Barbara Newman is Professor of English, Classics, and History at Northwestern University, and John Evans Professor of Latin. She is the author of The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships (2021), Making Love in the Twelfth Century (2016), Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (2013), Frauenlob’s Song of Songs (2006), God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2003), From Virile Woman to WomanChrist (1995), and many books and articles on Hildegard of Bingen and other religious women. Phone: 847-491-5679
A Companion to the Boke of Gostely Grace, ed. Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa and Anne Mouron, 2024
This essay examines purgatorial piety at Helfta, including suffrages for the dead and the communi... more This essay examines purgatorial piety at Helfta, including suffrages for the dead and the community's distinctive theology of the exchange of merits. Beginning with the purgatorial visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg, it goes on to contrast the optimism and salvational generosity of Mechthild of Hackeborn with the scrupulosity and perfectionism of St. Gertrude, her protegee.
Medieval Manuscripts, Readers and Texts: Essays in Honour of Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, 2024
This essay looks at three Latin visions written in England in a single decade (1196-1206): the vi... more This essay looks at three Latin visions written in England in a single decade (1196-1206): the visions of Ailsi, from Peter of Cornwall's Liber revelationum; the Vision of Thurkill as recorded by Ralph of Coggeshall; and the tale of the Goldsmith of Osney, from the Vision of the Monk of Eynsham. It examines these otherworld visions to see what they can tell us about parish life, lay piety, devotion to patron saints, and the new contritionist doctrine that made it much easier for the laity to attain salvation.
This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around... more This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around 1270, as a catalyst and inspiration for the literary nuns of that abbey, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great. It considers such aspects of her visionary mysticism as erotic spirituality, the feminine Divine (Frau Minne), and the image of the dance, and then looks at the way the younger Mechthild's "Book of Special Grace" pays homage while offering correctives to the more daring and potentially heterodox aspects of the beguine's writings.
This article is a translation of Hildegard's commentary on the Johannine prologue, taken from... more This article is a translation of Hildegard's commentary on the Johannine prologue, taken from her Book of Divine Works, with an introduction emphasizing the themes of the divine image and the holiness of the human body as an analogue of both the cosmos and the creative power of God. The note introducing the translation comments on Hildegard's prophetic, pictorial style and explains why her highly gendered thought cannot be rendered in contemporary gender-neutral language.
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 2009
This article assesses the legacy of Charles Williams as an esoteric Christian teacher. Best known... more This article assesses the legacy of Charles Williams as an esoteric Christian teacher. Best known as a friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, Williams was also a prolific writer, a practicing Rosicrucian, and a lay spiritual director. Focusing on his central doctrine of co-inherence and corresponding prayer technique known as “substituted love,” the essay examines his novels, poetry, and theological writings as well as his practice of spiritual direction, asking how his ideas were influenced by his familiarity with ritual magic. It also explores the informal religious order he founded, the Companions of the Co-inherence.
... Fourteenth-century theologians vigorously debated the issue of grace, merits, and rewards.27 ... more ... Fourteenth-century theologians vigorously debated the issue of grace, merits, and rewards.27 The ... This metaphor would have a long, checkered history in Christian exegesis and mysticism, marked by ... are lined with flowers, a taste of balsam overpowers everyone who names me ...
In the early 1130s Peter Abelard received three letters from Heloise, once his mistress and wife,... more In the early 1130s Peter Abelard received three letters from Heloise, once his mistress and wife, now his sister and daughter in religion. The first two were so traumatic that he must have thought twice before scanning the third, in which Heloise resolutely turned from the subject of tragic love to the minutiae of monastic observance. For modern readers the correspondence may lapse from titillation into tedium with this epistle. But Abelard was no doubt immensely relieved. Laying aside her griefs, Heloise now wrote to him as abbess to abbot, asking only two things: a treatise explaining ‘how the order of nuns began,’ and a monastic rule suitable for her nuns at the Paraclete. Although they were already observing the Benedictine Rule, she complained that as this rule ‘was clearly written for men alone, it can only be fully obeyed by men,’ because it is not fair to lay ‘the same yoke of monastic ordinance on the weaker sex as on the stronger.’ Heloise went on to specify several concrete areas of concern, such as the use of meat and wine, the dangers of hospitality, the practice of manual labor, and the liturgical role assigned to the abbot. To underline her point, she even observed that the regulation underwear prescribed in the Benedictine Rule was not suitable for women, because ‘the monthly purging of their superfluous humours must avoid such things.’
