FEMALE PHILOSOPHERS OF CHRISTIANITY

By Torsten Schwanke

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Catherine of Alexandria

Lived: 287 - 307

Nationality: Greek

Area of expertise: Rhetorician

Catherine of Alexandria is one of the most famous Catholic saints.

She is one of the Holy 14 Helpers of Sorrows and is regarded as a helper in cases of ailments of the tongue and speech difficulties.

Catherine of Alexandria is the patron saint of schools, philosophical faculties, seamstresses and tailors.

In Christian tradition, Saint Catherine is a young, intelligent beauty who had promised herself to Christ as a consecrated virgin.

When Caesar Maximinus condemned Christians to martyrdom, Catherine confronted him and asked him why he did not convert to Christianity instead of demanding sacrifices to idols from Christians.

In a public discussion, to which the emperor had summoned his best 50 philosophers and scholars, Catherine presented such lucid and learned arguments in favour of Christianity that all fifty converted to Christianity. Because they had failed to dissuade Catherine from the Christian faith, the emperor sent them all to the stake.

Impressed by her quick wit and beauty, the emperor offered Catherine several times to rule by his side as a mighty and highly adorned queen. However, she refused, was scourged and imprisoned in a dark dungeon for twelve days without food. However, she received divine assistance through angels who anointed the wounds and a white dove that brought food. Christ himself also came to strengthen her faith and prepare her for martyrdom. The instrument of torture for her martyrdom was to be the wheel. However, at Catherine's prayer, an angel came and destroyed the instrument of torture with such force that 4000 pagans were killed at the same time. In the end, Catherine was beheaded.

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Sosipatra of Ephesus

Lived: 300-362 

Nationality: Greek

Area of expertise: Neoplatonist

Sosipatra is known only from Eunapios of Sardis' biography of the philosophers and sophists; her name is not mentioned in any other source.

Eunapios, who describes some incidents from her life, gives an impression of the extraordinary reputation she enjoyed in the circles of the Neoplatonists of Asia Minor. His detailed narrative, in which he glorifies Sosipatra, is literarily embellished and has legendary features. He attributes to Sosipatra not only qualities that were expected of a philosopher personality in late antique Neoplatonism, but also superhuman abilities.

Thus, it was reported that Sosipatra had learned all the works of poets, philosophers and orators, and was able to explain the most difficult works with ease and clarity.

Thereupon her fame spread and students flocked to her.

Eunapios contrasted the ideal figure of the philosopher with the ideal of sanctity of the Christians, with whom the Neoplatonists rivalled, as an alternative.

In Pergamon, she taught philosophy and practised theurgy (contacting the world of the gods through special ritual acts). Thus she announced some prophecies, which are said to have been fulfilled, so that the Algerian bishop Augustine felt obliged to declare for later generations that he was fighting the allegedly known correctness of the pagan prophecies.

Whether she only taught orally or also wrote works is unknown.

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Makrina the Younger

Lived: 330-379 

Nationality: Asia Minor

Area of expertise: Ascetic, Doctrine of the soul

According to Gregory of Nyssa's dialogue on the soul and resurrection, Makrina's education must have included philosophy and natural science. Makrina the younger received a good manual, scholastic and intellectual education. Her brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, together with their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, achieved world fame as the Cappadocians. But, as we know today, behind them stood Makrina as spiritual mother, critical advisor and theological teacher. Gregory of Nyssa writes in his work "Dialogue with Makrina on the Soul and the Resurrection" that she answered the most complicated questions with excellent theological and philosophical knowledge.

As a beautiful girl from a respected and wealthy family, she had numerous suitors. Her father betrothed her at the age of fourteen to a young rhetor from the wider family. After the early death of her fiancé, Makrina decided to remain faithful to her fiancé and to be a support to her mother, not only in the household but also, after the early death of her father, in the management of the extensive family estates.

After her mother's death, Makrina became the leader of the ascetic community of consecrated virgins in Pontus, which is said to be the first women's monastery ever, where her brother visited her after Basil's death and found her on her deathbed.

Her life is described by her brother Gregory of Nyssa in Life of Macrina and Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection, where he portrays her as his spiritual teacher.

"And so great was Makrina's order of life, and so such the height of her philosophy, and so sublime her walk by day and by night, that words cannot tell. " 

(Gregory of Nyssa)

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Hypathia of Alexandrina

Lived: 355 - 415

Nationality: Greek

Field of Expertise: Neoplatonist / Syncretism / Mathematician / Astronomy

Hypatia was the daughter of the mathematician and astronomer Theon of Alexandria and the sister of the mathematician Epiphanius.

She was taught mathematics and astronomy by her father, who belonged to the Alexandrian Museion. She received her philosophical education in the Museion and probably in the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria, of which she was later the head. Who her philosophy teacher was is unknown. According to one research hypothesis, a son of the philosopher Sosipatra, Antoninos, comes into consideration.

After completing her education, she began teaching mathematics and philosophy herself. According to the Suda, she combined rhetorical talent with a prudent, thoughtful approach. Socrates of Constantinople reports that listeners came to her from everywhere.

Damaskios reports that she wore the philosopher's cloak (tríbōon) and travelled around the city teaching publicly and interpreting the teachings of Plato or Aristotle, or indeed any other philosopher, to anyone who would listen.

Étienne Évrard interprets the formulation of Damaskios in the sense that Hypatia taught in the open street, that she presented philosophical topics, which were usually discussed in a closed circle among the relevant educated, to a relatively broad public. Such an unusual procedure, especially for a woman at that time, caused a sensation.

Hypatia was known for not shying away from deliberately provocative behaviour. This is also an indication of a Cynic element in her philosophical stance; Cynics used to shock in a calculated way in order to bring about insights.

The news, handed down by Damaskios, that Hypatia interpreted both Plato's and Aristotle's writings and generally lectured on any philosopher, indicates that she represented the syncretism prevalent in her time. The basic tenets of all philosophical directions that were considered serious at the time were assumed to be uniform.

In the astronomical observations of the time, it was assumed that the planetary orbits were determined by the perfection of the circle. Hypathia recognised that due to the varying brightness of the sun, depending on the season, the earth and thus all the planets must revolve in an ellipse around the sun.

Through Hypatia's student Synesios of Cyrene, it became known that the philosopher developed the principle of tolerance and exemplified it as a value. She assumed that the basis of the coexistence of groups with different religious convictions is difference: someone is a Jew, a Christian or a Greek. Only by becoming aware of this difference can tolerance develop on two levels. The first stage is about recognising the difference: someone has a different religious conviction than I do. The second stage builds on this: it includes the equal rights of all different groups in a society: someone can live in Alexandria as a Jew, Christian or Greek without having to give up any rights. 

That she was extraordinarily revered in Alexandria is also attested to by a report handed down in the Suda. Her murder therefore caused a great stir and was also condemned by some Christian historians.

Thus Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary of Hypatia, in his Ecclesiastical History portrayed Hypatia as follows:

"In Alexandria there lived a woman named Hypatia. She had such an outstanding education that she outshone all the philosophers of her time. Her teaching brought her to the top of the Platonic school. To the authorities she appeared frankly and with the self-confidence that her education gave her. This woman was then the victim of certain machinations. The deed brought great shame to Cyril and also to the Church of Alexandria." 

In the 14th century, the Byzantine historian Nikephoros Gregoras reported that the Empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa, who lived in the 11th century, was called "a second Theano and Hypatia". From his words we can see that Hypatia lived on in the medieval Byzantine Empire as a model of an exquisitely educated woman.

"What is a circle but a special ellipse whose focal points are so close together that they appear to be one?"

"I must question what I believe in."

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Athenais (after her baptism Aelia Eudokia)

Lived: 405 - 460

Nationality: Greek / Eastern Roman

Area of expertise: Miaphysitism / Orthodoxy

Athenaïs was born in Athens as the daughter of the pagan philosopher Leontios and was considered highly educated.

On 7 June 421 she married the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II and was Byzantine Empress until 443.

Although her father had been a pagan, her actions and utterances showed a much stronger Christian mindset.

Athenaïs Eudokia herself combines paganism with Christianity, passing from the latter to the latter, and from the still ancient-philosophical Athens to the orthodox-Christian Byzantium. If such spiritual contrasts did not already make her life strange, the wonderful scenes on which it moved would do so in any case; for these are the cities of Athens, Constantinople and Jerusalem."

Aelia Eudocia was instrumental in the establishment of the Christian University of Constantinople, which was built up as the so-called Athenaeum in 424 based on Constantinian beginnings and produced the collection of the compilation of laws of the Codex Theodosianus as its first great intellectual achievement.

Aelia Eudokia herself composed spiritual poetry, some of which has been preserved. She sympathised with Miaphysitism, but turned to Orthodoxy at the end of her life. She is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church,

In Jerusalem, she had the city walls, which now enclosed Mount Zion as well as the old City of David, rebuilt and endowed hospitals, pilgrims' hostels, monasteries and churches. It also allowed the Jews greater freedom to visit the city on special religious feast days,

Although Eudocia's work has been ignored, especially by modern scholars, she left an exemplary legacy of how the Christian faith and Greek education became intertwined and the Byzantine Empire influenced the development of the Christian world.

The Homeric Centos, which Eudocia wrote, by some modern scholars is the most popular poem analysed, as Homer was a popular choice to write a Cento.

What is special about Eudocia's Cento is that it is the longest Homeric Cento at 2344 lines. This cento is a clear representation of who and what Eudocia was and what she believed. She wrote this epic combination of poems in hexameter to add the stories from the Book of Genesis and the New Testament story of the life of Jesus Christ to the Homeric philosophy from her classical Athenian educational background.

