President and Publisher
Kevin A.Lynch, C.S.P.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-Chief
Bernard McGinn-Donnelly Professor of Historical Theology and the History of Christianity, Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
Editorial Consultant
Ewert H.Cousins-Professor of Theology, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.
John E.Booty-Professor of Anglican Studies, School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.
Joseph Dan-Professor of Kabbalah, Department ofJewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
Louis Dupre-T. L.Riggs Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Rozanne Elder-Executive Vice-President, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Michael Fishbane-Nathan Cummings Professor, Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
Anne Fremantle-Teacher, Editor, and Writer, NewYork, N.Y.
Karlfried Froehlich-Professor of the History of the Early and Medieval Church, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ.
Arthur Green-Professor ofJewish Thought, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.
Stanley S.Harakas-Archbishop lakovos Professor of Orthodox Theology, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, Brookline, Mass.
Moshe Idel-Professor of Jewish Thought, Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia-Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies, Oxford University, England.
George A.Maloney-Spiritual Writer and Lecturer, Seal Beach, Calif.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr-Professor of Islamic Studies, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Heiko A.Oberman-Professor for Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation History, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Raimundo Panikkar-Professor Emeritus, Department of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, Calif.
Jaroslav Pelikan-Sterling Professor of History and Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Sandra M.Schneiders-Professor of New Testament Studies and Spirituality,Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif.
Michael A.Sells-Emily Judson Baugh and John Marshall Gest Professor of Comparative Religions, Haverford College, Haverford, Penn.
Huston Smith-Thomas J.Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
John R.Sommerfeldt-Professor of History, University of Dallas, Irving, Tex.
David Steindl-Rast-Spiritual Author, Benedictine Grange, West Redding, Conn.
David Tracy-Greeley Professor of Roman Catholic Studies, Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
The Rt. Rev. Rowan D.Williams-Bishop of Monmouth, Wales.
PREFACE BY
MARGOT SCHMIDT
Foreword
Preface
Key to Abbreviations
Introduction
Notes to the Introduction
THE FLOWING LIGHT OF THE GODHEAD
Prologue to the Lux Divinitatis
Latin Foreword with Table of Contents and Middle High German Translation
BOOK I
1. How Love and the Queen Spoke to Each Other
2. Concerning Three Persons and Three Gifts
3. The Handmaids of the Soul and the Blow of Love
4. The Soul's journey to Court During Which God Reveals Himself
5. The Torment and the Praise of the Soul
6. The Nine Choirs: How They Sing
7. God's Curse in Eight Things
8. The Most Lowly Praises God in Ten Things
9. With Three Things You Dwell on the Heights
10. Who Loves God Triumphs over Three Things
11. Four Battle for God
12. The Soul Praises God for Five Things
13. How God Comes to the Soul
14. How the Soul Receives and Praises God
15. How God Receives the Soul
16. God Likens the Soul to Four Things
17. The Soul Praises God About Five Things
18. God Likens the Soul to Five Things
19. God Caresses the Soul in Six Ways
20. The Soul Praises God in Return in Six Ways
21. Of Knowledge and Enjoyment
22. St. Mary's Message and How One Virtue Follows Another. How the Soul Was Made in the Jubilus of the Trinity, and How St. Mary Nursed All the Saints and Nurses Them Still
23. You Should Ask That God Love You Passionately, Often, and Long; Then You Shall Become Pure, Beautiful, and Holy
24. How God Responds to the Soul
25. The Way to Suffer Pain Willingly for God's Sake
26. The Path upon Which the Soul Draws the Senses and Is Free of Suffering of the Heart
27. How You Become Worthy of This Path and Keep to It and Become Perfect
28. Love Shall Be Deadly, Boundless, and Unceasing; This Is the Folly of Fools
29. The Beauty of the Bridegroom and How the Bride Should Follow Him in Twenty-Three Steps of the Cross
30. The Seven Hours
31. You Should Ignore Scorn
32. You Should Ignore Honors, Suffering, and Possessions. Be Sad After Sinning
33. Concerning Food, Consolation, and Love
34. In Suffering You Should Be a Lamb, a Turtledove, and a Bride
35. The Desert Has Twelve Things
