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Women Mystics of Germany and the Low Countries in the 14th c.

© Michelle Powell-Smith

The mystics of the fourteenth century were more interested in Christ's suffering and less interested in his divinity than their thirteenth-century counterparts. Their physical asceticism became more intense, a phenomenon that may be seen throughout fourteenth-century religious movements.

Many of these women followed a regimen of extreme ascetic practices, not unlike those recounted by Heinrich Suso in the Life of the Servant. Suso was a fourteenth century Dominican mystic. His life and visions are, however, very much like those of his female contemporaries. Suso took a great interest in the religous lives of women, frequently preaching to them, and advising them on spiritual matters. Many of these women modeled their own behaviors after his.

Suso's intense physical asceticism is illustrated in his writings, and appeared, even to his contemporaries, to be so extreme as to be bizarre.

"For a long time he wore a hairshirt and an iron chain until he bled like a fountain and had to give it up. For his lower body he had an undergarment of hair made secretly with thongs worked in to which a hundred and fifty pointed nails had been attached. They were of brass and had been filed sharp. The points of these nails were always turned toward the body (Suso, 1989, p. 87)

Suso's own asceticism was very extreme; however, he discourages others from following his path. Elsbeth Stägel's asceticism is evident in Suso's Exemplar, in which he discourages her extreme practices. Suso identified Elsbeth as his "spiritual daughter" and concerned himself with both her welfare and her spiritual growth.

Women did not just desire to imitate Christ, but to become one with Christ. They relished their own sufferings as a path leading to mystical union with God, much as Suso did. The nuns of Unterlinden described the sound of self-flagellation as melody, pleasing to the Lord. The asceticism of these women, and perhaps also their tendency toward self-starvation, was a part of their desire to imitate Christ, the imitatio Christi, a phenomenon that manifested itself throughout the period.

The physical devotions of women manifested in several ways, including self-mutilation and food asceticism. These manifestations were occasionally accompanied by the stigmata, a physical sign of devotion to the Passion. Women stigmatics frequently practiced intense physical asceticism, and even mutilated themselves in order to induce the stigmata. There are several notable examples of women in Germany and the Low Countries who showed signs of the stigmata. Lukardis of Oberweimar lived in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. While her wounds may have been self-inflicted, this was of little concern to the medieval observer. Lukardis frequently injured herself in imitation of the Passion of Christ; however, her stigmata appeared after a mystical vision in which Christ said "I wish thee to suffer with me." In a somewhat more extreme example, Elizabeth of Herkenrode, a German Cistercian nun, violently beat herself in imitation of Christ's Passion. Elizabeth, like Lukardis, was marked by stigmata, and was said to bleed from her hands, feet, side and eyes. These women, like others of their time, were driven by a desire to be one with Christ through suffering.

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