Eudocia needed the human ancient experience to provide a reference to the Bible in a new way. She used themes from the Iliad and Odyssey because they all contain content to clarify the gospel story.

Whenever and wherever possible, Eudocia needs or uses a Homeric line or adaptation to express greatness, pain, truthfulness, deceit, beauty, sorrow, grief, recognition, understanding, fear or wonder.

Eudocia's Homeric poetry is important in understanding how she, as a woman in the early Christian Byzantine Empire with an understanding of her role as empress, combines classical Greek literature with her Christian faith in her understanding of love.

The poem "Cyprianus and Justina" by the Empress Aelia Eudokia is practically unknown to us; and as far as I know, no German translation of it has ever been attempted. Its literary value, however, is no less than this, that it is the first poetical treatment of a subject, the most modern figure of which may be called the Faustian legend. 

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Hrotsvit (Roswitha) of Gandersheim

Lived: 935 - 973

Nationality: German

Field of Expertise: History of religion and philosophy

considered the first German poetess

Hrotsvit was a canoness at Gandersheim Abbey and had a considerable education, which included knowledge of some of the ancient classics such as Terence, Horace and Ovid. She read Greek and Latin. Her works also testify to extensive knowledge of the history of religion and philosophy as well as politics. She was also familiar with Pythagorean doctrine. In her poems, she most frequently used the leonine hexameter.

Her works are attributed to the "Ottonian Renaissance".

The most important manuscript of her works, which contains all texts except the Primordia, is the Codex, a manuscript written by several hands in Gandersheim at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. It was discovered by the humanist Conrad Celtis in 1491/94 in the Regensburg monastery of St. Emmeram and used as the basis for the first edition of the Opera Hrotsvvitea or Gandeshemensis, illustrated by Albrecht Dürer and published in Nuremberg in 1501.

Hrotsvite herself divided her work into three books:

The "Legend Book",

The "Drama Book",

The third book comprises two historical writings in leonine hexameters:

the "Gesta Ottonis" (Gesta Oddonis),

and the "Primordia coenobii Gandeshemensis",

Hrotsvit does not see woman as inferior to man, but triumphs over him because she is morally superior to him; for Hrotsvit, woman is the redeemer and bearer of salvation.

Her work is characterised by a great openness, touching on all subjects that a canoness might not easily be expected to deal with. History, struggle and evil, not to mention vivid erotic motifs, of which Roswitha herself said: "Freely, I was often taken by shyness before my work, burning red poured over my face, for I had to design in my mind and hold on with my pen the loathsome folly of boys and their unedifying gossip, from which we otherwise cover our ears....".

It is not only interesting from a literary-historical point of view that in one of her writings - in the Legend of Pelagius - an alliance between the devil and a human being is described for the first time. Faust's Mephisto is thus hinted at here.

It seems like an anticipation of the history of Bad Gandersheim that Roswitha devotes herself in her dramas to strong-willed female personalities, such as will be found in this place until the 18th century. She also had an unusual will for a woman of her time, namely to share her experiences, stories, legends and epics. Roswitha wrote all her works in Latin, the language of education. Her two historical epics in particular are still an important source of German history of the Ottonian Romanesque period.

Roswitha is the first German writer and intellectual to have composed Latin texts in the Middle Ages. Thus, she acquires a very great cultural significance both as a poet and playwright and as a historian.

"The human feeling mixes her

With the recommendation of the sacred virtues

And makes her a unique example

For subsequent epochs."

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Murasaki Shikibu (Tosa Mitsuoki)

Lived: 973 -1016

Nationality: Japanese

Field of Expertise: Scholarly

The birth name of Japan's first female novelist, like much else of her life, is unknown. Instead, she took the name Murasaki Shikibu (literally, Purple of Ceremony).

Murasaki spent much time writing the Genji Monogatari, but also had to devote herself to her court duties.

In 1005, Murasaki entered the service of Empress Jotomonain, which was a great honour for her, and yet Murasaki left reluctantly, returning home after a short time. Life at court was not at all as she knew it from stories and had imagined it, they were critical of her. But even when she was offended, hated and belittled by the other courtiers, she remained in her service as a lady-in-waiting at the request of the empress herself. She also received the support of Emperor (Tenno) Ichijo, who considered her so intelligent that he said she had certainly read Nihongi, one of the two ancient historical works of Japanese history written in classical Chinese. The peculiarity of this was that in the Heian period women could neither read nor write Chinese, but used the so-called women's script (onna-de). Murasaki, however, did have the ability to read Chinese.

She had to learn how to play the koto, practise calligraphic writing and entertain the empress. She instructed the empress not only in the works recommended by ministers and the emperor, but also secretly in collections of poems in which Murasaki saw the possibility of making the empress into a woman of the highest moral standards, which her father Michinaga greatly welcomed.

In autumn 1008, she began the Murasaki Shikibu nikki, which described her life at court and the time before and after the birth of Crown Prince Atsuhira.

With her sensitive differentiation of the characters in her works, especially her main work: the Genji Monogatari, and their interconnection into a subtle system of thoughts and feelings, she thereby develops aesthetic, existential and religious dimensions that are also of philosophical significance.

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Anna Komnena of Byzantium

Lived: 1083 -1154

Nationality: Greek

Field of expertise: Christian Aristotelianism

Anna was very interested in the natural sciences and had studied medicine in addition to the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music). She also wrote a treatise on gout and ran a hospital in Constantinople. Anna also studied philosophy and was a follower of Christian Aristotelianism, which bore Neoplatonic traits.

Thus, a remarkable flowering of Aristotelianism emanated from a philosophical circle maintained by the emperor's daughter Anna Komnene, who was excluded from political life.

Around 1123, Anna, like her husband, devoted herself to writing history.

In her work of history, the Alexiade (or Alexias), written after 1137 and until at least 1148, the highly educated Anna describes the career of her father Alexios in 15 books, more precisely the years from 1069 to 1118. It is also a supplement to the work of her husband Nikephoros (Hyle Historias), who had described the period from Romanus IV Diogenes to Nikephoros Botaniates, but was unable to complete his work due to his wound and death.

Anna herself claims to have witnessed a number of events herself and to have relied on the accounts of warriors who had accompanied the emperor on his campaigns. She had access to archives as well as numerous eyewitnesses.

Anna drew portraits of the most important participants in the First Crusade, such as Bohemund I of Taranto and Count Raimund IV of Toulouse.

Anna lived in a time when women were expected above all to remain quiet in their quarters (called gyneceum) and to concentrate their participation in life exclusively on family matters. In public, they covered their faces with a veil and were not even allowed to take part in processions. However, in Anna Komnena's work, she also reveals herself as a woman who was given the remarkable licence to write what she thought.

Thus, Anna Komnena's historical work is entirely committed to her education, strongly based on ancient models, especially Thucydides and Polybios. However, her work also contains quotations from Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, John of Epiphaneia and many others.

In general, the source value of the work, which is also literarily sophisticated, is considered very high in modern research and is thus an important corrective to the Latin sources. However, it is not always objective towards the participants of the Crusade.

It represents the most comprehensive and, overall, also the most reliable source for Byzantine history at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries.

The written history of history forms a very strong bulwark against the tide of time, and to some extent it checks its irresistible tide and, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over, secures them and binds them, and does not allow them to fall into the abyss of oblivion. 

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Heloisa dÀrgentuil

Lived: 1094 -1164

Nationality: French

Field of expertise: Eros / Love

Heloise was a brilliant scholar of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and had an excellent reputation for her intelligence and insight. Abaelard writes that she was nominatissima, "the most renowned" for her gift of reading and writing. She was famous throughout Western Europe for her erudition and was the wife of the philosopher and theologian Peter Abaelard and abbess of the women's convent Paraclete, founded on Cistercian and Fontevraldensian models and exegetically underpinned by Abaelard's writings.

Around 1116/1117 Heloise met and fell in love with Peter Abaelard. Abaelard, a lecturer in dialectics in Paris, initially hired himself out as Heloise's tutor and the two entered into a passionate but concealed love affair. After some time, however, the affair was discovered. Abaelard had his mistress, who had meanwhile become pregnant by him, secretly taken to Le Pallet, where she gave birth to their son Astralabius.

Heloisa was married to her lover against her will, but in accordance with the requirements of canon law, thus retroactively legitimising the previous birth and initially avoiding a public scandal. However, in the same year, his revenge-seeking uncle Fulbert had Abaelard castrated. He survived the mutilation and retired as a monk to the monastery of Saint-Denis. He instructed Heloisa to retire to the convent of nuns in Argenteuil, thus making her remarriage impossible in the event of a subsequent divorce.

In 1129, contact between Heloisa and Abaelard was revived. The 32-year-old nun finally found a new home with a group of nuns in Abaelard's abandoned hermitage Paraklet near Nogent-sur-Seine. Heloisa built up a new convent of women there as prioress and later as abbess, which lived according to an attenuated Benedictine rule, partly according to Abaelard's suggestions. The convent grew rapidly under Heloisa's wise leadership and until her death resulted in 5 priories and 1 daughter monastery. Abaelard remained in contact with Heloisa and the monastery as an advisor until his death.

The couple's correspondence made them famous. In it, Heloisa proved to be not only a woman of extraordinary intellect and heart, but also a gifted writer in the subtlety and elegance of her formulations, as later confirmed by a contemporary (Hugo Metellus from Toulouse).

After a brief happiness together, separated for life and yet one heart and soul, even beyond bodily death. A couple of such intensity of thought and feeling that no second ever equalled it...

"Partners must respect each other

And treat each other

As if she and he were the best thing on earth."

