Daughters at very early ages (5 to 9 years old) were betrothed and then married to the young sons of other noble houses, carrying with them the dowries of wealth, titles to fiefs and power alliances for regional stability. If the daughter were only entitled to a smaller dower, because of diminished family fortunes, too many daughters, or some characteristic in the girl that rendered her less desirable for marriage, she was sent to one of the women’s cloisters, usually attached to a male Order, to live out her adult life. Sometimes, and that rarely, young noble women decided against getting married because of the perils of childbirth and the loveless quality of the conjugal arrangements. They preferred the relative freedom from domination by father, brothers or husband, by entering the convents, where they were permitted to get an education, travel and interact with the outside world on frequent occasions. However, these daughters who became sisters, nuns, mother superior or abbess were not permitted by the Church of Rome to bequeath any remainder of dower or possessions to anyone else. Upon their death, the Church became the sole beneficiary, a practice which continued to enrich the Church of Rome. But while alive, the women usually had enough funds to provide some luxuries, good food and wine, and servants to care for them and travel with them when they chose to journey.
Because there was often no tolerance of nuns at the male monasteries, very wealthy fathers might start an Abbey for their daughters or for their wife to adjourn to, either after the death of the husband because the oldest son would inherit the castle or manor house, or after menopause when women were no longer baby makers and had diminished value. As an example of this intolerance, showing the depths of the negative socialization on the male clergy by the pronouncements of the Church against women, the acclaimed St. Francis of Assisi (lover of all animals, but not of women) was opposed to the addition of nunneries in his Order, commenting, “God has taken our wives from us and now Satan has given us sisters.” And previously when the Premonstratensain Order decided to abolish the female section from their monastery, they declared, “Since nothing in this world resembles the evil of women and since the venom of the viper or the dragon is less harmful to men than their proximity, we hereby declare that for the good of our souls, our bodies and our worldly goods, we will no longer accept sisters into our order and we will avoid them as we do mad dogs.”119
The organized post-reform Church did not permit the establishment of separate female orders. And, only the daughters of the nobility and newly wealthy merchant class called the bourgeoisie (who had the ability to pay the dower to the Church) were admitted to the Benedictines and to the newer Orders such as Dominican and Franciscans. Women of the lower classes and peasants could only serve as maidservants or lay sisters, which would soon lead to their joining groups such as the Beguines where they could live and work as holy women, unmarried, and without dower. For male sons, a fee could be paid by the father, who as a serf to his lord and master, could send his son to a Church school and then to a monastery where he could serve as a brother. But, there were no similar provisions in feudal customs for the daughter of a serf.
While the dowries for the convent among the daughters of the nobility were smaller than that required for marriage to a noble son of another family, the lower classes could not afford those prices for their daughters. So, unlike the situation today, during the Middle Ages only women of the nobility entered nunneries. And for the daughters of the merchant townspeople, the status of a nun was thought to be superior to that of an unmarried spinster, and, therefore, parents preferred to send their superfluous females to cloister. Additionally, illegitimate daughters, the deformed or mentally inept, were sent along with those for whom it was to serve as a hidden jail, punishment for offending either politically or personally, including the pernicious usurping of legacies to which the women (sisters or daughters) were entitled by inheritance.
Finally, noble women who became nuns and those who rose to the leadership of Abbess were largely free from subservience to males. Some women joined because of their fear of the “sins of the flesh”. Most nunneries of the time were not enclosed, so the women had relatively free access to the outside world without the outside world dictating their behavior. Noblewomen who became widows, rather than being forced to remarry, often chose the nunnery, and some married women entered after separating from their husbands by mutual consent, because divorce was rarely granted.
