Marie d'Oignies|| Angela of Foligno || Umilta of Faenza
Birgitta of Sweden || Catherine of Siena || Julian of Norwich
Margery Kempe ||
Chiara Gambacorta || Francesca Romana
St Birgitta giving her Revelations to Christendom.
Birgitta, Revelationes,
Ghotan: Lübeck, 1492.
he Rhineland Mystics, Meister
Eckhart , Henry Suso , John Tauler and Jan van Ruusbroec were part of an
important, and usually Dominican, network, encouraging and
influencing each others' contemplative writings and sermons.
What is not generally realised is that there is yet another
circle of mystics, women this time, on the medieval European
Internet, that stretched even farther afield, from
Scandinavia, England, Italy and even reaching Bethlehem and
Jerusalem. This circle included a Swedish noblewoman, widowed
mother of eight children, a Norwich anchoress, a Sienese
dyer's daughter, a Lynn merchant's wife who bore fourteen
children, a Pisan ruler's widowed daughter and a Roman wife
and mother of three children. They are Marie
d'Oignies , Angela of Foligno ,
Umilta of Faenza , Birgitta of Sweden , Catherine of Siena , Julian of Norwich , Margery Kempe , Chiara Gambacorta and Francesca Romana .
irgitta of
Sweden , like Hildegard of
Bingen , began her intense political and authorial
career suddenly in her forties. Birgitta was widowed in 1344
and at that point commenced her role as prophet not just to
Sweden but to all of Europe. She had already had visions, and
so did others concerning her. These visions she now wrote down
with the help of major Swedish ecclesiasts, one of them Master
Mathias, who had studied Hebrew
under Nicholas Lyra in Paris, an Augustinian Canon who was
associated with Dominicans, and who translated the Bible into
Swedish for her. She spoke of Master Mathias and of many
others in her circle as ' Friends of
God '. Her first agenda was the reform of King Magnus of
Sweden, who was much in need of it. But she was also deeply
concerned about Europe, particularly about the Hundred Years'
War being waged between England and France, and the exile of
the Popes to Avignon. Master Mathias in 1347 was delegated by
Bishop Hemming of Abo to take the
document to the Kings of England and France and to the Pope in
which Christ and the Virgin order them to cease their war and
the Pope to return to Rome.
Bishop Hemming and St Birgitta, Diptych, Finland
This is what she wrote in a vision about and to King Magnus. In it she sees a lectern and a book. 'For the appearance of the lectern was as if it had been a sunbeam [of red, gold, white]. . . . And when I looked upwards, I might not comprehend the length and breadth of the lectern; and looking downward, I might not see nor comprehend the greatness nor the deepness of it . . . After this I see a Book on the same lectern, shining like most bright gold. Which Book, and its Scripture, was not written with ink, but each word in the book was alive and spoke itself, as if a man should say, do this or that, and soon it was done with speaking of the Word. No man read the Scripture of that Book, but whatever that Scripture contained, all was seen on the lectern. Before this lectern I see a king . . . The said king sat crowned as if it had been a vessel of glass closed about . . .'
She continues to describe how the king's glass globe is protected by an angel but threatened by a demon . . . 'This living king appears to you as if in as it were a vessel of glass, for his life is but as it were frail glass and suddenly to be ended'. She continues by speaking of how this king knowingly sins but that if he repents he can be saved by the angel from the fiend. Beside him is a dead king above whom is writing describing his lust, his pride, his avarice. . . but the writing is blankly gone from the part that should have proclaimed his love of God.
'Then the Word speaks from the lectern, saying "[What you see is the Godhead's self. That you cannot understand the length, breadth, depth and height of the lectern means that in God is not found either beginning or end. For God is and was without beginning, and shall be without end "]. Also the Word spoke to me and said "[The Book that you see on the lectern means that in the Godhead is endless justice and wisdom, to which nothing may be added or lessened. And this is the Book of Life, that is not written as the world's writing, that is and was not, but the scripture of this Book is forever. For in the Godhead is endless being and understanding of all things, present, past and to come, without any variation or changing. And nothing is invisible to it, for it sees all things "]. That the Word spoke itself means that God is the endless Word, from whom are all words, and in whom things have life and being. And this same Word spoke then visibly when the Word was made man and was conversant among men'. She adds to the King that she is giving him the Word's words, adding that 'few receive and believe the heavenly words given from God, which is not God's fault, but man's'.
