An examination of ways in which the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were affected by traditional and contemporary attitudes towards women. The writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe show an awareness of traditional and contemporary attitudes towards women, in particular medieval attitudes towards the female body. This study examines the extent to which they make use of such attitudes in their writing, and investigates the importance of the female body as a means of explaining their mystical experiences and the insight gained from them; in both writers, the female body is central to their writing, leading to a feminised language through which they achieve authority and create a space in which they can be heard, particularly in the context of their religious and mystical experiences. The three archetypal representations of woman in the middle ages, as mother, as whore and as "wise woman", are all clearly present in the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; in examining the ways in which both writers make use of these female categories, McAvoy establishes the extent of their success in resolving the tension between society's expectations of them and their own lived experiences as women and writers. LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Literature, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University

Series Information:
Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture

Series Information:
Garland Medieval Casebooks

This volume explores the extraordinary life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century abbess and prophet whose interests ranged from music to theology to zoology to medicine. These essays-written specifically for this volume-approach Hildegard from a variety of perspectives including gender theory, musicology, art history, the history of science, and comparative studies.

Ramon LLull (1232-1316) was born the son of a prosperous Catalan merchant and spent his youth pursuing worldly pursuits, until a series of powerful visions of Christ moved him to devote his life entirely to serving God. One of his lifelong ambitions was to write a book to counter the "errors of the infidels," to which end he studied Arabic and immersed himself in whatever arabic texts he could obtain. The Book of the Lover is one of the most celebrated works of medieval mystical literature offering a uniquely expressed and moving testimony to the soul's quest for union with God. The 365 paragraphs of "moral metaphors" intended for daily meditation, are written in the style of the Muslim sufis who offer words of love and brief exampla that inspire great devotion. Professor Johnston concisely explains the peculiarities of Llull's idiosyncratic theological and philosophical system and offers the most comprehensive assessment to date of his debt to the Islamic tradition of devotional discourse. In addition, brief notes help to guide the reader's appreciation of the spiritual insight that Llull sought to stimulate with his text. Contains original Latin and Catalan text, translation and commentary.

Ramon LLull (1232-1316) was born the son of a prosperous Catalan merchant and spent his youth pursuing worldly pursuits, until a series of powerful visions of Christ moved him to devote his life entirely to serving God. One of his lifelong ambitions was to write a book to counter the "errors of the infidels," to which end he studied Arabic and immersed himself in whatever arabic texts he could obtain. The Book of the Lover is one of the most celebrated works of medieval mystical literature offering a uniquely expressed and moving testimony to the soul's quest for union with God. The 365 paragraphs of "moral metaphors" intended for daily meditation, are written in the style of the Muslim sufis who offer words of love and brief exampla that inspire great devotion. Professor Johnston concisely explains the peculiarities of Llull's idiosyncratic theological and philosophical system and offers the most comprehensive assessment to date of his debt to the Islamic tradition of devotional discourse. In addition, brief notes help to guide the reader's appreciation of the spiritual insight that Llull sought to stimulate with his text. Contains original Latin and Catalan text, translation and commentary.

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17-I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body-had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs, like the apostle Paul, received in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages, women (such as Catherine of Siena) were described as having stigmata more frequently than were men. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants.

These poems come from the beauty of the glimpsed moment ... a precious jewel held for a short time amid the pain and sorrow of the world, then let go into the bigger picture ... The beauty is what we remember, what gives the moment its significance. It's the way it's always been: to reach the sea, to stand watching, waiting; to know that nothing can be unravelled to its core but is like reflecting where wild flowers gathered in a vase, framed by a shore cottage window make of themselves a sea-wide subject: the beauty of things together. A blackbird sings and the song echoes in fragments of memory. Joy Mead is a member of the Iona Community and the author of The One Loaf, Making Peace in Practice and Poetry, Where are the Altars?, Words and Wonderings and A Way of Knowing, all published by Wild Goose Publications. She has been involved in development education and justice and peace work and occasionally leads creative writing groups.

Dante's masterpiece of literature is well matched by the peerless art of Gustave Dore. Dante and his guides, Virgil and Beatrice, journey through the cantos in an allegory of the passage of the soul through the Afterlife, with the subtle engraving of Dore's illustrations perfectly complementing the movement from darkness through to light.

