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Beguine Women And Mysticism

© Michelle Powell-Smith

While the Beguines did not encourage mysticism, there are a number of beguines who experienced mystical visions and wrote about them.

While the phenomenon of Beguines has only been minimally studied, a number of individual Beguine mystics, including Hadewijch of Brabant and Mechtild of Magdebourg, have been extensively studied. The beguines of the Low Countries and the Rhineland were, it seems, rather prone to mystical visions.

Beguine women were particularly devoted to the Eucharist, and were in fact partially responsible for the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi. Juliana of Cornillon, a thirteenth-century Beguine, was particularly influential. The Feast of the Corpus Christi was instituted in 1264. Beguines were also particularly devoted to other bodily aspects of Christ, including his heart. While the Feast of the Sacred Heart is modern, many thirteenth-century mystics had visions of the body, blood and heart of Christ (Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 56).

THE MYSTICAL JOURNEY OF THE BEGUINE

There were several stages of visionary activity, beginning with the purgation of past or present sin, usually through denial of the flesh. This stage is often characterized by intense fasting, denial of sleep and self-flagellation. The desire in this stage of visionary activity is twofold; to subdue the passions of the flesh and to participate in the imitatio Christi. Lutgard of Aywieres and Mary of Oignes are particularly known for her harsh food asceticism (Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 55, 82). Mary of Oignes even mutilated herself with a knife during one of her visions, creating wounds that replicated those that Christ incurred during his Passion (Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 119). These women went so far as to replace earthly food with the Eucharist (Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 117). Women were particularly known for their harshly ascetic practices, and were often discouraged in these practices by their male confessors.

The intense bodily asceticism of these women served to bring them closer to Christ. They did not attempt to deny the flesh, but rather to immerse themselves in a very physical union with Christ. They wished to suffer as Christ had suffered. Caroline Walker Bynum has suggested that

The goal of religious women was thus to realize the opportunity of physicality. They strove not to eradicate body but to merge their own humiliating and painful flesh with that flesh whose agony espoused by choice, was salvation. Luxuriating in Christ's physicality, they found there the lifting up--the redemption--of their own (Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 246).

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