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    "slug": "mechthild-flowing-light",
    "name": "The Flowing Light of the Godhead — Books I-VII (complete)"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 2,
    "slug": "vol-2-01-flowing-light-book-2",
    "title": "Book II",
    "of": 7,
    "words": 11256,
    "text": "## Book II\n\nThis is Book II of Mechthild's *Flowing Light of the Godhead* (Book I is on this site as a sibling work). The glossary anchors and source-chain disclosed in the Book I translator's note apply unchanged here. Book II introduces a few new anchors that did not appear in Book I:\n\n*Köpf* is rendered \"chalice\" or \"golden cup.\" In medieval German, *Kopf* (archaic) means a drinking-bowl, not the head; Mechthild's *zwei guldin köpfe* (two golden cups) of pain and consolation (Chapter VII) and the *köpf mit gallen* (cup of gall) shared with the martyrs (Chapter XXIV) are eucharistic-passion images, not anatomical ones. *Schenke* is rendered \"cupbearer.\" *Sister Hiltegund* — the named figure of Chapter XX — was almost certainly a Beguine companion of Mechthild's whose death-day she here commemorates; no further biographical record survives. Chapter XXIV includes a long litany in which Mechthild addresses individual saints (Mary, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Peter, Paul, Stephen, Lawrence, Martin, Dominic, Catherine) and speaks her own life through theirs; the structure follows late-medieval personal Litanies (cf. the *Litany of the Saints* in Office books) rather than canonical liturgical form.\n\nTwo Latin liturgical fragments appear in Chapter IV (*Gaudeamus omnes in domino*; *Liber generationis*) and one in Chapter VII (*Gloria in excelsis Deo*); all are preserved in Latin and footnoted.\n\nBook II is denser theologically than Book I — particularly Chapter XIX's three-heavens schema (the devil's false heaven, the senses' partial heaven, the true heaven of the inner light) and Chapter XXII's questioning of Contemplation about the relative status of Seraphim and the lowest human person. These passages anticipate the Eckhart-Tauler-Suso problem of whether the soul as Bride is higher than the angels; Mechthild answers yes, and on relational grounds (the soul as daughter / sister / *trutine* of the Trinity).\n\n---\n\n## This is the second part of this book.\n\n### I. The Love raises the soul high — not by human sense; that [counterfeit] comes from self-will.[^29]\n\nThe height of the soul happens in Love, and the adornment of the body happens in holy Christian baptism. Above Love there is no height, and outside of Christendom there is no adornment. Therefore they greatly delude themselves who, with grim, inhuman labours, imagine they will scale the heights, and yet bear a fierce heart — for they have not the virtue of holy humility, which alone can lead the soul into God. And there false sanctity gladly steals in, where self-will carries the mastery in the heart.\n\n### II. Of two songs of love that one who was in love saw.\n\nI would gladly die of love, if it could happen to me.\nHim whom I love, I have seen\nstanding in my soul with my own bright eyes.\nWhatever bride has lodged her Beloved\nneed not go far.\nLove cannot well pass away\nwhere the maidens often go after the Youth.\nHis noble nature is so ready\nthat he gladly receives her, and follows her\nfrom the heart. This may easily escape the dull,\nwho unwillingly stand near to love.\n\n### III. Of the tongue of the Godhead, of the light of truth, of the four rays of God into the nine choirs and the Trinity, and of Saint Mary.[^1]\n\nO noble eagle! O sweet Lamb!\nO fire of glow, kindle me!\nHow long shall I be so dry?\nAn hour is too heavy for me.\nA day is to me a thousand years.\nShould you be strange to me,\nshould it last eight days,\nI would rather go to hell —\nyet there I already am\nwhen God is strange to the loving soul.\nThat is a pain beyond human death\nand beyond all pain;\nbelieve me. The nightingale\nmust always sing,\nfor her nature is wholly the play of love.\nTake that from her, and she dies.\nAh, great Lord, consider my distress.\n\nThen the Holy Spirit spoke to the soul:\nAh, noble maidens, make ready!\nYour Beloved will come.