Mechthild of Magdeburg

Mechthild of Magdeburg (in German, Mechthild von Magdeburg or Mechtilde or Mechthilde, Mathilde in French).

Biography

We do not have any certainty as for its biographical dates which can however be rebuilt with some probability starting from indices in its work, recut with historical facts.

According to this assumption, Mechthild was born in 1207 in the minor nobility from the area from Helfta. It has its first vision at 12 years. About 1230 it joined Magdeburg to live there like béguine. The same year, the Dominican ones and the franciscains settle in this city. The béguines then live a religious life but while residing downtown, except monastery and without pronouncing wishes. They deal especially the most stripped with, marginalized by the rise of the urban culture.

About 1250, Mechthild starts to write the flowing Light of the Divinity , to perhaps remain by this skew in liaison with its confessor, the Dominican Henri de Halle, called then like reader with Neu-Toff. Henri collects his writings which start at once to circulate and cause reactions. One finds traces of discussions started starting from certain points in the later writings of the béguine.

About 1260 it is withdrawn in its family, probably because of a disease, perhaps also following persecutions. It is the year when a synod subjects the béguines to Magdeburg with the cure of heart of the secular ones.

About 1271, Mechthild, old woman and patient, enter to the monastery of [http://www.kloster-helfta.de/], then high-place of the female monastic culture (cf of Helfta,). Of obedience cistercian, without however being formally subjected to the order, the convent is under the influence of Dominican of Market where Henri has just been named. This last translates into Latin the whole of the writings of Mechthild published until this date, gathered in six books. But the translator alters the continuation of the texts according to sets of themes criteria and by flattening the metaphors too dared with his taste.

Mechthild dictates with his/her sisters with Helfta a seventh book which is not included in the Latin translation, proof that this one is established as of its alive. She dies in 1283, highly estimated by her sisters as work testifies some to one of the moniales, Mechthild de Hackeborn.

Its work

The work of Mechthild of Magdeburg is presented in the form of seven books with chapters length and literary kinds very different, since the small poem until the didactic treaty.

Marked by courteous poetry and of the popular songs, Mechthild transcribes the religious teaching which it receives, primarily the Dominican ones, in a vernacular language chatoyant, by creating metaphors of a great freshness, with new and unusual associations. It is the first writing in German language testifying to personal spiritual experiments. It thus forges a whole vocabulary for the posterior German mystic.

The work of Mechthild of Magdeburg is interesting on several levels. She makes it possible to measure the linguistic contribution of the new spirituality, with her many neologisms and her poetic high-quality. On the historical level, the female writing of XIIIe century gives information on the evolution of the statute of the woman to the Middle Ages. On the level of the history of the ideas, the setting in front of a union with God who is done in the destruction of oneself and by assuming the absence of God, constitutes one rather particular moment between speculative mystic and emergence of the individual.

French bibliography

Mechthild of Magdeburg, the flowing Light of the Divinity (Translated from German by Waltraud Verlaguet), Jerome Million 2001, ISBN 2-84137-117-4 * Ancelet-Hustache, Jeanne, Mechtilde of Magdeburg (1207-1282). Study of religious psychology , Honore Champion 1926.
Waltraud Verlaguet, the “éloignance”. The theology of Mechthild of Magdeburg (XIIIe century) , Peter Lang 2005, ISBN 978-3-03910-616-5 * Isn't Waltraud Verlaguet, How to follow God when God there? - The éloignance of Mechthild of Magdeburg (XIIIe century) , Stag - Wisdoms Christian women 2006 ISBN: 2-204-07986-3 * Mechthild of Magdeburg on the site of the Rhenish mystic

Principal German editions

Gisela Vollmann-Profe (Hg.): Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit . (Bibliothek of Mittelalters data base 19) Frankfurt amndt Hand: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag 2003. 870 S.: Leinen. EURO (D) 76, -. ISBN 3-618-66190-8. (edition of the manuscript of Einsiedeln, with notes and translation in modern German).
Hans Neumann (Hg.): Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit . Artemis-Verlag, Band I: Text, 1990; Band II: Untersuchungen, 1993; ISBN 3-7608-3400-0. (edition criticizes)
Margot Schmidt, Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit . Frommann Holzboog, 1995 (translation in modern German)

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