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3 - Heavenly Vision and Psychosomatic Healing: Medical Discourse in Mechtild of Hackeborn’s The Booke of Gostlye Grace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

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Summary

The Booke of Gostlye Grace is the Middle English translation of Liber specialis gratiae, the revelations of Mechtild of Hackeborn, a German mystic and chantress of the Benedictine/Cistercian convent of Helfta at the end of the thirteenth century. The Liber is thought to have been compiled by Gertrude the Great and Helfta nuns during the last decade of the thirteenth century, but it was soon shortened and abridged by an anonymous redactor. The Liber was widely circulated in various versions throughout Europe, and then translated into a variety of vernaculars. The Booke is the only extant text from Helfta to have been translated into Middle English. The translation dates to the early fifteenth century: this was the same period that Bridget of Sweden's Liber Celestis and Catherine of Siena's Dialogo were being translated into English in a Carthusian or Birgittine milieu.

The Middle English translation is based on an abridged version of the Latin text which concentrates on visions connected with the Church's liturgy and those associated with Mechtild's personal piety. Nevertheless, it retains the framework of the original version and the translator has followed the contents of the revelations ‘als thay stande in the booke’ (I, [translator's prologue], 65). Part I contains Mechtild's vision arranged around the seasons and holy days of the liturgical year; Part II lists the special graces bestowed on her; Part III gives guidance for ‘the helthe of manys sawle’; Part IV offers instruction to religious men and women; and Part V concerns prayers for the deceased.

Behind the Middle English translation of the Liber lies the politicoreligious tension of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, reflected in Arundel's Constitutiones of 1409/1410. As Vincent Gillespie argues,

[o]ne of the unintended consequences of Arundel's decrees may have been a new impetus to the translation into English of older texts with an impeccably orthodox pedigree or an unimpeachable authorial reputation, and Syon was probably a leading centre in the production of such texts.

The Booke of Gostly Grace is therefore one of those books that may well be connected to Syon, known for its interest in contemplative experience and ‘[reflecting] the orthodox reform agenda of the English church and the house that became its metonymy’.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

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