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Hildegard of Bingen (Sybille of the Rhine)

Lived: 1098 -1179

Nationality: German

Field: Mystic / Scholar

Hildegard von Bingen is regarded as the first, but not typical, representative of German mysticism in the Middle Ages. Her works deal with religion, medicine, music, ethics and cosmology. An extensive correspondence, including harsh admonitions to even high-ranking contemporaries, and reports on extensive pastoral journeys, including public preaching, have been preserved. The fact that this was possible for a woman in medieval society can be explained by the fact that her prophetic self-image was shared by those around her. In the Roman Catholic Church she is venerated as a saint.

The naturopath and abbess Hildegard von Bingen was the most important German mystic. Her mystical-prophetic visions, her firm faith, her exemplary life and her charismatic appearance made the Trumpet of God a revered popular saint even during her lifetime. Her works open up a holistic view of man and creation, in which theological, cosmological, natural history and spiritual aspects are interwoven in a fascinating way. 

Hildegard had numerous visions in the course of her life. In 1141 she experienced an apparition which she understood as a commission from God to record her experiences. About this experience - and uncertain about what it meant - she became ill. In her theological writing Liber Scivias (Know the Ways), which gathers her visions, Hildegard describes her inner struggle:

"But I, although I heard these things, refused for a long time to write them down - out of doubt and disbelief and because of the multiplicity of human words, not out of obstinacy, but because I followed humility and did so until the scourge of God felled me and I fell into a sick bed; then, moved at last by many kinds of sickness I gave my hand to writing. While I was doing it, I felt the deep meaning of the Holy Scriptures; and I thus raised myself from the illness by the strength I received and brought this work to its end - just so - in ten years. And I spoke and wrote these things not from the invention of my heart or of any other person, but by the secret mysteries of God, as I heard and received them from the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from heaven, and it said unto me, Lift up thy voice, and write thus."

A recognised scholar, she eventually founded the Rupertsberg monastery on the Rupertsberg on the left bank of the Nahe between 1147 and 1150. The preserved art objects, especially the gold-purple antependium, bear witness to Rupertsberg's former wealth.

In 1152, Archbishop Heinrich finally confirmed the transfer of the monastery estates, which had become very extensive due to Hildegard's reputation. This increasing wealth also affected the life of the monastery and provoked criticism. Several clergymen, but also leaders of other monasteries, for example Master Tengswich of Andernach, attacked Hildegard because her nuns allegedly lived luxuriously, contrary to the monastic commandment of poverty, and only women from noble families were accepted.

Since the number of nuns in the Rupertsberg monastery was constantly increasing, Hildegard acquired the Augustinian monastery in Eibingen in 1165 and founded a branch monastery there where non-nobles could enter. She appointed a prioress there and reserved the dignity of abbess for herself.

Because of her faith and her way of life, she became a guide for many people. Even during her lifetime, many called her a saint. Hildegard justified this view by repeatedly referring to visions for her theological and philosophical statements. In this way, she secured her teachings against the doctrine that women were not capable of theological knowledge on their own. She described herself as "uneducated".

Above all, it is the three theological works that established her fame at the time. Her main work:

Scivias ("Know the Ways") is a doctrine of faith in which the image of the world and the image of man are inseparably interwoven with the image of God. The overall philosophical-theological view, which corresponds in all essential points to the official church doctrine of the time, is presented in 26 visions. 

The second visionary work: Liber Vitae Meritorum ("Book of the Merits of Life") could be described as a visionary ethic. In it, 35 vices and virtues are contrasted. 

The third book: Liber Divinorum Operum (The Book of God's Work) is Hildegard's vision of the world and man. Here she describes the order of creation according to the medieval microcosm-macrocosm conception as something in which body and soul, world and church, nature and grace are placed in the responsibility of man. In this way, she also created an early form of homo signorum.

As abbess, she had to look after the nuns, not only as a superior, but also as a pastor. But Hildegard did not only have an open ear for her nuns. Crowds of people flocked to her for advice, especially for physical ailments.

In the records, Hildegard is mainly mentioned as a "healer". With her belief in viriditas and the prescription of natural remedies and the "sensible way of life", she also succeeded in actually curing the sick.

Between 1120 and 1160, Hildegard worked on her Encyclopaedia of Natural History: Liber Simplicis Medicinae secundum creationem, also called Healing Power of Nature, "Physica", the book on the inner essence of the various natures of creatures.

Schott published it in Strasbourg in 1533 and called it "Physica". It was her most scientific work and was used as a textbook at the Montpellier medical school. "Physica" and her later medical book: Causae et Curae (Origin and Treatment of Diseases or Book of Compound Remedies, on Signs and Cures of the Sick) was, like other medieval treatises on natural science topics, divided into books and chapters and written in a direct style. Hildegard described a total of 300 plant species. Among the animals, she treated birds, insects, mammals and also worms and the fish found in the Rhine and Nahe rivers.

Her image of God and man as well as her macrocosm in the form of the universe and her microcosm in the form of the human body are also philosophically relevant.

The collection of sacred songs by Hildegard von Bingen, which has come down to us under the name Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum ("Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Apparitions") contains 77 liturgical chants with melodies in diasthematic new notation as well as the liturgical drama Ordo virtutum, which has been preserved in text and musical notation, the range of chants includes antiphons, responsories, hymns, sequences, a curia, an alleluia and two symphoniae.

The so-called Giant Codex, formerly also called the "Codex with the Chain", is the central legacy of Hildegard of Bingen. Not only its enormous size, which is very unusual for a medieval manuscript, have made it a veritable relic and icon of her spirit over the centuries. The reason for this is also the idea of an encyclopaedically ordered complete edition of Hildegard's writings, which was also unusual for the Middle Ages and which underlies the codex. Today it is kept in the Landesbibliothek in Wiesbaden. 

„A wind blew from a high mountain and set in motion with its blowing a small feather, which of itself had no ability to fly, but only received it through the wind. Doubtless Almighty God caused this to happen, in order to show what He is able to work through a being which of itself would not have the least confidence."

Hildegard von Bingen will be canonised on 10 May 2012! 

She was elevated to the rank of Doctor of the Church on 7 October 2012.

"Heavenly happiness when I look with open eyes,

What you, my God, have created

I already possess heaven here."

"Without woman, man could not be called man; without man, woman could not be called woman."

"The Lord does not want us to destroy our bodies."

"Man should first consider all his works in his heart before he performs them."

"It is our divine right

To decide for ourselves."

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Herrad of Landsberg (Hohenburg), also Herradis Landbergensis

Lived: 1125 -1195

Nationality: German

Field of expertise: Writer / Scholar

Herrad von Landsberg was abbess of the Hohenburg monastery on the Odilienberg from 1167 to 1195 and achieved great fame as author and illustrator of the Hortus Deliciarum, which summarised the spiritual and profane knowledge of the High Middle Ages for the nuns of the Hohenburg monastery in Latin and is the first encyclopaedia verifiably written by a woman.

Illustrated with 350 miniatures, the encyclopaedic work in Latin summarises the theological and profane knowledge of the time for the instruction of the convent women. Many of the miniatures are symbolic representations of theological, philosophical and literary themes, some are historical, some depict scenes from the artists' current experience and others are a collection of portraits of their sisters in the religious convent community.

Thus, the septem artes liberales (The Seven Liberal Arts) traditionally shows the education befitting a free man. The liberal arts were so designated in order to value them as superior to the practical arts (Artes mechanicae). Seneca writes in his 88th letter: Quare liberalia studia dicta sunt vides: quia homine libero digna sunt (You see why the liberal arts are so called: because they are worthy of a free man). A free man was one who did not have to work for a living. Thus, only those occupations that had no connection with gainful employment could be worthy. In the liberal arts, a distinction was made between the trivium (three-way) of the linguistic and logical-argumentative subjects, which form the prerequisite for any occupation with (Latin) science, and the more advanced quadrivium (four-way) of the mathematical subjects.

The original was burnt in 1870 during the siege of Strasbourg (where it had been deposited since 1723) during the Franco-Prussian War; only tracings (including a facsimile from 1818 that is now almost as valuable) have survived. Beginning with the nature and attributes of God, the creation of the angels and the fall of Lucifer, the depiction of the Zodiac and the passage of time follows, depicting man as a macrocosm in the midst of the four elements.

The seven-planet doctrine, represented in the nimbus of the just-created human being, shows the difference between medieval symbolic thinking and our present rational-logical, scientifically supported world view.

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Beatrijs of Nazareth (also Beatrix van der Aa; van Lie; van Bloemendaal)

Lived: 1200 - 29.08.1268

Nationality: Flemish

Area of expertise: Mystic

Beatrijs' life story is known from a medieval Latin vita, the "Vita Beatricis", written by an unknown clergyman who based it on Beatrijs' lost records, the Liber Vitae (Book of Life). It was Beatrice's diary, written between 1217 and 1235, in which she recorded her mystical experiences. Although Beatrice had enjoyed a good education and was certainly more than familiar with Latin, she wrote this Liber Vitae in her vernacular.

In 1236 she came to the convent of Nazareth. There she was elected prioress, a post she held until her death.

Beatrijs wrote a mystical work in the Flemish language: "Seven manieren van minne" (Seven ways of love), which deals with various aspects of spiritual experience. In this work, one can trace influences from the love mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux, among others, in which she places greater emphasis on the intellect and its use in the mystical ascent of the soul.

With this work, Beatrijs is the first to use the vernacular for a religio-literary work and thus stands at the beginning of Middle Dutch literature.

Of the seven types of holy disadvantages which contain the core of Beatrice of Nazareth's mystical teachings: she writes about the ascent into mystical love (God's love). Here she distinguishes seven types of experience: purifying love, serving love, the insatiable longing for full love, mystical joyful love, stormy love, victorious love and the transition into eternal love. It is a small tract of about five hundred prose verse lines that she probably wrote during her stay at the monastery of Nazareth. The work has its own mystical terminology. The original manuscript has been lost, but there are three copies which survive: the oldest dates from the mid-fourteenth century and the youngest from the mid-fifteenth century.

