Abstract
The new genre of the “book of life” results from the cooperation of (prophetic) women whose experiential knowledge is embodied as experientia and articulated as prophetia with learned men.
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Notes
On Eve and Juliana, see Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005)
Jean-Pierre Delville, ed., Fête-Dieu (1246–1996) II: Vie de Sainte Julienne de Cornillon (Louvain-La-Neuve and Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).
Anneliese Stoklaska, “Weibliche Religiosität im mittelalterlichen Wien unter bes. Berücksichtigung der Agnes Blannbekin,” in Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter Bauer (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), pp. 165–84
Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, 4 vols (Munich: Beck, 1990–99)
Peter Dinzelbacher and Renate Vogeler, eds. and trans., Leben und Offenbarungen der Wiener Begine Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1315), Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 419 (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1994).
Ulrike Wiethaus, Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese Beguine, Life and Revelations (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2002).
Cate Gunn, “‘A recluse atte Norwyche’: Images of Medieval Norwich and Julian’s Revelations,” and Alexandra Barratt, “‘No such sitting’: Julian Tropes the Trinity,” in A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 32–41
Cf. Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–117
Jeffrey Hamburger collected in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998)
Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say: ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005): 1–44
The Chronicle Annales Palidenses published in the MGH SS 16:90 noted for the year 1158: “two women... were filled with the spirit of prophecy.” Cf. Paul Alphandéry, “Prophètes et ministère prophétique dans le Moyen Age latin,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 12 (1932): 334–359
André Vauchez, Saints, prophètes et visionaries: Le Pouvoir surnaturel au Moyen Age (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999)
Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaires (York: York Medieval Press/Boydel & Brewer, 1999).
Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 18
Hugh of Saint-Cher, De Prophetia, in Théorie de la prophétie et philosophie de la connaissance aux environs de 1230: La contribution d’Hugues de Saint-Cher (Ms. Douai 434, Question 481), ed. Jean-Pierre Torrel (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovanense, 1977)
Dinzelbacher and Vogeler, Leben und Offenbarungen, chapter 187, trans. Wiethaus, p. 127, where the editor explains: “The visual sense of the soul is contemplation, through which she sees God and uncertain and hidden matters are shown her [first stage]. The soul’s sense of hearing [of the voice within] is intelligence, through which the soul receives Divine revelations within and understands them without an interpreter [second stage].” He also identifies this as an “auditory experience.” Prior to all this, there is a preliminary stage in which Agnes had visions but could not remember them, not to mention interpret them. This was before she collaborated with the confessor, or rather before she had reached the age of discretion. On this age of discretion, see Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Renée Nip, eds., The Prime of their Lives: Wise, Old Women in Pre-Industrial Society (Louvain: Peeters, 2004).
A good example occurs in ibid., chapter 108. Cf. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350) (New York: Crossroad, 1998), p. 30
Aaron J. Gurjewitsch [Gurevic], Himmlisches und Irdisches Leben: Bildwelten des schriftlosen Menschen im 13. Jahrhundert: Die Exempel, trans. Erhard Glier (Amsterdam and Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1997), pp. 55–128.
Ibid., chapter 135, trans. Wiethaus, p. 134. Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Inner Experience in Christian Mysticism,” Spiritus 1 (2001): 164 [156-171]
In her commentary to the translation: Wiethaus, p. 164. As Mary Suydam remarks in “Beguine Textuality: Sacred Performances,” in Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, ed. Mary Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 176
Mary Douglas, Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste (London: Sage, 1996)
Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
James of Vitry, The Life of Mary of Oignies 2.48, trans. Margot H. King, in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 84 [33-127].
In his investigation into the new emphasis on visions and revelations in some saints’ Lives Peter Dinzelbacher continued to refer to them as vitae. Dinzelbacher, “Die ‘Vita et revelationes’ der Wiener Begine Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1315) im Rahmen der Viten-und Offenbarungsliteratur ihrer Zeit,” in Frauenmystik im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer (Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1985), pp. 152–177.
Current definitions are found in Claude Brémond, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’Exemplum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), pp. 37–38
Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses, pp. 139–140; cf. Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife. Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 57–61.
McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, p. 17. Amy Hollywood, in her review of Wiethaus’ translation, has similarly remarked: “Although the text has been read as hagiographical, it can also be understood as a collaboratively-produced devotional text, closer in its hybrid genre to the works of Hadewijch, Mechthild, and Marguerite than to thirteenth-century beguine and Cistercian hagiographers,” in Spiritus 4 (2004), p. 97 [91-97]
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© 2009 Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Liz Herbert McAvoy
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Mulder-Bakker, A.B. (2009). Two Women of Experience, Two Men of Letters, and the Book of Life. In: Mulder-Bakker, A.B., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230620735_5
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