Pseudo-Dionysius As Liberator
Pseudo-Dionysius As Liberator
Pseudo-Dionysius As Liberator
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it has been argued they were written by the same man." Like
the Cloud author, Hilton insists that his contemplative pupil first
'forsake all worldly riches, honours, and outward business' .13
As the title implies, the way to a mystical union with God is
through a gradual, step-by-step process culminating in the third
part of contemplation." As does the Cloud author, Hilton
emphasizes prayer as the most efficacious means toward the
mystic's goal. The third and highest kind of prayer Hilton
characterizes as being 'only in the heart, without speaking, and
with great rest of body and soul'." This is similar to the
'darkness' and 'lack of knowing' with which the Cloud author
describes the cloud of unknowing." Both these works had
great and lasting influence on late medieval English mystics. I?
In addition, more modern experts of mysticism, who
themselves were considered contemplatives, identified true
mystical experiences with the dark night of the soul. In the
twentieth century, they included Dom David Knowles, a
Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey and later a professor at
Cambridge Universit~, and Evelyn Underhill, another English
mystical theologian. 8 The via negativa also shares many
affinities with Eastern mystical traditions, as was recognized by
the religious philosophers, William James and Thomas
Merton." Perhaps this is explained by a common origin with
the desert fathers, or the founders of Christian monasticism in
the Middle East." Both the Hindu and Buddhist religions, for
example, use simple mantras and stress a denial of materialism
before the higher state of Brahma or Nirvana can be reached. 21
The negative tradition of mysticism which has just been
outlined provides the standard measure by which the Catholic
Church judges whether a given individual has achieved that
unique, ineffable union with God. During the Middle Ages, this
article will argue, this tradition was a liberating force for
women because it provided them with a rare opportunity to gain
equal status with men. Because its standards were based on
theology, not gender, the negative tradition set a universal
yardstick for mysticism which applied to everyone, be they men
or women. For those who lived up to its standards, the mystical
path ofpseudo-Dionysius was one of the few avenues by which
women during the Middle Ages achieved substantial power and
respect.
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Examples from the Middle Ages of women who did just that
abound. The most famous example from the high medieval
period is Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of the Benedictine Eriory
at Disibodenberg, Germany during the twelfth century. 2 Her
twenty-six visions, recounted in Scivias , are spiritual rather than
sensory experiences, perceived, as she says in a letter to
Guibert of Gembloux, 'in my soul, with my external eyes
open' .23 This is the quiet form of meditation preferred by the
negative tradition to the more ecstatic and physical brands of
piety.
During the fourteenth century, a real flowering of female
mysticism occurred. In England, the leading example was Julian
of Norwich. At the age of thirty-one, she was privy to sixteen
'showings' in a near-death experience in May 1373. These
showings were to provide the basis for Julian's subsequent
lifelong meditations as an anchoress in the church of St Julian
and St Edward in Conisford." Written down as a book of
'showings', or revelations, these meditations explore such
theological questions as the nature of the Trinity, the wonder of
creation and the Augustinian groblem of evil and the redemptive
power of Christ's passion. 5 The depth and profundity of
Julian's theology is testified by the number of scholarly books
devoted to the subject. 26
That Julian belonged within the pseudo-Dionysian tradition is
demonstrated by her progression from 'bodely syght' to 'gostely
syghte', or to purely spiritual and intellectual visions which
supplanted the corporeal." Her 'noghte', or self-annhilation,
of the soul after it has been 'noghthed of aIle that es made' may
be compared to the dark night of the clouds of forgetting and
unknowing." Julian is also careful to emphasize that the
showings by themselves are no proof of mystical grace but are
given for the benefit of all Christians:
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There are others who become faithful servants. They serve me with
love rather than that slavish fear which serves only for fear of
punishment. But their love is imperfect, for they serve me for their
own profit or for the delight and pleasure they find in me. Do you
know how they show that their love is imperfect? By the way they
act when they are deprived of the comfort they find in me. And
they love their neighbours with the same imperfect love."
This is why their love is not strong enough to last. No, it becomes
lax and often fails. It becomes lax toward me when sometimes, to
exercise them in virtue and to lift them up out of their imperfection,
I take back my spiritual comfort and let them experience struggles
and vexations. I do this to bring them to perfect knowledge of
themselves, so that they will know that of themselves they have
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Once again, prayer is the key by which the soul can overcome
this trial. In a parallel process to the progression of love, the
devout soul, Catherine explains, proceeds from 'imperfect vocal
prayer' to a 'perfect mental' one. 36
Finally, St Birgitta of Sweden, a noblewoman and foundress
of an order which took her name upon her death in 1373,
experienced a series of revelations in which various doctrinal
issues are addressed in the responses to her 'interrogations' ,37
In these revelations the influence of pseudo-Dionysius is
apparent. For example, in the fifth revelation of the fifth book,
Christ admonishes Birgitta against a love of riches and praises
the virtues of self-denial and humility. 38 In the tenth revelation
of the same book, Christ warns the saint that his teachings are
obscure and must be understood in a spiritual rather than a
corporeal sense:
Sometimes, too, I say things obscurely in order that you may both
fear and rejoice - fearing that they may come to pass in another
way because of my divine patience, which knows the changes of
hearts, and rejoicing too because my will is always fulfilled. So too,
in the Old Law, I said many things that were to be understood more
spiritually than corporeally - as concerning the temple and David
and Jerusalem - in order that carnal mankind might learn to desire
spiritual things."