Later, she writes 'I saw an altar and a chalice with wine and water and bread and I saw how in a church of the world a priest began the mass, arrayed in a priest's vestments. And when he had done all that belonged to the Mass, I saw as if the sun and moon and the stars with all the other planets, and all the heavens with their courses and moving spheres, sounded with the sweetest note and with sundry voices.'
St John writing the Apocalypse, Hans Memling, St John's Hospital, Bruges
In another vision, at the end of her life, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, she sees the judgement of her wicked son Charles where her prayers and her tears for Charles cause the devil to have amnesia concerning her son's sins. First the book in which the fiend has written them down suddenly has blank pages instead of writing, then the sack in which he has placed them is empty when turned inside out, then the devil himself forgets them totally from his memory and goes wailing off to Hell, cursing Birgitta.
Much of Birgitta's visionary imagery comes from law courts, for her father was the King of Sweden's law man and her husband was likewise a law man. She both prophesied and wrote following the Black Death of 1348 when Doomsday, Judgment Day, seemed particularly near. She told King Magnus that the Black Death would happen, then left for Italy, Sweden being too dangerous for her. Birgitta set up her household in Rome, living in prayer and constantly receiving visions, having male secretaries assist her, one of them a Spanish Bishop, Alfonso of Jaén. In the last year of her life she journeyed to the Holy Land, preaching on her journey in Naples and Cyprus, prophesying the 1452 Fall of Constantinople. Her massive book of the Revelationes, which is really Julian's title of 'Showings', was copied out in illuminated manuscripts, then in print, and treasured throughout Europe.
At her death Alfonso of Jaén, Queen Joanna of
Naples, Queen Margaret of Sweden, the Emperor Charles of
Bohemia, and Cardinal Adam
Easton of England, a Benedictine from Julian's Norwich,
all sought Birgitta's canonization as a saint.
Catherine of Siena, The Orcherd of Syon (Dialogo) , London: Wynken de Worde, 1519
ope Gregory XI sent Alfonso of Jaén to Catherine of Siena at
Birgitta of Sweden's death. At that point Catherine, who had
previously been illiterate, proceeded to write important
letters to Popes and Emperors, Kings and Queens and even to
the condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, on the need for peace. We
do not think of her as part of the Dominican-inspired
Friends of God movement across Europe but this act clearly
places her in that context. Pope Urban VI wanted her to have
Birgitta's daughter, Catherine of Sweden, accompany her to
carry out diplomacy on his behalf with Queen Joanna of
Naples.
Catherine had been the twenty-fourth child of a Sienese dyer. Everyone had wanted her to marry but she refused, having made a vow of chastity, and instead sought to enter the Dominican Third Order, which only admitted women who were widows. She won. As a Dominican Tertiary she cared for the sick and dying, including criminals condemned to death in Siena. She was surrounded by disciples, one of them an English hermit, William Flete, whose work, The Remedies Against Temptations, Julian quotes and uses in the Showings, another a lawyer Cristofano Di Ganno, who later translated Birgitta's Revelations into exquisite Italian, another a painter, Andrea Vanni, whose delicate portrait of her survives, indeed in the very place of her major visions in San Domenico, Siena.
Andrea Vanni, St Catherine of Siena, San Domenico, Siena
Her confessor and biographer was Raymond of Capua who became head of the Dominican Order. Pope Urban VI leaned heavily upon her for his own survival. Severely anorexic, she died at the age of thirty-three, collapsing under the weight, she said, of the Church.
