Global Religion

Mysticism - Medieval Female Mysticism

Gabriella Turai PhD

gabriella.turai@gmail.com
Mysticism in the everyday language
The term often associated with aspects like:

Woolly

Supernatural

Magical

Occult
Mysticism in the field of science
Mysticism vs. Spirituality
Mystic – ISM

 Reflects the modern love of –ism (19th-20th centuries)

 It was used to denote that aspect of Christian tradition which
emphasised the ineffable nature of God

 Mysticism has come to denote those aspects of the various religious

traditions which emphasise unmediated experience of oneness
with the ultimate reality (King, 2013)

 This is the preferred term within scholarship (until fairly

recently)
Mysticism in the field of science
Mysticism vs. Spirituality
Spirituality

 Not affiliated with a particular religious institution

 Belief in spiritual movements
 Has something to do with the experience of the sacred
 Reflects modern shifts in Western understandings of
religion
 A more individualistic and less tradition-bound approach to
the mystical
 Associated with cultural trends of secularisation (New Age)
Mysticism - Mystical (mysticos)
Terms with long traditions
Mystical reflects the esoteric nature of the Greco-Roman mystery
religions
Excluding outsiders – ONLY FOR INSIDERS!!!

Gr. MUO

 to close
 to lock
 closing one’eyes
 closing one’s lips
 remaining silent = muein
Early Christian understanding of the term
mystical
Louis Bouyer (1990)
Hermeneutics – the mystical as the allegorical, spiritual
or hidden meaning of Scripture

Liturgy – the mystical as a description of the mysterious

power of Christian liturgy (Eucharist:act of communion
with the Body and Blood of Christ)

Experience – the mystical as an experiential knowledge

of the divine
Medieval conception of the mystical
Pseudo-Dionysios
2 fundamental ways of speaking of God:

Kataphatic or affirmative theology, wich speaks of

God in terms of positive attributes (God is good, God
is love)
Apophatic or negative theology, which takes
seriously the mysterious, and indiscrabable nature of
divine = mystical theology
Apophatic, negativ theology
„We would be like sculptors who set
out to carve a statue. They remove
every obstacle to the pure view of the
hidden image, and simply by this act of
clearing aside (denial) they show up
the beauty which is hidden.”
(Mystical Theology Ch. 2, Pseudo-Dionysius, 1987:
138)
William James and the modern study of
mysticism
William James: 1901/2 Gifford Lectures
(The Varieties of Religious Experience)

-Established an intellectual framework for the

comparative study of mysticism and religious experience
in general
-Emerging descipline of psychology
-Aim: describing the individual religious experience
-Altered states of consciousness!!! = mystical experience
Modern questions of classifications
Aldous Huxley: mysticism represents a common core in all of the
major world religions
R.C. Zaehner: suggests there are 3 fundamental types of
mysticism
- theistic: most forms of Jewish, Christian, Islamic mysticism
and occasional Hindu and Buddhist Examples
- monistic: experience of unity of one’s own soul, includes
Buddhism and Hindu schools such as Samkhya and Advaita
Vedanta
- panenhenic or nature mysticism: drug induced mysticism,
animistic experiences, writings of poets like Wordsworth and
William Blake
Mysticism of love,
mysticism of being in the
Middle Ages, female
mystics, explosion of
women 
Mysticism of Love
- Scriptual basis for it was the Song of Songs (Song of
Solomon)
 Loving relationship between God and Israel
 Or poetic exploration of the relationship between God (the
Bridegroom) and the Church (the Bride)
 From Origen (185-254 CE) Song of Songs has also been
given mystical interpretation as well: God’s relationship wih
the soul (loving intimacy)
 Bernard of Clairvaux commentary upon the Song of Songs
(apparent eroticism in ‚the kiss o the mouth’ caused some
Controversy in Christian theological circles)
Explosion of activity by female mystics in
the Middle Ages
Explosion from 1200 (13th century) on

The overture of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), the

German Prophet or the Sybil of the Rhein

 
Women
„Mostly excluded from formal theological
training and therefore uninitiated in the
abstract intellectualism of the mysticism of
negation, many of these women places a great
deal of emphasis upon visions as a source of
spiritual knowledge and authority and in
some cases were persecuted and even
executed for their claims” (King, 2013, p. 309)
Why the women?
Franciscan Lamprecht von Regensburg 1250 wrote:

„And so, in our days in Brabant and the land of

Bayern, has the art arisen amongst women. Lord God,
what art is this that an old women better understands
than a man of wit?”

This women posses the art of understanding and

expressing spiritual realities better than gifted men,
instructed in matters of the spirit.
Why the women?
Still Lamprecht von Regensburg:

„It seems to me that thus it is a woman becomes good

for God; in the simplicity of her understanding her
gentle heart, her frailer mind are kindled more quickly
within her, so that in her desire she understands better
the wisdom flowing from Heaven than does a hard
man who is clumsy in this things”
Penetrating analyses of women’s psychological
constitution
Feminist interest
Modern feminist scholarship has become increasingly
interested in the resurgence of female spirituality during this
period and the historical task of recapturing some of the
silenced voices of these remarkable women has only just
begun

(For instance :
Bynum 1982
Petroff 1986
Beer 1992
Jantzen 1995)
Medieval women’s mystic
"a succession of insights and revelations about God
that gradually transformed the recipient" (Petroff
1994)

The life of a medieval woman mystic was spent

seeking unity with God in a series of stages.

The mystical life of a medieval woman began with a

purge of the spirit in which she released herself from
earthly indulgences and attachments.
Summary
"The texts of the visions point to seven distinct stages,
each dominated by a specific content and attitude:
Purgative, Psychic, Doctrinal,Devotional,Participatory
 Unitive, Ordinary" (Petroff 1978, 34–35).

Mysticism is nothing but cognitio Dei experimentalis =

the divine reality is not only conceptual but an
existential experience
Current way at the study of mysticism
Comparative study of mysticism

Katz, S. T. (2013): Comparative Mysticism: An

Anthology of Original Sources, Oxford University
Press, USA

Tha latest and most efficient way to study the varieties of

mysticism