\nThen she was startled and inwardly glad,\nand said: Ah, dear messenger, would it might be so!\nI am so wicked and so unfaithful\nthat without my Beloved I find no rest anywhere.\nWhen I feel\nthat I cool myself a little from his love,\nthen it pains me on every side,\nand it is welcome to me\nthat I must go yearning after him.\nThen the messenger said: You should wish,\nand pour out, and pray, and strew flowers.\nThen said the exiled soul:\nWhen I wish, I must be ashamed.\nWhen I pour, I must weep.\nWhen I pray, I must hope.\nWhen I gather flowers, I must love.\nWhen my Lord comes, I come out of myself,\nfor he brings me so many sweet sounds of strings\nthat he takes from me every quivering of the flesh.\nAnd his string-play is so full of all sweetness\nthat he takes from me all heart-sorrow.\n\nThe great tongue of the Godhead\nhas spoken to me many a mighty word\nwhich I have received with the small ears of my baseness.\nAnd the very greatest light has opened itself\ntoward the eyes of my soul.\nThere have I seen the unspeakable ordering\nand known the uncountable honour,\nthe incomprehensible wonder\nand the singular intimacy with discernment,\nthe all-sufficient on its highest reach\nand the great breeding within knowing,\nthe enjoyment with the withdrawing\naccording to the strength of the senses,\nthe unmingled joy in the union\nof the fellowship, and the living love of eternity,\nas it is now and ever shall be.\n\nThere you shall see four rays\nwhich shoot all together\nfrom the most noble crossbow of the holy Trinity,\nfrom the divine throne, through the nine choirs.\nThere hovers none so poor nor so rich\nthat they do not strike him in love.\nThe ray of the Godhead encloses him\nwith an incomprehensible light.\nThe loving manhood greets him\nin brotherly fellowship.\nThe Holy Spirit moves him\nwith the flowing-through\nof the marvellous shaping\nof the eternal bliss.\nThe undivided God feeds him\nwith the glance of his lordly face\nand fills him with the suffering-free breath\nof his flowing mouth.\nAnd how they go without labour, as the birds\nin the air who stir no feather;\nand how they journey wherever they will\nwith body and with soul,\nand yet remain unmingled in their ordering;\nand how the Godhead reasons,\nthe manhood sings,\nand the Holy Spirit finds the strings of the heavenly kingdom,\nso that all the souls must reason\nwho are made spouse in love.[^2]\n\nThen was seen the same lordly Trinity-throne\non which Christ now sits[^3]\nwith body and with soul,\nas he shall ever remain,\nexcept for the great adornment\nwhich the heavenly Father will give to all blessed bodies\non the last day.\nThat our Lady must yet do without,\nwhile this earth still floats upon the sea.\n\nThen was seen how fair our Lady stood\nat the throne at the left hand of the heavenly Father,\nunveiled in all maidenly shaping;\nand how the human body is tempered and formed\ninto the noble brightness of the soul of our Lady;\nand how her delightful breasts are unveiled, full of sweet milk,\nso that the drops flow down — to the honour of the heavenly Father,\nand to the love of the human person,\nso that the human is welcome above all creatures.\nFor the high princes, the archangels, marvel greatly\nthat other princes — the humans — have come over them.\nIt is praiseworthy that our full company is there.\n\nAt the foremost hand of our Lord stands Jesus, our Redeemer, with open wounds,\nbleeding, unbound,\nto overcome the Father's justice,\nwhich presses on many a sinner closely.[^4]\nFor as long as sin endures on earth,\nChrist's wounds shall remain open,\nbleeding without pain.\nBut after the judgment,\nChrist shall put on such a garment\nas was never seen,\nthat even God, ungenerated, would marvel at.\nThen the sweet wounds shall heal\nas if a rose-petal\nhad been laid upon the wound's place.\nThere one will then see them in joyful love-colour,\nwhich shall never pass away.\nThen the uncreated God will\nmake all his shapings new,\nand so new that they may never grow old.\n\nNow German fails me, and Latin I do not know.[^5] So if anything here is lacking, it is not my fault. For there was never a dog so wicked that it would not gladly come, if its master called it with a white loaf.