Medieval Women Mystics

[Nicole M]

Have any of you taken a little side trip during your middle ages studies to look at the medieval women mystics, their lives and works? I'm thinking Hildegaard (since we own ever available recording of her music), Julian of Norwich (because we're into British history and all things disaster and plague related) and possibly the Beguine movement (see this article for an overview if you're curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguines_and_Beghards - someday I'll figure out how to make a live link!). I thought I'd choose some selections of Hadewijch's poetry.

 

In the unlikely event that you've done this, what have you read? I was thinking Enduring Grace would be a good overview. It's been ages since I read it, so I'd have to re-read to decide. Am I missing something obvious?

 

I'm totally open to suggestions.

 

Nicole

[Peela]

I love that idea. I am reading Joan of Ark by Mark Twain at the moment- I don't know if she would be a mystic, but I guess she qualifies since she was sainted! Apparently it was Twain's work he considered his masterpiece- it's very readable and my 12 and 14yos will be reading it next year.

I was playing some gothic chants by Hildergard just yesterday!

[Plaid Dad]

I haven't done this with high school students, but I read a lot of medieval mystics in graduate school. (I seriously considered doing my diss. on the Rhineland mystics.) Margery Kempe, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard, and Julian were high on the list. If you want to include men, Meister Eckhart is a big name.

 

HTH!

[Kate in Arabia]

Are you staying only in the western European area? There are a number of women Sufi mystics from that general time period, the most famous being Rabia al-Adawiyyah:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabia_Basri

 

If you are spending a substantial time on this subject, it might be interesting to take a day or two exploring women mystics from other traditions (I assume there are women mystics in Buddhist, Hindu, etc. history as well).

[Nicole M]

Thanks, everyone. This is starting to look like a "thumbs up"!

 

Plaid Dad, I seriously considering doing my dissertation in the same area. Funny.

 

Kate, what a fantastic idea. We were mainly focusing on Europe this semester, since we spent last semester on the rest of the world cultures from this era - we're using Human Odyssey at a slow pace with lots of supplements. Every time we get to the end of a chapter, there are a few lines that say something like, "Women in X culture had few rights." Then there's a long list of misery. This upsets my son. "Mom! Why don't they just have one paragraph at the beginning of the whole book that explains that women got the shaft through most of history?!" ("Honey, do you know what got the shaft actually means?" "Yes. No. It's bad." "You're right. But you're also right, women have not had a lot of power.")

 

At any rate, I don't want the kid to get to college, like I did, under the impression that no women anywhere ever created anything of lasting value. The only women writers we read in HS were Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. Dickinson's seclusion was played up more then her poetry. So I pretty much thought women writers were nutjobs, without ever even being conscious that I thought that.

 

Big digression. I tend to do that when I'm writing here before 6am. But Kate, back to the point, to compare women mystics from other cultures is a great idea. Thank you.

[mommaduck]

Could someone explain what is being meant by "mystics" here?

[Murphy101]

there are many saint books that are awesome for a bit of perspective from the mystic's pov. also many of their writing are still in print and worth a read. very interesting reading!

[Nicole M]

Could someone explain what is being meant by "mystics" here?

 

Mysticism, from Britannica:

 

in general, a spiritual quest for hidden truth or wisdom, the goal of which is union with the divine or sacred (the transcendent realm). Forms of mysticism are found in all major world religions, by analogy in the shamanic and other ecstatic practices of nonliterate cultures, and in secular experience.

 

 

The mystics would be persons who have experienced visions or "showings" or "illuminations" into the nature of the divine being. (Some folks just think they're nutjobs, though. :D )

[Carol in Cal.]

I thought it was poorly written, which surprised me a lot. It was a topic that I was very curious about, but the book itself seemed pretty boring.

 

I wish that I could offer a better one.

 

I would have thought the same as you about women except that when I was a kid, and an avid reader, my mom tortured me by forcing me to take one non-fiction book out with every load of library books, and actually read it. So I surveyed the entire Dewey decimal system and figured out that the non-fiction that was most like actual fiction was biographies. So I read one biography per load of 8 library books for pretty much my entire childhood. Thus, I knew for sure that women could do anything. Anything. It was not until years later that I realized that that is not common knowlege. So there you have it--my advice is to make sure that you pepper his reading with lots of biographies of effective, outstanding women. Queens, teachers, mothers, prophets, physicists, chemists, explorers, nuns, professors, astronauts, etc. It is just as important for boys to know that women can do anything as it is for girls to know that women can do anything.

[Nicole M]

I thought it was poorly written, which surprised me a lot. It was a topic that I was very curious about, but the book itself seemed pretty boring.

 

I wish that I could offer a better one.

 

I would have thought the same as you about women except that when I was a kid, and an avid reader, my mom tortured me by forcing me to take one non-fiction book out with every load of library books, and actually read it. So I surveyed the entire Dewey decimal system and figured out that the non-fiction that was most like actual fiction was biographies. So I read one biography per load of 8 library books for pretty much my entire childhood. Thus, I knew for sure that women could do anything. Anything. It was not until years later that I realized that that is not common knowlege. So there you have it--my advice is to make sure that you pepper his reading with lots of biographies of effective, outstanding women. Queens, teachers, mothers, prophets, physicists, chemists, explorers, nuns, professors, astronauts, etc. It is just as important for boys to know that women can do anything as it is for girls to know that women can do anything.

 

Hmm. I didn't make it through all of Enduring Grace and maybe this is why...? Usually I don't totally forget what I read, but I did with this one. I loved her book about reconciling a feminist thirst and a spiritual hunger (or maybe it's vice versa?). I remember quite a lot of that, though when I loaned it to a friend, she could not get through it.

