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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Scholars agree that European Christians in the thirteenth century were enthusiastically devoted to the Virgin Mary. Even when they debated Mary's immaculate conception or her assumption body and soul into heaven, medieval Christians are not thought to have wavered in their desire to rely on her intercessory powers. While today some argue that Mary's virginal maternity set an impossible ideal for women and that her place below the Trinity sanctioned women's subordinate role within Christianity, medieval women supposedly did not assess Mary negatively. Given these widely held assumptions about thirteenth-century attitudes toward Mary, any uncertainty about honoring Mary warrants investigation. Any thirteenth-century Christian who rarely sought Mary's direct intercession but instead asked Christ to intercede with Mary deserves study. Attention especially ought to be given when questions about devotion to Mary are found in an unexpected place: the writings of a female saint renowned for her orthodoxy.
1. For Mary in the High Middle Ages, see Graef, Hilda, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (Westminster, Md., 1963), 1:162–345; andGoogle ScholarMaria in der Welt: Marienverehrung im Kontext der Sozialgeschichte 10–18. Jahrhundert, ed. Optiz, Claudia et al. , (Zurich, Switzerland, 1993).Google ScholarFor a focus on Mary and women, see Maria—für alle Frauen oder uber alien Frauen?, ed. Gössman, Elisabeth and Bauer, Dieter (Basel, Switzerland, 1989), esp. pp. 63–115;Google ScholarRuether, Rosemary Radford, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston, Mass., 1983), esp. pp. 139–158;Google ScholarSchirmer, Eva, Eva-Maria: Rollenbilder von Mannern fur Frauen (Offenbach, Germany, 1988);Google ScholarSchopsdau, Walter, Mariologie und Feminismus (Göttingen, Germany, 1985); andGoogle ScholarWarner, Marina, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York, 1976).Google Scholar
2. For the Latin critical texts and a French translation, see d'Helfta, Gertrude, Oeuvres Spirituelles, Sources chrétiennes 127, 139, 145, 255, and 331 (Paris, 1967–1986):Google ScholarLes Exercices, ed. Hourlier, J. and Schmitt, A. (1967) [henceforth E];Google ScholarLe Heraut (Books 1–3, 2 vols.), ed. Doyere, R (1968) [henceforth H I, II, or III]; Le Heraut (Books 4–5, 2 vols.), ed. Clement, J-M., the nuns of Wisques, and B. de Vregille (1978, 1986) [henceforth H IV or V].Google ScholarAlthough my arguments are based on the Latin texts, for ease of access I have also included references to and quoted from the readily available, recent English translations of the Spiritual Exercises by Lewis, Gertrud Jaron and Lewis, Jack (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1989) [henceforth SE]; and of Books 1, 2, and parts of 3 ofGoogle ScholarThe Herald of Divine Love by Margaret Winkworth (New York, 1993) [henceforth HD]. Otherwise, all translations are my own. See also the recent, fine translation of Books 1 and 2 by Alexandra BarrattGoogle Scholar, The Herald of God's Loving-Kindness (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1991); andGoogle Scholaran excerpted translation by a nun of Kenmare, The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude (1862; repr. Westminster, Md., 1983).Google Scholar
3. For more information on Gertrude and the other women of Helfta, see Bynum, Caroline Walker, “Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta, ”Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), pp. 170–262;Google ScholarFinnegan, Mary Jeremy, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics, (Athens, Ga., 1991); andGoogle ScholarSchmitt, Miriam, “Gertrude of Helfta: Her Monastic Milieu and Her Spirituality,” andGoogle ScholarMcCabe, Maureen, “The Scriptures and Personal Identity: A Study in the Exercises of Saint Gertrude,” in Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic Women, book 2, Medieval Religious Women III, ed. Nichols, John A. and Shank, Lillian Thomas (n.p.: Cistercian Publications, 1995), pp. 417–509.Google Scholar
4. Although influenced by the Cistercians, Helfta was founded in 1258, thirty years after the Cistercian General Chapter forbade the founding of new communities of Cistercian nuns. According to H I, 216 (HD, 85), Gertrude had been “exiled” from all her relatives so there was “no one who would love her for the sake of the ties of blood.”