36. Concerning Malice, Good Works, and Concerning a Marvel
37. The Soul Responds to God Saying She Is Unworthy of These Favors
38. God Boasts That the Soul Has Overcome Four Sins
39. God Asks the Soul What She Is Bringing
40. She Replies: Something That Is Better than Seven Things
41. God Asks in Praise What the Precious Stone Is Called
42. The Precious Stone Is Called Heart's Delight
43. Put Your Delight into the Trinity
44. The Sevenfold Path of Love, the Three Garments of the Bride, and the Dance
45. The Eight Days in Which What the Prophets Longed For Was Accomplished
46. The Diverse Adornments of the Bride; How She Comes to Her Bridegroom; and How the Retinue Is Composed, Which Is Ninefold
BOOK II
1. Love Brings Elevation to the Soul, Not Inhuman Toil; That Comes from Self-Will
2. Two Songs of Love of Him Who Was Seen in Love
3. The Tongue of the Godhead, the Light of Truth, the Four Rays of God Shining into the Nine Choirs, the Trinity, and St. Mary
4. The Poor Girl, the Mass of John the Baptist, the Transformation of the Host into the Lamb, the Beauty of the Angels, Four Kinds of Sanctified People, and the Golden Penny
5. A Song of the Soul About Five Things, and How God Is a Garment of the Soul and the Soul of God
6. God's Singing Response in the Soul in Five Things
7. In Suffering Praise God; Then He Will Appear to You. The Two Golden Chalices of Suffering and Consolation
8. Of Purgatory; a Person Freed a Thousand Souls from It with the Tears of Love
9. God Praises His Bride in Five Things
10. The Bride Praises God in Return in Five Things
11. Seven Kinds of Love for God
12. Seven Kinds of Perfection
13. Between God and the Soul There Should Be Love
14. Where Bitterness, Low Spirits, Sickness, Terror, Sensitivity, Distress, Forsakenness, and Inconsolability Come From
15. How One Wounded by Love Is Restored to Health
16. The Seven Gifts of a Brother
17. How God Woos the Soul and Makes Her Wise in His Love
18. How the So
ul Interprets God's Wooing in Eight Things
19. How Knowledge and the Soul Converse and How the Latter Says That She Is Threefold. Of the Three Heavens
20. How Sister Hildegund Is Adorned in Heaven with Three Mantles, with Seven Crowns, and How the Nine Choirs Praise Her
21. If You Would Behold the Mountain, You Should Have Seven Things
22. How Contemplation Asks the Loving Soul About the Seraphim and the Least of Men
23. How Love Questions and Instructs Dull Souls and Would Like to Bring Them to Their Lover and Begins to Speak; and How the Dull Soul Responds
24. How the Loving Soul Joins the Company of God and His Chosen Dear Ones and Shall Be Equal to All the Saints. How the Devil and the Soul Talk to Each Other
25. The Lament of the Loving Soul; How God Protects Her and Withdraws His Gift from Her. Concerning Wisdom, How the Soul Asks God How She Is and Where He Is. Concerning the Orchard, Flowers, and the Song of the Virgins
26. About This Book and the Writers of This Book
BOOK III
1. Of Heaven and the Nine Choirs and Who Is Supposed to Fill the Breach. Of the Throne of the Apostles and St. Mary and on Which Christ Sits. Of the Reward of Preachers, Martyrs, and Virgins, and of the Unbaptized Children
2. How the Soul Praises God and God the Soul for Seven Things. Of Balsam and Waiting
3. A Lament That the Soul Is a Maidservant for the Love of God
4. How Our Lady St. Mary Can Sin and How Not; the Holy Spirit Teaches This
5. How the Soul Complains That She Hears No Mass Nor Hours and How God Praises Her in Ten Things
6. If You Would Follow God Rightly, You Should Have Seven Things
7. Concerning Seven Obvious Enemies of Our Happiness That Cause Seven Kinds of Harm
8. Seven Things That All Priests Should Have
9. Concerning the Beginning of All Things That God Created out of Love
10. The Passion That the Loving Soul Has from God, and How She Rises and Ascends into Heaven
11. Between God and the Loving Soul All Things Are Beautiful
12. You Should Praise, Thank, Desire, and Beg. Concerning the Lantern and the Light
13. Sixteen Kinds of Love
14. Concerning False Virtues; Whoever Dwells Therein Lives in Lies
15. You Should Approach God's Table with Eight Virtues. By Ransom a Person Released Seventy Thousand Souls from Ghastly Purgatory, Which Is of Many Kinds
16. After a Gift There Follows a Scourge and After Disgrace Honor
17. The Purgatory of a Religious Person, His Five Kinds of Help out of the Torment, and the Nobility of the Order of Preachers
18. A Knight's Battle in Full Armor Against Sensual Desires
19. Two Kinds of Poor People: Those Who Are Cheerfully Poor and Those Who Are Unhappily So
20. The Five Prophets Who Illumine This Book
21. Hell: How It Has Three Parts; How Lucifer and Sixteen Kinds of People Are Tormented; There Is No Help for Them. Lucifer's Garment