\n\n### IV. Of the poor maid, of the mass of John the Baptist, of the changing of the wafer into the Lamb, of angel-beauty, of the four kinds of people sanctified, and of golden pennies.\n\nAh, dear Lord, how useful it is that a person be of good will, even when they cannot manage the works! Our dear Lord showed this to a poor maid, who could no longer be alone, and yet, alas, was unfit for his service. She spoke thus to God:\n\nAh, my dear Lord,\nshall I be today without Mass?\n\nIn this longing God took from her all her earthly senses, and brought her wondrously into a fair church. She found no one there. She thought: alas, you poor lazy one; now you have come too late, that you did not rise. That may avail you little here. Then she saw a Youth come who brought a sheaf of white flowers, which he strewed below in the tower, and then went away. Then came another and brought a sheaf of violets, which he strewed in the middle of the church. Then came yet another and brought a sheaf of roses, which he strewed beautifully before our Lady's altar. Then came a fourth and brought a sheaf of white lilies, and strewed them in the choir. When they had done this, they bowed gracefully and went away. These youths were so noble and beautiful to behold that no human's pain in body could be so great but that, could he look on them, all his pain must pass.\n\nThen came two scholars in white vestments, who brought two candles; these they set upon the altar. Then they went gracefully and stood in the choir. Then came a man of uneven height, very lean, and yet not old. His clothes were so poor that his arms and legs showed bare. He carried a white lamb before his breast, and two cruets in his fingers. He went to the altar and set the lamb upon it and bowed lovingly. This was John the Baptist, who was to sing the Mass. Then came a youth, beautifully tempered in bearing, who carried an eagle before his breast. That was John the Evangelist. Then came a simple man — Saint Peter. Then came a tall youth, who brought a bundle of vestments, with which the three lords vested themselves. Then came a great company — that was the mighty retinue of the heavenly kingdom — and so filled the church that the poor maid could find no place to remain. So she went and stood below in the tower.\n\nThere she found one sort of people in white vestments, who had no hair, but bore plain crowns upon their heads. These were they who had not lived according to marriage. The adornment of hair — that is good works — they had not. With what then had they come to the heavenly kingdom? With contrition and with good will at their end. Further she found yet fairer people clothed in manifold-coloured[^7a] garments, adorned with the fair hair of the virtues and crowned with the marriage-vow of God.[^33] Yet further she found fairer people clothed in rose-coloured garments, who bore the fair sign of the widows and a crown of accepted chastity.\n\nThe poor maid was ill-clothed and weak in body, and could remain among the three ranks nowhere. So she went and stood before the choir and looked in, where our dear Lady stood in the highest place, and Saint Catherine, Cecilia, bishops, martyrs, angels, and very many maidens. When this poor person saw this great lordship, she also looked upon herself, whether for her baseness she dared remain. She had about her a red-brown mantle made of love and after the brown-burning of the senses — for God and for all good things. The mantle was adorned with gold and also with a song; the song sang thus: *I would gladly die of love.*\n\nShe saw herself also like to a noble maiden, and bore upon her head a lordly chaplet of gold, on which was laid yet another song; it sang thus:\n\nHis eyes in my eyes, his heart in my heart,\nhis soul in my soul,\nembraced and without weariness.\n\nAnd her face she saw like to the angels.\n\nAh! I, unblessed mire,[^31] how has this now happened to me?\nTruly I am, alas, not so blessed\nas I there saw myself.\n\nAll who were in the choir\nlooked upon her with a sweet laughter.\nThen our Lady beckoned her\nto stand above Catherine.\nThen she went and stood beside our dear Lady,\nfor it could seldom happen\nthat she should speak with and see God's Mother.