Powerful and moving readings, stories and poems for Easter. The accounts of scapegoating, of power and violence and hope found in the gospels will always be current and significant. The story of Jesus Christ and of those who surrounded him remains a defining narrative of our time. Using artistic and theological licence, Rachel Mann writes with the voices of the characters involved in the biblical accounts of passion and resurrection. Unafraid to explore the darkest aspects evoked by these events, she says: 'The intention of both the more humorous and the visceral stories is to play with abiding themes of death and new life in ways which - in church contexts at least - break unusual ground. Some readers may find some of the language crude and offensive. It is not my intention to offend or outrage, but - to indicate that there are places and experiences where blasphemy is prayer and prayer is blasphemy.'

Friedrich von Hugel's Mystical Element of Religion remains the authoritative study of the spirituality of Catherine of Genoa. First published in 1908, this seminal work develops the authoris major theory of the three basic elements of religion, institutional, intellectual and mystical. Von Hugel shows how Catherineis mysticism relates to her life and thought, making his comprehensive and masterly two-volume analysis a classic in the study of Western mysticism.

Female mysticism, usually nourished in contemplative surroundings, in Blannbekin's case drew its inspiration from urban life; Weithaus identifies her visions as "street mysticism". This early example of a spiritual diary incorporating the visions of a female mystic offers a glimpse of religious women's daily life and spiritual practices. Her visions comment on memorable events such as a popular bishop's visit to town during which people were trampled to death; the consequences of a rape committed by a priest; thefts of the Eucharist and the work of witches. Christ, for Blannbekin, is not only bridegroom, but also shopkeeper, apothecary, and axe-wielding soldier, and it was her vision of swallowing Christ's foreskin which led to her eventual censorship. Life and Revelations has only relatively recently been rediscovered by Austrian scholar Peter Dinzelbacher, and this translation is based on his critical edition. Ulrike Wiethaus is Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Appointments, Wake Forest University.

Birgitta's religious authority considered, with regard to her prophetic mission and her authenticity as a medium of divine revelation in 14c Europe. This book examines the religious authority of St Birgitta of Sweden, the charismatic moral reformer and controversial female visionary of the fourteenth century, emphasising both representations of her prophetic mission and debates about her authenticity as a medium of divine revelation. It illuminates Birgitta's view of herself as a prophet of moral reform by explaining how her Revelations depict her religious mission and place in salvation history, goingon to reconstruct interactions between Birgitta and her contemporaries, including the significance of her prophetic authority vis-a-vis the priestly authority of her male clerical associates. Finally, it analyses arguments aboutwomen's suitability for mediating the divine word in posthumous attacks and defences of her claims to prophesy. Through a close examination of Birgitta's lengthy Revelations, canonization documents, and texts by her posthumous defenders and detractors, this study demonstrates that members of her audience perceived her to be both a vibrant source of supernatural power and a dangerous transgressor of conventional boundaries. Informed by sociological studies of prophetic authority, it contributes to our knowledge of Birgitta herself as well as to our understanding of the dynamics of women's spiritual authority. Professor CLAIRE SAHLIN teaches at Texas Woman's University.

Julian of Norwich, an anchoress of the fourteenth century has captured the imagination of our time in a remarkable way. She shares with her readers the deepest and most intimate experiences of her life through her writings, which are sustained reflections on the visions which appeared to her during a severe illness. Yet of her life and her world we know virtually nothing, not even how she came to be an anchoress. This detailed study of Julian attempts not only to penetrate her theological ideas but also bring to life her world and her life as an anchoress. This is a book not only for those who have a scholarly interest in Julian, but for anyone drawn to Christian mysticism and the place of women within that tradition. In the new introduction to this edition, Grace Jantzen explores what it might mean to be an anchoress in postmodernity, and how reflections on Julian of Norwich and her desire for God can enable us to become the space of divine transformation.

Best known today as a fine composer, the twelfth-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen was also a religious leader and visionary, a poet, naturalist and writer of medical treatises. Despite her cloistered life she had strong, often controversial views on sex, love and marriage too - a woman astonishing in her own age, whose book of apocalyptic visions, Scivias, would alone have been enough to ensure her lasting fame. In this classic and highly praised biography - first published by Headline in 2001 - distinguished writer and journalist, Fiona Maddocks, draws on Hildegard's prolific writings to paint a portrait of her extraordinary life against the turbulent medieval background of crusade and schism, scientific discovery and cultural revolution. The great intellectual gifts and forceful character that emerge make her as fascinating as any figure in the Middle Ages. More than 800 years after her death, Pope Benedict XVI has made Hildegard a Saint and a Doctor of the Church (one of only four women). Fiona Maddocks has provided a short new preface to cover these tributes to an extraordinary and exceptional woman.

