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Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experience in the Late Middle Ages pp 237–265Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

ConTact. Tactile Experiences of the Sacred and the Divinity in the Middle Ages

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Abstract

This chapter aims to address the sense of touch within the sphere of the sacred, starting from the hypothesis that touch is the sense that most radically introduces a life-oriented female horizontality. Touch is the only sense that implies reciprocity, because it is always a shared ‘contact’. This work explores the role played by touch within the framework of the five spiritual senses, from devotional practices to mystical union. The first part analyses the devotional, spiritual, and apotropaic uses of the sacred object, understood as possessing a potential for haptic transfer, as well as the evangelical models of tactile experience. The second part studies touch in female mysticism, discussing the contact with the divinity as a loving experience through some examples and the texts of Hadewijch and Mechthild von Magdeburg.

This chapter was originally written in Spanish. English translation by Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Aristotle, Acerca del alma, trans. and ed. Tomás Calvo Martínez (Madrid: Gredos, 2003), 189–212.

  2. 2.

    Madalina Diaconu, Tasten-Riechen-Schmecken. Eine Ästhetik der anästhesierten Sinne (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005), 19.

  3. 3.

    Jacques Derrida, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2000), 55 et seq.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 157.

  5. 5.

    Karl Rahner, ‘Les debuts d’une doctrine des cinq sens spirituels’, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 13 (1932): 113–145. See also James Walsh, ‘Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et les sens spirituels’, Revue d’ascétique et mystique 35 (1959): 27–42 and Patricia Dailey, ‘The Body and its Senses’, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, eds. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 264–270.

  6. 6.

    Friedrich Ohly, Hohelied-Studien. Grundzüge einer Geschichte der Hoheliedauslegung des Abendlandes bis zum 1200 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1958).

  7. 7.

    Ernst Fürlinger, Verstehen durch Berühren. Interreligiöse Hermeneutik am Beispiel des nichtdualistischen Sivaismus von Kaschmir (Innsbruck & Wien: Tyrolia Verlag, 2006), 230–238.

  8. 8.

    Deux traités de l’amour de Dieu: De la nature et de la dignité de l’amour, trans. and ed. Marie Madeleine Davy (Paris: J. Vrin, 1953), 95–101.

  9. 9.

    Hildegard von Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Albert Derolez and Peter Dronke (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), Part II, Fifth Vision, III. Translation: Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, trans. Matthew Fox (Vermont: Bear & Company, 1987).

  10. 10.

    Bonaventure, Obras de san. Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Itinerario de la mente a Dios, trans. León Amoros, Bernardo Aperribay and Miguel Oromi (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1945), 604–605.

  11. 11.

    Niklaus Largier, ‘Tactus spiritualis, Remarques sur le Toucher, la Volupté, et les Sens Spirituels au Moyen Age’, Microlugus XIII (2005): 16: ‘La relation entre les sens spirituels et les sens extérieurs n’est pas seulement une relation métaphorique ou allégorique. Il ne s’agit pas seulement d’un moyen de représentation ou d’une expression poétique de l’experience spirituelle, mais plutôt d’un moyen de constituer et de construire une réalité sensorielle nouvelle qui transcende et dépasse la distinction entre le monde intérieur et le monde extérieur’.

  12. 12.

    Toshihiko Isutzu, Sufismo y taoísmo, 2 vols. (Madrid: Siruela, 2004).

  13. 13.

    Giovanni Pozzi, ed., Angela da Foligno, Il libro dell’esperienza (Milano: Adelphi, 1992), 26.

  14. 14.

    Diaconu, Tasten, 38–39.

  15. 15.

    Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 243.

  16. 16.

    Caroline W. Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011).

  17. 17.

    See Peter Brown, ‘Reliques et statut social au temps de Grégoire de Tours’, in La société et le sacré dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Seuil, 1985), 182–183 and Patrick Geary, Furta sacra. Thefts of Relics in the central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 3–9.

  18. 18.