5. See Finnegan, , The Women of Helfta, pp. 11–61Google Scholar
6. For a fuller treatment, see Bynum, Jesus as Mother, esp. pp. 196–209.
7. Gertrude repeatedly asked for revelations, and she reported so many that the nun(s) organized the later visions under a variety of headings—the feast days on which they occurred, the people they concerned, the spiritual gifts they revealed, and the visions' central images. These visions may have been edited by the nun(s) who wrote them down, but I have not identified any contradictions between these later visions and the earlier ones in Gertrude's autobiography. However, since Marian visions are more numerous in the later collection, what I am calling Gertrude's understanding of Mary may also reflect the views of another nun or nuns at Helfta.
8. When in her autobiography Gertrude enumerated the revelations she considered pivotal for her spiritual development—her initial visions, receiving the stigmata of Christ in her heart, and a “wounding” with divine love—she did not mention any experiences involving Mary.
9. Gertrude also used the traditional Marian titles “mediatrix of the mediator of God and man” and “mother of mercy” in her autobiography. When addressing Christ in a vision, Gertrude referred to Mary as Christ's “Blessed Mother” and Christ's “most glorious Mother.”
10. Whether women can imitate the Virgin Mother is a much debated question today. See for example Ruether, , Sexism and God-Talk (Boston, Mass., 1983), pp. 139–158; andGoogle ScholarWarner, , Alone of All Her Sex (New York, 1976).Google Scholar Gertrude clearly thought this imitation was possible. Gertrude's identification of Chantress Mechtild and Abbess Gertrude with Mary as “virgin mothers” was particularly pronounced in visions she had at their deaths. When the chantress Mechtild died, Gertrude saw Christ place one of Mary's necklaces on Mechtild, “giving her this special privilege so that she might be called Mother and Virgin, like his Virgin Mother, because with chaste zeal she had given birth to the memory of him in many hearts” (H V, 92). At the abbess's death, Gertrude asked Christ to show the abbess the same affection he had given to his own mother when she departed her body, since the abbess had been a mother to the nuns (H V, 40–42).
11. The series of Christmas visions cannot be precisely dated, but Gertrude was not yet thirty when she experienced the first of them.
12. For an excellent assessment of the physicality of medieval women's visions, see Bynum, , “The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), pp. 181–238.Google Scholar For a discussion of similar visions in fourteenth-century Dominican convent literature, see Rosemary Hale, “Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs,” Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990): 193–203. Apdy labeling these visions “mother mysticism,” Hale rightly compares these experiences of mothering the infant Christ to the better-known experiences of union in “bride mysticism”; see esp. p. 193.
13. Although Gertrude usually expressed guilt about her neglect of Mary, she sometimes also worried that she neglected other saints. In one vision, Christ assured her that she would not be deprived of consolations because she focused on him alone, but rather the saints
14. Almost always envisioning Mary in her regal form as the Queen of Heaven, Gertrude only rarely saw Mary as she had been in her earthly life, even though many of Gertrude's visions were connected with feast days commemorating events in the life of Mary. Apart from the early Christmas season visions and another time Gertrude felt she was assisting at the birth f Christ (H II, 256–258; HD, 104—discussed below), the only scene from the life of Mary that Gertrude felt she witnessed was Mary's purification (H IV, 114–116). Sometimes Gertrude imagined that Christ reminded Mary of episodes from her earthly life (H IV, 132, 360–362), but Gertrude did not see the events reenacted. Once Gertrude saw the immaculate womb of the Virgin like a transparent crystal filled with divinity, but this was said to be seeing Mary in glory (H IV, 50–52). In her focus on the heavenly Mary, Gertrude differed from mystics like Margery of Kempe and Bridget of Sweden, who felt they witnessed biblical events involving Mary.
15. Gertrude often had visions of Christ's heart. For her as an early exponent of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, see Barratt, The Herald, pp. 19–25; and Finnegan, The Women, pp. 131–143.
16. This vision ended with Gertrude lamenting that she could not receive communion daily like a priest could, and Christ assuring her that her reward was greater than that of “a priest who celebrates merely out of habit” (H III, 176; HD, 207). Compare the vision of Gertrude receiving the Christ-child much as Mary had in H II, 256–258; HD, 104.
