Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 09-30-08
Beatrijs of Nazareth
/Beatrice /Beatrijs van Tienen (c.1200-1268)
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"LOVE MAKES THE SOUL SO BOLD THAT IT NO LONGER FEARS MAN
NOR FRIEND, ANGEL OR SAINT OR GOD HIMSELF."
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Beatrijs was the youngest of six children born at Tienen, near Brussels, to a family of merchants. When she was seven, her mother died and Beatrijs was sent to study, first with a community of beguines, and later at the Cistercian abbey of Bloemendaal /Florival. According to a biography written after her death, she had an unusually thorough education in Latin for a girl of the period. In 1216 she and two of her sisters took religious vows; later, her father and a brother became lay Cistercian brothers and looked after the affairs of the daughters' convents.
In 1217 Beatrijs studied manuscript writing and illumination at another abbey; the following year she helped to found a new abbey near her home at Tienen. From 1221 she was apparently at Bloemendaal; then in 1236, she moved to a new monastery, Our Lady of Nazareth, near Antwerp, which her father had founded at her request. In the six months preceding the move, she and her sisters copied all of the choir books that would be needed at the new foundation. (Other manuscripts were produced at the monastery during her lifetime; we don't know the extent of her participation in their production.) At Nazareth Beatrijs first acted as novice-mistress; she was soon elected prioress, a post she held until her death.
From about 1215 to 1237, Beatrijs kept a journal, describing in the vernacular her spiritual experiences and theological meditations. Later she apparently also wrote instructions to be given to the novices and her fellow-nuns at Nazareth. When she was dying, she left her writings "as a perpetual memorial to all who would read them" (De Ganck, Life, p. 81). About seven year after her death, an anonymous cleric was given her journal, and with this, supplemented by information from those who had known her, he wrote her biography in Latin, Vita Beatricis. In it he incorporated a Latin version of a treatise that Beatrijs had also written, De septum modis sancti amoris.
Beatrijs' journal is lost, but in the early 1900s a manuscript written in the Brabantine dialect of Middle Dutch was identified as being a late 1200s copy of her original work: Seven manieren van minne (Seven manners of love), probably written at Nazareth after 1236. It is a brief and clear introduction to and treatise on the growth of a personal love of God, developing the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux, the most famous Cistercian.
Beatrijs is sometimes described as a beguine; she wasn't, but like the beguine writers Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg she stressed the interpersonal over the transcendent in describing a loving relationship with God. However, unlike Hadewijch and Mechthild, Beatrijs did not speak of visionary experiences; instead, she wrote of the path that she believed any soul could hope to take. Seven manieren van minne is the theoretical statement of what has come to be called "beguine spirituality"; it describes simply what the writings of Hadewijch, Mechthild, and Marguerite Porete will reflect with greater complexity.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from a translation in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. A 1998 translation of Seven manieren van minne by Wim van den Dungen. Shown at top is a page of a c.1350 Middle Dutch manuscript. From this page you can link to the Middle Dutch original (followed by a translation into modern Dutch).
2. Another translation (1999) of the complete Seven manieren, into "a format close to contemporary English style," by Andy Anderson.
3. Excerpts by other translators:
(a) At the start of an essay, most of the "Fourth Manner."
(b) Another version of the opening of the "Fourth Manner," followed by a brief essay by composer Richard Einhorn, who has set the passage for chorus and orchestra.
(c) Near the bottom of the page, lines from the "Sixth Manner": "Like the fish, swimming in the vast sea."
4. Click on "Texts" and then go to #4 for a passage from De septum modis sancti amoris, the adapted Latin version of Seven manieren, translated by Roger de Ganck. The group of texts are preceded by an essay on Cistercian women of the period by Francisco Rafael de Pascual.