 

Biographies - great idea. My boys are totally into warfare and strategy; their favorite TC lecture series is Great Battles of the Ancient World. So I didn't think about this, exposing him to more biographies of women. He would be very open to that.

 

That's a great story about your mom making you read non-fiction. I recently returned to the tiny town I lived in as a child, and was stunned by how wee the library there is. I remembered it as a huge, warm place, and it's just dumpy and hardly bigger than my living room! So even if we'd had a rule about what we could check out, I don't know how far I would have gotten.

 

I'll keep thinking about this. I have a couple other options on my shelf that I need to dust off and peek through.

 

Thanks.

[Carol in Cal.]

Hmm. I didn't make it through all of Enduring Grace and maybe this is why...? Usually I don't totally forget what I read, but I did with this one. I loved her book about reconciling a feminist thirst and a spiritual hunger (or maybe it's vice versa?). I remember quite a lot of that, though when I loaned it to a friend, she could not get through it.

 

Biographies - great idea. My boys are totally into warfare and strategy; their favorite TC lecture series is Great Battles of the Ancient World. So I didn't think about this, exposing him to more biographies of women. He would be very open to that.

 

That's a great story about your mom making you read non-fiction. I recently returned to the tiny town I lived in as a child, and was stunned by how wee the library there is. I remembered it as a huge, warm place, and it's just dumpy and hardly bigger than my living room! So even if we'd had a rule about what we could check out, I don't know how far I would have gotten.

 

I'll keep thinking about this. I have a couple other options on my shelf that I need to dust off and peek through.

 

Thanks.

 

...the one about the feminist hunger and the spiritual thirst. It was as if it had been written by someone else than Enduring Grace. If you liked that first one, whose name escapes me for the moment, you may also enjoy the latest by Chitra Divakuruni, in which the East Indian story memorialized in the first is elaborated on from a woman's perspective. I enjoy all of Divakuruni's adult books, but this is her first foray into retelling of mythology. It's great, and interesting to compare to the Flanders book.

 

Re. your son, I think that social history is another interesting way to include women into history studies. Social history is the history of communities more so than of wars and leaders. Also, there is a ton of great historical fiction with strong woman characters. Edna Ferber comes to mind, for instance.

[Janie]

Scarlet Music

[Nicole M]

Scarlet Music

 

Thanks! I didn't know about that.

 

The Amazon reviews were interesting, too.

[Nicole M]

...the one about the feminist hunger and the spiritual thirst. It was as if it had been written by someone else than Enduring Grace. If you liked that first one, whose name escapes me for the moment, you may also enjoy the latest by Chitra Divakuruni, in which the East Indian story memorialized in the first is elaborated on from a woman's perspective. I enjoy all of Divakuruni's adult books, but this is her first foray into retelling of mythology. It's great, and interesting to compare to the Flanders book.

 

Re. your son, I think that social history is another interesting way to include women into history studies. Social history is the history of communities more so than of wars and leaders. Also, there is a ton of great historical fiction with strong woman characters. Edna Ferber comes to mind, for instance.

 

Wow! Wowzers, wow. I just had a peek at Kivakuruni's book, and it looks amazing. We just finished last semester reading excerpts from the Mahabharata, so that looks wonderful.

 

Also, not familiar with Edna Ferber. Boy, she's written quite a lot. Do you have one book, a favorite, that you would recommend to start with? We've exhausted all the Horatio Hornblower, Patrick O'What's-His-Name, and every other naval-type historical novel we could find so it's definitely time to move on. I do have a few more mature Rosemary Sutcliff novels picked out (she's a fave), but while her female characters are very real and strong, they are not the main characters, kwim?

 

I have never been so excited for a school year to begin. I want to read all these books. Forget the kid!

 

Thanks, again, Carol.

[Carol in Cal.]

Also, not familiar with Edna Ferber. Boy, she's written quite a lot. Do you have one book, a favorite, that you would recommend to start with?

 

 

Her work might be a little spotty (Showboat???), but the novel of hers that I remember most fondly is "So Big"--it's just wonderful.

 

Other great historical fiction works with strong woman characters include:

 

"An Old Fashioned Girl" by Louisa May Alcott--this one starts with a very 'young' feel--almost babyish. But stick with it--it explores issues in an extremely modern way, while documenting post-Civil War society near Boston extremely well.

 

"O Pioneers", "The Song of the Lark", and "My Antonia" by Willa Cather

 

"The Small Woman"--actually, this is a biographical book about Gladys Aylward, a Christian woman from England who felt called to minister in China and lived there until the Japanese invasion, I believe.

 

"The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

 

"Fifth Chinese Daughter" by Jade Snow Wong--this is actually an autobiography--very well written, it tells the story of a young woman who grows up in San Francisco's Chinatown during the middle of the 20th century.

 

"Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes"--autobiographical/biographical--early 20'th century New England.

[Nicole M]

First, thanks again to everyone who posted suggestions, especially Carol - you're amazing.

 

I've been thinking and reading and reading and thinking about this for the last week or so. My copy of TWEM just arrived and I was delighted to see Margery Kempe on the list of autobiographies. I also started re-reading Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, edited by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff. The introduction alone is worth the price of the book (though I'm sure it's available in libraries), and a great overview, in case anyone's interested. Here's a link:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Visionary-Literature-Elizabeth-Alvilda/dp/019503712X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219418118&sr=8-2

 

I'm still not sure what or whether I'll have my son read on my growing list, but Petroff's book refreshed my memory enough that I can speak lucidly about the subject now.

 

Again, thanks.