At the opening of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth, three witches take the stage and begin speaking to each other shiftily. “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” These are the “Weird Sisters,” as the titular character likes to call them, borrowing from the Anglo-Saxon term wyrd with its connotations of the strange and unearthly.
Relax! This is not an article about Macbeth, though like that play, it is set in the medieval era and spends a lot of time dwelling on bodily fluids. I wish to introduce you to another group of weird sisters: weird because they did epically strange things, and sisters because most of them were in holy orders. The medieval period in Western Europe featured a lot of strange trends: women shaving their hairlines back to enlarge their foreheads, men riding off to kill Muslims in the hope of escaping purgatory, and far more people dying of malaria than you might think. Then there was the trend of women receiving mystical visions from God and recording them for public consumption. (That last sentence was a bit tactless, as substantial numbers of the public were dying from consumption. Apologies.)
Here follows a somewhat irreverent introduction to the weirdest of the weird sisters.
Julian of Norwich
The first thing to know about Julian of Norwich is that her name may not have been Julian. Her parish church was called St. Julian, so that might be the source of her title. But Julian was also a popular female name at that time, so it might be her name after all.
The second thing to know is that she might or might not have been born in Norwich. Indeed, there is little we know about her for certain, except that she left us a famous work titled Revelations of Divine Love … except she never called it that. She was born in 1342 and died sometime after 1416 — so maybe 1418, and maybe at the Battle of the Somme. After all, a lot of English people died at the Somme, and we do at least know she was English.
Julian was an anchoress, which means she had herself walled into a cell attached to her parish church. This may seem like the sort of inexplicable thing women would agree to in an era before second-wave feminism (or even first-wave feminism, for that matter), but I find it the most relatable aspect of Julian’s eccentric life. Who among us hasn’t wanted to read, write, and pray with only our cat for company and no pop-up notifications (or people) to distract us? When you put it that way, Julian should be the patron saint of introverts, pestered parents, and professors at semester’s end.
When at the age of thirty Julian was afflicted with serious bodily illness, someone held up a crucifix for her to stare at. Stare she did, and it began to bleed. We can’t blame morphine for this one, as she lived in a time when opiates were not widely available. In a series of “shewings,” the Lord told her that even though life is crap, sin is horrific, and everything is going to pot, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Put aside any ideas you might have that medieval mystics were nice happy ladies who wrote poetry. They were essentially the medieval equivalent of “Just Stop Oil” protesters, with a reputation for being anti-authority, delusional troublemakers. After all, mystics thought they had a direct line to the divine, which made the vast mediatory apparatus of the Catholic Church sort of redundant. In an age when people were thoroughly convinced that witches existed, it wasn’t hard to connect the dots from that odd woman on the edge of town having ecstatic visions to that odd woman on the edge of town making your skin break out in pustules.
Yet Julian seems to have faced little or no opposition in her day, and while it surely helped that her writings were thoroughly orthodox, I cannot help wondering if the fact that she was literally a prisoner of her church, caged up and under control, might have worked to make her acceptable to the Church hierarchy. It’s a brilliant strategy, if you can get past the whole being locked up forever bit.
Margery Kempe
Mystics don’t typically do anything halfway, and Margery Kempe was no exception. Most medieval English folk contented themselves with a pilgrimage to Walsingham or Canterbury, but Margery was something of an internationalist, traveling to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the numerous basilicas in Rome, and even far-off Jerusalem. (We can safely assume she would have been a Remainer in 2016.) Chalk this up to either extreme spirituality or her desire to escape her fourteen children. That’s enough kids to form two Von Trapp Family choirs!
At some point in Margery’s marriage, she and her husband decided that while they had enjoyed an epic run with all that sexual activity, it was time to take a break and pursue solo projects. Yes, Margery went celibate for Jesus, which ironically put her at odds with many of the Church’s priests. Sadly, she would spend the remainder of her life at odds with those priests, who were so offended by the visions she claimed to receive from God that at one point they locked her up and threatened to do unspeakable things to her — as in, I really can’t speak about them, because this is a family publication.
