Here is the first English translation based on the new critical edition of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the sole mystical visionary work of Mechthild, a 13th-century (c. 1260-c. 1282/94) German Beguine. This challenging work of deep religious insight reflects Mechthild's inner life, and God's as well, employing a great variety of traditional medieval literary forms and genres in prose and verse.

Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead is one of the great surprises of German medieval literature. Compiled between c.1250 and c.1282, it is an extraordinary piece of imaginative writing. It integrates visions, auditions, dialogues, prayers, hymns, lyrical love poems, letters, allegories and parables, and draws creatively on features from hagiography, the disputation, the treatise, and magic spells, as the author documents her relationship with God and with her contemporaries. Within the context of German literary history, it is the first text in the tradition of mystical writing that was neither a translation nor a free adaptation of a Latin text, but rather an independent composition in the vernacular. Also of major significance is the fact that this text was written by a woman, thus offering insights into the cultural and social-historical context of the female religious (Mechthild lived her adult life as a beguine and latterly as a nun) in thirteenth-century northern Europe. Selections from the text are presented here in translation with introduction and notes. Dr Elizabeth A. Andersen teaches in the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University.

Book Review

The Soul as Virgin Wife presents the first book-length study to give a detailed account of the theological and mystical teachings written by women themselves, especially by those known as beguines, which have been especially neglected. Hollywood explicates the difference between the erotic and imagistic mysticism, arguing that Mechthild, Porete, and Eckhart challenge the sexual ideologies prevalent in their culture and claim a union without distinction between the soul and the divine. The beguines' emphasis in the later Middle Ages on spiritual poverty has long been recognized as an important influence on subsequent German and Flemish mystical writers, in particular the great German Dominican preacher and apophatic theologian Meister Eckhart. In The Soul as Virgin Wife, Amy Hollywood presents the first book-length study to give a detailed textual account of these debts. Through an analysis of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, and the Latin commentaries and vernacular sermons of Eckhart, Hollywood uncovers the intricate web of influence and divergence between the beguinal spiritualities and Eckhart.

In the passionate poetry of a bride to her bridegroom, this thirteenth-century German mystic recorded thirty years of her most intimate conversations with God. The selections in this edition offer a powerful glimpse into Mechthild's vision of God and her constant longing to be in his heart. This eloquent female ascetic recounts her mystical union with God in an unusual combination of literary genres ranging from rich allegory to lyrical poetry and prose. At age twenty, Mechthild left her home to begin a life of intense prayer as a beguine under the direction of the Dominicans. Continually speaking out against abuses in the Church, Mechthild incurred a lifelong conflict with the religious authorities of her time, making the survival of her writings all the more remarkable.

The great German mystic Meister Eckhart remains one of the most fascinating figures in Western thought. Revived interest in Eckhart's mysticism has been matched, and even surpassed, by the study of the women mystics of the late13th century. This book argues that Eckhart's thought cannot be fully be understood until it is viewed against the background of the breakthroughs made by the women mystics who preceded him.