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Updated: May 20, 2025
Mechthild adds that she asked of God how such an one could keep himself without sin in this earthly state, and that God made answer: “He shall keep himself always in fear, like a mouse that sits in a trap and awaits its death. When he eats, he shall be frugal and meek, and when he sleeps, he shall be chaste, and alone with Me.”
I must go from all things to God, who is my Father by Nature, my Brother through His Humanity, my Bridegroom through Love, and I am His for ever.” Silenced by this wondrous flight of holy passion, we bid farewell to Mechthild. She lived for her time, and she lives for us, as one of “humanity’s pioneers on the only road to rest.” “Out of the depths,” she cried to Heaven.
Whilst some expressed themselves in carved stone, or on painted wall, others, as did Mechthild, realised their visions and ideas in a wealth of word-pictures. Such visions and ideas had accumulated adown the ages, varying but slightly one from another, and Mechthild, in making use of this stereotyped material, only took from, or added to, the general sum.
The following pages tell of six such women who lived between the tenth century and the first half of the fifteenth Roswitha, a nun of Germany; Marie de France, a lady at the Court of Henry the Second of England; Mechthild of Magdeburg, mystic and beguine; Mahaut, Countess of Artois, a great-niece of St.
Whether it is held, as by the Neoplatonists, that Being and Knowledge are one, that the procedure of the world out of God is a process of self-revelation, and the return of things into God a process of higher and higher intuition, and so the mystic experience an apprehension of the highest rather than a form of worship; or whether it is expressed as by the humble Beguine, Mechthild, "My soul swims in the Being of God as a fish in water, the kernel of the mystic's creed is the same.
When Mechthild wrote her predictions on the last days, Joachim’s teachings, owing to the stir which their unorthodoxy had created not only in the Church and amongst the preaching friars, but also in the University of Paris, whence all manner of polemical discussions freely circulated were well known in Germany, and there can be but little doubt that Mechthild knew of them, probably from the Dominicans, who found special favour in her sight, and that they greatly influenced her own prophetic warnings to the Church.
With Mechthild it was certainly that of self-expression which predominated, for whilst, with her, both co-operated to make a beautiful whole, it was in detail and ornament, so to speak, rather than in the design itself, that she showed her special qualities and gifts.
Louis may well have chosen Jesus, or Joseph, or John, as the object of his devotional contemplation; and St. Catherine, and Theresa, and Mechthild might have paid their homage to the Virgin Mary. "Jeanne of the Cross" held constant converse with her guardian angel, who by the way was a beautiful youth, "more brilliant than the sun and with a crown of glory on his head." St.
Moreover, a hungry man can do no deep study, and thus must God, through such default, lose the best prayers.” From advice to the priesthood, Mechthild turns to warning, and pours forth her reproaches and forebodings with poetic intensity. “Alas, O thou Crown of Holy Christendom, how greatly hast thou lost lustre!
Birger himself had a queen for his wife, having married the dowager Queen Mechthild of Denmark, and to increase his importance he assumed the title of duke, never before borne in Sweden. But many of the peasants called him king, since he governed the kingdom and was married to a queen. But meanwhile poor Bishop Kol was dying of grief for the deed of shame into which this proud lord had led him.
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