Thoroughly gaslit, Margery went to visit another person who knew all about being locked up: Julian of Norwich. Yes, the two women lived in the same region of England during roughly the same period. I would say there must have been something in the water that was causing them both to break out in mystical activity, but what was actually in the water was rats killed by the Black Death, which tended to cause an outbreak of another kind. Julian advised Margery to mystic even harder, which she subsequently did, dictating her life story in The Book of Margery Kempe. It is often credited with being the oldest surviving autobiography in the English language.
Hildegard of Bingen
Now we come to one of the biggies: a legit Doctor of the Church, the Sibyl of the Rhine. Hildegard of Bingen was born in 1098 and died in 1179, so she is pretty much the O.G. medieval mystic. Perhaps you’ve seen her in a famous medieval illustration receiving a vision from Holy Spirit: only the Spirit looks like an octopus attacking her head.
Hildegard didn’t just receive visions. She was an expert in musical composition and herbal remedies. She was also an abbess whose reforms affected both nuns and monks. She even produced illuminated miniatures. Honestly, Hildegard, leave some talents for the rest of us, you showoff!
But wait: there’s more! Hildegard was also an expert rhetorician who embarked on four preaching tours of Germany. Now, I realize the past is a different country and they do things differently there, but in this case, the reaction was exactly what you would expect in 21st-century America: some devoted followers soaking up her teachings with exceptional gratitude and some other people losing their freaking minds.
Yet, like Julian of Norwich, Hildegard managed to avoid serious ecclesiastical censure. Not only women, but plenty of men sought her advice: even high-ranking officials in the Church establishment! In short, Hildegard seems not to have realized that she was living in the twelfth century: she acted like a fully empowered 21st-century Girlboss! Plus, her monastery is surrounded by some of the world’s best vineyards, so after a long day of ecstatic visions, she could kick back with a glass of riesling and watch the sun set over the Rhine, enjoying the feeling of making a positive difference in the world. Showoff!
Catherine of Siena
We now arrive at the prototypical female saint of the medieval period. No, not Joan of Arc! It’s Catherine of Siena, also a Doctor of the Church. (Becoming a Doctor of the Church is sort of like an honorary doctorate, only instead of giving a long commencement speech no one wants to sit through, you have to write some long books.) Every teenager goes through an emo phase, and when Catherine hit hers, she declared she would never marry a Sienese merchant, chopped off all her hair, and joined the local nunnery. On the spectrum of strange teenage decisions, I think we can honestly rank this no higher than the fortieth percentile.
Once she went monastic, Catherine never looked back. She became a devoted champion of the poor and was not afraid to suck the pus out of someone’s infected wound if that was what it took to heal them and become more like Christ, even claiming it tasted good. She also nearly brought an end to the Avignon Papacy single-handedly when she convinced Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. His successors would slink back to the French Riviera, but it was still a step in the right direction.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about Catherine of Siena is her mystical marriage to Christ, mostly because once you hear about it, you’ll be struggling to cleanse your brain of the thought for the next week or so. The Lord appeared to Catherine in a vision and offered her a very special wedding ring made of his own circumcised foreskin. Now, I like to think of myself as a halfway decent Christian. If the Lord tells me to take up a cross, I’m game. However, if he ever tells me to put on a ring made of his foreskin, that’s when I inquire about opportunities in monastic Buddhism, because I hear they strive for complete emptiness of mind, which will be exactly what I crave.
Catherine died in 1380 at the age of just 33, having worn herself out with repeated fasting. She was even said to have received the stigmata — that is, the wounds of Jesus Christ in her own flesh. By this point, that shouldn’t surprise you, as we’ve established her extreme love of all things bodily.