    The cartulary of San Juan de Caaveiro shows an exceptional example of this practice. Its abundant signa manua have been studied in Rogelio Pacheco Sampedro, ‘El “signum manuum” en el cartulario del monasterio de San Juan de Caaveiro (s. IX–XIII)’, Signo. Revista de historia de la cultura escrita 4 (1997): 27–37, esp. figs. 5, 11, 12, 16 and 19.

  19. 19.

    Blanca Garí, ‘The Politics of the Sacred in Medieval Barcelona from Inventio Santae Eulaliae to the Mercederian Legends’, Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum, IV (2010): 209. On the role of senses in solemn translations of relics, see, especially, Hedwig Röckelein, ‘Nonverbale Komunicationsformen und –medien beim Transfer von Heiligen im Frühmittelalter’, in Medien der Kommunication im Mittelalter, edited by Karl-Heinz Spiess (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003), 84–85.

  20. 20.

    The iconographic programme of this altarpiece was studied in Marisa Melero, ‘Eucaristía y polémica antisemita en el retablo y frontal de Vallbona de les Monges’, Locus amoenus no. 6 (2002–2003): 25 and Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 113.

  21. 21.

    Hedwig Röckelein, ‘Mittelalterliche Sakralobjekte. Zu ihrer Bedeutung, Funktion und Rezeption’, Historische Anthropologie 23 (2015): 354.

  22. 22.

    Kathryn Rudy, ‘Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manuscripts through the Physical Rituals they Reveal’, Electronic British Library Journal (2011): 4 et seq.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 1. However, the signs of wear and tear can also show other types of devotional attitudes. In the opinion of Alison Stones, for example, such is the case of Le livre d’images de Madame Marie (Reproduction intégrale du manuscrit, nouvelles acquisitions françaises 16251 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1997)), where the faces erased in the miniature dedicated to the incredulity of Thomas (fol. 47v) or in the scenes of the death and coronation of the Virgin (fols. 53v and 54) could be the result of an anti-Catholic reaction on the part of a possible Protestant owner between 1467 and the seventeenth century.

  24. 24.

    Hedwig Codex 2, 94, cited in Jacqueline E. Jung, ‘The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination’, in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, 2010), 203–240, 205.

  25. 25.

    Glenn W. Most, Der Finger in der Wunde. Die Geschichte des ungläubigen Thomas (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), 86.

  26. 26.

    Barbara Baert, ‘The gaze in the garden: body and embodiment in Noli me tangere’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008): 220.

  27. 27.

    As discussed in the reference work on this subject, particularly in relation to the healing power of the sacred, Marc Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1961), 76–79.

  28. 28.

    Emma Sidgwick, ‘Entre el límite y el umbral. El borde en el motivo cristiano temprano de la hemorroísa’, in Los márgenes, las orillas, los bordes. Tópicos del Seminario, eds. Rita Catrina Imboden and María Isabel Finilich (Puebla: Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2013), 82; Barbara Baert, ‘“Who touched my clothes?” The Healing of the Woman with the Hemorrhage (Mark 5.24b-34parr) in Medieval Visual Culture’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift 79, no. 2 (2010): 65–90.

  29. 29.

    Georges Didi-Huberman, L’empreinte (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997), 51.

  30. 30.

    Georges Didi-Huberman, ‘Face, proche, lointain. L’empreinte du visage et le lieu pour apparaître’, in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, eds. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1998), 95–108. See also, Phalènes, Essais sur l’apparition, 2 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2013), 20.

  31. 31.

    Didi-Huberman, L’empreinte, 43.

  32. 32.

    See Didi-Huberman, ‘Face’, 201, and Hamburger, The Visual.

  33. 33.

    Reproduced in Hamburger, The Visual, 328.

  34. 34.

    Hamburger, The Visual, 331–332.

  35. 35.

    Reproduced in Hamburger, The Visual, 327.

  36. 36.

    Didi-Huberman, L’empreinte, 49.

  37. 37.

    For images that depict these verses, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), fols. 18v and 27r.

  38. 38.

    Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkötter with the collaboration of Angela Carlevaris (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), Book Two, Fifth Vision. Translated in Bruce Hozeski, Hildegard von Bingen’s Mystical Visions, trans. Bruce Hozeski (Vermont: Bear & Company, 1986).