An account of the life and achievements of St Birgitta of Sweden, one of the most charismatic figures in the late medieval mystical tradition, founder of the Bridgettine order. St Birgitta of Sweden was one of the most charismatic figures in the late medieval mystical tradition. In Rome she succeeded in commanding prelates and popes, and throughout the courts of Europe she engaged in political secular intrigues; she married and produced eight children, yet became the only woman in the fourteenth century to be canonised; and in an age where new monastic foundations were proscribed, she founded an order of her own devising, primarily for women. This first modern biography presents an account of her extraordinary life and achievements, placing the saint in the context of the society from which she emerged, and showing how her public voice and reforming zealwere informed by a private spirituality at all stages of her life. Particular attention is given to her most lasting achievement, the monastic foundation which bears her name and has produced a network of communities throughout Europe, active to the present day. BRIDGET MORRIS is senior lecturer in Scandinavian studies at the University of Hull.

"Julian of Norwich" was a fourteenth-century woman who at the age of thirty had a series of vivid visions centered on the crucified Christ, twenty years later while living as an anchoress in a church she is believed to have set out her visions in a text called the Showing of Love. The trend in modern scholarship is to place Julian in the category of mystic rather than visionary, a classification which defines her visions as deeply private, psychological events. This book instead sets Julian's thinking in the context of a visionary project which she used to instruct the Christian community.
Drawing on recent developments in philosophy which debate the objectivity and rationality of vision and perception, Kevin J. Magill gives full attention to the depth and richness of the visual language and modes of perception in the Showing of Love, doing justice to the major themes in Julian's teaching. In particular the book focuses on the ways in which Julian presented her vision to the Christian society around her, demonstrating the educative potential of interaction between the "isolated" anchoress and the wider community. Challenging Julian's identification as a mystic and solitary female writer this book argues that Julian engaged in a variety of educative methods - oral, visual, conversational, mnemonic, alliterative - that extend the usefulness of her text.

Enemies of the Cross examines how suffering and truth were aligned in the divisive debates of the early Reformation. Vincent Evener explores how Martin Luther, along with his first intra-Reformation critics, offered "true" suffering as a crucible that would allow believers to distinguish the truth or falsehood of doctrine, teachers, and their own experiences. To use suffering in this way, however, reformers also needed to teach Christians to recognize false suffering and the false teachers who hid under its mantle. This book contends that these arguments, which became an enduring part of the Lutheran and radical traditions, were nourished by the reception of a daring late-medieval mystical tradition - the post-Eckhartian - which depicted annihilation of the self as the way to union with God. The first intra-Reformation dissenters, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Muntzer, have frequently been depicted as champions of medieval mystical views over and against the non-mystical Luther. Evener counters this depiction by showing how Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer developed their shared mystical tradition in diverse directions, while remaining united in the conviction that sinful self-assertion prevented human beings from receiving truth and living in union with God. He argues that Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer each represented a different form of ecclesial-political dissent shaped by a mystical understanding of how Christians were united to God through the destruction of self-assertion. Enemies of the Cross draws on seldom-used sources and proposes new concepts of "revaluation" and "relocation" to describe how Protestants and radicals brought medieval mystical teachings into new frameworks that rejected spiritual hierarchy.

The apparent disappearance of mysticism in the Protestant world after the Reformation used to be taken as an example of the arrival of modernity. However, as recent studies in history and literary history reveal, the "Reformation" was not experienced in such a drastically transformative manner, not least because the later Middle Ages itself was marked by a series of reform movements within the Catholic Church in which mysticism played a central role. In Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750, contributors show that it is more accurate to characterize the history of early modern mysticism as one in which relationships of continuity within transformations occurred. Rather than focus on the departures of the sixteenth-century Reformation from medieval traditions, the essays in this volume explore one of the most remarkable yet still under-studied chapters in its history: the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. With a focus on central and northern Europe, the essays engage such subjects as the relationship of Luther to mystical writing, the visual representation of mystical experience in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art, mystical sermons by religious women of the Low Countries, Valentin Weigel's recasting of Eckhartian gelassenheit for a Lutheran audience, and the mysticism of English figures such as Gertrude More, Jane Lead, Elizabeth Hooten, and John Austin, the German Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, and the German American Marie Christine Sauer.

