Mystic (ca. 1210 – ca. 1282)
Mechthild of Magdeburg, a German mystic of the thirteenth century, is known to us entirely through The Flowing Light of the Godhead, a kind of spiritual journal, written in her own hand, which she continuously amended over the course of her life.
At the age of twenty, she left her wealthy family near Magdeburg in Saxony to join a house of Beguines—a movement of women who fashioned an independent religious life, free of rules, enclosure, or ecclesiastical approval. Mechthild’s life of intimacy with God brought with it much loneliness
and estrangement from the world. She accepted the price along with the rewards of her vocation.
In her writings, which were copied and widely circulated, she offered a vivid account of her dialogues with Christ, along with unsparing criticism of ecclesial worldliness and corruption: “Alas! Crown of holy Church, how tarnished you have become. . . . Alas crown of holy priesthood, you have disappeared,
and you have nothing left but your external shape— namely, priestly power—with this you do battle against God and His chosen friends.” Not surprisingly, such sentiments attracted negative attention, so that she described herself as “a post or target at which people throw stones.” At the age of
sixty, she left the Beguines for the safe haven of the Cistercian convent in Helfta. There, almost blind, she was welcomed and cared for until her death.
“I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me. / If you want me to leap with abandon, / You must intone the song. / Then I shall leap into love.”
—Mechthild of Magdeburg
