Visions and Longings
Medieval Women Mystics
-
- $18.99
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
The women mystics of medieval Europe represent the very first feminine voices heard in a world where women were nearly silent. As such, they are striking and unusual, strange, powerful and urgent. Monica Furlong uses key selections from among these women's own writings and writings about them by their contemporaries, along with her own assessment of them, to open up their contributions to a wide popular audience. The eleven women represented in this anthology were housewives, visionaries, abbesses, beguines, recluses, and nuns who wrote between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. They include:
• Héloïse, the scholar and abbess, whose letters to Abelard are treasure of medieval literature
• Hildegard of Bingen, the visionary Rhineland nun
• Clare of Assisi, the close friend of Saint Francis and founder of the Poor Clares
• Catherine of Siena, an influential spiritual counselor whose book, Dialogue, consists of a debate between herself and God
• Julian of Norwich, the English hermitess who spent the greater part of her life meditating on and coming to understand the striking visions she received as a young woman
• and many others
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For readers who might avoid the complete, sometimes daunting works of the 11 women mystics included here, Furlong provides an excellent sampler. The cultural and physical conditions surrounding all these women are difficult for the modern mind to grasp; so also is the courage each employed in her rebellion against the prevailing social views of women and their proper status. From Heloise to the astonishingly clear and modern views of Julian of Norwich, we follow these women from the 11th through the 14th centuries. Being the first in medieval times to give voice to women, whose assigned role was that of silence, these mystics are noteworthy for the intellectual gifts they bring to their religious insights. The physical consequences, often manifesting as illness, of their actions is nowhere discounted by Furlong; nor does she evade the possibility that some of them suffered from conditions that modern medicine would label as mental disorders. These circumstances do not minimize the impact of the women's ideas, but rather-at least in Furlong's presentation-allow us to see the humanity as well as the ecstasy in 11 remarkable women.