\nAh, you dear gracious one!\nShe took it for a good thing\nthat the base crow stood near the turtledove.[^8a]\n\nAll who were in the choir\nwere clothed with shining gold,\nand were wrapped in a soaring bliss,\nbrighter than the sun.\n\nThen they began a Mass thus: *Gaudeamus omnes in Domino.*[^6] And as often as our Lady was named, they knelt, and the others bowed, for to her God has given the greatest honour. Then said the base one, who had come to that Mass: Ah, Lady, might I here receive God's body, for it does not stand here in jeopardy. Then said God's Mother: Yes, dear one, make your confession. Then the heavenly Queen beckoned John the Evangelist, who went out and heard the sinner's confession. Then she asked him to tell her how long she should live. Then said John: I must not tell you, for God does not will it; for if the time were long, you might from your manifold trouble fall into a peevishness, and if the time were short, you might out of the sorrow of your heart fall into a longing to live long.\n\nThen John went to read the gospel: *Liber generationis.*[^7] Then said the poor one to our Lady: Shall I make an offering? Then said our Lady: Yes, if you will not take it back. Then said the poor one: Ah, Lady, that grace you must give me from God. Then said our Lady: Now take this golden penny, that is your own will, and offer it to my Lord Son in all things. With great breeding and with holy fear the little man received the great penny. Then she looked upon the penny, how it was struck. There stood upon the penny how Christ was loosed from the cross. On the other side stood all the heavenly kingdom: in the centre the nine choirs, and above them the throne of God. Then God's voice spoke to her: If you offer me this penny so that you do not take it back, then will I loose you from the cross and bring you to me in my kingdom.\n\nThen the same priest celebrated the still Mass — he who was sanctified in his mother's womb with the Holy Spirit. When he took the white wafer in his hands, the same lamb rose up that stood upon the altar, and joined itself, with the words, under the figures of his hand, into the wafer, and the wafer into the lamb — so that I saw the wafer no more, but a bleeding lamb hung on a red cross.\n\nWith such sweet eyes it looked upon us\nthat I can never forget it.\n\nThen the poor maid begged our dear Lady thus: Ah, dear Mother, beg your Lord Son that he himself give himself to me, poor one. Then she saw that a shining ray gleamed from our Lady's mouth onto the altar, and stirred the lamb with her prayer, so that God himself spoke out of the lamb: Mother, I will gladly lay myself in the place of your desire. Then the poor maid went to the altar with great love and with an open soul. Then Saint John took the white lamb with its red wounds, and laid it in the recess of her mouth. Then the pure lamb laid itself in its own image upon her stall, and sucked her heart with its sweet mouth. The more it sucked, the more she gave to it.\n\nNow she to whom this happened is dead and gone hence. May God help us that we may yet see her in the company of angels. Amen.[^8]\n\n### V. A song of the soul to God in five things, and how God is a garment of the soul, and the soul of God.[^9]\n\nYou shine into my soul\nas the sun upon gold.\nWhen I must rest in you, Lord,\nmy bliss is manifold.\nYou clothe yourself with my soul\nand you are also her closest garment,\nso that a parting must happen between us[^10]\nand never have I known greater heart-sorrow.\nWould you love me more sorely,\nthen would I surely come hence,\nwhere without ceasing\nI could love you as I wish.\nNow have I sung to you;\nyet have I not prevailed.\nWould you sing to me,\nthen must I prevail.\n\n### VI. A counter-song of God in the soul in five things.\n\nWhen I shine, you must light up.\nWhen I flow, you must rise.\nWhen you sigh, you draw my divine heart into you.\nWhen you weep after me, I take you in my arms.\nWhen you love, the two of us become one.\nAnd when we two are thus one, no parting may ever happen there;\nrather, a delightful waiting dwells between us both.