17. Mysticism and Visuality JEFFREY F. HAMBURGER “Mysticism and visuality”: the topic presents, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have put it, “a most ingenious paradox.” By definition, the inef- fable lies beyond representation of any sort, be it visual or verbal. In its root sense, the word mysticism derives from the Greek “muo,” “to remain silent” or “to close the lips or eyes.” What place can there be for any discourse on the visible in the context of a system of thought that, by definition, is predicated on obscurity and blindness? The par- adox extends from sight to speech: were mystics to fall silent, there would not be any mystical literature. Yet when they speak, they very often are called to describe what they see. The description of mystical vision might be considered a special subgenre of ekphrasis, a rhetorical mode predicated on the assumption that, in defiance of the aphorism to the contrary, a thousand words are worth a single picture. Given, how- ever, that the visible, let alone the invisible, is often said to defy verbal description, it must be asked what — and how — mystics “see,” and why vision, however defined, is so indispensable to their way of framing the world and their experience of it." My observations assume that not only the form but also the content of mystical experience, whatever claims its practitioners might make to the contrary, are conditioned by historical context.’ For an art historian, the most obvious way of insisting on the impact of context, however construed, is to point out the numerous instances in which works of art shaped and structured the experience of onlookers. To define the prob- lem in such straightforward terms, however, is too simplistic; images are shaped in complex ways by the experience, expectations, class, and gender of their audiences. For the material discussed here, the audience «In lieu of the large literature, I cite only Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005): 1-43. For her comments and criticism, Iam indebted to Hildegard Elisabeth Keller. > See Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 277278 Jeffrey F. Hamburger is, above all, monastic, although by the later Middle Ages it expands to comprehend the laity. Given that writings in (and on) the monastic tradi- tion have often interpreted manifestations of the visible as concessions to lay piety, linking visualization with vernacularization, it is important to stress that this essay’s emphasis lies elsewhere: on the value attached to the visible within monastic exegesis, theology, and practice.’ The focus of this essay is Christian mysticism - specifically, Christian mysticism of the Western Middle Ages. Yet the history of Christian atti- tudes toward the ineffable and invisible cannot be understood without a glance back at Jewish traditions. Jewish scripture is not silent on the sub- ject of the visible and visuality.+ Nonetheless, especially as characterized by Christianity, which is the relevant context here, it ultimately insists, or is said to insist, on God's invisibility, his status as the hidden God, the Deus absconditus (Is 45:15: “vere tu es Deus absconditus Deus Istahel salvator” [Verily thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel the savior]). This is the God whom Moses cannot see face to face, who shows him only his “back parts” (Ex 33:20-3: “Thou canst not see my face: for man shall not see me and live....And when my glory shall pass, I will set thee ina hole of the rock, and protect thee with my right hand, till I pass: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face thou canst not see.”) Moses’s vision is presented and granted as a privilege (cf. Ex 33:13-14], but from a Christian perspective, the prophet is denied the ultimate vision of God face to face that is the birthright of every true believer, in keeping with Paul's proclamation in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face-to-face.” A German History Bible, dated 1467, illustrates this specifically Christian retrospective on Moses’s vision with an image that reverses the logic of the icon by taking very literally the words spoken by God (“so wirst dii mein hintertailsehen”) (see Fig. 1).$ Ironically, his “back + For background, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary: The Changing Role of the Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions,” Viator 20 (1989): 161-82, reprinted in Jeffrey EF, Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany |New York: Zone Books, 1998). * See, in general, Kalman P, Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Also see Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg, eds., Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011} 5 See Jeffrey F, Hamburger, “Body vs. Book: The Trope of Visibility in Images of Christian- Jewish Polemic,” in Asthetik des Unsichtbaren: Bildtheorie und Bildgebrauch in der Vormoderne, ed. David Ganz and Thomas Lentes (Berlin: Reimer, 2004], pp. 112-45. 