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known or heard save by him who has received it, and who himself
must be clean and separate from the things of earth."
And yet, maybe, they imagine it to be the fire of love, lighted and
fanned by the grace and goodness of the Holy Ghost. In truth, from
this falsehood many evils spring: much hypocrisy and heresy and
error. For hot on the heels of false experience comes false
knowledge in the school of the fiend, just as true experience is
followed by true knowledge in the school of God. 52
Not all those who speak of the fire of love really know what it is,
for what it is I cannot tell you, except for this. I tell you, it is
neither material nor felt in the body. It can be felt in prayer or in
devotion by a soul who exists in a body, but he does not feel it by
any bodily sense, for although it is true that if it works in a soul the
body may pass into a heat - as it were warmed by the pleasant
labour of the spirit - nevertheless the fire of love is not in the
body, for it is only in the spiritual desire of the SOUJ. 53
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Then our blessed Lord Christ Jesus answered to her soul and said,
'My beloved daughter, I swear by my high majesty that I will never
forsake you. And, daughter, the more shame, contempt and rebuke
that you suffer for my love, the better I love you, for I behave like
a man who greatly loves his wife: the more envy that other men
have of her, the better he will dress her to spite his enemies. And
just so, daughter, shall I behave with yoU. 65
Our Lord also gave her another token which lasted about sixteen
years, and increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of
fire of love - marvellously hot and delectable and very comforting,
never diminishing but ever increasing; for though the weather were
never so cold she felt the heat burning in her breast and at her
heart, as veritable as a man would feel the material fire if he put his
hand or his finger into it. 61
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NOTES
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Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1984),
1-16.
21. A useful anthology of the texts of Hinduism and Buddhism can be
found in: L. Browne, ed., The World's Great Scriptures: An Anthology
of the Sacred Books of the Ten Principal Religions (New York, 1946).
22. Studies of Hildegard of Bingen include: A. Bruck, ed., Hildegard
von Bingen, 1179-1979: Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen
(Mainz, 1979); V.M. Lagorio, 'The Medieval Continental Women
Mystics', in Introduction to Medieval Mystics, 163-66; P. Dronke,
Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from
Perpetua to Marguerite Porete (Cambridge, 1984), 144-201; K. Kraft,
'The German Visionary Hildegard of Bingen', in K.M. Wilson, ed.,
Medieval Women Writers (Athens, GA., 1984), 109-19; B. Newman,
Sister of Wisdom: St Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley,
1987); S. Flanagan, Hildegard ofBingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life
(London, 1989); E.Z. Brunn and G. Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics
in Medieval Europe, trans. S. Hughes (New York, 1989),3-17; F.
Beer, Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages (Wood-
bridge, Suffolk, 1992), 15-55; A. Weeks, German Mysticism from
Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Literary and Intellec-
tual History (Albany, N.Y., 1993), 39-58; E.A. Petroff, Body and
Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford, 1994), 10-
12.
23. Kraft, 'Hildegard of Bingen', 123. The original Latin text of
Scivias is available in: Hildegardis Scivias, ed. A. Fiihrkotter and A.
Carlevaris (Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio MedievaIis, 43, 43a,
Turnhout, 1978). For an English translation, see: Hildegard of Bingen,
Sci vias, trans. C. Hart and J. Bishop (New York and Mahwah, N.J.,
1990).
24. Good summaries of Julian's life and writings are to be found in:
Underhill, Mystics of the Church, 127-32; Coleman, English Mystics,
131-52; E.I. Watkin, Poets and Mystics (New York, 1953), 70-103;
Pepler, English Religious Heritage, 305-20; Knowles, English Mystical
Tradition, 119-37; Thornton, English Spirituality, 201-17; R. Bradley,
'Julian of Norwich: Writer and Mystic', in Introduction to Medieval
Mystics, 195-216; C. Jones, 'The English Mystic: Julian of Norwich',
in Medieval Women Writers, 269-77; Beer, Women and Mystical
Experience, 130-57; Petroff, Body and Soul, 19-20.
25. For the Middle English version of Julian's book, see: Julian of
Norwich, A Book ofShowings to the Anchoress Julian ofNorwich , ed.
E. Colledge and J. Walsh, 2 parts (Toronto, 1978). A Middle English
version in modern alphabet is available in: Julian of Norwich, The
Shewings ofJulian ofNorwich, ed. G.R. Crampton (Kalamazoo, MI.,
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