Journey through these abysses, reader. Make yourself available to the paladin. Walk to the threshold and open the door. Here youll find pain, sin, redemption, debauchery, vulnerability, subtlety, solitude, addiction, and the mysticsof course, everything pliable to the human heart. Use your senses to understand the ideas of the beast. These are also visions of my phantasm, but very much so accessible real realms to the senses. Real poetry either soars to the heavens or plummets through the earth. Poetry is violent and apocalyptic. I know none other as sure.
This interdisciplinary study of medieval English anchoritism from 1080-1450, explodes the myth of the anchorhold as solitary death-cell, reveals it instead as the site of potential intellectual exchange, and demonstrates an anchoritic spirituality in synch with the wider medieval world.
In cities and towns across northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a new type of religious woman took up authoritative positions in society, all the while living as public recluses in cells attached to the sides of churches. In Lives of the Anchoresses, Anneke Mulder-Bakker offers a new history of these women who chose to forsake the world but did not avoid it. Unlike nuns, anchoresses maintained their ties to society and belonged to no formal religious order. From their solitary anchorholds in very public places, they acted as teachers and counselors and, in some cases, theological innovators for parishioners who would speak to them from the street, through small openings in the walls of their cells. Available at all hours, the anchoresses were ready to care for the community's faithful whenever needed. Through careful biographical studies of five emblematic anchoresses, Mulder-Bakker reveals the details of these influential religious women. The life of the unnamed anchoress who was mother to Guibert of Nogent shows the anchoress's role as a spiritual guide in an oral culture. A study of Yvette of Huy shows the myriad possibilities open to one woman who eventually chose the life of an anchoress. The accounts of Juliana of Cornillon and Eve of St. Martin raise questions about the participation of religious women in theological discussions and their contributions to church liturgy. And the biographical study of Margaret the Lame of Magdeburg explores the anchoress's role as day-to-day religious instructor to the ordinary faithful.
From divine visions to self-tortures, some strange mystical experiences have shaped the Christian tradition. Full of colourful detail, this book examines the mystical experiences that have determined the history of Christianity.