22. Of God's Mercy, His Concern, and Justice.
23. The Intensity of Yearning Takes Away Words; God Cannot Do Without Virgins; God's Countenance, His Embrace, and His Joy Overcome a Thousand Deaths
24. Two Kinds of Spirits-from God and from the Devil-Are Offered to Two Kinds of Religious People. The Seven Kinds of Love
BOOK IV
1. Pure Virgins Should Have Five Things
2. This Book Has Come from God; the Soul Praises Herself for Many Things; She Is Given Two Angels and Two Evil Devils. With Twelve Virtues She Does Battle Against the Flesh
3. Sinners Fall Away from God; of Three Gifts of
Wisdom; of the Stone; of the Praise of the Virgin Who Is Christianity
4. Two Dissimilar Paths: the First Descends into Hell; the Second Ascends to Heaven
5. Our Sin, Future Fall, Earthly Being, the Kingdom of Heaven. God's Gifts Should Be Clearly Before Our Eyes
6. Being Chosen by God Cannot Hurt Anyone; True Repentance Earns Remission and God's Grace, and Frees from Purgatory
7. How a Free Soul Speaks to God in Total Love
8. Concerning God's Body, Which a Sick Person Vomits Up, and Concerning Power
9. Four Kinds of Offerings to Priests
10. Concerning the Offerings of Laypersons According to Their Means
11. Four Things Concerning How Christians Should Conduct Themselves in Dealing with Jews
12. How a Bride Who Is United with God Rejects Consolation from All Creatures Except for That from God Alone, and How She Sinks into Pain
13. The Text of This Book Is Seen, Heard, and Felt in All Members
14. Of the Holy Trinity, of the Birth and the Name of Jesus Christ, and of Human Nobility
15. Genuine Pure Love Has Four Things; If You Surrender Yourself to God, God Will Also Surrender Himself to You
16. Great Love Has More than Ten Parts and of Two Kinds of Complaint
17. Concerning a Lady Who Liked Being at Court; Concerning Her Devil Who Recommended to Her Seven Kinds of Evil
18. A Spiritual Person Resembles an Animal in Thirty Things as to His Nature
19. The Task of Blessed Love Is Manifold
20. The Six Virtues of St. Dominic
21. Sixteen Reasons Why the Order of Preachers Is Dear to God
22. Brother Heinrich's Fourfold Crown and of the Dignity of St. Dominic
23. About the Burial of St. John the Evangelist
24. How God Receives the Souls in Heaven; How He Crowns Three Kinds of People; How He Greets, Adorns, Praises, and Thanks Them
25. How We Are Now Present in Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell
26. God Consoles the Depressed Brother Baldwin
27. Concerning the End of the Order of Preachers and the Antichrist; Concerning Enoch and Elias
28. The Fivefold Power of Love. Because of the Weakness of People and the Treachery of the World One Must Remain Silent About the Truth
BOOK V
1. Three Kinds of Sorrow, Ten Kinds of Benefits, and the Path of Angels and Devils
2. Two Kinds of Suffering, Four Kinds of Benefits, and the Manifold Host of Sins
3. God Shall Weigh All Innocent Suffering and Also the Blood of Three Kinds of People
4. The Power of Marvelous Love Is Manifold; How the Soul Sinks. Four Kinds of Humility. The Sevenfold Beauty of the Loving Soul
5. The Purgatory of a Beguine Whom No Prayer Helped Because of Her Selfishness
6. How the Soul Praises the Holy Trinity
7. How God Praises the Soul in Return
8. A Good Person Should Have Three Children for Whom to Pray
9. Concerning the Glory of Seventy Men Who Arose with Christ as Testimony
10. How Sin Is Like God's Greatness