Beatrijs' philosophy is best explained by their image of man, which is most closely related to their views on God, the soul and the world. The human soul is originally an image of God.

Among the

Natural gifts of the soul

Include a

Perceptive reason and a noble pride,

So that the soul should keep away from evil 

And direct itself towards the higher, 

That is, towards God, 

Who in the Neoplatonic manner, 

Following the example of Augustine, 

Is called the highest good. Also

Kindness, generosity and 

The will to spare one's neighbour,

Should be among the natural gifts.

*

Mechthild of Magdeburg (Helfta)

Lived: 1207 - 1282

Nationality: German

Area of expertise: Mystic

Mechthild of Magdeburg is one of the most important mystics of Central Europe.

Around the age of 20, she moved to Magdeburg, or more precisely the poor quarters of Magdeburg, where she took care of the outcasts and abandoned of society as a Beguine around 1230, where she lived as a Beguine according to the Rule of St. Dominic for over 30 years. Around 1250, at the encouragement of her confessor Heinrich von Halle, she began to write about the delights and torments of her mystical experiences with God. Heinrich von Halle compiled her notes, written in Middle Low German, into the first six of a total of seven books of the "Flowing Light of Divinity". The sensation she caused with this writing and her contemporary critique of real religious life, the Church and the world probably prompted her to spend the last years of her life in seclusion in the Cistercian monastery of Helfta. There she met, among others, the young Gertrud of Helfta. She lived in the monastery for another 12 years and added an eighth book to her records during this time.

In her work "Das fließende Licht der Gottheit" (The Flowing Light of Divinity), which comprises seven parts, Mechthild uses images from the Song of Songs and Minnesang to describe the mystical marriage of the soul with Christ. She is influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux, David of Augsburg, Hildegard of Bingen and Gregory the Great, among others. Mechthild's writings are considered one of the most impressive examples of German women's mysticism and show the height of women's education in the Middle Ages.

Mechthild drew her spiritual strength from love, which she described in detail in her book "The Flowing Light of the Godhead". Mechthild is one of the first thinkers to give a differentiated philosophical account of different types of love and their significance for human beings.

Mechthild distinguishes 16 different types of love. She is primarily concerned with true love of divine wisdom, but she is also aware of sensual love. She understood love first and foremost as a gift from God that shapes people's lives and gives them the strength to survive turbulence. Those who love, believe in themselves and lose their inner alienation.

The Low German original of her text has not come down to us. What we do have is an Upper German transmission that was written between 1343 and 1345 in the circle of the Basel Friends of God around Heinrich von Nördlingen. This manuscript is now in the Einsiedeln Abbey Library. In addition, several other surviving excerpts or fragments attest to a certain, albeit not very broad, medieval reception of Mechthild's work. In addition, Mechthild's work was translated into Latin at an early date. An extensive manuscript of this version has also survived, which contains the first six books of the "Flowing Light", although the texts are arranged differently.

Mechthild's writings are the first testimonies of German mysticism written in Low German and are considered one of the most impressive examples of German women's mysticism and show the height of women's education in the Middle Ages.

"Whatever a man does,

If he is not truthful, do not trust him."

"Foolishness finds pleasure in itself,

Wisdom can never ask enough questions."

"I dance when Thou leadest me."

"Prayer makes a bitter heart sweet,

A sad heart glad, a poor heart rich, 

A foolish heart wise,

A timid heart bold, a weak heart strong, 

A blind heart seeing.

It draws the great God into a small heart.

It drives the hungry soul up 

To the God of fullness."

"Wisdom is always with love,

Is mistress of all virgins.

She keeps whatever love grants,

Makes useful what man reads or teaches."

*

Hadewijch of Antwerp

Lived: ca. 1210 - 1260

Nationality: Dutch

Area of expertise: Love and Minnemystic

Hadewijch of Antwerp was the first female poet in the history of Dutch literature and one of the most important authors in Middle Dutch. Hadewijch is also one of the first mystical authors in the Netherlands.

In a recent study, Daniel Devreese (2010) identifies with some historical arguments that Hadewijch was born as a certain Hadewid Greca before 1187. She lived in a group of nuns before moving to the Weyngaert Merksem crypt in 1212, which was supervised by the monastery of Villers. She lived there until about 1230.

There is no historical source about the real life span of Hadewijch.

She must have enjoyed a good education and been a very well-educated woman. She was familiar with Latin texts (mystical literature, Vulgate translation of the Bible) and well read with the most important theologians of the time (Augustine, Gregory, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry and Richard of St. Victor). In addition, she was familiar with courtly manners and customs.

Hadewijch wrote in Latin or French, but in a variant of Middle Brabant, including the current provinces - Northern, Flemish and Walloon Brabant and Antwerp.

Recent research has shown that Hadewijch must have had a very musical talent. At first, her verses were recognised as poems, but these were mostly tunes, which made her famous. These tunes were often used by northern French minstrels in the thirteenth century. In her own creative way she used rhyme schemes and rhyming words.

From various sources it can be deduced that Hadewijch presided over and lived as the spiritual leader of a group of Beguine nuns.

Hadewijch's works have been preserved in their entirety in three manuscripts. Two old manuscripts come from the Rooklooster in Brussels (second half of the 14th century). They are kept in the Royal Library of Brussels. A third manuscript is said to come from the Bethlehem Herent monastery in Leuven (end of the 14th century). It is in the library of the University of Ghent. A fourth manuscript contains only part of her work (early 16th century). It is kept in the library of the Ruusbroec Fellowship in Antwerp.

These manuscripts contain: 14 visions, 45 songs of stanzaic poems, 31 letters and 16 letters of rhyme or Mengele poems.

Hadewijch's mystical visions are linked to Christian faith and symbolism, and in them one naturally finds strong similarities with the great mystics from other cultures and religions. Hadewijch, however, gives them a special colour with her Christian religious experience. She does this freely and proudly, without the feeling of being bound to church teachings and convictions. This is what makes Hadewijch so special.

These visions, like her other texts, help Hadewijch to fulfill her spiritual quest for the inner self.

Most scholars assume that the fourteen visions describe Hadewijch's development, which she experienced spiritually: the process of spiritual growth.

Hadewijch's ideas exerted little influence in her time until a later Dutch mystic, Jan van Ruusbroec adopted and popularised her doctrine of the Trinity and other core ideas (without mentioning her name). Ruusbroec himself was translated and read in many languages, which had a great influence on the wider Catholic traditions. Even though Hadewijch herself was little read until modern times, her ideas indirectly influenced many great thoughts to come.

Love mysticism has, besides a great emotionality, a strong ethical and also intellectual character.

Virtue and reason both play an important role. Ethics and reason are inseparable.

The path to the mystical union of the soul with God leads through following the human life of Jesus Christ.

This ethical path of virtue, which also implies suffering and tribulation, is equally the path of reason.

„The rational soul is created in the image 

Of God and has 3 functions: 

1. memory and consciousness

2. intelligence

3. the will."

"The soul has two eyes:

Love & Reason."

"In the deepest depths of the soul

The fiery wheel of God's love turns."

*

Mechthild of Hackeborn

Lived: 1241 - 1299

Nationality: German

Area of expertise: Mystic

Mechthild kept her mystical experiences secret until she was 50 years old.

Her revelations were published by two fellow sisters on the instructions of the abbess Sophie von Querfurt in the "Liber specialis gratiae" (The Book of Special Grace) in the Latin language. The appendix of the five-part work reports on the last days of the lives of Mechthild and Gertrud of Hackeborn. Presumably Gertrud von Helfta was involved in the writing of the script, which was copied and revised by hand and published in 1877 in two volumes under the title "Revelationes Gertrudianae et Mechtildianae" (The Revelations of Gertrud and Mechtild) appeared in print.

The Liber specialis gratiae, (Book of Special Grace) contains her visions of bridal mysticism, the Unio mystica as summa experientia, supreme experience, in addition to that of the wounds of love, the veneration of the Heart of Jesus, (via ευχαριστειν Eucharist - to give thanks, brings to mind the salvific dying of Jesus Christ.) It is rich in allegories such as that of the Fountain of Virtue or the Garden of the Heart, as well as numerical symbolism.

As a feat of asceticism, to commemorate the Passion of Christ, she placed broken pieces in her bed and rolled in them until she was dripping with blood, thus averting the wrath of God.

She was often questioned about the fate of the deceased. Miraculous healings are also reported, for example, she helped a blind sister to see again.

After initially attracting a great deal of attention in the 16th century, her own work "The Book of Streaming Praise" disappears completely behind the above-mentioned Gertrude Book, which became popular.

In it, she nourishes God not through abstraction from the senses, but through the use of all the senses towards God, in ever greater conformity with the senses of the God-man. Not spiritualisation away from the world, but communion of the created with the uncreated will through perfect virginal yes is the way.

*

Angela of Foligno

Lived: 1248 - 1309

Nationality: Italian

Area of expertise: Mystic

She belonged to the Third Order of Franciscans and is considered an important mystic of the order.

Angeela's penitential practices and austerities were rewarded with revelations, visions and gifts of grace such as had not been seen for centuries. In 1291 she became a Franciscan tertiary and remained so even after the death of all her relatives. She sold her possessions and now lived in poverty and penance.

She now gathered her many disciples and followers in the Cenacolo, Communion Hall, in the Franciscan monastery not far from her home, which she founded after 1285, where men and women, clergy and laity gathered to pursue paths of progressive religious life and social engagement.

