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Mechthild of Magdeburg
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Thirteenth century Beguine and, in her last years, a nun at the convent of Helfta, whose book The Flowing Light of the Godhead is the first work of mystical theology written in German. She wrote in Middle Low German at a point when the language had almost no religious literature of its own, mixing verse, dialogue, vision and blunt complaint, and she was as willing to attack corrupt clergy as to describe the soul dancing with God. She wrote, she says, because a confessor told her to, and against her own judgement that a woman writing such things would be punished for it.
Facts
Life
Lifespan or Floruit Office HeldA Beguine who in her last years became a nun at the convent of Helfta. 1 Place of ActivityMagdeburg as a Beguine, and the Cistercian convent of Helfta in her last years 1 Publications
Notable PublicationThe Flowing Light of the Godhead, the first work of mystical theology written in German 1 Disputed
Lifespan or FloruitThe source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date. Attestation
HistoricityHistorically attested, chiefly through her own book and the records of the convent at Helfta. The original Middle Low German text is lost; the work survives in a later Alemannic version and in a Latin translation of six of its seven books Attributions
TraditionBeguine, then Cistercian 1 Position Profile
Key TextHer Flowing Light of the Godhead, written originally in Middle Low German rather than Latin, is among the earliest surviving mystical texts by a woman in that vernacular, blending visionary prose and verse across its seven books. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionHer visionary writing uses the erotic language of courtly love poetry to describe the soul's union with God, a bridal mysticism that reads divine encounter through the vocabulary of secular romance literature circulating in her own century. 1 History
Historical NoteIn her final years at Helfta she likely knew the younger nun and mystic Gertrude the Great, whose writing made the same convent, within a generation, one of the most important centers of medieval women's mystical literature in Europe. 1 Learn More
The First Mystical Book Written in German
The Flowing Light of the Godhead was composed over about thirty years and it does not look like a treatise. It is assembled from short pieces in many forms: dialogues between the Soul and Love, or the Soul and God, verse, prayer, vision, allegory, satire, and stretches of straightforward complaint. The material is arranged in seven books, the last written when Mechthild was old and going blind and dictating.
Its historical importance is partly linguistic. She wrote in Middle Low German, a language that in the middle of the thirteenth century had almost no theological vocabulary, so where a Latin writer would reach for an established term she has to build an image instead. That constraint produces the book's characteristic manner: God as a flowing light, the soul as a bride at a dance, desire described in the erotic register of the Song of Songs and pressed much further than a Latin commentator would have pressed it.
She is also unsparing about the church of her day. Corrupt clergy are attacked directly and by name of office, canons are compared to goats, and she reports being warned that the book would be burned. She answers, in the text, that she wrote because her confessor commanded it and because she was told to by God, which is the standard defence a medieval woman writer had available and which she deploys with some skill.
Helfta, and a Text That Survives at One Remove
Mechthild lived most of her adult life as a Beguine in Magdeburg, under the direction of Dominicans, and moved late in life to the Cistercian convent at Helfta, where she died. Helfta at that moment was extraordinary: a house of unusually educated nuns which within one generation produced Gertrude the Great and Mechthild of Hackeborn as well as sheltering Mechthild of Magdeburg, so that three substantial bodies of mystical writing come out of a single small community. The convent supported her, and the final book of the Flowing Light was written there.
The transmission of the text is the complication. The original Middle Low German has not survived. What survives complete is a translation into Alemannic German made within a few decades at Basel, together with a Latin translation of the first six books produced by Dominicans. Everything read today therefore passes through at least one other hand, and the Latin version reorders and tidies its material.
The consequence is that arguments about her precise wording, and about how far the surviving text represents what she dictated, cannot be fully settled. What is not in doubt is the priority: a woman writing mystical theology in a German vernacular in the thirteenth century, before Eckhart preached in German and before any comparable body of work existed in the language.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The two founding voices of vernacular Beguine mysticism, writing within a few decades of one another in German and in Middle Dutch.
Belongs to Tradition
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