The Beguines: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Antwerp, and Marguerite Porete
We come now to the weirdest of the weird sisters: a triumvirate of females worthy of a Shakespearean drama. These are the mystical beguines.
I’m going to pause right there, because what you might have just heard me say in your head is beignet, a rectangular pastry usually served in New Orleans and covered in a heap of powdered sugar of equal weight with the actual dough. After all, beguine seems as likely to spell “Ben-yay!” as beignet does. Beignets are a sort of cousin to fancy French patisserie that provide most of the gastronomical benefits without the same degree of preparatory commitment, which is an apt metaphor for the beguines, who were essentially nuns who didn’t take formal vows and lived according to a more flexible rule.
Because of their weird halfway identity, beguines were met with suspicion from the beginning. When they started having visions, all bets were off. Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207–about 1290) became friends with some Dominicans and recorded her mystical experiences in The Flowing Light. The reception it received was on the order of a bunch of Star Wars purists reacting to Jar Jar Binks. Some called for her writings to be burned, and Mechthild’s life ended in relative isolation.
Then there was Hadewijch of Antwerp, who lived in the thirteenth century. She’s fun if only because the pronunciation of her name is sort of like Hedwig the owl from the Harry Potter books. She left several writings in an early version of Dutch, and one of her letters is now a favorite of modern scholars because it mentions her intense love for two of her female beguine compatriots. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean Hadewijch should be trotted out during Pride Month. Mystics tended to wax lyrical about anything and everything.
No beguine mystic faced as much opposition as poor Marguerite Porete (1258–1310). Her book The Mirror of Simple Souls spoke of her ecstatic experiences of union with Christ, such that her own soul was annihilated. Some people took this in a non-literal sense and thought it was lovely. The Church hierarchy took it in an uber-literal sense and declared her a heretic. Refusing to recant her writings, she was burned at the stake near the present Hôtel-de-Ville in Paris, bringing the beguine experiment in mysticism to a sad end.
A Conclusion of Sorts
So, did any of these women actually have these visions, or were there simply fewer things to occupy their time before the advent of television?
Honestly, I don’t know. That’s the thing about medieval history: much of it is shrouded, not in the fog of war, but some sort of metaphorical misty thing, and certainly not in the actual Shroud of Turin, which probably has a medieval origin itself.
What I do know with some degree of certainty is that no one in that era was taking theological counsel from women, unless that counsel happened to take the form of a direct revelation from God via ecstatic experience. This does not mean all these mystics were fakers who wanted publicity, but it does mean that the Church chose to listen to female mystics while ignoring other females. Mysticism was the sole avenue by which a woman could teach theology, and even then, it was a risky endeavor. Just ask Marguerite Porete!
I cannot help but notice that some of the best-selling female authors in the Christian market today also have a mystical bent. No, today’s mystics do not usually claim visions of the type Hildegard saw (and fortunately nothing in line with Catherine’s mystical marriage!), but they believe they receive messages from God. As in the medieval period, there are some who eagerly devour these texts, and some who denounce the authors as heretics.
I cannot help thinking of the Apostle Paul’s mystical experiences. In 2 Corinthians chapter twelve, he describes “a man” who “was caught up to the third heaven” (v. 2). There this man “heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak” (v. 4). It’s fairly clear that Paul is talking about himself: a sort of first-century humble brag.
But then Paul immediately describes an experience of suffering in his life: a “thorn in the flesh” (v. 7) that revealed his own inabilities. He receives a message from God — a direct revelation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (v. 9).
According to Paul, ecstatic experiences are not the greatest gift. It is grace that saves us and allows us to go on, even in the midst of suffering. Grace is the hope for those without special abilities. We don’t have to be mystics. We just have to accept the grace that is poured into our hands: hands that God must pry open for us, because that is how stubborn we are. He doesn’t pour daintily. He showers us in grace upon grace, immersing us in it. The greatest spiritual experience you can ever have is to be the recipient of the grace of God.