5 See Ferdinand Hutz, Die Vorauer Volksbibel: Faksimile-Wiedergabe aller 51 Seiten des Buches Exodus aus dem Codex 273 der Stiftsbibliothek Vorau (Graz, Austria: ADEVA, 1986). I employ the modern foliationMysticism and Visuality 279 Figure 1. God showing Moses his back parts. Vorauer Volksbibel, 1467 (Stiftsbibliothek Vorau Codex 273, f. 96v}. Photo: after Hutz.280. Jeffrey F. Hamburger parts” are precisely what the image omits, as the deity emerges from a cloud that looks more like a pool of water. Although God's face is in profile and his back in three-quarter view, his halo stands parallel to the picture plane and hence is not subject to reversal. This is the Deus absconditus of Jewish scripture, yet the cross-halo represents an immu- table truth, a reminder that full vision is accessible only to Christians. In this instance, the image rewards the reader by showing that any believ- ing Christian will, in the fullness of time, come to see more than Moses ever could. Images served as means, not simply of making ideas accessible but also of endowing them with authority, authenticity, and immediacy. Very often such images frame themselves explicitly in terms of vision. A four- teenth-century French frontispiece to the Bible historiale identifies the monarch with the wise king Solomon by showing the patron, Charles V of France, having taken the place of Moses (who cowers at the upper right in what Exodus describes as a “hole in the rocks”), gazing wide-eyed into the tabernacle, which opens to reveal, not the solitary Jehovah, but now the Trinitarian Godhead (see Fig. 2).” In contrast, in Christian scripture, the tables are turned by the Incarnation: God does not merely manifest himself in human history by means of signs and symbols (e.g., as in Ex 13:21, a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire), he enters into history in person, in the flesh. In keeping with the classic formulation of Christian doc- trine, “from Christ the human being to Christ the Lord” (“per Christum hominem ad Christum dominum”), the Incarnation establishes a bridge between empirical and what, for lack of a better word, could be called transcendental experience. The opening of John’s Gospel (Jn 1:14), a pas- sage to which magical powers were attributed throughout the Middle Ages, summarizes this teaching in words that underscore the preemi- nent role of vision in leading the faithful to a revelation that surpasses understanding: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father).” This definitive statement of faith is not, however, without an element of equivocation: “et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis.” “As it were” — in other words, not quite the real thing. An element of mystery beyond the power of vision remains. ” For fuller discussion, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Medieval Work of Art: Wherein the ‘Work’? Wherein the ‘Art’?,” in The Mind's Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005], pp. 374-412; and Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Rewriting History: The Visual and the Vernacular in Late Medieval History Bibles,” in Retextualisierung in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Ursula Peters and Joachim Bumke (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2005), pp. 259-307.Mysticism and Visuality 281 Figure 2. Frontispiece to Old Testament, Biblehistoriale of Charles V, Paris, ca. 1370 (Bibliotheque de Arsenal, Ms. 5212, fol. rr). Photo: Bibliotheque de France. The quasi that opens John’s Gospel contains within it the poten- tial for all of Christian art, be it verbal or visual (or, for that matter, musical). John Tauler (ca. 1300-61) reminds his readers of this fact when, in a sermon on the illustrations to Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias, he concludes by noting that “whatever nature does, that always has some stain [flecken] and is not yet completely pure.”* By “stain,” Tauler means less the stain of sin, although that connotation is implicit in his term, than the fact of representation itself. Any representation of divine glory necessarily falls short of the mark. Nonetheless, with- out imaginative representations worshippers would be unable to pro- ject themselves into the mysteries of the faith. Sometimes framed as a ® Fora fuller discussion, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The ‘Various Writings of Humanity’: Johannes Tauler on Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias,” in Images and Objects: Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 161-205. See Ferdinand Vetter, ed., Die Predigten Taulers aus der Engelberger und der Freiburger Handschrift sowie aus Schmidts Abschriften der ehemaligen Strassburger Handschriften (repr., Dublin- Zurich: Weidmann, 1968), p. 380, lines 13-16: “Wissest: was die nature wiirket, das hat alwegen etwas flecken, und es enist mit vollen luter.”282 Jeffrey F. Hamburger grudging pastoral concession to the illiterate (otherwise known as the “idiotae,” for whom, according to canon law, images took the place of books), images and visualization nonetheless had an established place in Christian thought.’ How could it have been otherwise? The doctrine of the Incarnation provided the best argument for those seeking to justify the use of images against those who characterized them as idols: if God had truly taken on human form, then surely he could be portrayed just like any other man. As a religion of the book, Christianity, like Judaism, is rooted in scripture. In the visions of the Apocalypse, as in those of the Old Testament prophets on which it is modeled (and which had an impact on medieval iconography no less profound than that of the Gospels), vision provides a vehicle for transporting the soul to God or for God to mani- fest himself to humanity. Christianity sought to distinguish itself from Judaism in part on the basis of the abrogation of the second command- ment, according to which humanity should make no graven images."® The existence of images, let alone their legitimacy, in turn required at least a limited affirmation of vision and visual experience, closely linked to Christianity’s affirmation (in the face of dualist doctrines) of crea- tion and history. Right from the start, one sees that vision, and mystical visuality along with it, had apologetic as well as theological dimensions. They hence belong as much to social history as to the history of art, lit- erature, and spirituality. In the context of an essay written for a modern handbook, it is reveal- ing to turn to an earlier vade mecum, John Altensteig’s Vocabularius theologie, published in Hagenau in 1517.‘ Scanning its entries, one looks in vain for any equivalent to mysticism, let alone anything that might be likened to visuality as it has been defined in modern dis- course, a historicized account of the process and protocols of percep- tion. Recognizing the root of contemplation in vision, Altensteig notes » See, most recently, Herbert L. Kessler, “Gregory the Great and Image Theory in Northern Europe during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 151-72. © Herbert L. Kessler, ““Pictures Fertile with Truth’: How Christians Managed to Make Images of God without Violating the Second Commandment,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 49-50 (1991-2): 53-6; and, more generally, Herbert L. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God's Invisibility in Medieval Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). © Johann Altensteig, Vocabularius theologie coplectes vocabulo(rum) descriptioes @) significatus ad theologiam utilium @) alia quibus prudes @) diligens lector multa abstrusa @ obscura theologo(rum) dicta dissolvere ... intelligere poterit (Hagenau, Germany: Heinrich Gran for Johann Rynman of Ohringen, 1517).Mysticism and Visuality 283 that, according to Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173), contemplatio can be defined as “the suspension of the mind with admiration in a certain arresting mirror (or reflection) of wisdom (est mentis quidam conspicua in sapientiae spectacula cum admiratione suspensio).” He goes on, however, to define contemplation more broadly in terms of the other senses, not just sight but also taste (degustare), a metaphor that would have meant more to monastics who likened reading to mastication.* Vision |visus), according to Altensteig, tends toward blindness: “I am unwilling, he said, to see Christ: it is enough if I will see him in glory” (“Nolo inquit hic videre christum: satis est ipse in gloria si videro”). His definition of the next term, visibile, predictably focuses on its apophatic opposite — “The invisible: that which cannot be seen” (“Invisibile: quod non potest videre”). He adds that, according to Bonaventure (1221-74), there are three reasons why things cannot be seen: on account of defec- tive organs, a lack of light, or the intellect’s inability to perceive spiri- tual things (spiritualia). Given that Altensteig writes on the eve of the Reformation, it is not surprising to find an entry titled “De imaginibus.” Warning against idolatry, he trots out the age-old ratio triplex, the three- fold argument for the necessity of images. Images instruct, edify, and commemorate, because, he affirms, citing Horace’s Ars poetica, “our affect is more excited by sight than by hearing” (“affectus noster plus excitari visu quam auditu”’)." Visuality is defined in part by the place of vision within a hierarchy of the senses, in which vision by no means always occupied or attained the top tier. Altensteig’s understanding of vision and its limits is rooted in scrip- ture — witness the Ark of the Covenant, which literally veils scripture in a Russian doll-like series of sequestered chambers that only heighten spiritual desire. As late as the sixteenth century, the Flemish illuminator Simon Bening comments on Christian interpretations of such desires, defined in terms of penetrating vision."