\nLord, then I wait with hunger and with thirst,\nwith hunting and with delight,\nuntil the playful hour\nwhen from your divine mouth\nflow the chosen words\nwhich by no one are heard\nexcept by the soul alone\nthat has unclothed herself from earth\nand laid her ear to your mouth —\nyes, the very one whom the discovery of love grasps.\n\n### VII. In suffering, praise — and he appears to you. Of two golden chalices, of pain and of consolation.\n\nI, sinful, slothful: I should have prayed at one hour, but God acted as though he would give me no grace at all. Then I would gladly have grieved miserably about my fleshly sickness, which seemed to me a hindrance to spiritual enjoyment. *Ah, no,* said my soul, *think now of all faithfulness, and praise your Lord thus: Gloria in excelsis Deo.*[^11]\n\nIn this praise a great light appeared to my soul, and with the light God showed himself in great honour and uncountable clarity. Then our Lord raised up two golden chalices[^12] in his hands, which were both full of living wine. In his left hand was the red wine of pain, and in his front hand the most precious consolation. Then our Lord said: Blessed are those who drink this wine; for although I alone pour both out of divine love, the white is yet the more noble in itself, and most noble of all are they who drink both — white and red.\n\n### VIII. Of purgatory wholly; how a person freed a thousand souls with the tears of love.\n\nA person should pray with great desire,\nvery simply, for the poor souls, to God in heaven.\nThen God showed her the dreadful purgatory all together,\nand there so many a torment\nas the sins were in them.\nThen the person's spirit became so fierce-fervent\nthat she clasped purgatory wholly in her arms.\nThen she endured grievously\nand longed lovingly.\nThen God in heaven said:\nDo not let this woe come now to you;\nit is too heavy for you.\nThen said the spirit in lament:\nAh, dearest one, release some of them.\nThen our Lord said: How many would you have?\nThe spirit said: Lord, as many as I can with your goodness repay.\nThen our Lord said: Now take a thousand, and bring them where you will.\nThen they rose out of the pain — black, fiery, foul, burning, bloody, stinking.\nThen the person's spirit said again:\nAh, my dear Lord, what shall now happen to these poor ones?\nFor in such dreadful state they will never come into your kingdom.\nThen God inclined immeasurably his nobility,\nand spoke a word that to us sinners stands as great consolation:\n*You shall bathe them in the love-tears\nthat now flow from the eyes of your body.*\nThen there was seen a round great vessel.\nThere they rose with a single sweep into it,\nand bathed themselves in love, clear as the sun.\nThen the person's spirit received uncountable bliss, and said:\nPraised be you, dearest, by all creatures eternally!\nNow they please you well in your kingdom.\nThen our Lord inclined himself toward them from the height\nand set upon them a crown of love which they had won from there, and said:\nThis crown you shall wear eternally,\nas a sign to all in my kingdom\nthat you were freed with love-tears, nine years before your rightful time.\n\n### IX. God praises his bride in five things.\n\nYou are a light of the world,\nyou are a crown of the maidens,\nyou are a salve of the wounded,\nyou are a fidelity to the false,\nyou are a bride of the holy Trinity.\n\n### X. The bride praises God in return in five things.\n\nYou are a light among all lights,\nyou are a flower above all crowns,\nyou are a salve above all wounds,\nyou are an unchangeable fidelity without falseness,\nyou are a host in all inns.\n\n### XI. Of sevenfold love of God.\n\nThe right love of God has seven beginnings.\nThe joyful love steps into the way.\nThe fearing love takes up the labour. The strong love can do much.\nThe loving love takes up no boasting.\nThe wise love has knowing.\nThe free love lives without heart-sorrow.\nThe powerful love is ever after merry.\n\n### XII. Of sevenfold perfections.\n\nGladly unhonoured, gladly unfeared, gladly alone,\ngladly still, gladly low, gladly high, gladly common.\n\n### XIII. Between God and the soul shall be love.\n\nBetween you and God shall ever be love.\nBetween earthly things and you shall be anxiety and fear.\nBetween sins and you shall be hatred and battle.