More and more mystical experiences and proofs of grace now came to Angela. Her visions were recorded by Fra Arnaldo in the Liber de vera fidelium experientia, the book of the true experience of faith, and verified and confirmed by the Church. Angela describes mystical experience, drawing ever closer to Christ until the soul unites with Him in love and pain, enabling the experience of God as Ognibene, the highest perfection.

Angela, who was influenced early on by Franciscan theology, is considered one of the most important mystics in this context. The theme of God's encounter with the human soul is a leitmotif of her writings.

"One must know,

That God comes into the soul at times,

Without being asked

Or even wished for."

*

Marguerite Porete

Lived: 1255 - 1310

Nationality: French

Area of expertise: Mystic

Little is known about Margaret's life. It can be deduced from her educational background that she came from the upper classes.

At an unknown time, she had joined the Beguine movement, an emancipatory religious form of life that had arisen almost simultaneously in various places in Europe in the second half of the 12th century.

On 11 April 1310, she was condemned as a heretic by 21 theologians in the church of Saint-Mathurin in Paris. A total of fifteen sentences of her writing, taken out of context and sounding heretical, had formed the basis for the condemnation of Margaret, who herself refused to comment or recant.

On 1 June 1310, Whit Monday, after being handed over to the secular authorities as a relapsed heretic (relapsa) on 30 May, she was burned at the stake in the Place de Gèrve in Paris.

Marguerite's famous work Mirouer des simples Ames (Mirror of the Simple Soul) was written before 1296.

The Mirror of Simple Souls Who Persist Only in Desiring and Longing for Love (Mirouer des simples Ames aneanties et qui seulement demourent en Desir et Vouloir d'Amour) was written in Old French. It was widely read after Margaret's death, was translated into Latin and later into four other languages.

The writing is a textbook of love mysticism, structured in the form of a dialogue, which describes the path of the soul through seven stages to perfection. Under the guidance of divine love, the soul, as a disciple of the Godhead, progresses from the valley of humility through the level of truth to the mountain of minne to perfect union with God in love, which means perfect freedom.

This idea of freedom in particular was interpreted as immoral by the representatives of the Church, condemned and burned at the stake in Paris.

Margareta's thinking revolves around the ascent of the soul to God. She sees the ascent as a return to an original state in which the soul originally found itself before it separated from God.

What is striking is the close proximity of Margaret's theological positions to those of Meister Eckhart, who was her contemporary. For example, in Margaret's view, the soul exists eternally because of its consubstantiality with God, and is therefore not created in time; this corresponds to Eckhart's doctrine of the eternity of the soul's ground.

In the "Mirror of Simple Souls", reason is mentioned on almost every page. Porete is harsh in his criticism of it:

"Reason understands only the gross and leaves aside the subtle; those who obey it live in slavery".

"Reason is unfree and self-absorbed. Even a donkey would not know what to do with what its followers teach".

"No one arrives at a deep foundation nor even at a high building, unless he arrives at it with the acuteness of the powerful natural sense and by the subtlety of the light of spiritual insight."

*

Gertrude of Helfta, the Great

Lived: 06.01.1256 - 1301/2

Nationality: German

Field: Mystic

At the age of 5 Gertrud entered the convent school of Helfta near Eisleben in the province of Saxony.

The very gifted and creative child learned the liberal arts with zeal, almost impetuosity, and with great success. Among them, Latin and music were particularly important for nuns. The abundance and fluency that Gertrudis gained in Latin, as evidenced by her "Spiritual Exercises" written in Latin, aroused a fair amount of astonishment and reminded one of a famous Benedictine predecessor: Hrotsuita of Gandersheim.

At the age of 26, on 27 January 1282, she had her key religious experience, a first vision in which she saw herself called by Christ into his special discipleship.

Hereupon Gertrudis turned from the liberal arts to purely spiritual studies; she exchanged grammar and secular literature, in which she had lost herself too much, according to her own views, for theology.

Gertrud's love for Jesus was great, but her love for people was just as strong. For hours she was a listener, counsellor and comforter to the people around her. At the same time, she was a highly educated and artistically gifted woman.

As an important mystic, theologian and linguistic artist, she is one of the outstanding women of the Middle Ages; she is the only German female saint to bear the epithet "the Great".

Through her, her teacher Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1284/92) and her fellow sister Mechthild of Hackeborn) (1241-1298) became mystics too.

Helfta is considered the "crown of German nunneries."

Gertrude's mystical life was always characterised by a pleasant simplicity, calmness, evenness, strength of soul and mildness. Her power of thought and will are always pushing towards perfection. The feeling of inadequacy faithfully accompanies the striving soul, and likewise an ever-awake eagerness to be a buster, which in its fire melts out impatience and vanity, for example. Humility, open-heartedness, patience and all-embracing love shine out in Gertrud.

She thirsts for spiritual perfection; she never rests in self-satisfied enjoyment of the graces; indeed, these do not even deprive her of the conviction that she is not worthy to be carried by the earth. She does not regard her pardon at all as a personal distinction or even as a reward; she only believes that she has the task of an example from which one may learn how graciously God's human kindness condescends even to the most unworthy creature, the task of a herald of the God-Man‘s heart of the all-merciful Saviour.

From such faith flows her respect and pure, strong love for her fellow human beings, deep tenderness without cloying softness. She is full of compassion, even for suffering animals, which she does not forget in addition to her sublime contemplation. The synopsis of the individual traits of Gertrud's inner life, which the "Messenger" describes or hints at in the first book, allows us to perceive her life in the full light of the Holy Gospel.

The spiritual, lively, strong-willed saint corresponds so well to what her Rule in the 72nd chapter demands of good zeal.

As she looks into this mirror, so she also looks out of it.

Further mystical experiences deepened her relationship with Christ in the following years. Gertrud now developed, as the centre of the Helfta circle of theologians, a lively literary activity:

she translated parts of the Bible into German, wrote numerous prayers, as well as her two major works, the Exercitia spiritualia (Spiritual Exercises) and - with the support of fellow sisters – the Legatus divinae pietatis (Messenger of Divine Love).

Later, together with a fellow sister whose name is unknown, she wrote in the Liber specialis gratiae (Book of special grace) the revelations of Mechthild von Hackeborn.

In her literary work, Gertrud developed a theology of her own with great linguistic skill, writing a mystical "summa" of the theology and religious speculation of her time. At the centre is the comprehensive message of "God-love" that reaches into cosmic dimensions.

Rarely in the history of Christianity has God been seen so exclusively as Love as in Gertrude.

The incomparable dignity of every human being is derived from the longing of the loving God for human beings, especially from the incarnation of God.

Prayer has great power,

Which a person performs 

To the best of his ability.

It makes a bitter heart sweet,

A sad heart glad,

A poor one rich,

A foolish one wise,

A despondent bold,

A weak one strong,

A blind seeing,

A cold one burning.

It draws the great God

Into a small heart.

It lifts the hungry soul

Up to God, the living source,

And brings together two lovers:

God and the soul.

"Too much closeness sometimes prevents

From seeing each other clearly."

"The Lord much prefers to take the good will of a sincere heart 

Than great works without a sincere intention."

*

Birgitta (Birgersdotter) of Sweden

Lived: 1302 - 1373

Nationality: Swedish

Area of expertise: Mystic

It was Birgitta's wish to enter a monastery from an early age. Even as a child, Birgitta is said to have experienced several visions: When she was seven years old, the Virgin Mary appeared to her and placed a golden crown on her head. At the age of eight, the crucified Christ appeared to her for the first time.

At the age of thirteen, however, Birgitta was married to the 18-year-old Ademar Ulf Gudmarsson.

In 1339, Birgitta and her husband Ulf went on their first pilgrimage to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway. Two years later they made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On the journey home, Ulf fell ill and died in Alvastra in 1344. There Birgitta experienced new revelations and felt called to be a "bride of Christ and His mouthpiece". She founded a new religious community and establish a monastery in Vadstena on Lake Vättern in Sweden. So in 1349 she founded the Order of the Redeemer there, today usually called Birgitten. In the same year she left Sweden and moved to Rome.

In 1370, Pope Urban V gave his permission to found the Order of the Redeemer. Two years later, Birgitta went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the age of 69. On 23 July 1373 she died in her residence at the Piazza Farnese in Rome.

On 7 October 1391, Birgitta was canonised by Pope Boniface IX. Pope John Paul II elevated her to Patroness of Europe on 1 October 1999, together with Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein.

Her visions had a great influence on piety and the way biblical scenes are depicted in the visual arts.

Albrecht Dürer depicted the infant Jesus lying on the naked ground, not in the manger, but as in Birgitta's vision. In the works of the painter and Dürer-contemporary Matthias Grünewald, there are also several references to her visions. This applies just as much to the Isenheim Altarpiece as to the Stuppach Madonna created afterwards. Birgitta of Sweden's visions can also be traced back to the type of nativity scene depicting the Mother of God adoring the Child.

Three of her works have been published: Opera minora, Revelaciones extravagantes and Regula Sancti Salvatoris.

In 1502 her „Puch der himmlischen offenbarungen der heiligen wittiben von dem kunigreich Sweden“ was published in German in Nuremberg. The state of the Church around that year gave her records an unheard-of topicality. This was further intensified by the Immaculata controversy prevailing around this time.

She emphasised the unity of the eternal triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) the three persons were consubstantial and each person was present in every other person, one will, one wisdom, one power, one virtue, one love and one joy.

In 1391, Pope Boniface IX canonised the mystic. On 1 October 1999, St. John Paul II proclaimed Birgitta co-patroness of Europe.

„What is God but life and loveliness, shining light, everlasting goodness, judging justice and healing mercy?"

"There can be nothing more lovely than to rejoice in one's neighbour's happiness and to wish for him what one wishes for oneself."

"He is truly wise who knows only one word: Love."