* Drawing on medieval precedents, he pairs two images in a prayer book (see Fig. 3): on the left, a close-up of the Crucifixion, and, on the right, the rent veil of the tabernacle, which opens to reveal the ark containing the covenant that, along with the prohibition on images, is abrogated at the moment of Christ’s death. 2 See Friedrich Ohly, Stisse Nagel der Passion: Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Semantik (Baden-Baden, Germany: Koerner, 1989}; and Rachel Fulton, “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet’ (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West,” Journal of Religion 86 (2006): 169-204. 3 Creighton Gilbert, The Saints’ Three Reasons for Paintings in Churches (Ithaca, NY: Clandestine Press, 2001). * Discussed further in Hamburger, “Body vs. Book.”284. Jeffrey F. Hamburger Close scrutiny reveals that Christ’s side wound ~ according to legend, the source of the spurting blood that healed the blind Longinus - is hid- den by the slight torsion in Christ's torso that presents his flank to the eyes of Mary and John."5 For the viewer, the opening has been displaced onto the rent veil to the right, which, in keeping with Paul’s words in Hebrews t0:19-20, represents the torn, sundered flesh of Christ: “having therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ; A new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.” Beneath the veil of the flesh lies the truth of the Logos. The image does not reveal this truth; rather, it constructs it. The record of such constructions in terms of vision could be said to represent the history of Christian visuality. Images do not merely reflect visual experience; rather, they shape the experience of perception. Further still, even in the absence of art theory, they provide an implicit commentary on the role, status, and legitimacy of images and visual experience as such, These issues, far from incidental to a his- tory of Christianity, are as central as the doctrine of the Incarnation. Bening’s polemical miniature reveals that Christianity is founded on the desire, even the necessity, to make the Word visible. In Exodus (33:20), God says to Moses, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.” Paul takes up the same topic when. he declares, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of men, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9). In spite of such pronouncements, or precisely in order to contravene them, the John of the Epistles (1 Jn 3:2) declares, “Tt does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he [Christ] appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” With fullness of vision comes not just knowledge but also identifica- tion and transformation. Faith, far from being blind, aspires to a full- ness of vision that goes beyond anything that can be imagined from a merely human perspective. Mysticism, at least mysticism understood as the experiential cognition of God (“cognitio Dei experimentalis”), cannot, it turns out, be imagined without recourse to the visible, how- ever it is defined. Theologians and mystics resorted to theories of vision to account for the workings of the imagination, revealing in the process something ' Close examination of the leaf, which was inaccessible to me when I published it previously, suggests that the area in question may have been damaged and/or repainted in part, so that the absence of the side wound must be taken cum grano salis. Nonetheless, the fact remains: Mary and John view Christ’s body from behind, rather than from his right side, let alone from the traditional positions to either side of the cross.Mysticism and Visuality 285 Figure 3. Simon Bening, Christ on the Cross, cutting from a Spanish prayer book, ca. 1509-10 (Private collection, on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York). Photo: author. of their attitudes toward art and visual experience." In schematic terms, the principal theories of vision can be grouped under the headings of intromission and extromission. Both theories are invoked in mystical texts, not simply by way of analogy but also in order to ground reli- gious realities in human experience and, vice versa, to characterize such experience as but the first step in an upward-leading