  39. 39.

    Blanca Garí, ‘Introducción’, in Heinrich Seuse, Vida, trans. and ed. Blanca Garí (Madrid: Siruela, 2013), 11.

  40. 40.

    Kurt Ruh, ‘Das Leben des Franziskus als vita mystica’, in Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, Band II, Frauenmystik und Franziskanische Mystik der Frühzeit (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1993), 377–398.

  41. 41.

    Beatrijs van Nazareth. Seven manieren van minne, ed. Leonce Reypens and Jozef van Mierlo (Leuven: Leuvense studien en tekststuitgaven, 1926), 4–16. Consulted March 10, 2018, http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/beat001lrey01_01/beat001lrey01_01_0003.php.

  42. 42.

    Hadewijch , Brieven, ed. Jozef van Mierlo (Antwerp: Staandard, 1947), 19–21. ‘The first nameless hour of the twelve that draw the mind into the nature of Love is that in which Love reveals herself and makes herself felt (beruert), unawares and unlonged for when, in view of Love’s dignity, this is least expected’, Hadewijch, The Complete Work, trans. Columba Harte (New York and Ramsey & Toronto: Paulist Press, 1980), 91.

  43. 43.

    Hadewijch , Das Buch der Visionen, ed. Gerald Hofmann (Stuttgart & Bad Cannstatt: Fromman Holzboog, 1998), II: 80.

  44. 44.

    Marguerite Porete, Le mirouer des simples âmes. Speculum simplicium animarum, eds. Romana Guarnieri and Paul Verdeyen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 10.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 318.

  46. 46.

    Beatrijs van Nazareth, Van seuen manieren, 9–26 [Consulted March 10, 2018]. ‘And thus the heart is being tenderly touched (gerenen) by love, and, full of strong desire, is being pulled inside love, and so wholeheartedly seized by love, so strongly dominated by love, so lovely embraced by love, that she is completely conquered by love. In this she experiences a great proximity to God (ene grote naheit te gode), a spiritual clearness, a wonderful bliss, a noble freedom, a delightful sweetness, a great superior power of strong love, and an abundant fullness of great joy. Then she experiences that all her senses are one in the grip of love and that her will has become love, and that she is so deeply plunged and gulped down in the abyss of love, that she herself has become fully love’. The translation is taken from Beatrice of Nazareth, On Seven Ways of Holy Love, trans. Wim van den Dungen (Taurus Press, 2016). Consulted March 18, 2018, http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/7ways.htm.

  47. 47.

    Haas, Alois Maria, Geistliches Mittelalter (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1984), 395–397.

  48. 48.

    Hadewijch, Brieven, 65 (‘nothing can touch her except desire’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 91).

  49. 49.

    Hadewijch Brieven, 66–69. ‘The most secret name of Love is this touch, and that is a mode of operation that takes its rise from Love herself’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 91–92.

  50. 50.

    Hadewijch, Liederen, ed. Veerle Fraeters and Frank Willaert (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2009), 8–9. ‘He should send Love summons for debt/He should touch Love wholly with love’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 240.

  51. 51.

    Hadewijch, Liederen, 29–35. ‘Alas, true Love! You alone are pure Love;/When will you so make me pure love/That I shall be conformed to you in nature? / For all I have is contrary to nature:/All other things are bitter to me;/But what is bitter to me above all / Is that I cannot touch you’. Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 251.

  52. 52.

    Hadewijch, Brieven, 361. ‘But before Love thus bursts her dikes, and before she ravishes man out of himself and so touches him with herself that he is one spirit and one being with her and in her, he must offer her noble service and the life of exile—noble service in all works of virtue, and a life in exile in all obedience’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 63.

  53. 53.

    Hadewijch Liederen, 24–25. ‘What is this light burden of Love/And this sweet-tasting yoke?/It is the noble load of the spirit/With which Love touches the loving soul/And unites it to her with one will’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 158.

  54. 54.

