[This entry is for the class on November 3, “Mater sponsi, sponsa Dei.” The readings were from Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Gertrude of Helfta. I focus on Mechthild here, though.]
Looking through Mechthild’s writing again, I noticed how frequently she uses the word “love.” On pages 52-53, for examples, the word love appears 18 times. This isn’t particularly surprising, given the focus on love in the New Testament and in Christian tradition, but Mechthild seems to talk about it more than other figures whose work we’ve read. In her retelling of the Passion narrative, Mechthild distinguishes between its effects on the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. While both suffer because of their love for Christ, Mary Magdalene is inconsolable because she has “simple love without lofty knowledge” (203). The Virgin Mary is unique because she has both love and knowledge. Mechthild claims that Mary spoke to “our Lord” and “his Godhead then answered her sometimes” (203). Does this mean that Mary can talk to Jesus because she is close to him or is Mechthild implying that she has special communication with God in a non-earthly sense? I read it as the latter at first, perhaps because “Godhead” is not a term I particularly associate with Jesus. Perhaps Mechthild is inclined to view Mary as the recipient of divine knowledge because of Mechthild’s own experience of visions. In any case, she describes the Virgin Mary’s combined and special traits of both love and knowledge, which together allow her to bear the grief of her son’s death. Others may love him, but they lack Mary’s unique knowledge.
What is interesting to me about this is that Mary is not characterized just in terms of her love and devotion to Christ but as a figure of knowledge, perhaps in reference to her association with Wisdom. Mechthild writes, “of all humankind her heart was most deeply filled with divine knowledge” (204). Mechthild then connects this trait to virgins, who “preserve their chastity out of love for God” (204). “They are able to move the heavenly Father on our behalf because they bear his likeness fully in themselves” (204). This quote strikes me as a radical interpretation of virgins’ special access to God. Like Mary (though not necessarily in imitation of her), virgins have a special relationship with God because they are a reflection of God on earth. Each of the four female authors here (Elisabeth, Gertrude, Mechthild, and Hildegard) have a connection to Mary (and God?) because of their merits and devotion. Some of them have visions of biblical figures and events because, like Mary, they have both an aptitude and a calling.
Mechthild presents an image of Mary suckling the “pure lamb…from her heart” (75). Later she feeds Christ with “the sweetness flowing from her pure heart” (199). Virgins seem to have a similar role of sustaining Christ with love in Mechthild’s account. Is this capability specific to female virgins? I suspect that isn’t the case for any of the four authors, given their close relationships with brothers, confessors, etc., but there also seems to be a slightly different relationship between the women in these texts and Mary because of their ability to have visions.
I keep thinking about our discussion of Marina Warner in class. While it seems to me that she likely applied aspects of her own experience to radically different contexts, I’m tempted in each reading for this class to question what the depictions of Mary mean for the author’s (and by extension, their society’s) perceptions of gender. To me, religion plays a hugely significant role in the construction, legitimation, and maintenance of gender ideologies—though to be clear, I think perceptions of gender also contribute to religious understandings and practices; the relationship between them isn’t in any way straightforward. Part of me wants to believe that as anachronistic as some of Warner’s ideas may be too much of the history of Christianity, it still means something that two exalted roles of Mary are contradictory for other women. Granted, these aren’t the only roles of Mary and she means more than her relational position. However, each of the cultures in which our sources were produced featured inequality—sometimes incredibly pervasive and harmful—between men and women. Both men and women could be devoted to Mary and feel particular kinship with her, but ultimately none of these women could be priests and very little of their writing, much less their direct, unfiltered thoughts, survives.
Much of the material in this class points to previously unexamined symbols and conceptions of Mary, but I keep finding myself wanting to make sure that the possibility isn’t lost that perceptions of the Mother of God had an influence on the way women in general were perceived. It’s a different question than the ones we focus on (for good reason, since the things we talk about in class have often been ignored), but it’s one that remains important to me. Has anyone else been struggling with similar ideas? They seem apt for this class session, since the authors are all women.