11. A Religious Name Shall Be Exalted. Concerning the Conduct of Sisters. How They Should Pray and Toil with God
12. How God Responds to a Brother Concerning What Is Written in This Book
13. Ten Kinds of Benefit a Good Person's Prayer Has
14. The Purgatory of Bad Priests
15. The Purgatory of a Good Priest
16. It Is Diabolical to Sin
17. This Is a Greeting, Praise, and Prayer of a Sinner
18. How God Responds to This
19. How Seventeen Kinds of Sin Pursue a Person
20. Praise of God in Eight Things. An Offering for Sins
21. Why Man Is Rejected and Yet Loved, and How You Should Bless Yourself
22. The Seven Things of Judgment; Shame and Good Will
23. St. Mary's Prayer, Gabriel's Light, the Child's Blanket, Where the Milk Came from, the Gifts for the Child, the Devils, and the Hunger Cloth
24. The Six Kinds of Children of Our Lord God and the Virtues of St. Dominic and How God Has Honored His Order in Four Ways
25. Something That One Misses in Heaven in Seven Things; Thereafter Follow Seven Things; the Praise of a Disheartened Person Is Beneficial in Seven Ways
26. How God Pr
aises Himself and Celebrates Himself in Song
27. The Heavenly Father Received His Son, Jesus, with Twelve Words
28. The Seven Crowns of Brother Albert. Disposition Is One Thing, Choice Is Another
29. After Ecstasy with God a Person Would Be Like an Angel If He Were to Follow It, and Concerning the Wickedness of the Devil
30. Twenty Powers of God's Love and Many Kinds of Names
31. Of Ten Powers of Love and That No Creature Can Fully Imagine the Longing of the Soul for God
32. The Sublime End of Sister Mechthild
33. How Small Sins Harm Perfection and How Through Them the Devil Draws Close to the Soul
34. Five New Saints Sent for the Sake of Bad People and How God Will Hereafter Wash Christianity in His Own Blood
35. How Sister Mechthild Thanks and Praises God and Prays for Three Kinds of People and for Herself
BOOK VI
1. How a Prior or a Prioress or Other Religious Superiors Should Conduct Themselves Toward Those Under Them
2. The Rule of a Canon: How He Should Conduct Himself. This Came from God
3. God Gives Authority. How Billy Goats Become Lambs
4. Discernment and Fear That Preserve the Senses from Earthly Things
5. After Love and Desire the Beauty of Creatures Gives Knowledge Along with Sadness
6. At the End You Should Have Love, Longing, Fear, and Three Kinds of Sorrow
7. Our Self-Will Can Resist the Barbed Hook. The Good Soul Comes Swiftly to God
8. Between God and Lucifer There Are Two Kinds of Purgatory. How the Devil Tortures Souls
9. The Saints Honor Those Who Honor Them and They Console Them at Their Death
10. Prayer, Masses, God's Word, the Lives of Good People, Fasting, and Carenae Free Souls from Purgatory
11. How a Student Is Dead and a Dominican Was Seen
12. HowYou Should ConductYourself as to Fourteen Things
13. How Religious out of Blindness Fend Off Inwardness from Themselves. The Sixfold Power of God's Gift
14. Those Who Complain in Suffering Lack Six Things; How One Should Bear Sickness and Contempt
15. The Sufferings of Enoch and Elijah, the Last Preachers, and the Wickedness of the Antichrist
16. How the Soul of Our Lord Dwells in the Trinity and What Its Task Is; How It Speaks for the Sinner and Concerning the Task of Our Lady
17. God Considers the Sinner Good; What a Good Right Will Is; Concerning a Good Burden
18. You Should Scrutinize Your Heart at All Times
The Flowing Light of the Godhead Page 1