*

Juliana of Norwich

Lived: 1342 - 1413

Nationality: English

Area of expertise: Mystic 

Juliana of Norwich was probably a reclusant at the church of St Julian in Norwich and experienced 16 mystical openings about the life of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity during a serious illness in 1373.

Twenty years later she reported on them in her book Revelations of Divine Love.

The most important source about her origins and circumstances are the details given in the Revelations of Divine Love. Her writings suggest a sound biblical and also theological knowledge. Her revelations have been written down in two versions: A shorter transcript is commonly dated earlier and still contains many biographical details and particulars, while the later, second transcript, has been worked through theologically. In this second writing, everything is directed towards God's will of salvation towards all people.

Her desire to share in suffering springs from a sense of solidarity, both with the suffering Jesus and with those who mourn for him. Moreover, her consciousness of suffering is active because it does not lead to self-sacrifice but turns into a feeling of joy.

She said, that the fundamental life cycles of creation, rebirth, redemption and providence also correspond with the cycles of natural and supernatural life.

Since God has maternal aspects, and the human soul is a part of God, all human beings can be ascribed these maternal aspects.

"All things will be good and all things will be well, and all kinds of things will be good."

*

Catherine of Siena

Lived: 1347 - 1380

Nationality: Italian

Area of expertise: Mystic

Catherine had her first vision as a seven-year-old child: She saw Jesus Christ and the apostles Peter, Paul and John above the roof of the Dominican church.

At the age of twelve, she was to be married, but refused because she had vowed virginal celibacy for the sake of Christ. At sixteen she entered the Third Order of the Dominicans against the will of her parents. She devoted herself intensively to prayer, the care of the sick and the welfare of the poor.

It was only through a renewed vision of Christ that she stepped out of her secluded life. In addition to ecclesiastical questions, she also spoke out on political and social issues - extremely unusual and sensational for a woman at that time.

Out of her religious understanding, she also developed a political effectiveness. She gave public speeches and - when she felt it necessary because of her connection to the church - also sharply criticised those in positions of responsibility in the church and in politics. Soon her reputation spread throughout Europe and people from all countries asked her for advice - including even the Pope, whom she did not spare but prophetically rebuked. However, rebellion against papal authority was alien to her.

On 1 April 1375, she was stigmatised in front of a cross in Pisa: the stigmata of Jesus are said to have miraculously appeared on her body, although they could only be seen by Catherine herself.

In 1376, Catherine travelled to Avignon. She convinced Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. A year later, the Great Schism began, with Catherine supporting Pope Urban VI. At his request, she moved to Rome. From there she fought for the unity of the Church and for a peace settlement in crisis-ridden Italy.

In 1461 Catherine was canonised and in 1939 she was named patron saint of Italy. In 1970, Pope Paul VI elevated her to the rank of Doctor of the Church; in 1999, she was elevated to the rank of Patroness of Europe by John Paul II, together with Edith Stein and Birgitta of Sweden.

St. Caterina of Siena's texts are filled with deep faith, enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God and devoted love for Christ's Church. She does not shy away from taking up conflictual themes and prophetically addresses people from different walks of life, including popes, bishops and princes. The reading of her writings can also be of help to people today who are striving for spiritual deepening.

The goal, closeness to God, is symbolised by three lights:

The general light that people already possess, which lives in the general love for their fellow human beings and for God. The other two lights can only be acquired by those who strive for perfection, both are rooted in the light of reason.

One, the second, is the special light given to those people who chastise their bodies and thus prevent their sensuality from ruling their reason.

The third light is the most perfect; at this level man participates in the divine truth and has reason to rejoice in everything.

St Catherine of Siena says "to those who take offence at what happens to them and rebel against it":

"Everything proceeds from love, everything is ordered towards the salvation of man. God does nothing except with this end in view."

"May God grant that we may not be deprived of the light which makes us know the truth."

"Through dialogue man experiences the connection between truth and love, and the path to his true destiny, love, is shown."

*

Dorothea Bucca

Lived: 1360 - 1436

Nationality: Italy

Field of Expertise: Moral Philosophy

Bucca proclaimed her laureata (doctorate) in 1390 and was appointed professor at the University of Bologna, occupying a chair of internal medicine and moral philosophy for almost 40 years.

In those days medicine was still very unscientific overloaded with magic and superstition. There was no exact science in the modern sense. The anatomy of the human body was unclear.

The art of healing, so closely associated with charm and enchantment, was widely perceived as a magical art.

The woman "healer", as Mrs Bucca was called, was to many nothing more than a sorceress, for she supposedly treated with the powers of darkness and thus knew how to exercise control over her life, happiness and health by means of communing with these powers.

She was feared and respected by all.

In the 15th century, whole crowds of young men made pilgrimages to Bologna to hear the moral philosophies of Dorothea Bucca.

*

Christine de Pizan

Lived: 1365 - 1430

Nationality: French

Field: Poet / Utopian

After the death of her father in 1387 and that of her husband, who succumbed to an epidemic in 1390, she had to deal with protracted inheritance proceedings and the resulting financial problems. In addition to her own children, she also had to provide for her mother and two teenage brothers. Since a remarriage with such an entourage and no fortune was hardly conceivable, she turned to her poetic talent and began to write ballads, lais and rondeaus, taking Eustache Deschamps as her model. For her children, she first wrote the educational book "Book of Wisdom", which she dedicated to the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, in return for the usual payment,

After this, she quickly won other wealthy patrons to whom she dedicated and presented her works, among them the French Queen Isabeau de Bavière and the Dukes John of Berry, Louis of Orleans and John Without Fear of Burgundy, the successor of Philip the Bold, who also belonged to the royal family.

As a lyric poet, Christine initially focused on love, lamenting the loss of her husband in a very personal manner (Ballades du veuvage, Cent ballades d'amant et de dame).

Later, she wrote more doctrinal-philosophical works, not only in verse but also in prose, e.g. the princely mirror L'Épître d'Othéa (1400) or the reflections on Fortuna's work in history and in her own life in La Mutation de Fortune (1403).

In addition, she reacted to the civil wars in France in politically motivated works.

In 1399 she criticised the misogyny of the men in her social circle, and in particular that of Jean de Meung in The Novel of the Rose, thus unleashing the so-called Querelle du Roman de la rose, the first Parisian literary dispute in the history of French literature, in which she herself intervened with her Épître au dieu d'amours (also 1399). In 1401 she wrote Le Dit de la rose, which describes the fictitious founding of an "Order of Roses" protecting women.

A treatise on the proper education of girls, Le Livre des trois vertus, dates from 1404.

In 1405, she completed her most interesting work from today's perspective:

Le Livre de la Cité des dames.

In it, she uses the example of significant female figures from biblical and profane history to point out the unrecognised abilities of women and develops the image of a utopian society in which women are granted equal rights.

"Everywhere, in all kinds of treatises, philosophers, poets, all orators (listing them would take up too much space) seem to speak as if from a single mouth and all come to the same conclusion, namely, that women tend to all kinds of vice in their behaviour and way of life."

"Those who have slandered women out of ill-will are small minds who have encountered numerous women superior to them in cleverness and gentility. They reacted to this with pain and displeasure, and so their great envy has led them to accuse all women of evil.“

From 1418, the beginning of one of the worst phases of the Hundred Years' War, she lived in seclusion with her daughter Marie in the convent of the Dominican nuns of Saint-Louis de Poissy. There, in 1429, she witnessed the military achievements of Joan of Arc, the "Maid of Orleans", and in 1430, after a long silence, dedicated a eulogy to her as heroine and "Honour for the female sex", the Dictié en l'honneur de la Pucelle (Poem in honour of the Virgin).

"After your death will come a prince of character and wisdom, who, from his familiarity with your works, will wish he had lived in your time and beheld you with his own eyes" (Christine on Joan of Arc).

Christine de Pizan's importance is not exhausted in her femininity, nor in her advocacy of women's causes. The political author and the philosopher Christine remain to be discovered, as well as whether the first approaches to a historicising view of human behaviour have a forward-looking character. 

Christine de Pizan writes de la rose: "Nature has endowed women with as many physical and spiritual gifts as the wisest and most experienced men."

"But if women had written these books - of this I am sure - everything would be very different, for they know well that they are falsely accused."

*

Battista Malatesta (di Montefeltro)

Lived: 1384 - 1448

Nationality: Italian

Field of expertise: Humanist

Battista Malatesta was a learned woman of the nobility as well as a poet and orator who was educated in philosophy and languages. She corresponded with other scholars of her time such as Leonardo Bruni. Bruni`s letter to Baptista Malatesta of Montefeltro, entitled De studiis et litteris, was written in the early 15th century. In it Bruni describes a course of study suitable for women who share the conviction, held early on by humanists, that classical studies are "worthy of being pursued by men and women alike."

De studiis et litteris (from now on just De studiis) is a letter addressed to Battista Malatesta (1384-1448), daughter of the Count of Urbino, Antonio di Montefeltro (†1404). It was written between 1422-1429, but most likely in 1424. 

Bruni's praise of her erudition at the beginning of the letter, though a common mode of introduction in humanist letters, seems to be based on her actual interest in classical literature. With her father-in-law, the Lord of Pesaro, who was also interested in ancient literature and was known as Il Malatesta degli Sonetti, she exchanged sonnets and Latin letters, many of which are still preserved in manuscript. In 1433, when King Sigismund travelled through Urbino, he was greeted by Battista with a Latin poem.

Bruni's thoughts in De studiis can be easily summarised: formation must for him consist of two elements, namely literary ability and factual knowledge or erudition.

Bruni ends the writing with the thought that his aim is to spur Battista on, as one who is excited by her excellence, in the same way that the crowd of spectators in a racing race spurs on the runner in search of glory.