In the Middle Ages, a girl could become a nun by age 14, about the same time as they were expected to marry and begin conceiving children of their own. However, some entered at a much earlier age, placed there by their overburdened parents with no use for them because so many other children had been born before they were. So by the ages of 8 or 9, perhaps as young as 5 (Hildegard’s experience), little girls were sent away from home for life. In the Italian cities of Florence, Milan and Venice more than 13 percent of all women were nuns.120
But while the nunneries were empowered both by the Roman Church and by the European nobility, their Lady Abbesses, often the daughter or wife of the family, who built the cloister for them, enjoyed more temporal power than their secluded sister in adjoining castles. As estate holders, through dower contributions, in England, France, the Netherlands, Southern Italy, Germany and Spain, the abbesses exercised power over the peasants living on the land who cultivated the fields. With extensive holdings, these same Abbesses held not only the first power (cited previously) but also what was called “seigniorial” rights and the governmental powers attached to them. Those with these rights presided over secular courts of their estates, equal to the titled brothers. On occasion, they were empowered to hear criminal cases. Like Abbots, their male counterparts who were similarly empowered, and with the assistance of local secular offices, the Abbesses were able through these courts to impose fines, to punish criminals, to approve transfers, sales and leases of land within their domain, and to establish fairs and markets of trade or commerce. In both secular and ecclesiastical courts they litigated matters on property rights, income and judicial authority with secular seigniors and Church institutions.121 Within the Church hierarchy and confined to their own dioceses, the Abbesses approved appointment of priests and looked after the paying of tithes. Most nunneries were self-sufficient, growing vegetables, meat and dairy products. Bread was baked, and ale was brewed on premises. Only fish, salt and spices were purchased at the markets. In the larger nunneries, domestic work was supplied by maid servants, lay sisters and farm workers leaving the noble nuns free to embroider, work as scribes and illuminators of books, reading and prayer. Some instituted schools to teach laywomen and girls of the nobility, charging fees, used as income for the house.
Criticism of the nunneries rose and fell. Some accounts reveal purchases of liquor, games, torches and musicians, all prohibited. Fashionable clothing and pet animals (monkeys, squirrels, birds and lapdogs) were kept as the remnants of the noble ladies’ lifestyle, but seen from both the view of the male church hierarchy and the outside world as the “inability to cast off worldly things.” Morally, however, there were fewer direct charges against the nuns for engaging in lesbian behavior than there were against priests’ and monks’ purchases of prostitutes or engaging in homosexual behavior. In fact, some added bestiality and masturbation to the list of accusations against the men in monasteries.122
Whatever education nuns obtained, they received it directly within the confines of the mother house, because exterior institutions of higher learning, such as the newly forming universities, were categorically closed to all women, even the most noble.
The Mystics
Among nuns were the famous Medieval Mystics. While both men and women were mystics, women (unless Queens or noblewomen) held no status equal to men, so their attribution as mystics deemed them quite uniquely special and recognized them as sanctified by the same Roman Catholic Church, which prohibited them from the sanctity of priesthood. It also brought them into relationship with the women noted for prophecy in the Judeo/Christian bible and because o
f that recognition linking them back in time to the ancient priestesses of prophecy, despite the fact that none of these female medieval mystics would have been aware of that connection. Church bishops, abbots, popes and secular monarchs respected their gifts and accepted their prophecies as coming from a source they condoned, namely the male god of the Roman Christian Church. Therefore, these approved female mystics, mostly all nuns, were not subject to prosecution. Quite the contrary, these same men of status sought advice and spiritual instruction from the female mystics. Evidence to that effect has survived in detailed written correspondence.
But Hildegard was not alone. There is extant record of many other women mystics who were equally esteemed such as Angela of Goligno, Bridget of Swedes, Catherine of Sienna, St. Gertrude, Juliana of Norwich; Mechthild of Hackenborn and Mechthild of Mageburg; Catherine of Genoa; Teresa of Avila.123
These women received their distinction from personality alone, and not from rank, either ecclesiastical or secular. Thomas Aquinas said:, “Prophecy is not a sacrament but a divine gift (i.e. gift from god). The Latin reads, propheta non est sacramentum sed Dei donum. i.e. “given from god.” Though born of nobility and often serving as Abbess, they were not admitted to priesthood, so they could not rise through the clerical hierarchy to Bishop or Pope. They were each bound to identify themselves as subordinate to all men, identify themselves as less than men because of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, (wherein women took on the sins of humankind), and to identify themselves as non-sexual beings.