5. Essays:
(a) Two essays by Katrien Vander Straeten: The first (apparently incomplete), "Beatrice of Nazareth: Facts of her Life and her Context," provides a detailed and illustrated biography. The second, "A Study of Beatrice of Nazareth's Van seuen manieren van heiliger minnen" (2001), compares the earliest Dutch version of Beatrijs' treatise with that used in the Latin Vita Beatricis; in this latter essay, Vander Straeten gives her own translations from the Dutch and De Ganck's from the Latin.
(b) The middle section of Susan Hutchens' 1983 "Humility and Pride United in Love: Three Flemish Mystics" discusses the concept of nobility shown in Seven manieren; quotations from the text are given in Edmund Colledge's translation (for more from that, see below, under "In print").
6. Reviews (for information on the books' treatment of Beatrijs, see under "Secondary sources").:
(a) Anna Dronzek on Prudence Allen's 2002 second volume of The Concept of Woman series, The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500; elsewhere, another review, this by Patricia Z. Beckman.
(b) Carolyne Larrington on the 1999 essay collection, Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters; and another review, by Lisa M. Bitel.
(c) James A. Wiseman on Bernard McGinn's 1998 history, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350); and another, by Lawrence S. Cunningham.
7. A page from a 1244/45 antiphonary prepared at the Nazareth monastery; scholars conjecture that Beatrijs, an experienced illuminator, may have been responsible for the decorated initial. And from the same site, partially annotated 2001 bibliographies of editions and translations of and secondary sources on Seven manieren van minne.
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[Edmund /Eric Colledge's collection of medieval Dutch literature includes his translation of Seven manieren van minne:]
Mediaeval Netherlands religious literature / trans. &
intro by E. Colledge. Leyden, Sythoff; New York, London House
& Maxwell, 1965 [c1964]. (226 p.)
LC#: PT5445.E5 C6
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"Longing of this kind... comes from love and not from fear."
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[Brief excerpts describing each of the "seven manners":]
There are seven manners of loving, which come down from the heights and go back again far above.
The first manner is an active longing, which proceeds from love, and must rule a long time in the heart before it can conquer all opposition....
Longing of this kind... comes from love and not from fear. Fear makes us work and suffer, act and be still out of dread of the anger of our Lord. of the judgment of our righteous Judge, of punishment in eternity or of chastizing in this life. But love, in all that it does, strives for the purity and the exaltation and the supreme excellence which is love's very nature and possession and delight; and it is this striving which love teaches to those who serve love. [pp.19-20]
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"It offers itself to our Lord to serve Him for nothing."
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Yet the soul has a second manner of loving, when at times
it offers itself to our Lord to serve Him for nothing, doing
this only in love and asking for no answer, no reward of grace
or of glory; but the soul is like a maiden who serves her master
only for her great love of him, not for any payment, satisfied
that she may serve him and that he suffers her to serve....
[p.20]
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"The soul longs single-handed to do as much as all the men
upon earth...."
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The third manner of loving is attained by the pious soul when it comes into a time of much suffering. This is when the soul longs to be sufficient for love....
[I]t is above all else the greatest torment to the soul that despite its great longings it cannot do enough for love, and that in loving it comes so short. Yet it knows well that it is above human ability and beyond its powers to do as it wishes, for what it longs to do is impossible and unnatural to created beings. For the soul longs single-handed to do as much as all the men upon earth, as all the spirits in heaven, as every creature that ever is, to do more beyond all telling than they do, serving, loving, glorifying love as is love's due.... [p.20-21]
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"...that it has itself entirely become love."
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In the fourth manner of loving, it is our Lord's custom to give sometimes great joy....
Then [the soul] feels a great closeness to God and a spiritual brightness and a wonderful richness and a noble freedom and a great compulsion of violent love, and and overflowing fullness of great delight. And then the soul feels that all its senses and its will have become love,... that it has itself entirely become love.... [p.22]
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"It cannot rule itself by reason, cannot reason through
understanding,..."