Besides her Letters she had also written, or, again, rather dictated, the Dialogo, the Dialogue between God and his Daughter, Catherine's Soul, in which he tells her that his Son is the bridge between God and man, a bridge that is like a stair, beginning first with the affections, then love, then peace. He adds that his Son's 'divinity is kneaded with the clay of your humanity like one bread'. This work, likely through Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich who knew all three women, influenced Julian's Showings, her 'Revelations'. A most beautiful manuscript of the Dialogo was translated into Middle English for the Brigittine nuns of Syon Abbey and called the Orcherd of Syon. It was printed by Wynken de Worde, Caxton's successor, again with that title, in 1519. It is illustrated above. Its exemplar may well have been a manuscript Adam gave Julian.
ulian, Anchoress of St Julian's Church in Norwich,
is not normally thought to have been influenced by Birgitta of
Sweden and by Catherine of Siena, yet it is clear that her Showingsgets its concept and
its title from Birgitta's influential work while much in its
text resonates with that in Catherine of Siena's Dialogo. It is clear, too, that,
just at St Birgitta spends her a lifetime writing her Revelationes,
so does Julian spend a lifetime writing her Showings. It is
also clear, once the life of Adam
Easton, Norwich Benedictine, is known, that that
influence largely came from him. He avidly defended St
Birgitta's canonization, arguing for women and their
theological abilities, citing among other examples the four
daughters of Philip who were each prophetesses and who helped
Luke write his Gospel and Book of Acts. Adam would also have
exposed Julian to the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius
, for he owned his complete works in a manuscript that
survives today at Cambridge University, and he may indeed have
written for her the Dionysian 'Cloud of Unknowing '
and its related 'Dionise Hid Diuinite' and Epistles. Julian
thus may have had a spiritual director, Adam Easton, who
taught Hebrew at Oxford, just as Birgitta had Master Mathias
who studied Hebrew at Paris. Julian's St Julian's Church was
also next door to the Austin Friary, a Friary in contact with
the Austin Hermit William Flete, Catherine
of Siena' s disciple and executor.
Julian's manuscripts, like those of Catherine of
Siena, are copied out again and again in the context of Syon Abbey , the Abbey
deliberately founded in England in accordance with St
Birgitta's Rule by Henry V, in response to her desire for
peace between England and the rest of the world.
Interestingly, both Julian (circa 1413) and Syon Abbey (1434)
were visited by an indefatigable woman pilgrim, mother of
fourteen, Margery Kempe.
Hear http://www.umilta.net/soulcity.mp3
for the conversation between Julian and Margery.
argery
Kempe was illiterate and exhibitionistic but valiantly
struggled to imitate the lives of these saints and their
book-writing. She did so by means of having others read to her
devotional books by
Walter Hilton and by Birgitta
of Sweden and then travelled to the same places Birgitta
had visited as a pilgrim, Compostela, Jerusalem
, Rome, Trondheim, Cologne and Gdansk. Her confessor was a
Dominican, the Dominicans of Lynn being in direct contact with
Catherine of Siena' s Raymond of
Capua. She next dictated her memoirs in order that The
Book of Margery Kempe be written down. Birgitta had
worked to reform the state, to reform the Kingdom of Sweden by
reforming her King, then the state of Europe by reforming not
only kings and queens but even Emperors and Popes. Her work
with the Friends of God was not
for herself but for all of Christendom. Catherine of Siena,
likewise, worked for not only her city state of Siena, but for
all of Tuscany, striving for peace between the ancient
enemies, Siena, Pisa and Florence, then she worked for the
Church and for peace in all of Christendom, begging the
English mercenary, Sir John Hawkwood, to leave Tuscany and go
on a bloody Crusade elsewhere, against pagans rather than
Christians. Julian leaves aside issues of Church and State and
works directly for the love of one's even-Christian, and she
even and perhaps especially shows that charity towards Margery
Kempe. Birgitta, Catherine and Julian are characterised by
joy, by laughter, Birgitta's maid servant telling Margery many
years later that her mistress had always a laughing cheer,
Catherine of Siena being deeply loved by her disciples and
joking about God playing a joke upon her, Julian bringing in
laughter even at her death-bed scene. But Margery takes
herself too importantly to be able to laugh at herself - and
this makes it hard to take her seriously. What we find in
these mystics' writings is that self-importance is a form of
noughting, while the love of God and one's neighbour in God's
image, is oning .
