Matelda and the cloister of Hellfde

by of Magdeburg Mechthild

Matilda’s book grew in an irregular manner from year to year. She wrote from time to time on loose sheets that which she believed she had received from God. There is, therefore, no connection in these writings, nor is there any plan in her manner of writing. Sometimes she wrote in prose, or in prose running from time to time into metre and rhyme. Sometimes she wrote in verse, in irregular measure, and with or without irregular rhymes, each division with a heading.

The friar Henry of Halle collected the loose leaves, and before the death of Matilda he divided them into six books. A seventh book was added by Matilda after the death of Brother Henry. Five of these books appear to have been written before Matilda entered the convent of Hellfde, and some can be dated by allusions to contemporary events.^[5]

Apart from all that is interesting in these books, as literature or as history, there remains for the Christian reader who “is not a Pharisee” the far more interesting field of research into their value as spiritual teaching. The Pharisee will find much to blame and to despise in the ignorance and superstition of this Béguine of the Middle Ages.

And in sifting Matilda’s writings, as indeed the writings of any man or woman, the gold, if there be any, has to be separated from the dross. The dross which had been accumulating for twelve centuries formed a large amount of that which Matilda believed she had learnt from God. We can recognise the gold by the one test furnished to us by Him who despises not any, but teaches the most ignorant who come to Him. If we apply to the writings of Matilda this infallible test, of conformity to the Word of God, we may be enriched by the gold without being encumbered by the dreary heaps of dross from which we have to sift it.

The book is supposed to be the expression of the intercourse of the soul with God. That it is really so in part, can be verified by any Christian reader who will compare it with the Bible and with the experience common to Christian believers. That this true Christian teaching should be mixed with the errors of her time is natural, and we know that the errors of each successive age leave their traces in the books that are the most enlightened, and that our own age is no exception.

The object in view in making the following extracts from Matilda’s book is not to present it as a literary or historical study. Were it so, it would be needful to give extracts from the false as well as from the true teaching, so as to give a correct idea of Matilda and her times. But writing simply with a desire that the truth taught to Matilda by the Spirit of God should be made available for those in these later days who are glad of spiritual food, the false and the imaginary will be passed over, and the remainder given as much as possible in Matilda’s own words.

It must be remarked, however, that certain expressions which in mediæval German conveyed no impression of irreverence would sound painfully familiar in modern English. An equivalent has, therefore, to be found conveying to readers now the same sense which the original words would have conveyed to the readers of the thirteenth century.

It may also be remarked that the chief errors to be noted in Matilda’s book are a tendency to the worship (in a lower sense of the word) of the Virgin and the Saints, a belief in Purgatory, and a certain weight attached to the merit of human works.

Of the first of these, it may truly be said that Matilda’s references to the Virgin Mother stand in remarkable contrast to the writings of later times. If compared with “the Glories of Mary,” now in popular use, they serve as a landmark showing the downward course of error and superstition in the Church of Rome during the past six hundred years, though there were already those, such as Bonaventura,^[6] who hastened the fall.

It must be observed, too, in reference to Matilda’s allusions to the Virgin Mary, that the chasm between the mother of the Lord and all ordinary believers is very much reduced if compared with that which exists in modern Roman Catholic books of devotion, from the fact that the place assigned to every redeemed soul in Matilda’s writings is far higher than in most Catholic or Protestant teaching. Even amongst Protestants it is not uncommon to regard the redeemed as in a place below the angels, or on a level with them. But to Matilda the power and the value of the work of Christ were so fully recognised, that she regarded the Bride of the Lamb, or the individual who is made a member of the body of Christ, as in the highest place next to the Bridegroom, the Head of the Body.