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In the fifth manner, it also sometimes happens that love is powerfully strengthened in the soul and rises violently up, with great tumult and force, as if it would break the heart with its assault and drag the soul out of itself in the exercise and the delight of love....
It seems to the soul that the veins are bursting, the blood spilling, the marrow withering, the bones softening, the heart burning, the throat parching, so that the body in its every part feels this inward heat, and this is the fever of love...
...[T]he soul is so fettered with the bond of love, so conquered by the boundlessness of love, that it cannot rule itself by reason, cannot reason through understanding, cannot spare itself this weariness, cannot hold fast to human wisdom.... [pp.23-24]
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"...like a housewife who has put all her household in good
order."
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In the sixth manner, as the bride of our Lord advances and climbs into greater holiness, she feels love to be of a different nature, and her knowledge of this love is closer and higher....
And you may see that now the soul is like a housewife who has put all her household in good order and prudently arranged it and well disposed it; she has taken good care that nothing will damage it, her provision for the future is wise, she knows exactly what she is doing, she acquires and discards, she does what is proper, she avoids mistakes, and always she knows how everything should be....
And then love makes the soul so bold that it no longer fears man nor friend, angel or saint or God himself in all that it does or abandons, in all its working and resting....
This is freedom of conscience....
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"...drawn along with love alone into eternity and incomprehensibility."
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Yet the soul has a seventh manner of yet higher loving. in which it will experience little activity of itself. For it is drawn, above humanity, into love, and above human sense and reason and above all the works of the heart, and it is drawn along with love alone into eternity and incomprehensibility....
So the soul always wishes to follow after love, to see love, to delight in love; and this cannot come to the soul here in this exile. So it longs to leave this life and find its home.... For the soul knows well that there all hindrances will be removed, that there it will in love by its own true love be received....
May God make speed to bring us all to this. Amen. [pp.26-29]
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[This anthology also includes Colledge's translation of the Middle Dutch original of Seven manieren van minne. (See the book's table of contents online:]
Medieval women's visionary literature / [edited by] Elizabeth
Alvilda Petroff. New York : Oxford University Press, 1986. (xii,
402 p.)
LC#: BR53 .M4 1986; ISBN: 0195037111, 019503712X
Bibliography: p. 373-391.
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[A near-literal translation of Seven manieren van minne will be found in this anthology. The translator, Theresia de Vroom, has tried "to maintain the exact language and sense of the Dutch text" (p.89). Also included are translated excerpts from the Latin Vita Beatricis:]
Women writing in Dutch / edited by Kristiaan Aercke (Women
writers of the world: vol. 1; Garland reference library of the
humanities: vol. 1439). New York: Garland Pub, 1994. (xiii, 713
p.)
LC#PT5411 .W66 1994; ISBN: 0815302312
Includes bibliographical references (p.713)
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Secondary sources
[Roger de Ganck gives, in Latin and in his English translation,
the Vita Beatricis. Except for a few brief quoted prayers,
it's difficult to find Beatrijs' thought under the anonymous
late thirteenth-century cleric's interpretation. However, when
De Ganck gives his translation of the cleric's De septum
modis sancti amoris, he also helpfully includes in a parallel
column, his translation of the original Dutch Seven manieren
van minne:]
The life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1200-1268 / translated and
annotated by Roger de Ganck, assisted by John Baptist Hasbrouck
(Cistercian Fathers series; no. 50). Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian
Publications, 1991. (xlii, 364 p.: facsim.)
LC#: BV5095.B43 V5713 1991; ISBN: 0879074507, 087907650X
Companion vol. to: Beatrice of Nazareth in her context, and Towards
unification with God. Includes bibliographical references (p.347-349)
and index.
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[A two-volume study by De Ganck: Vol. 1 is a thorough analysis of the period, Vol. 2 a study of Beatrijs' spirituality as revealed in the Latin Vita:]
Ganck, Roger de. Beatrice of Nazareth in her context (Cistercian
studies series; no. 121-122). Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications,
c1991. (2 v. (xv, 692 p.)
