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Women Mystics in the Late Middle Ages: An Introduction

© Michelle Powell-Smith

While the Middle Ages are marked by a great many important religious movements, mysticism is perhaps one of the most influential. There were mystics throughout the Middle Ages; however, mysticism may have reached its highest peak in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Both men and women had mystical experiences; however, for a time, women mystics far outnumbered men, and their experiences are often particularly interesting. This is a subject of particular interest to me, and one which I expect to return to often, so this article shall serve as a brief introduction not to the mystics themselves, or to their experiences, but rather to the lives they led.

In order to fully understand the women mystics of the late Middle Ages, we must understand their lives and circumstances. The options available to women, both within religious and secular society, were relatively few. Marriage and childbearing posed a number of physical and emotional risks to women, as well as limiting their educational and creative opportunities. The religious life offered greater freedom of education and thought, but usually confined a woman to the cloister, denying her access to the outside world.

There were several options available to women who desired a religious life, including traditional convents and less traditional beguinages. Taking vows at a traditional convent implied a permanent dedication to the church, but also served to place women under the authority of the male dominated church. Convents in the Middle Ages were not, as they later became, refuges for poor women. The nuns of the Middle Ages were wealthy women, who had to be dowered by their families in order to enter the convent. While women who entered convents were stringently cloistered, beguines usually remained active outside their beguinages. Beguinages were lay religious foundations for women, similar to convents; however, the women were not expected to take permanent binding vows, and were frequently of a lower social class than the average nun. Beguinages were prevalent in both Germany, especially in and around Cologne, and the Low Countries; however, the beguinages of the Rhineland were generally smaller and less cohesive than the large, well-organized beguinages of the Low Countries.

Some women joined the religious houses at a very early age; however, other female mystics took formal religious vows later in life, after having remained in the world, marrying and bearing children. There were still yet other religious women who passed their entire lives within their own family homes in the world, never entering a formal religious community.

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