\nBetween the heavenly kingdom and you shall be steady hope.\n\n### XIV. Whence comes purity, weakness, sickness, certainty, swiftness, necessity, exile, seldom-comfort.\n\nBitterness of the heart comes from the manhood,\nweakness of the body comes from the flesh alone,\nswift mind comes from the nobility of the soul,\nanxiety before pain comes from guilt,\nsickness of the body comes from nature,\nexile-necessity comes from self-will,\nseldom-consolation comes from unrest.\n\n### XV. How the one wounded by love becomes whole.\n\nWhatever person at one hour\nbecomes truly wounded by true love\nshall never more become wholly whole,\nunless they yet kiss the very mouth\nby which their soul was wounded.\n\n### XVI. Of seven gifts of a brother.\n\nThe soul is groundless in longing,\nburning in love,\nlovely in presence,\nmirror of joy,\nweak before the great,\nfaithful in helping,\ngathered in God.\n\n### XVII. How God woos the soul and makes her wise in his love.\n\nThus God woos the simple soul and makes her wise in his love. Ah, dear dove, your feet are red, your wings are smooth, your mouth is rightly set, your eyes are fair, your head is fine, your bearing is delightful, your flight is swift, and you are all too swift to the earth.\n\n### XVIII. How the soul touches God's freedom in eight things.\n\nLord, my feet are coloured with the blood of your true redeeming;\nmy wings are smoothed with your noble choosing;\nmy mouth is set right by your Holy Spirit;\nmy eyes are clarified in your fiery light;\nmy head is given sight by your faithful shielding;\nmy bearing is delightful from your mild gift;\nmy flight is swiftened by your unresting delight;\nmy earthly sinking comes from your union with my body.\nThe greater the redeeming you give me, the longer I must hover in you.\n\n### XIX. How Knowing and the soul speak together, and she says she is threefold from three heavens. Knowing speaks first.[^13]\n\nKNOWING: O loving soul, I have looked upon you;\nyou are made marvellously lovely.\nA light was lit to me\nso that I might behold you;\notherwise it would never have been done for me.\nYou are threefold in yourself —\nyou may well be God's image.\nYou are a manly man in your battle.\nYou are a well-adorned maiden\nin the palace before your Lord.\nYou are a delightful bride in your love-bed.\nGod's loving soul, in the battle\nyou are armed with immeasurable strength,\nand with so great a gathering of your mind\nthat all the multitudes of the world,\nnor all the help of your flesh,\nnor all the hosts of the devils,\nnor the strength of hell\nmay not bring you down from God.\n\nYou arm yourself as with flowers.\nYour sword — that is the noble rose, Jesus Christ —\nwith this you arm yourself.\nYour shield is the white lily, Mary.\nIt does not avail [the enemy] that they assail you,\nbut only that they adorn you and increase in you\nimmeasurably God's honour.\nAll who stand purely in this battle\nshall receive rich pay from the Emperor.\n\nAh, distinguished soul, in your palace of the holy Trinity,\nwhere you stand so lovingly adorned before your Lord —\nwhat is your honour?\n\nSOUL: Lady Knowing, you are wiser than I am; why do you ask me?\n\nKNOWING: Lady Soul, God has chosen you above all things; you are my Lady and my Queen.\n\nSOUL: Lady Knowing, I am of noble and free birth; I must not be without honour\nfor him whom I alone love. So I must win him who loves me, comforts me, and honours me.\n\nYou holy Trinity,\nand all that heaven and earth bear,\nmust be eternally subject to me.\nIf I now let Love rule mightily over me,\nso that I give her place\nto bind me into holy patience\nso that I add not to my guilt,\nthen she leads me into the noble gentleness,\nso that I be ready for all good things;\nand she yokes me into the strong obedience,\nso that to God and all creatures\nI must lovingly be subject.\n\nKNOWING: Ah, Lady Bride, will you yet say to me a sign-word\nof the unspeakable secret things\nthat lie between God and you?\n\nSOUL: Lady Knowing, that I do not.\nThe brides must all be silent of what happens to them.\nThe holy beholding and the most precious enjoyment\nyou shall have from me.\nBut the chosen experience of God\nshall always remain hidden from you in all creatures,\nsave only to me.