writings.⁴ Clerics preached about an angry God who required blood atonement. Sin was overwhelming and redemption costly. In response, pious women offered outrageous acts of violent penance.

Men’s writings tend to magnify physical suffering, but women could be critical of extreme penitential practices and some discouraged women from self-harm. Beguines’ writings modified the theology available to them to reflect more of their own experience. Meditations on the humanity of Christ provoked a sense of the nearness of divine love to suffering humanity. Meditations on the passion became on avenue to participate in divine compassion. The choice of poverty was an implicit criticism of a wealth-infatuated church. It might seem that asceticism and penance would be acts of self-hatred, but in that time and place, these acts granted women access to their own spiritual power. Asceticism, meditation, and charitable service were elements of divine love experienced and shared.

The Movement Expands

In contrast to those who joined an established religious order, small groups of women gathered around an unofficial leader and advisor (magistra) who instructed them in lives of apostolic poverty and contemplation. She might teach literacy to allow them to read the psalms, lectio divina, and other devotional literature; she might teach meditation, ascetical practices, charitable works, and in some cases handcrafts to support the community. Very few participants in these practices wrote about them or the theology that percolated in these women’s communities. But we are lucky that a few did.

Visions and ecstasies were not outside the norm. Teachers well acquainted with these practices could help discern what visionary experiences were helpful or hurtful, what they understood to be authentic revelations and what were misleading seductions. Our more scientific age is a little bewildered by the idea of visions, but however one interprets them, they are attested to across human cultures and religions. Visionary experience is in part rooted in the practice of visualization and the visual qualities of medieval Christianity. Fasting and sleeplessness can also prime the body for unusual experiences. But it is also the case that the deep wisdom of the human mind, or divine grace (depending on one’s point of view), or mature spiritual practice can communicate itself in visual images and imageless insight. Certainly Christians in this period took this for granted.⁵

The authority of teachers did not derive simply from the strangeness of their experiences. There is a charisma of wisdom, discipline, and love that has its own attractiveness. The three most famous beguine theologians, Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, appear to have been this kind of leader.

Study and Education

A wide range of education existed among contemplative women. For educated noble women, familiarity with the Latin psalter and at least the rudiments of Latin was not unheard of. Beatrice of Nazareth reportedly could recite all of the psalms in Latin by the age of five. She read Augustine’s De Trinitate as well as the writings of Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor.⁶ Hadewijch of Brabant wrote in Latin as well as Flemish, indicating that her readership included Latin-reading beguines as well as (possibly) both male and female contemplatives. Familiarity with Latin and availability of small libraries gave access to the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, and other monastic writers.⁷ The beguines’ familiarity with troubadour songs and the poetry of courtly love influenced their own thinking. These popular genres portrayed the knight errant, unrequited love, the intensities of erotic desire, and heroic quests. In the writings of women contemplatives the erotic energy and courage of the quest was redirected to describe the boldness of their God-hungry hearts.

As committed as they were to compassionate action, their preferred metaphor for divine love was romantic: less often caritas (charity) than amour (French) or minne (Dutch and German). It was also feminine: Lady Love. Though dedicated to works of charity, romantic love better captured the intensity of their desire and the joy of intimacy with the divine Beloved.

Contemporary readers may find metaphors drawn from the bedroom strange. This may be in part because of the veil that is drawn over sexuality by Puritan forefathers, a veil lifted now by consumerism’s crass or exploitative images. Neither of these tempt us to think about a divine Beloved. But as early as the Bible’s Song of Solomon, the intense love that we humans feel for the dear one of our heart has seemed a natural way to express the spiritual desire for the mysteriously beautiful and infinitely loving source of our deepest and best longings. To reintroduce ourselves to the spiritual psychology of yearning and the infinite goodness that draws us on can enrich our religious imaginations.⁸

Meditation and Contemplation

During this period of religious change and renewal, contemplative practices gained adherents among the laity; for many, it was a natural component of the apostolic life. They did not think of the apostles only as believers in Jesus but as men and women who imitated his way of life through poverty, prayer, and compassion. They recognized in Jesus’ withdrawal for prayer or his admonition to go to a quiet room and pray to the Father in secret (Matt. 6:6) an invitation to contemplative prayer. Meditation is a focused kind of prayer in which the mind concentrates on an image, a word, a passage from Scripture, or an imageless resting in the divine presence. It is a practice that can prepare the heart for transformation by and for love.

One form of meditation practiced by contemplatives was lectio divina, a “divine reading.” This form of prayer, still popular today, is a way to pass through the external meaning of Scripture to enter its living spirit and allow the grace of the Holy Spirit to enter.⁹ Contemplatives were encouraged to enter into a biblical narrative as if they were a part of it. They visualized what it would feel like, what it would smell like, what it would look like to be in the middle of a biblical scene. How would it feel to be Mary Magdalene as she met Jesus for the first time? What “demons” would the contemplative want Jesus to cast out of her: fear, jealousy, distraction, bad memories, hard-heartedness? This kind of meditation forged emotional bonds with Jesus and the saints. It reformed their own emotional patterns so they would be more in line with biblical characters. The compassion of biblical characters would be internalized as compassion for people in the beguine’s own community. Contemplation and action, Christ’s love for humanity, and the contemplative’s love for those around her percolated together. Through meditation, this love would flow into a single river in which desire, will, and action became grounded in the divine love.

Meditation opened a pathway of union with the divine that was inexpressible. The mystery of the divine darkness is the root of the divine love but is impossible to express in language, in visions, or in action. The beguines developed a deep appreciation for the “negative way:” that is, the transcendent mystery of God that defies imagination and eludes all attempts at expression. Doctrine, sacrament, virtue, and Scripture are all routes to the divine life, but they are not identical to God’s own being. Contemplative practice brings us to the edge where image and mystery, action and contemplation, darkness and illumination dance together.

A Lively Conversation

The alchemy of theology and practice occurring in women’s communities was part of larger discussions among confessors, monks, nuns, friars, and lay-people. Books were read aloud and discussed. Out of these informal conversations emerged a dramatic and rich theology of love. As Robin Anne O’Sullivan puts it, “we might do well to describe beguine communities as a ‘school of love.’ The women in these communities dedicated themselves to the study of love, God’s love and their own, as a way of purifying the ‘eyes of the heart.’”¹⁰ Their theological language drew on the erotic imagery of Bernard of Clairvaux’s exegesis of the Song of Songs as well as the popular troubadour songs and poetry. Like William of St. Thierry, they sought to “taste” divine love.

The beguines’ love for those they served was in a sense the same love with which God loved humanity. This circulation of love flowed from the Beloved to humanity, a stream mingling in the ocean, light in which the duality of self and other, God and soul could be radically diminished. Through their practices they became, as Teresa of Avila would say a few centuries later, the hands and feet making God’s love present in the world.

The Bramble and the Rose: Competing Visions of Christian Community

The beguine way of life produced a great flowering of spirituality in which women and men shared their insights and deepened their understanding of divine love. But this way of life was a stark challenge to an increasingly authoritarian church, which used both violence and ideology to make sure that religious symbols reinforced its authority. Official theology portrayed the anger of God punishing humanity with never-ending fire. Christ stepped in to tak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Note to Readers and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Part 1: Contemplating Love with Three Women Mystics
• Part 2: Lady Love and Mother Christ: Three Women’s Spirituality of Compassion
• Notes
• Bibliography