This book explores the rich and varied mystical writings by and about medieval and 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.
This book explores the rich and varied mystical writings by and about medieval and early modern women across Western Europe.
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 Bingens 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 Nazareths Seven Manners of Love and Ida of Nivelles
Eight Topics of Contemplation
8. Spiritual Edifices: Beatrice of Nazareths
Monastery of the Heart and Agnes Blannbekins 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 Norwichs 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
John Arblaster is Associate Professor of the history of spirituality in the Low Countries at the Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp and Assistant Visiting Professo rat the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven.
Rob Faesen is Jesuitica Chair Emeritus at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, and the Francis Xavier Chair at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, and is also Professor Emeritus at the Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp.
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