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To commemorate the launch of three new collections on Theology and Religion Online in collaboration with Paulist Press – Ancient Christian Writers, Classics of Western Spirituality: Pre-1500, and Classics of Western Spirituality: Post-1500 – this featured content celebrates four women writers throughout history who made invaluable contributions to scholarship on spiritual life.
A mystic is simply a man or woman in love with God, and the Church is hungry for such people. The Church has brought forth many mystics; one who is unknown but should be known is Catherine of Genoa, a saint beloved of God. Catherine was born into the aristocratic Fieschi family and married into the equally powerful and aristocratic of Adorno. Ten years after he marriage she underwent a profound religious experience. Her husband Giuliano also experienced a religious conversion, and together they began working at the Pammatone Hospital, the hospital for the sick poor in Genoa.
The works in Catherine of Genoa: Purgation and Purgatory can most aptly be referred to as the “teachings” of Catherine. Catherine herself wrote no books, and her “works” were completed around the year 1522, about twelve years after her death. Some of the material may have been written down during her lifetime, but these works are largely the works of her friends recounting what they heard from her. It is in this way that they can be called her “teachings.”
Click here to read an excerpt from Catherine of Genoa: Purgation and Purgatory.
Marguerite Porete, cruelly burned alive in the main public square of Paris in 1310, was virtually forgotten to posterity until 1965, when the publication of the original French version of her Mirror of Simple Souls became the basis for one of the most dramatic scholarly retrievals of the present century. Now, in this book, Ellen Babinsky offers English-language readers the first translation of the complete work. Through lyrical prose and lively imagery, The Mirror of Simple Souls impresses as a vibrant work of literature, yet is even more impressive as a searching and daring work of mystical theology.
Marguerite refused to apologise for being a woman. Because she was certain that her work was divinely inspired, she refused to apologise for having written it – or even to explain to her (inevitably male) judges how she had come to do so. Between 1296 and 1306 she was forced to watch the public burning of her book in Valenciennes and to listen to a formal warning that if she circulated it again she would suffer the direst penalties. Yet she did circulate it again and was rearrested. Once imprisoned, she refused to cooperate with her jailers, even while knowing that death at the stake could be the only outcome. Marguerite calls the liberated soul a “phoenix,” a characterisation that could apply equally well to the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls.
Read the commentary on this passage from the Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls.
Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi spent all of her adult years, from the age of 16 until her death at 41, in strict enclosure in the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Unlike the public mystics of her age, Maria Maddalena’s spirituality was intensely private. She never wanted her raptures to be recorded or read by anyone in the outside world. Had it not been for the teams of her sister nuns who were assigned to record her words (and the acts that accompanied them) in detail, we would not even have the records from which these translations by Armando Maggi have been made. The transcriptions made by her companions did not circulate widely; even though they were written down in her lifetime, Maria Maddalena’s visions were not edited for publication until the middle of the twentieth century and have been the object of very few critical studies. It is very easy to get the feeling that scholars have rather been avoiding Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.
What we have here is a type of sacred eavesdropping, and texts as messy as they are fascinating, powerful, and truly visionary. This work, in the words of Giovanni Pozzi, consoles the reader with ‘lyrical effusions, rushes of vehement and eternal passion… [a] descent into the core of the human soul, elevations to the threshold of the sublime.’
Click here to read an excerpt from Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Selected Revelations.
Julian of Norwich wrote about the central problems of the spiritual life, particularly those related to the encounter between the soul and God. Her writings are now considered to have universal and permanent value. As a woman, she represents the feminine teacher and feminine insight that are less rare in the Western Christian tradition than many of our contemporaries might think. Her teaching is timeless, meeting some of the urgent needs of those seeking God in our age and answering many of the crucial problems of spiritual development and contemplative consciousness.
Of all the doctrinal issues that she considers, the one which makes Julian’s contribution the most timely, the most in tune with certain trends in contemporary theology, is her insistence on referring to God as Mother. This was not new, but part of a long tradition. The Church has always been aware of the maternal aspect of God and has given it expression in her theological formulations, particularly in the notion of providence. What makes her contribution original, however, is the theological precision with which she applies this symbolism to the Trinitarian interrelationships.
Click here to read an excerpt from Julian of Norwich: Showings.
If you’ve enjoyed this taster of what Paulist Press: Classics of Western Spirituality Pre-1500 and Paulist Press: Classics of Western Spirituality Post-1500 have to offer, why not let your librarian know about these collections on Theology & Religion Online? Recommend them to your librarian here.
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