‘Melting in divine love like wax before the fire.’

— Mechthild of Hackeborn, 13th C.

Three Love Mystics

Three medieval women mystics whom I love and want to honour have feasts days that fall next week on the 16th and 19th November. They are, Mechthild of Magdeburg, a Beguine, and Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude of Helfta, both Benedictine nuns from the famous monastery at Helfta. That monastery was led by Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn a remarkable and visionary feminist leader living centuries before her time. The women mystics were contemporaries who lived in 13th century Germany. Mechthild of Magdeburg, the eldest of them, had a mystical awakening in childhood and left home aged 20 to live with the Beguines in Magdeburg where she wrote of her mystical life in the vernacular to make it accessible to ordinary people in the area. Her book is called The Flowing Light of the Godhead and it’s nothing short of a miracle that a copy of it was found in the 1800’s, 600 years after it was essentially lost or discarded. Mechthild spent the last ten years of her life in the monastery at Helfta, bringing her Beguine boldness and mystical courage to the monastery and inspiring the younger nuns to begin their own mystical writing.

Mechthild of Magdeburg became close friends with Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude, and definitely influenced and inspired the nuns, and indeed the whole monastery, to embrace their mystical lives and to write their own mystical books. Mechthild of Hackeborn’s book is called The Book of Special Grace, and Gertrude’s is commonly known as The Herald of Divine Love. The three women are among the earliest ‘love mystics’ of Christianity and together their three texts are widely recognised as constituting the greatest ever medieval mystical corpus. I wrote my MA dissertation on their trailblazing mystical texts and I continue to rely on their guidance in my own journey of awakening. Their writing sets my heart on fire every time I read them, and I hope you will enjoy meeting, or reconnecting, with them below.

Each of the three women broke new ground with their mystical lives and also as literate women writing books in age when it was rare for women to do so. It was also forbidden for women to claim any religious or spiritual authority so their bomystical texts are a testament to their remarkable sense of independence and sovereignty, and their sidestepping of the patriarchy and the institutional church’s control of women and their writing. In particualr, they were at the vanguard of a new style of msytical writing which was vibrant, imagistic, sensual, erotic, and embodied and that contrasted sharply with the established, normative style of mystical texts written by monastic male mystics which were generally austere, ascetic, verging on silent, and apophatic.

Before the explosion of these women’s new style of visionary mysticism the writing of only a few women mystics had ever been recorded. One woman who had broken the mold before them was the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen in the 11th century. The three women, therefore, inaugurated a radically new era of visionary mystical experience and writing in Europe that was soon to be lost to ‘witch’ burnings and the further silencing of women by the church and patriarchy. Our three women died within only a couple of years of each other - Mechthild of Magdeburg died in either 1282 or 1294, Mechthild of Hackeborn in 1298, and Gertrude in 1301. The first burning of women began in 1310 with the burning of the mystic Marguertie Porete in Paris. Remarkably, however, their books, and Marguerite’s Mirror of Simple Souls, are enjoying a strong recovery and resurgence of popularity in our times.

Mechthild and the Helfta mystics’ writing is powerful, affective, and beautiful as it describes their intimate mystical experiences with Christ, especially through their distinctive living symbol of the Sacred Heart. They were also the first to experience the particular gift known as the exchange of the Sacred Heart, a gift that interestingly, has only ever been reported by women mystics. They are the foremothers of Marguerite Marie Alacoque (17th century) whom Christ tasked, against all the odds, with ensuring the establishment of the feast of the Sacred Heart in Catholicism, including the perceived controversial offer of his Heart to be extended to all of humanity. 

A particularly beautiful feature of the mystical exchange of the Sacred Heart is that the gift of Christ’s heart is freely given to each of the women. It doesn’t depend on the women (or anyone) climbing a ladder to God like Guigo, or following a difficult path through an interior castle with St. Teresa of Ávila. Rather, it is a free and reciprocal exchange based entirely on love. Love alone is what mediates the women’s  mystical transformation. Christ takes his heart in his hands and gives it to his mystic brides, lovers, and beloveds, taking their hearts for his own, in every way enacting a mystical marriage of love. 

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead opens with a moving dialogue of love between her and God whom she styles as Lady Love. Then Mechthild writes of her longing for God, and what she experiences in response, 

With great longing he reveals to her his divine heart. It resembles red gold burning in a great fire of coals. He places her into his glowing heart. When the exalted Sovereign and the little waif thus embrace and are united as water and wine, she turns to nothing and is transported out of herself. When she has no strength left, he is as lovesick for her as he always was; for he neither increases nor decreases. Thus she says:

“Lord, you are my lover, my desire, my flowing fount, my sun; and I am your reflection.” (Bk 1, ch.4., 43 – 44.)

Elsewhere, Mechthild prays, ‘Lord, because I have no earthly treasure, I do not have an earthly heart either. For you, Lord, are my treasure, just as you are also my heart.’ In another place she says,

'I too … have flowed forth spiritually from your heart … was born in the flesh from your side ….'
…
'Lord, heavenly Father, you are my heart. 
Lord, Jesus Christ, you are my body.
Lord Holy Spirit, you are my breath.'
(Bk 5, ch.6, 185 – 86.)

Mechthild of Hackeborn in The Book of Special Grace, on the feast of the Annunciation records,

'Finally he united his honey-sweet heart to the Soul’s heart, granting all his exercise of meditation, devotion, and love; …. Thus her whole soul was incorporated into Christ. Melting in divine love like wax before the fire, (Ps 67:3), she put on his likeness, being wholly absorbed in God just as wax is imprinted with a seal. In this way, that blessed Soul became completely one with her Beloved.’ (Bk 1. Ch 1., 39.)

Gertrude, in her book Herald of Divine Love, also offers beautiful descriptions of the reciprocal movement of her heart into God, when she says, 

'In addition to all these favors, you granted me the priceless gift of your familiar friendship, giving me in various ways, to my indescribable delight, the noblest treasure of the divinity, your divine heart, now bestowing it freely, now as a sign of our mutual familiarity, exchanging it with mine.' (Bk 2, ch. 23, 128 – 134, 130 -31.)

Another day, when Christ was unable to bear Gertrude’s sadness over some issue, 

‘[He] gave her, with his own hands as it were, his divine heart in the form of a lighted lamp, saying: “Behold, here is my heart, …. From now on my heart will always cleave to you.”’ (Bk 3. Ch. 25, 188 – 89.)

Speaking of Gertrude to another nun in the monastery, Christ said,

'“The love of my divinity unites her inseparably with me, as the heat of the fire unites gold and silver to make an alloy.” […] “Her heart pulsates continuously with the heartbeat of my love.”' (Bk 1. Ch. 3., 58-59.)

Everything about these women mystics was extraordinary. The beauty of their books reflect the beauty of their mystical lives and provide remarkable testimony for the living, embodied awakening to love in Christ that is offered to every one of us. They describe their experiences of the light that flows from the heart of God as love, and that flows freely, in every second, through every element of creation, seeking lovers who will receive and return the gift. It’s an honour to write of them and to share some of their writing with you. Blessings of their feasts days to all who might read this. 

All quotes taken from: Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love. Translated and edited by Margaret Winkworth. New York; NJ: Paulist Press, 1993; Mechthild of Hackeborn. The Book of Special Grace. Translated and Introduction by Barbara Newman. New York; NJ: Paulist Press, 2017; Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of The Godhead. Translated and Introduction by Frank Tobin. NJ: Paulist Press, 1998.

Image: Fourth dimension, Mariusz Lewandowski.