ascent. In a ser- mon for Christmas, Tauler compares the process of mystical union to the process by which the eye perceives an image on the wall: “For if two are to become one, one must be passive, whereas the other must act. If, for instance, my eye is to receive an image on the wall, or anything whatever, it must first be free from other images; for if there remained an image of color, it could not receive another.... In short, whatever should receive must first be empty, passive, and free.”"” Meister Eckhart % See Robert $. Nelson, ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Houndmills, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002}; and La visione e Io sguardo nel Medio Evo/View and Vision in the Middle Ages (Florence, Italy: Sismel, 1997-8). ” Vetter, Die Predigten Taulers, p. 9, line 34 through p. 10, line 3 (sermon 1), and John Tauler, Sermons, trans. Maria Shrady (New York: Paulist Press, 1985], p. 38.286 Jeffrey F. Hamburger (d. 1328] states, “An eye is nobler in itself than an eye that is painted on a wall.”"* Eckhart’s choice of image is hardly coincidental; the eye he has in mind is none other than the all-seeing eye of God.!? The disem- bodied eye also stands for the intellect that, in striving for union with God, comes to see all. Elsewhere, Eckhart states, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.”*° In keeping with the Neoplatonist underpinnings of his thought, Eckhart character- izes the eye's activity primarily (although not exclusively] in terms of extromission, that is, the notion that the eye grasps the object of percep- tion by emitting an effluent, variously characterized as a “visual fire” or “ray,” that coalesces with sunlight before extending toward the object of perception. Eckhart’s theory of vision is notably at odds with theories current in his day, which, whatever the differences among them, were predicated on the idea of intromission, that is, of rays emanating from the object somehow imprinting themselves on the mind through the medium of the eye. Eckhart’s mysticism demonstrates the extent to which the apophatic theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius, which insisted that God was beyond all predication, continued to make its presence felt, especially in the Rhineland. Even there, however, to paraphrase one of Eckhart’s immedi- ate successors, the Dominican Henry Suso (ca. 1295-1366}, images could be used to drive out images. An illustration to Suso’s Exemplar, culmi- nating in the geometric representation of the triune Godhead represented as three concentric circles seen beyond the veil of the tabernacle, seeks to demonstrate this process (see Fig. 4). Suso’s writings demonstrate the extent to which in the High and later Middle Ages, not to mention in the early modern period, mystical and visionary spirituality increasingly con- verge in mendicant and, more surprisingly, in Cistercian piety, leading to a broad-based affirmation of the legitimacy of images that in no way ® Meister Eckhart, Sermon 9, in Meister Eckhart, Eckhart; Werke Lil, ed. Nikolaus Largier and trans. Josef Quint, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), vol. 1, p. 112, lines 2-3. * For the eye of God, see Gudrun Schleusener-Eichholz, Das Auge im Mittelalter, 2 vols (Munich: Fink, 1985}, vol. 2, pp. 1076-1110. » For the passage that drew his critics’ ire and that he, in turn, defended, see Meister Eckhart, Sermon 12, in Eckhart, Werke, ed. Largier, vol. 1, p. 148, lines 31-4; and Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, trans. Maurice 0’C. Walshe, 3 vols. (London: Watkins, r981-7}, vol. 2, p. 87. » For Eckhart on vision, sce Schleusner-Bichholtz, Das Auge, vol. 1, pp. 116-28; John E. Crean, “Mystical ‘Schauen’ in Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruusbroec,” Monatshefte 62 (1970): 37-44; and the commentary of Largier, s.v. “Auge.”Mysticism and Visuality 287 Figure 4. The Mystical Way, Heinrich Seuse, Exemplar, Strasbourg, ca. 1370 (Strasbourg, Biblioth¢que Nationale et Universitaire, Ms. 2929, f. 82r). Photo: Biblioth¢que Nationale et Universitaire. can be written off as a concession to popular piety. Images increasingly become constitutive of certain kinds of mystical experience. The theological roots of this development are broad and deep. As in so many other respects, however, the twelfth century can be seen as a turning point. Augustine's commentary on Genesis had established the threefold hierarchy of corporeal, spiritual, and intellective vision as the288 Jeffrey F. Hamburger framework for all medieval discussions of the subject.2? Yet Altenstaig’s harking back to Hugh of Saint Victor (1096-1141) also points to the influ- ence of Victorine theology. The reinterpretation of a single verse in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1:20) permits one to trace the Victorine reeval- uation of the visible and, along with it, nature, human history, and the literal (as opposed to the allegorical] sense of scripture.