When Alastair McIntosh was asked what makes a good BBC radio 'God slot' he quoted his late friend Walter Wink: 'To conceive of heaven as the transcendent possibilities latent in every emerging moment.' This anthology shares the best of Alastair's Prayer and Thought for the Day pieces from nearly a decade. Here is that of God, transcendent, yet also here and now, immanent, within the day's hard news. 'O taste and see - '

What does the Bible really tell us about the heavenly host? Everyone knows that angels have wings, usually carry harps, and that each of us has our own personal guardian angel, right? We all have some preconceptions about angels from movies, television shows, and other media, but you might be surprised to know that a lot of those notions aren't based on anything from the Bible. If you read Luke 1:26-38 and imagine the angel Gabriel standing before Mary with neatly folded white wings, you're not getting that picture from anything the Bible itself says. What the Bible really says about angels is overlooked or filtered through popular myths. This book was written to help change that. It's a book about the loyal members of God's heavenly host, and while most people associate them with the word "angel," that's just one of many terms the Bible uses for supernatural beings. In The Unseen Realm Michael Heiser opened the eyes of thousands to seeing the Bible through the supernatural worldview of the ancient world it was written in. In his latest book, Angels, Dr. Heiser reveals what the Bible really says about God's supernatural servants. Heiser focuses on loyal, holy heavenly beings because the Bible has a lot more to say about them than most people suspect. Most people presume all there is to know about angels is what has been passed on in Christian tradition, but in reality, that tradition is quite incomplete and often inaccurate. Angels is not guided by traditions, stories, speculations, or myths about angels. Heiser's study is grounded in the terms the Bible itself uses to describe members of God's heavenly host; he examines the terms in their biblical context while drawing on insights from the wider context of the ancient Near Eastern world. The Bible's view on heavenly beings begins with Old Testament terms but then moves into literature from the Second Temple period-Jewish writings from around the fifth century BC to the first century AD. This literature from the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament influenced the New Testament writers in significant ways. With that important background established, the book focuses on what the New Testament tells us about God's holy ones. Finally, the book reflects on common misconceptions about angels and addresses why the topic is still important and relevant for Christians today.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) achieved international fame with the publication of her book Mysticism in 1911. Continuously in print since its original publication, Mysticism remains Underhill's most famous work, but in the course of her long career she published nearly forty books, including three novels and three volumes of poetry, as well as numerous poems in periodicals. She was the religion editor for Spectator, a friend of T. S. Eliot (her influence is visible in his last masterpiece, Four Quartets), and the first woman invited to lecture on theology at Oxford University. Her interest in religion extended beyond her Anglican upbringing to embrace the world's religions and their common spirituality. In time for the centennial celebration of her classic Mysticism, this volume of Underhill's letters will enable readers and researchers to follow her as she reconciled her beliefs with her daily life. The letters reveal her personal and theological development and clarify the relationships that influenced her life and work. Hardly aloof, she enjoyed the interests, mirth, and compassion of close friendships. Drawing from collections previously unknown to scholars, The Making of a Mystic shows the range of Evelyn Underhill's mind and interests as well as the immense network of her correspondents, including Sir James Frazier and Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore. This substantial selection of Underhill's correspondence demonstrates an exceptional scope, beginning with her earliest letters from boarding school to her mother and extending to a letter written to T. S. Eliot from what was to be her deathbed in London in 1941 as the London Blitz raged around her.

This book is concerned with the concepts of Christian holiness and spirituality, from Late Antiquity through to the Middle Ages. The first group of articles focuses on the Desert Fathers, the following ones examine key figures in the monastic history of the medieval West, dealing above all with England and with Bede and Anselm of Canterbury. Throughout, Benedicta Ward's aim has been to find an approach that makes full sense of Christian writings, notably the hagiography, miracles and all. This should not be seen, she argues, simply as biography, nor as a quarry for information on social history, valuable though it may be for those purposes. The primary object of these Lives - as of the people about whom they were written - was religious; to neglect this meaning is to risk fundamentally misunderstanding these texts. Ce volume traite des concepts de la saintete et de la spiritualite chretiennes, de l'Antiquite tardive jusqu'au Moyen Age. Le premier groupe d'etudes se concentre sur les Peres du Desert, les suivants font l'examen de personnages-clefs dans l'histoire monastique de l'Occident medieval, s'attachant avant tout A l'Angleterre et A Bede et Anselme de Cantorbery. Benedicta Ward A pour propos constant de trouver une approche rendent tout son sens A la litterature chretienne et notamment A la litterature hagiographique, miracles et autres. Bien que valable A ces deux niveaux, ceci ne devrait pas Atre perAu, souligne-t'elle, en tant que simple biographie, ni en tant que source d'information sur l'histoire sociale. L'objet premier de ces Vies est d'ordre religieux; toute negligence de ce sens peut mener A une mecomprehension fondamentale de ces textes.

A spiritual guide for millions the world over, this is the autobiography of a holy woman who "attained to the knowledge of supernatural things in such abundant measure that she was able to point out the sure way of salvation to others." --Pope Pius XI