From this spiritual abode of the virtues we turn to one of Mechthild’s earliest recorded visions—that of Hell, with its flame and flare. Whilst Death was perhaps man’s first mystery, the Hereafter has been his endless pre-occupation. Whatever his country or his time, he has ever sought to lift the veil which hides the future, portraying his vain efforts in symbol. In Mechthild’s time her world was engrossed with thoughts and speculations concerning the Hereafter, for Death, which at the end of the next century was to take dramatic and pictorial form in the weird and all-embracing “Dance of Death,” although its earliest known poetic form is of 1160, ever hovered near in pestilence, war, and tumult. Whilst some expressed themselves in carved stone, or on painted wall, others, as did Mechthild, realised their visions and ideas in a wealth of word-pictures. Such visions and ideas had accumulated adown the ages, varying but slightly one from another, and Mechthild, in making use of this stereotyped material, only took from, or added to, the general sum. Yet even so, she contrives to make her personality felt. She begins: “I have seen a place whose name is Eternal Hatred.” Lucifer, farthest removed from the source of Light, forms the foundation-stone, and around him are arranged the deadly sins. Above him are the Christians, then the Jews, and, farthest removed from Hell’s dire depths, the Heathen. Horror upon horror follows, like those pictured a hundred years before by Herrad von Landsperg, abbess at Hohenburg, in Alsace, and, fifty years later, by Dante, and when she concludes by saying that, after seeing the terrors of Hell, all her five senses were paralysed for three days, as if struck by lightning, it is significant that Dante tells that, overwhelmed with sorrow for the lovers, doomed for ever to be borne upon the winds, he “fainted with pity ... and fell, as a dead body falls.”
It is with a sense of relief that we leave such sad scenes, to glance at her vision of Paradise, although it does not follow in this sequence in her recorded revelations, for, as seems fitting, it is one of the very latest. Calling it “a glimpse of Paradise,” she says that “of the length and breadth of Paradise there is no end.” Then she continues—and this is especially interesting because it is in this opening that some commentators have seen the connecting link with Dante[23]—that between this world and it, she came to a spot—the Earthly Paradise—where she saw trees and fresh grass and no weeds. Some of the trees bore apples, but most of them sweetly scented leaves. Swift streams flowed through it, and warm winds were wafted from the north. The air was sweeter than words can tell. Here, she adds, there were no animals or birds, for God has reserved it for mankind alone, so that he may dwell there undisturbed. This seems to strike a strange note coming from the poetess Mechthild. How different is her sentiment from that of her brother-mystic, St. Francis, to whom the birds were his “little sisters,” and who “loved above all other birds a certain little bird which is called the lark.” But though, with apparent satisfaction, Mechthild saw no birds, she did see Enoch and Elias, and greeted the former by questioning him as to how he came there. Holy Writ has supplied the only answer, “He walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Having spoken thus of the Earthly Paradise, Mechthild goes on to tell of the Heavenly, where she sees, “floating in rapture, as the air floats in the sunshine,” the souls which, though not deserving of Purgatory, are not yet come into God’s kingdom, and to whom rewards and crowns come not until they enter that kingdom. She then concludes by saying that “all the kingdoms of this world shall perish, and the earthly and the heavenly Paradise shall pass away, and all shall dwell together in God”—the Empyrean of Dante, where he “saw ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe; substance and accidents and their relations, as though together fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simple flame.”
In her very varied writings many beautiful and suggestive thoughts are to be found, as, for instance, when “Understanding” converses with “Conscience,” and accuses Conscience of being at the same time both proud and humble, and Conscience explains that she is proud because she is in touch with God, and humble because she has done so few good works. And again, when “Understanding” and “the Soul” hold converse. Understanding, desirous of knowing everything, asks the Soul why such brilliant light radiates from her, and the Soul replies by inquiring why Understanding asks this, seeing that she is so much wiser than the Soul. When Understanding would still penetrate the unspeakable secrecy between God and the Soul, the Soul refuses to answer, since, as she explains, to her alone is given union with God, to which Understanding can never attain. Or, again, when Mechthild, telling how the Soul, no longer led by the Senses, but leading them to the desired goal, says, “It is a wondrous journey along which the true soul progresses, and leads with it the senses, as a man with sight leads one who is blind. On this journey the soul is free and without sorrow, since it desires naught but to serve its Lord, who orders all things for the best.”
Of Prayer, which to her was “naught else but yearning of soul,” she says, “It makes a sour heart sweet, a sad heart merry, a poor heart rich, a dull heart wise, a timid heart bold, a weak heart strong, a blind heart seeing, a cold heart burning. It draws the great God down into the small heart, it drives the hungry soul out to the full God, it brings together the two lovers, God and the soul, into a blissful place, where they speak much of love.”
Again, in a spirit of self-examination, she writes: “What most of all hinders the spiritually-minded from full perfection is, that they pay so little heed to small sins. I tell you, of a truth, that when I abstain from a laugh that would hurt no one, or hide some soreness of heart, or feel a little impatience at my own pain, my soul becomes so dark, and my mind so dull, and my heart so cold, that I am constrained to pray heartily and long, and humbly to make confession of all my faults. Then grace comes again to wretched me, and I creep back like a beaten dog into the kitchen.”
But all these and kindred thoughts pale before her discourses on love. Love was the keynote of her life. She was born a poetess; she became a saint. How sorely she strove towards this end, and spent herself in conflict between self-control and ecstasy, no words can tell. It was only when Purgation’s way was partly trod, and she had “found in Pain the grave but kindly teacher of immortal secrets,” that she could say, “Lord, I bring Thee my treasure, which is greater than the mountains, wider than the world, deeper than the sea, higher than the clouds, more beautiful than the sun, more manifold than the stars, and which outweighs all the earth.” Then asks the voice of God: “How is this thy treasure called, oh Image of my Divinity?”
“Lord, it is called my heart’s desire. I have withdrawn it from the world, kept it to myself, and denied it to all creatures. Now no longer would I carry it. Lord, where shall I lay it?”
“Nowhere shalt thou lay thy heart’s desire save in My own Divine heart. There only wilt thou find comfort.”
Love and knowledge, the two aspirations of the soul after ultimate truth, are her frequent theme. Sometimes she contrasts Love with the knowledge of the understanding: “Those who would know much, and love little, will ever remain at but the beginning of a godly life. So we must have a constant care how we may please God therein. Simple love, with but little knowledge, can do great things”; sometimes with the knowledge of the heart—“To the wise soul, love without knowledge seems darkness, knowledge without fruition, the very pain of Hell. Fruition can be reached only through Death.” In one of her visions she, in an exquisite simile, describes how love flows from the Godhead to mankind, penetrating both body and soul. “It goes without effort,” she says, “as does a bird in the air when it does not move its wings.” In the same vision she sees the Holy Mother, with uncovered breasts, standing on God’s left hand, and Christ on the right, showing his still-open wounds, both pleading for sinful humanity, and she adds that as long as sin endures on earth, so long will Christ’s wounds remain open and bleeding, though painless, but that after the Day of Judgment they will heal, and it will be as though there was a rose-leaf instead of the wounds.[24]
Of Love, as she conceived it in relation to herself individually, she can never write enough. “I also may not suffer that any single comfort move me, save my love alone. I love my earthly friends in a heavenly fellowship, and I love my enemies with a holy longing for their salvation. God has enough of all good things, save of union with the soul.”