Virginity no longer had the same connotation as in ancient times when it meant independent women, a woman virile and free. In medieval times virginity has been transformed into a never-sexual female human, ever obedient to men from her birth until her death. Because “never-sexual” is contrary to the human condition, self-inflicted abuse to the point of life endangerment was prevalent (among men as well) and rarely discouraged as a means of literally beating the sexuality out of the mind and body.
Of course, it could not work. As a result, many spiritual women not only neglected their health but also abused their bodies, in attempts to purge themselves of the undesirable human urges. In this quest to become one with the divine, as defined by men who both hated and feared women, these mystics sometimes suffered horribly from malnutrition, depression, preventable diseases of skin, limb and organs, and self-inflicted injuries which went untreated. This deeply destructive legacy has been transmitted to some modern Western women, who serve everyone else and neglect themselves to the point of trauma because it is now subconsciously perceived as being the “Christian” way to live.
The Great Goddess of healthy sexuality, music, dance and the great mysteries of everlasting life, the Great prophetic Sybils of old, must have been weeping for her troubled daughters.
Through it all, what is amazing is that, when the mandatory socialization of the Roman church is stripped away, the majority of the mystical writings left by these women of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries speak to love, truth and beauty with a passion usually attributed to those actively engaged in human sexuality. Is it possible that love, truth and beauty were being learned and experienced behind cloistered walls among the women themselves, devoid of male influence or contact, and that the men who held them in such low regard, simply never noticed? Is it also possible that, given the opportunity, women are more easily able to reconnect with those same eternal principles and, therefore, with the divine, as was always presupposed by all ancient peoples?
Here then, (from Women Mystics) are their voices, in their own words.
Mechthild of Magdegurg lived 1210 to 1297 and is the first European mystic to write in German vernacular. Early in her life, at twelve, she had her first “greeting from god.” At twenty-three she became a Beguines, joining a non-Roman Catholic church-approved group originating in Belgium, spreading to France and then Germany. Later, and in ill health, she joined the Benedictines to live out her days. Interestingly, she incorporated the romantic ideas of “courtly love” in order to explain her mystic experiences. This excerpt is from her work titled The Flowing Light of the Godhead:
I cannot dance, O Lord, unless thou lead me.
If thou wilt that I leap joyfully
The must thou thyself first dance and sing!
The will I leap for love
From love to knowledge,
From knowledge to fruition,
From fruition to beyond all human sense.
There I will remain
And circle evermore.
Fish cannot drown in the water
Birds cannot sink in the air
Gold cannot perish
In the refiners fire. (i.e. alchemy)
This has god given to all creatures
To foster and seek their own nature,
How then can I withstand mine?
She continues, “That prayer has great power which a person makes with all his might. It makes a sour heart sweet, a sad heart merry, a poor heart rich, a foolish heart wise, a timid heart brave, a sick heart well, a blind heart full of sight, a cold heart ardent. It draws down the great God into the little heart, it drives the hungry soul up into the fullness of God, it brings together two lovers, god and the soul in a wondrous place where they speak much of love.” If one chooses to substitute the word “Goddess” for “God,” once again we see the power of the ancient mysteries transmitted through time and into the woman spirit of the Middle Ages.
Juliana of Norwich, (England) 1342–1416, is described as an anchoress (a person choosing seclusion for spiritual purposes), not a nun whose visions say nothing about either hell or purgatory. More astonishing, “she discovered that maternity is as intrinsic to God’s nature as majesty.” This would tie her revelations directly to the teachings of the ancient Goddess although Juliana would have had no knowledge of this connection.
