ABSTRACT
From the early thirteenth century, German and Dutch mysticism flowered among women visionaries who expressed their piety in the erotic imagery of divine love and marriage. The movement of religious women received papal protection and recognition in 1216 and again in 1233. The best known of the Helfta women were Gertrude of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great of Helfta, of whom the last two also left a significant corpus of mystical writing. Glimpses of Mechthild’s life may be had from the autobiographical segments of her writing as well as the recollections of her younger companions, the nuns of Helfta. The writings of both Mechthild and Beatrijs creatively synthesize several major traditions of amatory literature. The German mystic Mechthild and the Dutch mystic Beatrijs adopt the language and imagery of Minnesang to sing of the soul’s ecstatic and erotic pleading with God.