*? A touchstone in medieval debates over the status and experience of the visible world, this passage from Paul provides the classic argument against image worship in terms that relate the experience of the visible to the knowledge of the invisible: “For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eter- nal power also, and divinity: so that they [idolators] are inexcusable.” In effect, Paul presents a version of the argument from design, arguing that any intelligent observer, independent of Christian revelation, should be able to discern that behind the world’s visible appearances there has to stand an eternal, if invisible, creator. Christian commentators went so far as to argue that in referring, not to God’s invisibility, but rather to the “invisible things [plural] of God” (invisibilia dei), Paul referred to the Trinity, another way of linking the visible (Christ the Son} to the invisible (God the Father). Victorine exegetes, however, gave Paul’s formulation an unexpected twist, laying the foundation for a new vision that attributed the capacity to point the intellect toward God to the faculty of sight. The technical term given to this way of reading the world was speculation (speculatio). In his treatise De operibus trium dierum (On the Works of Three Days), which also circulated under the title Tractatus super invisibilia (Treatise on Invisible Things), Hugh of Saint Victor provides a detailed account of the perceptual process by which a person should be led from visible things to invisible things (per visibilia ad invisibilia), arguing that his- tory, that is, scripture, and the book of nature are written by the hand of God. To be sure, the visible world represents no more than the first stage in the mind's ascent to God, but, in a fundamental shift, it now represents an indispensable stepping-stone along the way. Paraphrasing Paul, Hugh argues that the person who sees nature but who fails to dis- cern the hand of its creator beyond its visible forms is like the illiterate % See Veerle Fraeters’s essay in this volume. » For fuller discussion, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotions,” in Deutsche Mystik im abendlandischen Zusammenhang: Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansiitze, nenetheoretische Konzepte, ed, Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Tubingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 2000}, pp. 353-408.Mysticism and Visuality 289 who, upon viewing figures in an open book, is unable to understand their significance. This is the classic definition of speculative reasoning sum- marized by Alan of Lille (d. 1202/3) in his famous verses: “Every crea- ture in the world is, for us, like a book and a picture and also a mirror” (“Omnis mundi creatura / Quasi liber est pictura / Nobis est, et specu- Jum”). In this way of reading, vision provides a platform from which the right-thinking viewer can rise to the vision of God. Nature has become a veil and a mirror. The Victorine turn had implications for mysticism as well as exegesis. By the late Middle Ages, taking Victorine exegesis as their point of departure, various commentators and mystics had turned Paul’s premises entirely on their head. Gertrude of Helfta’s Legatus divinae pietatis (Herald of Divine Love), written ca. 1300, begins with an apol- ogy for her visions based on Richard of Saint Victor (erroneously identi- fied as Hugh), which in turn is based on Paul:*+ But, as invisible and spiritual things cannot be understood by the human intellect except in visible and corporeal images, it is neces- sary to clothe them in human and bodily forms. This is what Master Hugh demonstrates in the sixteenth chapter of his discourse on The Inner Man: “In order to refer to things familiar to this lower world and to come down to the level of human weakness, Holy Scripture describes things by means of visible forms, and thus impresses on our imagination spiritual ideas by means of beautiful images which excite our desires.” This apology for images lays the ground for what follows. In the vision related in book 2, chapter 8, Gertrude again speaks of “the invisible things of God ... manifest to the intelligence by the exterior things of creation.”?5 By the end of book 2, the only section of the Herald that can be reliably attributed to Gertrude, she turns the Gregorian dictum on its head.