I'd like to talk about female Christian mystics - women who *really* bucked norms of the era.
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@BritishLibrary has a good overview. bl.uk/the-middle-age…
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Lower-born women began to enter the beguinages I told you about yesterday.
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Placed in a monastery as a small child with another, older girl, she was essentially shut off from the world for two decades. It was then that she began an amazing journey.
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With the help of a scribe, she recorded these as a book, 'Scivias' ('Know'). Here's an illustration from it. She would go on to write two more.
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Hildegard died in 1179. However, it took until 2012 to get her canonzied as a saint.
There, working with another mystic, she wrote a text 'Seven Ways of Divine Love'.
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She is the very first writer in what would become known as the Dutch language.
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She wrote 'The Flowing Light', which not only detailed visions, but took potshots at the venality & corruption of the Church.
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Many of these female Christian mystics said and did things that others simply couldn't get away with.
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Her book posited that souls can join completely with God, circumventing the strictures of the Church. Of course, this was not on.
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There's also another dark side to many of these female mystics, one that is increasingly being studied and debated...
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The famed Catherine of Siena was known to suffer 'holy anorexia', partaking only in the Eucharist for weeks.
More than a few female mystics died very young.
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Their struggle, their victories and their sorrows resound through time.
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Look up people like Julian of Norwich, Getrude the Great, Bridget of Sweden or Margery Kempe.
I think you'll be glad you did. FIN.
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