In her words, “I did not see sin, for I believe that it has no kind of substance, no shore of being, nor can it be recognized except by the pain caused by it.” For those churchmen of her time who believed in the literal Satan manifest, she is in direct contradiction. Furthermore, she does not see evidence of a wrathful God, as in the Old Testament. She is fortunate that the Inquisition was not formalized in England; otherwise, she may have been considered suspect as a result of her visions. Then she speaks of the profound nature of Mother: “Our Mother is nature, our Mother is Grace, because he wanted altogether to become our Mother in all things, made the foundations of his work most humbly and mildly in the maidens womb. The Mother’s service is nearest, readiest and surest: nearest because it is most natural, readiest because it is most loving and surest because it is truest.” She proceeds to attribute this to “Mother Jesus,” calling him the “Mother of Life and All Things” though she cannot have known that the Goddess was titled the very same. The peculiarity of speaking of Mother as a male (i.e. Jesus) stems from two sources: First the fact that in the life of Jesus, it is clear that he made every effort to include and incorporate women, and secondly, the fact that the Church of Rome, though entirely and exclusively run by men, called itself the Mother Church, in an attempt to attract those of the Old Religion whose reverence for the divine female that church needed to convert in order to assume majority rule.
Catherine of Sienna, 1347 to 1380, lived and died near Florence, Italy, in the hills of Sienna, a city dedicated to the Virgin Mary. She was the daughter of a lowly wool-dyer, twenty-fourth of twenty-five children born from the same mother! Catherine only lived thirty-three years, but it is amazing she lived even that long, considering her early childhood circumstances and the depleted state of her mother when she came into this world. Catherine is not a nun either, but a lay member of the Dominican Third Order, who dedicated herself to prayer and service. “Her extraordinary prophetic skills and visionary gifts allowed her to combat the ills of the Catholic Church, which were considerable, on every level. Her devoted followers, the Catherinate came from all social classes, including the same Church au
thorities she held most responsible for widespread corruption that finally culminated in the Great Schism. Citations of her work are from The Dialogue.
Perfect prayer is achieved not with many words but with loving desire, when the soul rises up to me with knowledge of herself, each movement seasoned by the other. In this way, she will have vocal and mental prayer at the same time, for the two stand together like the active and contemplative life. Still, vocal and mental prayer are understood in many different ways. This is why I told you that holy desire, that is, having a good and holy will, is continual prayer … Whatever you do in word or deed for the good of your neighbor is a real prayer.
After a visionary experience in which she and Christ had exchanged hearts, she said, “My mind is so full of joy and happiness that I amazed my soul stays in my body. There is so much heat in my soul that this material fire seems cool by comparison, rather than to be giving out heat: it seems to have gone out, rather than to be still burning. This heat has generated in my mind a renewal of purity and humility, so that I seem to have gone back to the age of four or five. And at the same time so much love of my fellow-men has blazed up in me that I could face death for them cheerfully and with great joy in my heart.”124
Teresa of Avila, 1515–1582, was Mother foundress of seventeen convents for Discalced Carmelites as a reformer of the Order. Her life, seen from the outside, was a contradiction: a cloisted nun unable to interact with the outside world who was also a reformer, witty, beautiful, intelligent and a great lover of literature. She lived during increasingly dangerous times for women during the Inquisition. Her references to the body and nature are by now familiar analogies to women of all times. She writes,
It seems that since heavenly water begins to rise from this spring I’m mentioning that is deep within us, it swells and expands our whole interior being, producing ineffable blessings; nor does the soul even understand what is given to it there. It perceives a fragrance, let us say for now, as though there were in that interior depth a brazier giving off sweet-smelling perfumes. No light is seen, nor is the place seen where the brazier is; but the warmth and the fragrant fumes spread through the entire soul and even often enough, as I have said, the body shares in them.
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