With Bruni's support, Battista Malatesta then wrote and left behind an Opusculum studiis et de litteris.

*

Isotta Nogarola

Lived: 1418 - 1466

Nationality: Italian

Field of expertise: Humanist

Isotta and her sister Ginevra studied together under Martino Rizzoni, a pupil of Guarino da Verona. Between 1434 and 1440 the sisters corresponded with the most important humanists of the Renaissance. Perhaps deterred by the example of her sister Ginevra, who abandoned her studies after her marriage, Isotta took a self-proclaimed vow of chastity. Thereupon, withdrawn from the rest of the family, she spent her life alone in the library at her mother's house. In 1441 she began to study theology.

Isotta's most famous work "de Pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato" (Of the equal or unequal sin of Adam and Eve) arose from a lively correspondence with the humanist Ludovico Foscarini. It was triggered by Saint Augustine's statement that Eve was more guilty of original sin than Adam. In the dialogue, about the equal or unequal sin of Eve and Adam, Isotta therefore discusses the question of whether woman is inferior to man.

With a Latin diologue and several letters, she is considered the first Renaissance woman to contribute to humanist culture.

Isotta's surviving texts were not published until 1885 in Vienna!

"The inconstancy of Eve, which was condemned, was not an inconstancy of nature, but of habit. For those qualities which are in us by nature, we are neither praised by guilt, according to the judgment of the wisest philosophers."

"Eve being intellectually as well as morally weaker, less blame for original sin can be attributed to her. Adam, on the other hand, was made in the image of God, he was brought into the world by God as the perfect man. Therefore, he also possessed more knowledge and thus more responsibility than Eve, who, as an incompetent, was supposed to be subject to the man, but was unable to see through the serpent's cunning. Ludovicio regarded Adam as a passive victim. Eve had deliberately deceived him, because she wanted to become more like God. But a deliberate act would not only presuppose intelligence and free will, the premise of the woman's inferiority would also be reduced to absurdity. If the woman really acted out of ignorance, she can be exonerated from guilt. If, however, her actions were based on an unreasonable thirst for knowledge and arrogance, her guilt cannot be derived from her inferiority, and the essential inequality of man and woman would be abolished."

*

Cassandra Fedele

Lived: 1465 - 1558

Nationality: Italian

Field of expertise: Humanist

In 1487 Cassandra was asked by the University of Padua to deliver a speech in praise of science at a graduation ceremony. Her "Oratio" was soon circulated in print and carried the news of this miracle of female scholarship as far as Germany.

In an ever-increasing correspondence with scholars and high ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, Cassandra praised the sciences, virtues, capable achievements and, last but not least, the high addressees themselves in a humanistic manner. They did not fail to respond to her in an appropriate manner.

On ceremonial occasions, Cassandra appeared as a speaker on behalf of the Venetian Senate, thus documenting the Serenissima's claim to claim a leading position alongside Florence and Rome in the field of humanistic studies as well.

When Queen Isabella of Castile sought to attract Cassandra to her court, the Doge himself forbade the young scholar to leave her home.

Nevertheless, Cassandra was soon allowed to live in oppressive poverty. As a woman, she was denied a university degree and an adequate professional position. Around 1500, she married a doctor with whom she spent several years on Crete. On the return journey, the couple lost all their belongings in a shipwreck. When Cassandra's husband died in 1521, he left his wife in poverty.

A petition from the widow to Pope Leo X remained unanswered. It was not until 1547 that the aged scholar, who despite all adversities had prepared a work "De scientiarum ordine" for printing - it is lost due to the publisher's carelessness - was given a livelihood-securing position as director of an orphanage for girls.

The ninety-year-old made her last appearance when she gave a speech to welcome the Polish Queen Mother Bona Sforza.

"I can make myself immortal and happy in this life."

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Beatriz Galindo

Lived: 1465/75 - 23.11.1534

Nationality: Spanish

Field of expertise: Humanist / Scholar

Beatriz Galindo was one of the most educated women of her time.

Her parents decided to have her taught in a grammar class at the University of Salamanca. She showed great talent for Latin, not only in translating and reading classical texts, but at fifteen she was also able to speak in Latin and make great corrections.

Her fame spread first from Salamanca and then throughout the Empire and she became known as "La Latina".

She translated Aristotle in particular into Spanish.

In 1486, when she was preparing to become a nun at the Isabella of the Catholic Monastery, Queen Isabella of Castile summoned her to her court, where the Queen and her children took Latin lessons from Galindo.

Her presence at the court was not limited to being a governess to the Queen, their relationship is said to have been very friendly, but also to her collaboration with Lucio Marineo Siculo (1460 - 1533).

Beatriz Galindo was held in very high esteem by the queen for her friendly advice, which also went beyond philological matters.

She became a professor at the University of Salamanca, where she taught rhetoric, philosophy and medicine.

Galindo is said to have written a series of treatises on classical authors and philosophers for the Queen's better understanding, the existence of which is disputed.

"Posside sapientiam, Melior est quia auro"

"The possession of wisdom is better

than the possession of gold"

*

Laura Cereta

Lived: 1469 - 1499

Nationality: Italian

Field of expertise: Humanist

As a pupil, assistant and secretary to her father, Laura Cerete acquired knowledge from a wide variety of fields. Her studies, to which she sacrificed many night hours, ranged from Italian literature and humanistic education to natural science, philosophy and theology.

Besides learning Latin and Greek from her father, she also showed great interest in mathematics, astrology, agriculture and her favourite subject: moral philosophy.

She produced her literary work, a corpus of 78 letters of mixed content and a paradoxical encomium ("Dialogue on the Death of an Ass"), before the age of 20.

In 1486 she is said to have begun a seven-year career of teaching moral philosophy at the University of Prada, but no public record of this is said to exist.

In 1488 she produced a fair copy of her texts, copies of which soon circulated.

Unlike most women of her time, Cereta was able to participate in letter-writing because of her social contacts. The topics Cereta discusses in her humanist-style letters in loose succession are topics of education and science, moral and religious issues, political and warlike events, but also her personal circumstances and, time and again, the discrimination and degradation of women, especially in the field of studies. she defended women's right to education and fought against the oppression of married women.

In contrast to the slightly older Cassandra Fedele, whose writings testify to complete conformity to the leading social and educational classes and "feminine reserve" in terms of subject matter and diction, Cereta astonishes us with the wide radius of her themes, the daring of her assertions and the non-conformism of her style.

Her appearance can be seen as a contradiction of the universally accepted image of the virgo docta, as embodied by Cassandra Fedele at the time, in a sense as a provocation of a metropolitan cult figure by an uncouth young woman from the provinces.

Cereta's style is considered complex, her Latin overstylised. Stylistically, she was initially inspired by Francesco Petrarch, later by Augustine and Jerome. In terms of content, Cereta was particularly an advocate of women's rights.

Her letters laid the foundation for the feminism of the Enlightenment.

Her letter to Bibolo Semproni contains one of the few medieval references to the 1st century BC poet Cornificia.

Cereta's letter to Lucilia Vernacula: Violence against women, denigrating learned women, asserts "that uneducated women are stronger than the adversaries of feminist ideals, the men who disregard the notion of women as human beings possessing scientific potential." Vernacula addresses all ignorant women who do not know Therefore, Cereta's letter to Lucilia Vernacula is in fact addressed directly to all uneducated women, rather than to any particular person who shows an interest in learning.

"All human beings, which include women, are born with the right to education"

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Vittoria Colonna

Lived: 1492 - 1547

Nationality: Italian

Field: Poet / humanist / new-platonic thought 

Vittoria Colonna was/is described as the female genius of the Italian Renaissance.

With her irresistible urge, she corrected, competed, spurred, enriched, complemented contemporary poets, philosophers, theologians, and all the male literary, philosophical, theological doctrines of her time that caught her attention, challenging male abstracting thought from the perspective of a woman committed to the fullness of life.

Her mother Agnese of Montefeltro came from the lineage of the Dukes of Urbino. Urbino was an important centre of humanist culture. Since Agnese was known for her love of literature and fine arts, and Fabrizio had cultural and scientific interests, it can be assumed that Vittoria grew up in an intellectually stimulating atmosphere.

Among her contemporaries, Vittoria found an extraordinary degree of admiration and adoration, which related to her character as well as to her education and beauty. Already in her married years, a circle of literary figures formed around her, by whom she was glorified in poems (among them Girolamo Britonio, Pietro Gravina, Scipione Capece, Marcantonio Minturno and Galeazzo di Tarsia).

The most prominent among the poets who befriended her even then were Jacopo Sannazaro and Francesco Berni. Giovanni Berardino Fuscano praised her in his Stanze sopra le bellezze di Napoli as the most beautiful of beauties.

She was also on friendly terms with Baldassare Castiglione, who gave her the manuscript of his Cortegiano to judge in 1524. A close friend of Vittoria was the papal secretary Gian Matteo Giberti.

After the death of her husband, other literary figures entered Vittoria's circle and became enthusiastic about her, among them Claudio Tolomei, Bernardino Rota, Angelo di Costanzo, Bernardo Tasso, Bernardino Martirano, Gian Giorgio Trissino and Marcantonio Epicuro. Titian painted a Maria Magdalena at Vittoria's instigation in 1531. Other prominent friends of Vittoria were Ludovico Ariosto, who praised her poetry as unique in his epic Orlando furioso, Marcantonio Flaminio, who glorified her in Latin poems, and Cardinal Pietro Bembo, who spoke enthusiastically of her sonnets.

While humanist-minded poets continued to pay homage to her in the style of cheerful, gallant worship, as a widow she began to devote herself with growing passion to religious concerns. Neoplatonic impulses played a significant role in the spirituality she now developed.

