‘From my infancy’, she says, ‘up to the present time, I being now more than seventy years of age, I have always seen this light in my spirit and not with external eyes, nor with any thoughts of my heart nor with help from the senses. But my outward eyes remain open and the other corporeal senses retain their activity. The light which I see is not located but yet is more brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length, or breadth, and I name it the “cloud of the living light”. And as sun, moon, and stars are reflected in water, so the writings, sayings, virtues, and works of men shine in it before me. And whatever I thus see in vision the memory thereof remains long with me. Likewise I see, hear, and understand almost in a moment and I set down what I thus learn....
‘But sometimes I behold within this light another light which I name “the Living Light itself”.... And when I look upon it every sadness and pain vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid and not as an old woman....[119]
‘And now that I am over seventy years old my spirit according to the will of God soars upward in vision to the highest heaven and to the farthest stretch of the air and spreads itself among different peoples to regions exceeding far from me here, and thence I can behold the changing clouds and the mutations of all created things; for all these I see not with the outward eye or ear, nor do I create them from the cogitations of my heart ... but within my spirit, my eyes being open, so that I have never suffered any terror when they left me.’[120]
Note.—The author’s thanks are due to the Rev. H. A. Wilson, Mr. C. C. J. Webb, and Mr. R. R. Steele, who have read the proofs of this article and have made valuable suggestions; to Mr. J. A. Herbert of the MS. Department of the British Museum, who drew his attention to the work of Herrade de Landsberg; and to Mr. M. H. Spielmann, who brought to his notice the crucifix figured in Plate [X]. He owes a special debt of gratitude to the late Dom Louis Baillet of Oosterhoot for his courtesy and generosity in lending him reproductions of the illuminations of the Wiesbaden Codex. Baillet was a young scholar of great promise, whose early death is a severe loss to the knowledge of mediaeval science.
The author has also to thank Professor Henrici of the Nassauische Landesbibliothek at Wiesbaden, Professor Wille and Professor Sillib of the Universitätsbibliothek at Heidelberg, and Signor Boselli of the R. Bibliotica Governativa at Lucca, who have all given him exceptional facilities for the study of the treasures under their charge.
