MECHTHILD VON MAGDEBURG

(ca. 1207–1282)

Mechthild was born around 1207 as the daughter of a noble family of lower rank; she lived near Magdeburg and apparently received a good courtly education. There in 1230, she moved into a house of Beguines (a kind of voluntary convent for women without the strict rules and the vows of a traditional convent). As a 12-year-old Mechthild had already experienced religious visions, but she waited until 1250 before writing them down in response to a request from her confessor, Heinrich von Halle. This huge collection of visions, herLicht der fließenden Gottheit(Flowing Light of the Godhead), became one of the most important contributions to medieval mystical literature because of the intricate combination of the erotic and the religious.In many visions Mechthild reports intimate encounters with Christ, who asks that her soul come to bed with him to make love. During the 1260s,Mechthild suffered from many setbacks, caused both by severe illness and the public opposition against Beguines, especially by the church authorities. In 1270, Mechthild joined the Cistercian women’s convent Helfta, near Eisleben.Helfta was, at that time, a major center of women’s learning under the famous abbess Gertrud the Great. Mechthild inspired Gertrud and also the nun Mechthild von Hackeborn to write down their own mystical visions. Mechthild von Magdeburg died in 1282.

The original Middle Low German text of herLicht der fließenden Gottheitis lost today. In its place we have a Middle High German translation written sometime between 1343 and 1345 in Basel, probably by Heinrich von Nördlingen (extant in only one manuscript). Unusual for a woman’s mystical text,Mechthild’s book was also translated into Latin. Mechthild relied on many different sources to express her visions, such as texts by AUGUSTINE, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Joachim of Fiore. Drawing from her literary education in her youth, she also utilized erotic courtly poetry to formulate the religious experiences in her visions.

■ Andersen, Elizabeth A.The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000.

■ Mechthild von Magdeburg. ‘Das fließende Licht der Gottheit’.Nach der Einsiedler Handschrift in kritischem Vergleich mit der gesamten Überlieferung. Edited by Hans Neumann. 2 vols. Munich: Artemis, 1990.

■ ———.The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Translated by Frank Tobin. With a preface by Margot Schmidt. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.