Love and Suffering in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s workThis study asks how love and suffering are expressed in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Light ofthe Flowing Godhead, with an emphasis on how the two are connected. What do the two termsmean and how do they influence each other and Mechthild’s understanding of them? Empirically,this study is based on Mechthild’s book, which was composed between about 1250 and 1283 inseven parts and distributed even while Mechthild was still working on later parts. The study alsodraws upon modern research to explain the wider religious contexts in which Mechthild wasworking, such as the clerical understanding of suffering as a means of contrition, and the use ofromantic and erotic metaphors to express a relation to God. In accordance with this, both love andsuffering are found to have shifting meanings depending on their respective contexts. Both havethe ability to bring humans closer to God, but, if used for the wrong purpose, can separate thehuman entirely from God. However, a shift in focus can be found over time. While the concept oflove becomes less allegorical and more abstract, the concept of suffering becomes more prevalentand central for Mechthild’s understanding of life and spirituality. At the same time, Mechthild’spositive relation to her faith and its power remains mostly unchanged.This study shows how Mechthild understands and interprets the themes of love and sufferingas a lay sister, woman and human being. Using Barbara Rosenwein’s term “emotionalcommunity”, Mechthild is found to be part of such a community, tying together academic religiousunderstandings of suffering and female mystics’ understandings of love. By examining one thinkerand drawing possible connections to a bigger, as of yet mostly unexplored, community, itcontributes to the overall picture of medieval mysticism.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Jose Caldeira do Amaral.pdf: 1451835 bytes, checksum: 2aa4903e28057e68929f47ff1fc1cb41 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-08-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The main objective of this research is the prospect of a deeper study on mysticism as a possibility for enlarging the knowledge in the symbolic and fundamental field of the Sciences of Religion. Our interest in researching the medieval records of Mechthild of Magdeburg, the flieBende Das Licht der Gottheit - object of this essay - is based on the feasibility of contributing to the debate on the human condition, emphasizing the inherent knowledge of the soul that loves God, disregarding her own self as consisted literally in the language of the text under study. Our hypothesis is that the movement extended over the established senses in concepts belonging to the religious context of western Christianity with reference to love, eros and agape, - as a key to reading -, sustains a possible understanding of love itself, from the development of a hermeneutic of the mystical language in focus. The loyalty to Mechthild of Magdeburg s records, written in vernacular language, the speculation of authors before and contemporary to her, and information of the religious medieval female authors, of the so called Frauenmyistic (female mysticism), formalized the development of our speculation around the mystique of love unfolded in the infusion of love as a deity. The Love of God, substantiated in the essence of the condition of the soul in distress by the inexorable search for that love, unfolds in the apex of love - concept formalized in the final construction of the research - as the best way of setting the dynamics between eros and agape available in the language of the flieBende Licht der Gottheit / O objetivo principal desta pesquisa está na perspectiva de um aprofundamento do estudo da mística como possibilidade de ampliação do conhecimento no campo simbólico e fundamental nas Ciências da Religião. Nosso interesse em pesquisar os registros medievais de Mechthild de Magdeburg, o Das flieBende Licht der Gottheit - objeto desse trabalho - reside na viabilidade em contribuir para o debate sobre a condição humana, enfatizando o saber inerente à alma que ama Deus, desfazendo-se de si mesma, constituída na linguagem literal do texto em estudo. Nossa hipótese é de que o movimento constelado entre os sentidos estabelecidos em conceitos próprios ao contexto religioso do cristianismo ocidental referentes ao amor, eros e ágape, - como chave de leitura -, sustenta uma possível compreensão do próprio amor, a partir do desenvolvimento de uma hermenêutica da linguagem mística em foco. A fidelidade aos registros de Mechthild de Magdeburg, escritos em língua vernacular, a especulação de autores anteriores e contemporâneos a ela e, as informações sobre as autoras medievais religiosas, da chamada Frauenmyistic (mística feminina), formalizaram o desenvolvimento de nossa especulação em torno da mística do amor desdobrada na infusão do amor deidade. O Amor de Deus, substanciado na essência da condição da alma em sofrimento pela procura inexorável desse amor, se desdobra no cúmulo do amor conceito formalizado na construção final da pesquisa - como a melhor possibilidade de configuração da dinâmica disponibilizada entre eros e agape na linguagem do Das flieBende Licht der Gottheit

The limit between the proper and the foreign – how this limit is established, but also crossed and dissolved – has remained a crucial issue in phenomenology. Setting these questions in the context of the phenomenology of religion, this thesis develops an analysis of the relation between transcendence and body understood in terms of a certain limit. The introductory part is rooted in Edmund Husserl’s discussions of the concept of transcendence, which is shown to have an essential connection to the analysis of inner time-consciousness. Here we encounter a decisive limit to objectifying knowledge, which also comes across in his investigations of the body and its spatiality. The second part discusses Max Scheler’s critique of Husserl’s excessively objectifying view of knowledge, with a particular focus on Scheler’s understanding of love as a condition of possibility for any knowledge. Scheler is shown to have developed a new concept of transcendence that avoids the pitfalls of objectivism, although in his philosophy of religion he tends to downplay the importance of the body. The third part undertakes a reading of Edith Stein, who develops ideas similar to Scheler’s, though in a phenomenologically more nuanced fashion. Although her philosophy of religion also bypasses the body, Stein provides a more genuine access to the writings of the mystics, the analysis of which forms the core of the fourth and concluding part. Drawing on the work of the 13th century Beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, this concluding chapter develops a phenomenological understanding of religion with an emphasis on transcendence and limit, while also retaining the centrality of our experience of the body. This means: a phenomenology of the limit is investigated, rather than a limit of phenomenology. / Hur gränsen mellan det egna och det främmande ska dras är en central fråga inom den fenomenologiska traditionen, en fråga som här undersöks i ett religionsfilosofiskt sammanhang. På vilket sätt kan vi överskrida oss själva mot det främmande och ogripbara, och på vilket sätt är denna möjlighet förbunden med vår egen kroppslighet? Dessa teman utvecklas i en serie diskussioner av filosofer som Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler och Edith Stein. Redan i Husserls analyser av transcendensen, tidsmedvetandet och kroppsligheten framträder en bestämd gräns för den objektiverande kunskapen, även om han i sista hand alltid uppfattade den som ett ideal. I Schelers och Steins religionsfilosofier utvecklas därefter en kritik av denna kunskapssyn, bland annat i form av en analys av kärleken (Scheler) och mystiken (Stein), men hos ingen av dem får kroppsligheten en central ställning. I den avslutande delen, som analyserar den mystika erfarenhetens uttryck hos den medetida beginen Mechthild von Magdeburg, utvecklas en fenomenologi som förbinder transcendens med kroppslighet och sinnlighet. Därmed undersöks en gränsens fenomenologi snarare än fenomenologins gräns. Jonna Bornemark är forskare och lärare på Södertörns högskola. Boken är hennes doktorsavhandling.