\n\nKNOWING: Lady Soul, your marvel-seeing and your high word —\nwhich you in God have seen and heard —\nif you compel me thereto\nthat I should bring forth a small part of it,\nthen I set the Emperor's light\nin a dark, foul stable.\nThe cattle indeed eat their straw well.\nFor some who seem to be God's children\nyet butt themselves like unbound cattle\nin the dark stable,\nand ask what such German is supposed to mean,\nsaying it is thought up from self-will\nand brought forth in false sanctity.\n\nSOUL: Lady Knowing, one finds it so written,\nthat Saint Paul was carried into the third heaven.[^13a]\nIt would never have happened to him,\nhad he remained Saul.\nHad he found the truth\nin the first or the second heaven,\nhe would never have climbed into the third.\n\nThere is one heaven that the devil has made\nwith his fair, false cunning.\nThere thoughts wander in with sorrowful senses,\nand the soul lies still,\nfor she finds not her natural love.\nThere the soul remains without comfort,\nand she beguiles the simple senses.\nIn this heaven the devil shows himself\nlike to a shining angel —\nyes, even by his five wounds, like to God.\nSimple soul, beware!\n\nThe other heaven is made\nfrom the holy longing of the senses,\nand from the first part of love.\nIn this heaven there is no body.\nThe soul does not see God here.\nShe tastes an incomprehensible sweetness\nthat goes through all her members.\nShe also hears a voice of certain things\nwhich she yet gladly hears,\nfor it is mixed with earthly senses.\nIf the depth of all humility is not there,\nthen the devil sets his light upon it;\nwhat then happens there\nis not of God.\n\nBut if full humility is there,\nthen must the soul further journey\ninto the third heaven;\nthere is given to her the true light. —\nThen say the senses:\n\nOur Lady, the soul has slept from childhood;\nnow she is awakened in the light of open love.\nIn this light she sees herself all around,\nwho he is who shows himself to her,\nand what it is one says to her.\nShe sees truly and knows\nhow God is all things in all things.\nNow I lay down all trouble\nand journey with Saint Paul into the third heaven.\nWhen God lays my sinful body lovingly down there,\nthis third heaven is vaulted and ordered\nand shines beautifully with the three Persons,\nwho begin thus:\nThe true greeting of God,\nthat comes from the heavenly flood…[^14]\n\n### XX. How Sister Hiltegund is adorned in the heavenly kingdom with the mantles, with seven crowns, and how she praises the nine choirs.\n\nOn the day of a blessed maiden — Saint Barbara — Sister Hiltegund received her honour.[^15] This God showed to a lame dog, who still licks his wounds with sorrow.[^16] In my prayer it happened so, that I do not know whether the heavenly kingdom was inclined toward me, or whether I was drawn into the marvel-rich house of God. There Hiltegund stood before the throne of the heavenly Father, adorned as a new bride whom the King has fetched home. She had about her three mantles, and bore upon her head seven crowns, and the nine choirs especially praised her. When I saw her, I knew her in all the gifts she had received from God. Yet I delighted to speak with her, and asked her in the enjoyment, so that I might be longer with her. Ah, whence have you this rose-coloured mantle? Then said Hiltegund: I was a martyr in fiery love, so that often my heart-blood poured out over my head. Then I asked her further: Whence have you this golden mantle that shines so beautifully? Then she said: From the image of good works. Then I said: Whence have you this blossoming white mantle? Then she answered: From the distinguished love[^32] which I bore secretly in my soul and in my senses.\n\nThese were the seven crowns: the Crown of Steadfastness, the Crown of Holy Belief, the Crown of Fidelity, the Crown of Mild Mercy, the Crown of Holy Reasonableness, the Crown of Love, the Crown of Maidenhood. Then I asked further: Dear one, where is the Crown of Humility, which so well befits spiritual people? Then she answered: That I have not as a separate crown, nor ever won one, but only so much that God took from me by it all pride. These seven crowns are adorned, each particularly, with the chaplet of the nobility of pure, lordly[^17] chastity.