** Rather than characterizing images as the bible of the illit- erate, she argues that “just as students attain to logic by way of the alphabet, so, by means of these painted pictures [istas velut depictas % Gertrude of Helfta, Oeuvres spirituelles, vol. 2, Le Héraut (Livres I et Il), ed. Pierre Doyere (Paris: Le Cerf, 1968], I. i. 3-4, pp. 124-27; Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love, trans. Margaret Winkworth (New York: Paulist Press, 1993}, Pp. 54-5- The passage quoted by Gertrude, which has remained unidentified by all her editors and translators, comes from chapter 15 of Richard of Saint Victor's Benjamin minor, see Richard of Saint Victor, Les Douze Patriarches ou Beniamin minor, ed. and trans. by Jean Chatillon, Monique Duchet-Suchaux, and Jean Longgre [Paris: Le Cerf, 1997). % Gertrude of Helfta, Héraut, IL. viii. 4, p. 266; Gertrude, Herald, p. 107. » Gertrude of Helfta, Héraut, IL. xxiv. 1, p. 351; Gertrude of Helfta, Herald, p. 135.290 Jeffrey F. Hamburger imaginationes, by which she means her visions], as it were, they may be led to taste within themselves that hidden manna, which it is not possi- ble to adulterate by any admixture of material images and of which one must have eaten to hunger for it forever.’”*” Gertrude’s “by means of” (velut) indirectly invokes John’s “as it were” (quasi): the reader can, as it were, taste hidden manna (note, once again, the relationship of taste to sight). Her words also draw on a passage in Paul (Heb 5:12-14], in which the apostle declares that “you are become such as have need of milk; and not of strong meat. For every one that is a partaker of milk, is unskillful in the word of justice: for he is a little child, But strong meat is for the perfect.” Whereas Paul describes his words as milk for those too weak for the meat of words “hard to be intelligibly uttered” (Heb 5:11), Gertrude, in contrast, describes her pictorial visions as the hidden manna of Revelation (2:17). Different types of mystical spirituality cultivated different forms of visuality. Vision was strictly controlled in monastic environments; different groups adopted (or were compelled to adopt) different proto- cols of vision.*® These rules were anything but abstract and were often subject to change, according to circumstances. Visuality was closely linked to corporeal discipline. Under strict enclosure, which was increasingly common following the tellingly titled bull, Periculoso (named after its opening words, “Wishing to provide for the dangerous and abominable situation of certain nuns”), issued in 1298 by Pope Boniface VI, nuns were to shun any contact with the outside world or with male clergy, a move that also curtailed access to the Eucharist, a focal point of female visionary piety.*? In part because enclosed women were denied frequent visual contact with the consecrated host, convent chronicles brim over with accounts of women gazing at the priest hold- ing the Christ Child in his hands at the moment of the elevation.2° On occasion, the enclosed woman “sees” the host through the wall, as if Gertrude of Helfta, Héraut, TI. xxiv. 1, p. 351; Gertrude of Helfta, Herald, p. 135. See Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. » See, most recently, Carola Jaggi, Frauenkloster im Spaitmittelalter: Die Kirchen der Klarissen und Dominikanerinnen im 13, und 14. Jahrhundert (Petersberg, Germany: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2006). ® See Karl Bihlmeyer, ed., “Mystisches Leben in dem Dominikanerinnenkloster Weiler bei EGlingen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert,” Wirttembergische Vierteljahrshefte fir Landesgeschichte NF. 25 (1961): 61-93, esp. p. 81; and Ruth Meyer, Das “St. Katharinentaler Schwesternbuch”: Untersuchung, Edition, Kommentar (Tubingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 1995], p. 117, lines 21-4. The desire to see the consecrated host was hardly peculiar to nuns; see Edouard Dumoutet, Le désir de voir I'Hostie et les origines de la dévotion au Saint-Sacrement (Paris: Beauchesne, 1926]Mysticism and Visuality 291 with X-ray vision.’ Other accounts stress that the nun in question saw the Corpus Christi “with bodily eyes” (“mit leiplichen augen”), not with spiritual sight.3* Some women relied on sounds made by outsid- ers, who knocked on the wall dividing the choir from the lay church, signaling when they should stand to see the elevated host.’ Only the exceptional nun does not seize every opportunity to gaze at Christ. The fourteenth-century chronicle of Adelhausen reports that the lay sister Gite Tuschelin refused to join her companions in the kitchen and the infirmary as they rushed to a window to witness the elevation of the host, even though, strictly speaking, they were excused from atten- dance at Mass.}* At Saint Katharinental, Elsbeth of Stoffeln “had the habit of standing in her place in the stalls when the convent took com- munion so that she could see him well.” Elsbeth's actions are reported without disapproval; she is rewarded with a vision.