Musical Saints of Helfta

November is a month that commemorates many musical saints, both celebrated and unknown. This is a repost from a couple of years ago about the musical aesthetic of the Benedictine Abby at Helfta.
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November 22, aside from being a singularly tragic day in American history, is the feast day of the Roman martyr Saint Cecilia, patroness of musicians, whose name I took at my confirmation. I love that her feast falls at the denouement of autumn, when the beauty of the season is mostly past and everything is gray and barren; it cheers the heart. But November also marks the feasts of some other remarkable “musical” saints, a trio of women from the thirteenth-century Saxon monastery of Helfta, a Benedictine abbey that was a sort of hothouse of visionary nuns: Mechthild of Hackeborn (November 16), Gertrude the Great (who shares her feast day), and Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose feast day is November 19.

All of these nuns were party to visions of Christ in which musical sounds and imagery played an important role. Gertrude the Great, for instance, wrote of a visitation by the Lord in which he told her: “Listen to me, beloved, and I will sing you a song of love that is quite different from those sung by profane courtiers,” and then proceeded, in a voice that Gertrude calls indescribably sweet, to sing the following words to the hymn tune Rex Christe factor:

Amore meus continuus,
Tibi languor assiduous,
Amor tuus suavissimus,
Mihi sapor gratissimus.

(My continuous love,
Your persistent languor;
Your very sweet love,
a most pleasing savor to me.)

Mechthild of Hackeborn, the abbey’s choirmistress, was renowned for her own beautiful voice; her sisters in religion referred to her as “God’s nightingale.” She received a revelation in which Christ extended a harp from his sacred heart, explaining that the harp was himself, and the strings were “all chosen souls which are all one in God through love”; then Christ, the “high chanter of all chanters,” struck the harp and led “all the angels with delectable sound” as they sang the hymn Regem regum Dominum.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical writings are well known, and have been studied and appropriated by both feminist and Jungian scholars. The record of her revelations, the book The Flowing Light of the Godhead, is also filled with remarkable musical imagery, including a vision in which Christ tells her: “Oh, dear dove,/Your voice is string music to my ears./ Your words are spices for my mouth./ Your longings are the lavishness of my gift.”

I find the musical mysticism of Gertrude and the two Mechthilds of Helfta quite thrilling and encouraging. Their aesthetic – a sort of ecstatic rigor that, like all mystical writing, from Rumi to St. John of the Cross to William Blake, uses the language of poetry and eros – is so very far removed from our present understanding of holiness that it strikes me that many present-day orthodox Catholics would find it dubious and unsettling at best. But it seems to me an antidote to the both the meandering confusion of liberal Catholicism and the joyless legalism of modern-day traditionalism, and I'm happy that the Church in her wisdom has seen fit to honor these three nuns.

God's Nightingale [UPDATED]

Today is the feast day of Saint Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241-1298), shown above at left with her sister Gertrude; both women were Cistercians in the renowned Saxon abbey of Helfta, which was also the home of Saints Gertrude the Great, who shares her feast day, and Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose feast is November 19. Mechthild of Hackeborn was the abbey's choirmistress, and her beautiful singing voice earned her the sobriquet "God's Nightingale."

Like Saint Augustine, Mechthild experienced a heightened sense of hearing, which afforded her the grace of auditory visions. In one, Christ proffered a harp drawn out of His Sacred Heart, explaining that the harp was Himself, and the strings were “all chosen souls which are all one in God through love”; then He, who Mechthild described as the “high chanter of all chanters,” struck the harp and led “all the angels with delectable sound” as they sang the hymn Regem regum Dominum: "O come, let us worship the Lord, the King of kings, Who is himself the Crown of all the Saints." Her visions were transcribed and published in the fourteenth century as the Liber specialis gratiae, which was translated into middle English as The Booke of Ghostlye Grace. The Liber also became popular in Florence as La Laude di donna Matelda. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the beautiful lady who Dante hears singing "Venite, benedicti patris mei" on a riverbank in Canto XXVIII of Purgatorio, and who is later identified as Matilda, is in fact Saint Mechthild.

May Saint Mechthild of Hackeborn pray for us, that our ears and voices may be opened to hear and proclaim the truth.

UPDATE: After looking more closely at the image above, I'm starting to doubt whether the figure on the left is really Mechthild of Hackeborn. As a fully-professed Cistercian nun, she would be wearing the same habit as her sister, Gertrude (known as Gertrude of Helfta to distinguish her from Saint Gertrude the Great), shown on the right. I'm wondering now if the figure on the left is actually Saint Mechthild of Magdeburg, who had been a Beguine -- a woman living in a lay community of the faithful -- before joining the abbey at Helfta; as such, she would have worn a different dress and habit before profession. There is indeed some confusion in the biographical records of these saintly women, owing perhaps to the remarkable plethora of mystical Mechthilds and Gertrudes all in Helfta at the same time.

Musical Saints of Helfta

November 22, aside from being a singularly tragic day in American history, is the feast day of the Roman martyr Saint Cecilia, patroness of musicians, whose name I took at my confirmation. I love that her feast falls at the denouement of autumn, when the beauty of the season is mostly past and everything is gray and barren; it cheers the heart. But November also marks the feasts of some other remarkable “musical” saints, a trio of women from the thirteenth-century Saxon monastery of Helfta, a Benedictine abbey that was a sort of hothouse of visionary nuns: Mechthild of Hackeborn (November 16), Gertrude the Great (who shares her feast day), and Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose feast day is November 19.

All of these nuns were party to visions of Christ in which musical sounds and imagery played an important role. Gertrude the Great, for instance, wrote of a visitation by the Lord in which he told her: “Listen to me, beloved, and I will sing you a song of love that is quite different from those sung by profane courtiers,” and then proceeded, in a voice that Gertrude calls indescribably sweet, to sing the following words to the hymn tune Rex Christe factor:

Amore meus continuus,
Tibi languor assiduous,
Amor tuus suavissimus,
Mihi sapor gratissimus.

(My continuous love,
Your persistent languor;
Your very sweet love,
a most pleasing savor to me.)

Mechthild of Hackeborn, the abbey’s choirmistress, was renowned for her own beautiful voice; her sisters in religion referred to her as “God’s nightingale.” She received a revelation in which Christ extended a harp from his sacred heart, explaining that the harp was himself, and the strings were “all chosen souls which are all one in God through love”; then Christ, the “high chanter of all chanters,” struck the harp and led “all the angels with delectable sound” as they sang the hymn Regem regum Dominum.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical writings are well known, and have been studied and appropriated by both feminist and Jungian scholars. The record of her revelations, the book The Flowing Light of the Godhead, is also filled with remarkable musical imagery, including a vision in which Christ tells her: “Oh, dear dove,/Your voice is string music to my ears./ Your words are spices for my mouth./ Your longings are the lavishness of my gift.”

I find the musical mysticism of Gertrude and the two Mechthilds of Helfta quite thrilling and encouraging. Their aesthetic – a sort of ecstatic rigor that, like all mystical writing, from Rumi to St. John of the Cross to William Blake, uses the language of poetry and eros – is so very far removed from our present understanding of holiness that it strikes me that many present-day orthodox Catholics would find it dubious and unsettling at best. But it seems to me an antidote to the both the meandering confusion of liberal Catholicism and the joyless legalism of modern-day traditionalism, and I'm happy that the Church in her wisdom has seen fit to honor these three nuns.