Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-28T05:36:31.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Eroticism and Pain in Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Emily Hunter McGowin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents an introduction to the rhetoric of eroticism and pain in the theology of medieval mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1208-c. 1282/94), author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead. A survey of select texts from TFL is presented, with a focused analysis of Book IV, Chapter 12, where pain is cast in the role of a courtly intermediary between Christ and the soul. It is argued that a deeper consideration of this chapter provides significant insight into Mechthild's overall conception of pain in relation to the divine. Moreover, she writes with a coherent mystical theology of pain situated firmly within the Christian liturgy and narrative tradition.

Keywords

MechthildPainSufferingEroticMysticism
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 92 , Issue 1041 , September 2011 , pp. 607 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Council. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2010, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1991.Google Scholar
Flynn, Maureen. The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer 1996): 257–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollywood, Amy. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Jantzen, Grace M. Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism. Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Martin, Paul. The Body in the Realm of Desire: Gendered Images on the Horizon of the Divine. Mystics Quarterly. Vol. 30. Nos. 3–4 (Sept-Dec 2004): 96–121.Google Scholar
McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism—1200–1350. New York: Crossroad, 1998.Google Scholar
Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of the Godhead. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Trans. Tobin, Frank. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Miller, Julie B. Eroticized Violence in Medieval Women's Mystical Literature: A Call for Feminist Critique. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Vol. 15, No. 2 (Fall 1999): 25–49.Google Scholar
Neville, David O. The Bodies of the Bride: The Language of Incarnation, Transcendence, and Time in the Poetic Theology of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Mystics Quarterly. Vol 34, Nos. 1–2 (Jan-Apr 2008): 1–34.Google Scholar
Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobin, Frank. Mechthild von Magdeburg: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes. Literary Criticism in Perspective. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995.Google Scholar