LC#: BV5095.B43 G26 1991; ISBN: v1: 0879074213,
0879077212; v2: 0879074221, 0879076224
Other title: Beatrice of Nazareth and the thirteenth-century
mulieres religiosae of the Low Countries. Contents: [v. 1. without
special title], v. 2. Towards unification with God. Includes
bibliographical references (p. 607-657) and indexes.
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[This collection contains Myra Scholz' translation of an
essay by Wybren Scheepsma, "Beatrice of Nazareth: The First
Woman Author of Mystical Texts," which questions the attribution
of Seven manieren van minne but finds in the Vita
remnants of Beatrijs' pre-1236 writings. Scheepsma uses Beatrijs'
work to look at the motives of nuns who wrote in the vernacular
and at the way their works were received by Latin-reading clerics.
(See the book's
table of contents online.):]
Seeing and knowing: women and learning in medieval Europe, 1200-1550
/ edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Medieval women, texts and
contexts; v. 11). Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, c2004. (x, 204
p.)
LC#:HQ1147.E85 S44 2004; ISBN: 2503514480
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[An essay in this collection, Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen's "Can
God Speak in the Vernacular? On Beatrice of Nazareth's Flemish
Exposition of the Love for God," compares Seven manieren
with the Latin version found in the Vita, and discusses
both the move to vernacular writing and the resistance to it.
(See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The vernacular spirit: essays on medieval religious literature
/ edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and
Nancy Bradley Warren (The new Middle Ages). New York: Palgrave,
2002. (324 p.)
LC#: PN682.R4 V47 2002; ISBN: 0312293852
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[This collection includes an essay by Amy Hollywood, "Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer," which also compares Seven manieren and the Latin Vita, showing how the clerical author of the vita takes Beatrijs' wholly internal experience and turns it into a bodily experience suitable to conventional hagiography. Hollywood's notes give the Dutch and Latin originals of her translations. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Gendered voices: medieval saints and their interpreters /
edited by Catherine M. Mooney; foreword by Caroline Walker Bynum
(The Middle Ages series). Philadelphia: University Pennsylvania
Press, 1999. (xi, 276 p.)
LC#: BX4662 .G46 1999; ISBN: 0812234855, 0812216873
Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-259) and index
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[This second volume of Prudence Allen's major study on the philosophy of gender includes a brief but useful section (pp.36-41; 60-64) on the philosophical views revealed in Seven manieren. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Allen, Prudence. The concept of woman. Volume 2, The early
humanist reformation, 1250-1500. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans
Pub., c2002. (xxiv, 1161 p.: ill.)
LC#: BD450 .A4725 2002; ISBN: 0802847358
Includes bibliographical references (p. 1091-1129) and index
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[Volume 3 of Bernard McGinn's history of western Christian mysticism includes a discussion of the Dutch Seven manieren (pp.166-174). McGinn's notes give full bibliographic information on translations and studies; they also give the original of all translated passages. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
McGinn, Bernard.The flowering of mysticism: men and women
in the new mysticism (1200-1350) (The presence of God; vol. 3).New
York: Crossroad, c1998. (xiv, 526 p.)
LC#: BV5075 .M37 vol. 3; ISBN: 0824517423, 0824517431
Includes bibliographical references (p. [465]-505) and indexes
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[Rosemary Bradley' essay in this collection, "Beatrice of Nazareth (c.1200-1268)," analyzes both Seven manieren and the Latin Vita:]
Vox mystica: essays on medieval mysticism in honor of Professor
Valerie M. Lagorio / edited by Anne Clark Bartlett ... [et al.]
Cambridge; Rochester, NY, USA: D.S. Brewer, 1995. (xiv, 235 p.:
port.)
LC#: BV5075 .V68 1995; ISBN: 0859914399
Includes bibliographical references
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Updated 09-30-08