This article revisits the Rothschild Canticles, specifically the Trinity cycle, through a close s... more This article revisits the Rothschild Canticles, specifically the Trinity cycle, through a close study of the Latin text. It identifies previously unknown sources, demonstrating the compiler’s wide frame of reference and confirming that the most recent texts date from the 1290s. Further, it argues that the Trinity painter developed a vocabulary of apophatic literalism to give visual form even to such unlikely statements as “Truly you are a hidden God” and “My center is everywhere, my circumference nowhere.” The intimate link between text and miniatures suggests that the designer of these paintings was a seasoned contemplative, almost certainly a monk. In its second section, the article considers the collaboration of compiler, artist, and scribe, proposing that the compiler himself designed the miniatures, although they were executed by a professional artist from Saint-Omer. Another perplexing feature lies in the scribe’s carelessness and failure to understand the material. The essay asks why and where such a sophisticated painter would have collaborated with a minimally competent scribe. Finally, it turns to one extremely rare text, tracing it to a hagiographic work by the eleventh-century monk Drogo, unknown outside his abbey of Bergues-Saint-Winnoc. On this ground it argues that the compiler was a monk of Saint-Winnoc, where the manuscript was produced—possibly for a canoness at the local abbey of Saint-Victor. That Bergues was not known at this time for professional book production could explain the inexpert scribal work. A postscript seeks to identify the coat of arms on fol. 1.
Women Intellectuals and Leaders of the Middle Ages, 2020
This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around... more This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around 1270, as a catalyst and inspiration for the literary nuns of that abbey, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great. It considers such aspects of her visionary mysticism as erotic spirituality, the feminine Divine (Frau Minne), and the image of the dance, and then looks at the way the younger Mechthild's "Book of Special Grace" pays homage while offering correctives to the more daring and potentially heterodox aspects of the beguine's writings.
Journal of Inklings Studies 9.2, pp. 154-171, 2019
This essay argues that the dancing Fool is the key to Charles Williams’s fusion of Christianity w... more This essay argues that the dancing Fool is the key to Charles Williams’s fusion of Christianity with esotericism in his novel The Greater Trumps (1932), centered on the tarot cards. It begins by reviewing Williams’s esoteric activities, including his membership in A. E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and uses Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot as a guide to the author’s likely thinking about the cards. The essay compares the novel’s depictions of magical operation and Christian contemplative prayer, demonstrating parallels as well as oppositions between the two kinds of spiritual practice that feature so prominently. It then turns to the arcanum of the Fool, a figure of Christ in his aspect as the foolishness of God that is wiser than men. That figure, numbered zero in the tarot deck, presides over a broad spectrum of folly embodied in Williams’s characters—raging mental illness, idiocy, spiritual blindness, prideful lust for power—but also radical love and sanctity. As an image of God the Redeemer, the Fool dances in the end with the Juggler, a tarot trump signifying God the Creator. The article closes by relating this novel’s unusual optimism to its Christmas setting and allusions to two closely related feasts, the ancient Birth of the Invincible Sun and the medieval Feast of Fools.
A Companion to the Boke of Gostely Grace, ed. Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa and Anne Mouron, 2024
This essay examines purgatorial piety at Helfta, including suffrages for the dead and the communi... more This essay examines purgatorial piety at Helfta, including suffrages for the dead and the community's distinctive theology of the exchange of merits. Beginning with the purgatorial visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg, it goes on to contrast the optimism and salvational generosity of Mechthild of Hackeborn with the scrupulosity and perfectionism of St. Gertrude, her protegee.
Medieval Manuscripts, Readers and Texts: Essays in Honour of Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, 2024
This essay looks at three Latin visions written in England in a single decade (1196-1206): the vi... more This essay looks at three Latin visions written in England in a single decade (1196-1206): the visions of Ailsi, from Peter of Cornwall's Liber revelationum; the Vision of Thurkill as recorded by Ralph of Coggeshall; and the tale of the Goldsmith of Osney, from the Vision of the Monk of Eynsham. It examines these otherworld visions to see what they can tell us about parish life, lay piety, devotion to patron saints, and the new contritionist doctrine that made it much easier for the laity to attain salvation.
This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around... more This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around 1270, as a catalyst and inspiration for the literary nuns of that abbey, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great. It considers such aspects of her visionary mysticism as erotic spirituality, the feminine Divine (Frau Minne), and the image of the dance, and then looks at the way the younger Mechthild's "Book of Special Grace" pays homage while offering correctives to the more daring and potentially heterodox aspects of the beguine's writings.
This article is a translation of Hildegard's commentary on the Johannine prologue, taken from... more This article is a translation of Hildegard's commentary on the Johannine prologue, taken from her Book of Divine Works, with an introduction emphasizing the themes of the divine image and the holiness of the human body as an analogue of both the cosmos and the creative power of God. The note introducing the translation comments on Hildegard's prophetic, pictorial style and explains why her highly gendered thought cannot be rendered in contemporary gender-neutral language.
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 2009
This article assesses the legacy of Charles Williams as an esoteric Christian teacher. Best known... more This article assesses the legacy of Charles Williams as an esoteric Christian teacher. Best known as a friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, Williams was also a prolific writer, a practicing Rosicrucian, and a lay spiritual director. Focusing on his central doctrine of co-inherence and corresponding prayer technique known as “substituted love,” the essay examines his novels, poetry, and theological writings as well as his practice of spiritual direction, asking how his ideas were influenced by his familiarity with ritual magic. It also explores the informal religious order he founded, the Companions of the Co-inherence.