et us turn back to Italy. Bishop Alfonso of Jaén had
been spiritual director to Birgitta of
Sweden , then to Catherine of
Siena , being sent to her when she was in Pisa where she
received the stigmata in the church of Santa Cristina. Both
Alfonso and Birgitta were close friends with the powerful
Gambacorta family, Pietro Gambacorta travelling with them on
their pilgrimage to Bethlehem
and Jerusalem in 1372.
Pietro's daughter, Tora, married at 13 and was widowed at 15.
She refused to marry again, Alfonso backing her against her
family in her decision, and she became a Dominican, taking the
name, Chiara, after Santa Chiara ,
in 1382, and she became Prioress in 1392. She commissioned for
her convent splendid paintings about both Birgitta of Sweden
and Catherine of Siena, clearly taking these two women who she
had known as models for herself and her fellow nuns.
rancesca Romana, St Frances of Rome, was married at
12 to a noble family, the Ponziani. Her grandson, Battista
Ponziani, in turn married into Mabilia Papazurri , whose family
had revered Birgitta of Sweden
for she had been their tenant. Francesca bore her husband
three children, then was under the guidance of the Olivetan
Benedictines, founding a monastery, the Tor de' Specchi, which
still exists. Birgitta, who had to support a large household
that included three of her grown children, a prior, a master,
a bishop and several maid servants, without any income, took
to begging outside the Poor Clare church of St Lawrence in
Rome, where she would also mend the other beggars' clothing,
and dressed herself in a patched cloak made from a worn-out
dress, doing all this at Christ's command. Francesca similarly
cared for the poor and sick, her life being noted for many
miracles. She dictated her visions including one in which the
Virgin wrapped her in her own cloak, a vision
Birgitta also had described in her book, and others in
which she saw scenes out of Dante'
s Commedia of Hell and Heaven. The account of her
visions was not only written down but also beautifully frescoed on her
convents' walls. These women, who left all to follow Christ in their
love of God and their neighbour in God's image, were linked to
each other across the map of Europe and did much for the
status of women and the state of the Church. When one reads
their canonization documents witnessing their miracles it is
to find that the miracles centre on the powerless, on women
and on children, on the condemned and the oppressed, on
servants and nuns, and that these may well respond with
seemingly miraculous healing because their saviour is a member
of their own oppressed half of society. What is also
characteristic of this network is that it is as it were a
'literacy campaign', in which women, barred from universities
and education, are the writers of Sybilline books of prophecy
which are more powerful even than those written by men. They
are writing, Cardinal Ratzinger has said, 'revealed theology'. Saint Catherine of Siena,
socially the least in this group, we do not forget, has been
proclaimed by the Church a 'Doctor of the Church', the equal
of the learned Saints Jerome
and Gregory. Let us call them very
practical mystics.
JULIAN OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE
AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2017
JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY || JULIAN OF NORWICH || SHOWING OF
LOVE || HER TEXTS ||
HER SELF || ABOUT HER TEXTS || BEFORE JULIAN || HER CONTEMPORARIES || AFTER JULIAN || JULIAN IN OUR TIME || ST BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN
|| BIBLE AND WOMEN || EQUALLY IN GOD'S IMAGE || MIRROR OF SAINTS || BENEDICTINISM|| THE CLOISTER || ITS SCRIPTORIUM || AMHERST MANUSCRIPT || PRAYER|| CATALOGUE AND PORTFOLIO (HANDCRAFTS, BOOKS
) || BOOK REVIEWS || BIBLIOGRAPHY ||