17. Although Gertrude did not need Mary to reveal the maternal side of God, Mary may often have fulfilled this role in Christian history.
18. In her landmark study Jesus as Mother, Bynum argued that men like Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux used maternal imagery for Christ and for themselves when they wished to emphasize traits of tenderness, closeness, and union; see “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing,” pp. 110–169. For Gertrude, in contrast, Bynum points out that motherhood was “stern as well as comforting”; see “Women Mystics,” esp. pp. 208–209, 227, 252–253. In her later study, “The Female in Body, Bynum developed this theme further by showing that “medieval thinkers used gender imagery fluidly, not literally” (p. 218). My comments on Christ as mother amplify Bynum's insight. In Gertrude's vision, although Christ often described himself as a mother, he rarely said he was like a father. See the unusual image of God comparing himself to a father who lavished special affection and gifts on a child who lacked the attainments of the others in his family (H II, 301; HD, 119). See also H III, 164–166; HD, 204–205.
19. See H III, 250–252; HD, 226–227; H III, 288–290, 336, and 346; and H V, 136. Although “the child” often suffered in this purification process, Mother Christ did not. In contrast to later female mystics like Julian of Norwich, Gertrude did not draw a parallel between the pains Christ suffered on the cross and the pains of a mother giving birth. Having been given to the monastery as a child, Gertrude considered the abbess to be her mother, so Gertrude's idea of motherhood may reflect her view of the abbess. For a more general discussion of motherhood, see Atkinson, Clarissa W., The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), esp. p. 143.Google Scholar
20. H III, 250–252; HD, 226. Also comforting were three other visions in which Christ described himself as a mother: H III, 28; HD, 160; H IV, 88; H V, 132. In these visions Christ might also be compared with Mercy and Cherishing-love, two virtues Gertrude personified as mothers in the Spiritual Exercises: E 7, 260; SE 123; E 7, 280; SE 132.
21. See esp. the numerous visions in H IV, 370–388.
22. In one vision Gertrude saw Mary press the Christ-child to the soul of each sister in the choir. Some of the nuns held his head carefully, a sign of their good will; others, who had imperfect wills, let his head hang down awkwardly (HIV, 52–54). Here Mary appears as the mother of Christ, not the nuns, perhaps to reveal their spiritual state.
23. Before Mary embraced the soul of the dying abbess, she recounted the great delight she had experienced when Christ held her in his arms as she lay dying. Then Jesus explained to Gertrude that he had embraced Mary because she had sighed so deeply in remembering his passion. Thus, to gain the merit of his embrace, the abbess would have to become more like Mary by suffering with sorrowful sighs—and so the abbess suffered in agony the entire day of her death (H V, 40–42). This is one of the few instances when Gertrude mentions Mary's sufferings and the only time when the imitation of Mary was not a joyful experience. At the funeral of the abbess, Gertrude saw Mary, not Christ, embrace the abbess's soul (H V, 40–42).
24. In a vision, Mary promised that if anyone saluted her devoutly as the “White Lily of the Trinity and the fairest Rose of heavenly Bliss,” she would appear to her at the hour of death “in a blossoming of such beauty that she will be wondrously consoled as I reveal to her the bliss of heaven” (H III, 108–110; HD, 185–186).
25. In Gertrude's visionary premonitions of her own death, this connection between Christ's act and Mary's is also apparent: Gertrude sometimes imagined that her head was supported “in the delicate hands” of “the Queen of Virgins” (H V, 256–258); other times she thought Christ himself would comfort her in this way (H V, 206–208). See also note 24.
26. Mary is omitted from only one set of prayers, the fifth exercise.
27. In one prayer, Christ asked Mary for her aid when he entrusted the nuns' virginal purity to Mary's maternal care (E III, 118–120; SE 55). But even in this prayer, Christ was not interceding for the nuns as he had for Gertrude.
28. Bynum has argued that maternal names for God (like those Gertrude used) and devotion to the Virgin did not occur together in medieval texts (Jesus as Mother, p. 141). Gertrude's fear of neglecting Mary caused her to deviate from the typical pattern that Bynum identified.
29. See note 10 above for modern treatments of Mary as “alone of all her sex.”