... Fourteenth-century theologians vigorously debated the issue of grace, merits, and rewards.27 ... more ... Fourteenth-century theologians vigorously debated the issue of grace, merits, and rewards.27 The ... This metaphor would have a long, checkered history in Christian exegesis and mysticism, marked by ... are lined with flowers, a taste of balsam overpowers everyone who names me ...
In the early 1130s Peter Abelard received three letters from Heloise, once his mistress and wife,... more In the early 1130s Peter Abelard received three letters from Heloise, once his mistress and wife, now his sister and daughter in religion. The first two were so traumatic that he must have thought twice before scanning the third, in which Heloise resolutely turned from the subject of tragic love to the minutiae of monastic observance. For modern readers the correspondence may lapse from titillation into tedium with this epistle. But Abelard was no doubt immensely relieved. Laying aside her griefs, Heloise now wrote to him as abbess to abbot, asking only two things: a treatise explaining ‘how the order of nuns began,’ and a monastic rule suitable for her nuns at the Paraclete. Although they were already observing the Benedictine Rule, she complained that as this rule ‘was clearly written for men alone, it can only be fully obeyed by men,’ because it is not fair to lay ‘the same yoke of monastic ordinance on the weaker sex as on the stronger.’ Heloise went on to specify several concrete areas of concern, such as the use of meat and wine, the dangers of hospitality, the practice of manual labor, and the liturgical role assigned to the abbot. To underline her point, she even observed that the regulation underwear prescribed in the Benedictine Rule was not suitable for women, because ‘the monthly purging of their superfluous humours must avoid such things.’
This article revisits the Rothschild Canticles, specifically the Trinity cycle, through a close s... more This article revisits the Rothschild Canticles, specifically the Trinity cycle, through a close study of the Latin text. It identifies previously unknown sources, demonstrating the compiler’s wide frame of reference and confirming that the most recent texts date from the 1290s. Further, it argues that the Trinity painter developed a vocabulary of apophatic literalism to give visual form even to such unlikely statements as “Truly you are a hidden God” and “My center is everywhere, my circumference nowhere.” The intimate link between text and miniatures suggests that the designer of these paintings was a seasoned contemplative, almost certainly a monk. In its second section, the article considers the collaboration of compiler, artist, and scribe, proposing that the compiler himself designed the miniatures, although they were executed by a professional artist from Saint-Omer. Another perplexing feature lies in the scribe’s carelessness and failure to understand the material. The essay asks why and where such a sophisticated painter would have collaborated with a minimally competent scribe. Finally, it turns to one extremely rare text, tracing it to a hagiographic work by the eleventh-century monk Drogo, unknown outside his abbey of Bergues-Saint-Winnoc. On this ground it argues that the compiler was a monk of Saint-Winnoc, where the manuscript was produced—possibly for a canoness at the local abbey of Saint-Victor. That Bergues was not known at this time for professional book production could explain the inexpert scribal work. A postscript seeks to identify the coat of arms on fol. 1.
Women Intellectuals and Leaders of the Middle Ages, 2020
This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around... more This essay considers the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg, who entered the convent of Helfta around 1270, as a catalyst and inspiration for the literary nuns of that abbey, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great. It considers such aspects of her visionary mysticism as erotic spirituality, the feminine Divine (Frau Minne), and the image of the dance, and then looks at the way the younger Mechthild's "Book of Special Grace" pays homage while offering correctives to the more daring and potentially heterodox aspects of the beguine's writings.
Journal of Inklings Studies 9.2, pp. 154-171, 2019
This essay argues that the dancing Fool is the key to Charles Williams’s fusion of Christianity w... more This essay argues that the dancing Fool is the key to Charles Williams’s fusion of Christianity with esotericism in his novel The Greater Trumps (1932), centered on the tarot cards. It begins by reviewing Williams’s esoteric activities, including his membership in A. E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and uses Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot as a guide to the author’s likely thinking about the cards. The essay compares the novel’s depictions of magical operation and Christian contemplative prayer, demonstrating parallels as well as oppositions between the two kinds of spiritual practice that feature so prominently. It then turns to the arcanum of the Fool, a figure of Christ in his aspect as the foolishness of God that is wiser than men. That figure, numbered zero in the tarot deck, presides over a broad spectrum of folly embodied in Williams’s characters—raging mental illness, idiocy, spiritual blindness, prideful lust for power—but also radical love and sanctity. As an image of God the Redeemer, the Fool dances in the end with the Juggler, a tarot trump signifying God the Creator. The article closes by relating this novel’s unusual optimism to its Christmas setting and allusions to two closely related feasts, the ancient Birth of the Invincible Sun and the medieval Feast of Fools.
Simon (ca. 1164-1229) was a lay brother of the Cistercian monastery of Aulne in the diocese of Li... more Simon (ca. 1164-1229) was a lay brother of the Cistercian monastery of Aulne in the diocese of Liège. Although he chose to be a humble conversus, his noble birth gave him access to social elites, and he was close to Pope Innocent III. Widely travelled, he became a celebrity for his astounding gifts of telepathy and clairvoyance. Simon's unfinished Life, written by a monk of Aulne shortly after his death, has never been edited. It survives only in a Jesuit copy of 1637.
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