[575] Cf. St. Bernard’s treatment of this matter, ante, Chapter XVII.
[576] In a Middle High German Marienleben, by Bruder Phillips (13th century) the young virgin is made herself to say to God:
“Du bist min lieber priutegam (bridegroom),
Dir gib ich minen magetuom (maidenhood),
Du bist min vil schoener man.
“Du bist min vriedel (lover) und min vriunt (ami);
Ich bin von diner minne entzundt.”
Bobertag, Erzählende Dichtungen des späteren Mittelalters, p. 46 (Deutsche Nat. Litt.).
[577] Vita B. Mariae Ogniacensis, per Jacobum de Vitreaco, Bollandi, Acta sanctorum t. 21 (June t. iv. pp. 636-666). Jacques had good reason to canonize her bones, since one of them, in his saddle-bags, had saved his mule from drowning while crossing a river in Tuscany.
[578] Cant. ii. 5. The translation in the English Revised Version is: “Stay me with cakes of raisins, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.” The phrases of Canticles, always in the words of the Latin Vulgate, come continually into the minds of these ecstatic women and their biographers. The sonorous language of the Vulgate is not always close to the meaning of the Hebrew. But it was the Vulgate and not the Hebrew that formed the mediaeval Bible, and its language should be observed in discussing mediaeval applications of Scripture.
[579] “Dum esset Rex in accubitu suo,” Cant. i. 11, in Vulgate; Cant. i. 12, in the English version, which renders it: “While the King sitteth at His table.”
[580] Vita B. Mariae, etc., par. 2-8. Since we are seeing these mediaeval religious phenomena as they impressed contemporaries, it would be irrelevant to subject them to the analyses which pathological psychology applies to not dissimilar phenomena.
[581] It is reported of St. Catharine of Siena that she would go for weeks with no other food than the Eucharist.
[582] I am drawing from her Vita by her contemporary, Thomas of Cantimpré, Acta SS., Bollandi, t. 21 (t. 3 of June), p. 234 sqq.