    Hadewijch, Brieven, 174. ‘That is, you should contemplate your dear God cordially, yes, much more than cordially, so that the eyes of your desire, both together, remain fixed to the countenance of your Beloved by the piercing nails of burning encounters that never cease. Then for the first time you can rest with Saint John, who slept on Jesus’ breast (John 13:23–25). And this is what they do who serve Love in liberty’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 88.

  55. 55.

    Victoria Cirlot, Hildegarde de Bingen et la tradition visionnaire de l’Occident (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016), 66–69.

  56. 56.

    Hadewijch, Das Buch, 177–185. ‘The seven gifts are seven signs of love, but the eighth is the Divine Touch, giving fruition, which does away with everything that pertains to reason, so that the loved one becomes one with their Beloved’, Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 300.

  57. 57.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit (Munich & Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1990), Band I, Buch I, XLVI, 28–34. ‘The bride has five kingdoms. The first are her eyes. They are founded in tears and adorned with restraint. The second are thoughts. They are founded in struggle and are adorned with good counsel. The third is speaking. It is founded in usefulness and is adorned with trust. The fourth is hearing. It is founded in the Word of God and is adorned with consolation. The fifth is touch. It is founded in strength and is adorned with noble habit’. Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. by Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 64.

  58. 58.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch V, IV, 1–4. ‘O wondrous Love of God, you possess great sacred power, you illumine the soul, teach the senses, and bestow full strength on all virtues’, Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 182.

  59. 59.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch V, IV, 11–15. ‘This love passes through the senses and storms the soul with all its might. All the while that love grows in the soul, it ascends to God longingly and, richly flowing, opens up to receive the wonder that is approaching. It dissolves through the soul into the senses. Then does the body gain its share, so that it is refined with respect to all things’, Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 182.

  60. 60.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch V, IV, 29-31. ‘… so as does the sun when it descends from its highest point and sinks down into the night’, Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 183.

  61. 61.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch V, XI, 28. ‘No, dear Sister, before all else you must have an open mind’, Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 189.

  62. 62.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch VI, XXXVI, 1–7. ‘One cannot grasp divine gifts with merely human understanding. And so they sin who do not keep their spirit open to invisible truth. What one is able to see with the eyes of the flesh, hear with the ears of the flesh, and say with one’s fleshly mouth is as utterly different from the open truth of the loving soul as light from wax is from the bright sun’. Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, 261.

  63. 63.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch VII, XV, 2.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., Band I, Buch II, XXIV, 85. Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light, 92.

  65. 65.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch III, I, 31–33. The Flowing Light, 102: ‘He took her in his divine arms and laid his fatherly hand on her breast and looked her in the face. Well, was she kissed at all? In the Kiss she was drawn up to the most sublime heights above all the angel choirs’.

  66. 66.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch III, XV, 14. The flowing light, 122: ‘… I must go to meet you and caress you with my divine nature as my one and only queen’.

  67. 67.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch II, XXV, 55–56. The Flowing Light, 94: ‘No matter how softly I caress you,/I inflict immense pain on your poor body’.

  68. 68.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band II, 43.

  69. 69.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch VI, V, 1–2. The Flowing, 231: ‘The first knowledge that God gave me, after touching me with love and after the flood of desire, was accompanied by sorrow’.

  70. 70.

    Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, Band I, Buch V, VIII, 1–2. The Flowing, 186: ‘No one knows what consolation or suffering or longing is unless he is touched by these three himself’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Cirlot

  2. Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Blanca Garí

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  1. Victoria Cirlot
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  2. Blanca Garí
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Correspondence to Victoria Cirlot .

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  1. Universitetet i Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    David Carrillo-Rangel

  2. Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel

  3. Heinrich-Heine-Universität-Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Pablo Acosta-García

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Cirlot, V., Garí, B. (2019). ConTact. Tactile Experiences of the Sacred and the Divinity in the Middle Ages. In: Carrillo-Rangel, D., Nieto-Isabel, D., Acosta-García, P. (eds) Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experience in the Late Middle Ages . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26029-3_9

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