*s The Eucharist has often been held up as a focal point of visual piety in the High and later Middle Ages, although its importance can be exaggerated.** In theory, if not always in practice, the consecrated host remained a point of passage, not an end in itself.’ In the words of an anonymous Carthusian writing toward the end of the fifteenth century who summarizes a long tradition of theological commentary, in particu- lar in this passage, Jean Gerson “that which you see with the eye of the body is not our lord, but that which you see with the eye of your heart, that is the lord our God.”3* Similar theological tags were often inscribed on images, reminding viewers that “the form is neither God nor man, ® Franz Mittermaier, ed. “Lebensbeschreibung der sel. Christina von Retters,” Archiv fiir mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 17-18 {1965-6}: 209-5 1, 203-38, at p. 243. » Bihlmeyer, “Weiler,” p. 72. 39 Ibid, p. 81. + Johannes Konig, ed., “Die Chronik der Anna von Munzingen, geschrieben von Johannes Hull, 1433, nach der dltesten Abschrift mit Einleitungen und Beilagen,” Freiburger Didzesan-Archiv 13 |1880}: 129-236, esp. p. 169. 36 Birlinger, “Mystisches Leben,” p. 167. See the cautionary comments of Thomas Lentes, “As far as the eye can see ...’: Rituals of Gazing in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Mind's Fye, ed. Hamburger and Bouché, PP. 360-73. » See Caroline Walker Bynum, “Seeing and Seeing Beyond: The Mass of St. Gregory in the Fifteenth Century,” in The Mind's Eye, ed. Hamburger and Bouché, pp. 208-40. »* Basel, Offentliche Bibliothek der Universitat Basel, Ms. A VIII 37, f. 31. For a fuller discussion of this manuscript, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Writing on the Wall: Inscriptions and Descriptions of Carthusian Crucifixions in a Fifteenth-Century Passion Miscellany,” in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting and Manuscript [lumination, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and A. S. Korteweg (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006), pp. 231-52.292 Jeffrey F Hamburger Figure 5. The connubium spirituale, Rothschild Canticles (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Ms. 404, f. 66r). Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. which you here do behold. / But here the God and Man, of whom you by that form are told” (“Nec deus est, nec homo, presens quem cernis imago | Sed deus est et homo, presens quem signat imago").3° Eucharistic piety is only one arena in which vision looms large. Bridal mysticism is another. Bridal mysticism has its roots in the Marian liturgy’s application of the Song of Songs, first, to the marriage of Christ and Church or the Virgin, then, by extension, to the union of Christ and the loving soul. As in the case of exegesis, so too in that of the visual arts: only beginning in the twelfth century do we see any systematic attempt to translate the metaphorical imagery of the Song of Songs into a coherent picture of the soul’s union with God. These efforts culmi- nate in the later Middle Ages in a mystical miscellany known as the Rothschild Canticles, in which an eroticized image of the spiritual » See Ragne Bugge, “Effigiem Christi, qui transi, semper honora: Verses Condemning the Cult of Sacred Images in Art and Literature,” Acta ad Archeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 6 (1975): 127-39, esp. pp. 133-4. Also see Herbert Kessler, Neither God nor Man: Words, Images, and the Medieval Anxiety about Arts (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 2007].Mysticism and Visuality 293 nuptials (connubium spirituale) provides perhaps the best antecedent for Giovanni Bernini’s (1598-1680) Ecstasy of St. Teresa (see Fig. 5).!° Perhaps the ultimate paradox, when speaking of mysticism and visuality, is that a discourse that by definition shuns the senses came, throughout the course of the medieval millennium, not only to legiti- mize but also even to redeem them. Given the incarnational emphasis of late medieval piety, one must use the word redeem advisedly, if cau- tiously, given that mysticism’s sensory and, at times, sensual side was never without controversy. The sensory was integrated into the spiritual. In the spirit of “as it were,” illusionistic strategies, some driven by the desire for divine presence, only served to make images more persuasive. Changing attitudes toward works of art form a part of this picture. Not even the Reformation was able to undo the effects of this affirmation of the visual. © Sce Jeffrey F Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 106-10.THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM Edited by Amy Hollywood Harvard Divinity School Patricia Z. Beckman St. Olaf College CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS