Medieval Mystical Women in the West

Growing in the Height of Love

John Arblaster, Rob Faesen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032123493
• eBook ISBN: 9781040087572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book explores the rich and varied mystical writings by and about medieval – and a few early modern – women across Western Europe. Women had a profound and lasting impact on the development of medieval and early modern spiritual and mystical literature, both through their own writing and as a result of the hagiographical texts that they inspired. Bringing together contributions by both established and emerging scholars, the volume provides a valuable overview of medieval mystical women with a special focus on the Low Countries and Italy, regions that produced a disproportionately high number of female mystics. The figures discussed range from Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, Angela of Foligno, Julian of Norwich, and Beatrice of Nazareth to lesser-known women such as Agnes Blannbekin, Christina of Hane, and Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. The chapters address topics such as the body, pain, desire, ecstasy, stigmata, annihilation, virtue, visions, the tension between exterior and interior experience, and the nature of mystical union itself.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Some Significant Episodes in the Study of Medieval Mystical Women: An Introduction
• 1 Mystical Hagiography in the Thirteenth Century: The Low Countries and Italy
• 2 Annihilated Women in the Thirteenth Century
• 3 Hidden Marks of Leadership: Holy Women and Invisible Stigmata in the Late Middle Ages
• 4 ‘Enarrabiliter’: The Separation of Visionary Experience and Communicable Form in Hildegard of Bingen’s Vision Books
• 5 Gender and Feminine Virtue in Bernard of Clairvaux and Hadewijch
• 6 Kenotic Christology, Poverty, and Annihilation in Clare of Assisi and Angela of Foligno
• 7 Mysticism by the Numbers: Beatrice of Nazareth’s Seven Manners of Love and Ida of Nivelles’ ‘Eight Topics of Contemplation’
• 8 Spiritual Edifices: Beatrice of Nazareth’s Monastery of the Heart and Agnes Blannbekin’s Urban Stations of Christ
• 9 The Mystic as Symbol: Ecstasy as Liturgical Participation in the Vita of Beatrice of Nazareth
• 10 ‘I Want to Die Living’: The Entanglement of Death and Desire in Mechthild of Magdeburg
• 11 Spiritual Vision in Corporeal Space: The Power of Performative Language in the Mystical Life of Christina of Hane
• 12 Can This Text Still Speak? Reading Julian of Norwich’s Prayer for Illness as (Fully a Part of) a ‘Classic Text’ of Embodied Mysticism
• 13 The Theological Virtues, Interiorisation, and Theological Anthropology in The Evangelical Pearl
• 14 The Blood and the Word: The Mystical Speech Acts of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi
• Index