The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500.
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The underlying message of this work suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of "unknowing", at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God.
Wycliffe's Bible or Wycliffite Bibles or Wycliffian Bibles (WYC) are names given for a sequence of Middle English Bible translations believed to have been made under the direction or instigation of English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford. They are the earliest known literal translations of the entire Bible into English. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395.
Henry Suso, OP was a German Dominican friar and the most popular vernacular writer of the fourteenth century. Suso is thought to have been born on 21 March 1295. An important author in both Latin and Middle High German, he is also notable for defending Meister Eckhart's legacy after Eckhart was posthumously condemned for heresy in 1329. He died in Ulm on 25 January 1366, and was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1831.
The Beguines and the Beghards were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Western Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, in the 13th–16th centuries. Their members lived in semi-monastic communities but did not take formal religious vows; although they promised not to marry "as long as they lived as Beguines", to quote an early Rule of Life, they were free to leave at any time. Beguines were part of a larger spiritual revival movement of the 13th century that stressed imitation of Jesus' life through voluntary poverty, care of the poor and sick, and religious devotion.
Walter Hilton, Can. Reg. was an English Augustinian mystic, whose works gained influence in 15th-century England and Wales. He has been canonized by the Church of England and by the Episcopal Church in the United States.
Quietism is the name given to a set of contemplative practices that rose in popularity in France, Italy, and Spain during the late 1670s and 1680s, particularly associated with the writings of the Spanish mystic Miguel de Molinos, and which were condemned as heresy by Pope Innocent XI in the papal bull Coelestis Pastor of 1687. "Quietism" was seen by critics as holding that man's highest perfection consists in a sort of psychical self-annihilation and a consequent absorption of the soul into the Divine Essence even during the present life.
Marguerite Porete was a French-speaking mystic and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, a work of Christian mysticism dealing with the workings of agape. She was burnt at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1310 after a lengthy trial, refusing to remove her book from circulation or recant her views.
Revelations of Divine Love is a medieval book of Christian mystical devotions. It was written between the 14th and 15th centuries by Julian of Norwich, about whom almost nothing is known. It is the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. It is also the earliest surviving work written by an English anchorite or anchoress.
The Brethren of the Free Spirit were adherents of a loose set of beliefs deemed heretical by the Catholic Church but held by some Christians, especially in the Low Countries, Germany, France, Bohemia, and Northern Italy between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The movement was first identified in the late thirteenth century. It was not a single movement or school of thought, and it caused great unease among Church leaders at the time. Adherents were also called Free Spirits.
The Sister Catherine Treatise is a work of Medieval Christian mysticism seen as representative of the Heresy of the Free Spirit of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe. Wrongly attributed to Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, it nevertheless shows the influence of his ideas or at least the ideas which he was accused or attributed as having had by the Inquisition.
The medieval genre of speculum literature, popular from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, was inspired by the urge to encompass encyclopedic knowledge within a single work. However, some of these works have a restricted scope and function as instructional manuals. In this sense, the encyclopedia and the speculum are similar but they are not the same genre.
Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, Master Eckhart or Eckehart, claimed original name Johannes Eckhart, was a German Catholic theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire.
Heilwige Bloemardinne was a Christian mystic who lived in Brussels and was loosely associated with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. She was also known as Heilwijch Blomart.
Bible translations in the Middle Ages went through several phases, all using the Vulgate. In the Early Middle Ages, they tended to be associated with royal or episcopal patronage, or with glosses on Latin texts; in the High Middle Ages with monasteries and universities; in the Late Middle Ages, with popular movements which caused, when the movement were associated with violence, official crackdowns of various kinds on vernacular scripture in Spain, England and France.
The Stimulus Amoris is a mystical treatise on love written by the Franciscan James of Milan in the late thirteenth century. The text was expanded after James's death, growing from twenty-three to fifty-three chapters by the early fourteenth century, and growing yet again in its 1476 and 1596 printings. There are at least six forms of the Latin text in existence. In its original version, it survives in ninety manuscripts. The early fourteenth century version, however, often called the Stimulus maior or Forma longa, exists in complete form in 221 manuscripts and partially in another 147.
Richard Methley, also known as Richard Firth or Richard Furth (c.1451–1527/8), was a monk of the Carthusian house of Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire. He is remembered for his writings - some original, and some translations.
For medieval women, mysticism was "a succession of insights and revelations about God that gradually transformed the recipient" according to historian Elizabeth Petroff of Oxford University in her 1994 book, Body and Soul. The word "mysticism" has its origin in ancient Greece where individuals called the mystae participated in mystery religions. This page focuses on examples primarily relating to Christian expressions of mysticism amongst women, their lives, and their significant contributions to their communities' theology and cultural psyche. The life of a medieval woman mystic was spent seeking unity with God in a series of stages. The mystical life of a medieval woman began with a purge of the spirit in which she released herself from earthly indulgences and attachments. In a state of contrition the medieval woman mystic faced suffering because of her past sins, and the mercy of God was revealed to her through penitence. Mystics sought to imitate the suffering of Christ in order to gain an understanding through experience. During the compassion stage of suffering, the pain experienced by the medieval woman mystic "revealed the believer's love of Christ, fostered unity with Christ and the world, and began to draw the believer beyond the physical Jesus who suffered on the Cross to understand the immensity of the love that motivated Christ in the world to suffer on humanity's behalf". Medieval women mystics experienced visions during what medieval historians refer to as the Illuminative stage of their lives that contained instructions from God and would communicate their revelations in written form.
Clare Kirchberger was an Anglican nun, medievalist and librarian, who edited and translated several works of Christian mysticism.
