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 ©1997-2015
JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY ||
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