She joined a religious current in Catholicism whose aims partly coincided with those of the incipient Reformation. The initiator of these efforts was the humanist Juan de Valdäs, who deeply impressed Vittoria and significantly influenced her new orientation. The concern of these circles was a deepened inwardness of religious life; this was often associated with a distancing from conventional customs and the externalised practice of ritual customs. Adherence to formalities was contrasted with the need for a personal relationship with God.

A core idea here was that grace as a free gift was decisive for man's salvation; merits that he believed he could acquire through his actions were insignificant. Good works and even the desire to perform them were not merits of man, but owed to grace itself, i.e. their consequence and not their cause. This emphasis on grace led Vittoria's friends and herself to formulations that showed a more or less pronounced closeness to Martin Luther's concept of sola gratia. Through her sympathy for such ideas and for prominent theologians who advocated them more or less clearly, Vittoria found herself caught between the fronts in the incipient struggle between Catholicism and the Reformation, even though there was no doubt that she considered herself a Catholic until the end of her life. This potential for conflict came to the fore particularly sharply in the Reformation.

This potential for conflict came to the fore particularly sharply in the controversy surrounding her friend Bernardino Ochino, of whom she was an enthusiastic follower. Ochino was a religious general of the Capuchins and a famous but controversial preacher who was suspected of heresy by his opponents. Vittoria spoke up for him forcefully in urgent letters. He later fled Italy, broke with the Catholic Church and openly espoused a Reformed theology, compromising Vittoria. Another friend of Vittoria, Pietro Carnesecchi, was also suspected of heresy; later, long after her death, he was handed over to the Inquisition and executed. But she also had friends in the College of Cardinals who were sympathetic to her spiritual concerns, including in particular Gasparo Contarini, Jacopo Sadoleto and Reginald Pole. She found a like-minded friend and comrade-in-arms in the Queen of Navarre Margaret of Angoulume.

Vittoria's friendship with Michelangelo, which began in 1538, was very intense, and he glorified her in several poems in the style of her gallant humanist admirers, praising her beauty in particular effusively.

The last years of Vittoria's life were darkened by increasing religious intolerance. The Roman Inquisition, set up by Pope Paul III in 1542 to prevent the advance of Protestantism in Italy, turned against a central part of her religious thought, the doctrine of grace. From then on, she was no longer allowed to represent the ideas that were now definitely considered heretical.

Vittoria's poetic activity began in 1512 at the latest; her oldest surviving poem dates from this year. Of her poems, a considerable part of over 100 sonnets and canzonas is dedicated to the memory of her husband, whose personality she idealises.

Petrarch's influence is strongly noticeable in Vittoria's poetic work, both in form and content (Petrarchism). A fundamental difference to Petrarch's attitude, however, is that Vittoria never regrets earthly love as such or regards it as a mistake. Rather, she values what she has experienced in marriage as fundamentally positive, for she sees in it, in a Neoplatonic sense, the prerequisite and starting point for what she hopes to attain through the deification of love. She only sees as a mistake her continued clinging to grief over the loss of the ephemeral after the death of the beloved husband has put an end to this way of experiencing love.

On the other hand, Vittoria also knows and masters the Petrarchist discourse on love, which depicts and problematises the contradictory emotions (contrari affetti) in erotic experience. This is evident, among other things, in her Cento poetry, in which she takes passages from various Petrarch poems and combines them into a new unity.

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Tullia d Àragona

Lived: 1510 - 1556

Nationality: Italian

Field of expertise: Poet / Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought. 

Tullia d'Aragona was born in Rome. She came from a noble house. Her father was probably Pietro Tagliavia of Aragon, archbishop and cardinal, the lover of her mother Giulia Ferrarese, who was married to Constanzo Palmieri.

Tullia d'Aragona was considered one of the most famous and educated cortigiana onesta, an intellectual courtesan of the Renaissance; as well as an admired poet and philosopher in sixteenth-century Italy and the men who belonged to her, were powerful of their time and powerless in her famous arms; taken with the intellect of the cortigiana onesta, and had it not been for her will to rise to the top. Not, however, through coitus or the gutter of reporting, but as a literary woman. Through her father, she received an extensive education in literature, philosophy and spoke several languages. In her salon in Ferrara, Florence and Venice, the most respected men of the Roman clergy, poets, scientists and politicians frequented.

Well-known and famous poets and scientists belonged to her circle of friends (Guilio Camillo, Francesco Maria Molza, Cardinal Hypolitos de Medici, Ercole Bentivolglio, Filippo Strozzi, Lattanzio Benucci, Benedetto Varchi, Girolamo Muzio, Pietro Manelli), so that one should not have made too much noise about her.

In Siena, they wanted to put Tullia d'Aragona on trial as a courtesan, and in Rome she was published on the tax list as a prostitute. But she addressed the Duke of Florence with an excellent dialogue on the relationship between physical and spiritual love, and was given permission to continue running her salon thereafter as a highly respected writer. She spent most of her life in Ferrara and Rome, where she resided until the death of her husband.

The French traveller Villamont, who came to Rome in 1588, wrote the following about the courtesans:

„What I admire most is that the distinguished gentlemen of Rome, when they pass the windows of Madame the Courtesan, greet her with such submissiveness, kiss her hands and pay their respects as if they were a princess or some great lady...“

As a widow, she went under the protection of the Duchess Eleonora of Toledo, with whose support she published a book of verses and poems. As well as yours:

Dialogues on the Infinity of Love, which appeared in Florence in 1547 and was dedicated to Casimo I de Medici.

Benedetto Varchi, Tullia d'Aragona's most important interlocutor in the dialogue, had reviewed the dialogue. Another interlocutor is Muzio Lattanzio Benucci.

Tullia d'Aragona ascribes to herself the role of the student who asks questions that are then answered by Varchi. However, this role is not rigidly maintained.

In terms of content, the dialogue refers to Plato's Symposium and the Phaedrus, as well as to the contemporary authors Marsillio Ficino, Sperone and Pietro Bembo.

The dialogue discusses, among other things, questions about the relationship between rhetoric and logic, the connection between Platonic and Aristotelian thought, the concepts of infinity and immortality, and Petrarch's ideal of love.

The starting point is the question of whether love has to be infinite or whether it is possible to love with measure and limit.

Varchi proves that love knows no end by reflecting on the difference between the noun love and the verb to love. On the basis of grammatical-logical considerations, the philosopher comes to the conclusion that love as a noun has a higher status than the verb to love. She thus agrees with Varchi on the Aristotelian theory of the superiority of the noun over the accidental (verb).

Tullia d'Aragona concedes the higher value to the beloved and proves this with the example of God, who is both lover and beloved.

"Do not let this be your concern, but set your mind on continuing in your proof. And if it is possible for you, bring things into a system; connect them with each other and pay no attention to what I know or do not know. For to confess the truth, it seems to me that I know nothing at all, except just that I know nothing."

"Thus he deserves nobility and punishment to a far greater degree who, without discipline and moderation, surrenders himself to sensual passion and thus makes reason, which should always be the ruler, the slave of the senses."

*

Teresa of Avila "the Great“

Lived: 28.03.1515 - 04.10.1582

Nationality: Spanish

Field: Mystic / Doctor of the Church

After the death of her mother and the marriage of her eldest sister, her father turned to a worldly life and brought Teresa at the age of sixteen to the convent of the Augustinian nuns in Ávila for further education, which she had to leave again after eighteen months for health reasons. For the next few years she stayed with her father and an uncle who introduced her to the teachings of the Church Father Jerome. Probably in 1536, without her father's knowledge, Teresa entered the Carmel of the Incarnation in Ávila, where 140 sisters lived at that time. Her father quickly accepted Teresa's decision, but for her this step was "as if she had to leave every bone behind".

The following year, Teresa became seriously ill. Her father took her to a quack in Becedas, whose attempts to heal her completely ruined her physically. For three years she was unable to move, and it is said that she was supposed to be buried, already presumed dead. During this time Teresa learned inner prayer, helped by the fact that on her way to becoming a "curandera" ("the healer") she came across a book by the Franciscan priest Francisco de Osuna, the Tercer Abecedario Espiritual ("Third Spiritual ABC"), which contained an introduction to this form of prayer.

After the partial recovery of her health, she again took part - supported by her prioress - in the lively intercourse with visitors to the convent in the consulting rooms, but suffered greatly because she felt she belonged neither to the secular life nor to that in God.

In 1554, Teresa saw a depiction of the suffering Christ and was so moved by it that she found her "final conversion". In radical self-sacrifice, she wanted to live only in Christ in the future, a wish that was not taken entirely seriously in her community. In 1560, Teresa experienced visions of hell, which intensified her desire for complete surrender.

Against much opposition, she finally received permission from Pope Pius IV and the local bishop to found her own convent in Ávila, that of the Discalced Carmelites, where the original rule of the order was to be followed again. At the same time, Teresa stipulated that no more than 21 sisters should live in a Carmel. The first one was followed by 16 more monastery foundations, in collaboration with John of the Cross a total of 32, as Teresa reports in her book of foundations.

Teresa developed ideas of living in passive contemplation.

Her two most important works are:

"Ways to Perfection" and "The Inner Castle".

In 1614 she was beatified, in 1617 she was named Patroness of Spain and in 1622 she was canonised. In 1944, Pope Pius XII declared her the patron saint of chess players. In 1970, Pope Paul VI elevated St Teresa to the rank of Doctor of the Church.

"Let our thoughts be ever directed to that which is eternal."

"Not a little misery and confusion come from not understanding ourselves through our own fault and not knowing who we are."

"But nothing is explained to us

that we cannot explain to ourselves."

"...never will anything else be able to replace self-knowledge, whether we want it to or not."