\n\nThus they praise her, the choirs, in nine virtues:\nWe praise you in your contrition, in your good will, in your truth, in your wisdom, in your sweet sorrow, in your willing poverty, in your strength, in your justice. Thus the Seraphim praise her, for they are her companions:\nWe praise you in the love of God, O Queen.\nThe Thrones praise thus:\nWe praise the Bridegroom in the beauty of the bride.\n\nI asked her many things,\nwhich I now eternally hold,\nexcept only that the heavenly kingdom is love-coloured.\nBut the earthly kingdom is, alas, very changeable —\nin me, and in many another,\nwho has not yet come to heaven,[^18]\nwhere one shall behold the truth.\n\n### XXI. If you would behold the mountain, you must have seven things.\n\nA mountain have I seen,\nand it happened to me wholly fittingly,[^19]\nfor no body might bear\nthat the soul should be there even one hour.\n\nThe mountain was below white, cloud-coloured,\nand above, in its height, fiery sun-clear.\nIts beginning and its end I could not find,\nand within it played in itself,\nflowing gold-coloured in uncountable love.\nThen I said: Lord, blessed are the eyes\nthat shall eternally behold this love-soaring\nand know this wonder.\nI may never take it in.\nThen said the mountain: Your eyes,\nwhich shall thus see me,\nmust be adorned with seven things;\notherwise it can never be.\nThey are these:\ngladly to pay their pledged debts,\nand not to hold to oneself,\nunfaithful toward hatred\nand loving toward what is fearful,\npure of guilt and ready\nfor the receiving.\n\n### XXII. How Contemplation asks the loving soul about the Seraphim and the lowest person.\n\nCONTEMPLATION: Lady Soul, would you rather be an angel of the Seraphim, or a human with body and soul in the lowest choir of the angels?\n\nSOUL TO CONTEMPLATION: Lady Contemplation, you have well seen that the angels of the Seraphim are high princes, and that they are one love and one fire and one breath and one light with God.\n\nCONTEMPLATION: Lady Soul, you have well seen that the angels are simple persons, and that they praise God no further, and love and know him no further, than is born into them; whereas the lowest human person may move forward with Christian belief, with contrition, with longing, and with good will — though indeed the human soul cannot burn so deeply in the Godhead.\n\nSOUL: Lady Contemplation, you have well seen that the angels of the Seraphim are God's children and yet his servants. The least soul is daughter of the Father, sister of the Son, friend of the Holy Spirit, and truly a bride of the holy Trinity.\n\nWhen the play goes over and above,\nthen one sees the weight of most worth most heavily —\nthe worthiest angel, Jesus Christ,\nwho hovers above the Seraphim,\nwho must with his Father be one undivided God.\nHim I, the least soul, take into my arms,\nand eat him and drink him,\nand do with him what I will.\nThat may never happen to any angel,\nhowever high he dwells above me.\nAnd his Godhead can never be so precious to me[^20]\nthat I do not without ceasing\nin all my members feel her.\nSo I may never more grow cool.\nWhat then troubles me, what the angels feel?\n\n### XXIII. How Love asks and teaches the dull soul, and would gladly bring her to her Beloved; and Love speaks first, and the dull soul answers.\n\nLOVE: Ah, foolish soul, where are you,\nor what is your dwelling and on what do you live?\nWhere do you rest now, since you do not love\nyour delightful God above your own will\nand above all your might?\n\nSOUL: Let me unwakened.\nI do not know what you say to me.\n\nLOVE: One must wake the Queen well\nwhen her King will come.\n\nSOUL: I am in a holy order,\nI fast, I keep vigil, I am without mortal sin.\nI am sufficiently bound.\n\nLOVE: What avails it that one binds an empty vessel much,\nand yet the wine runs out?\nThen must one fill it with stones of outward labour\nand with ashes of perishability.\n\nSOUL: I dwell in the pleasure of my kin\nand of my dear spiritual friends;\nand how could I delightfully love\nhim whom I do not know?\n\nLOVE: O woe! Can you not know the Lord\nwhom one so often names to you?\nYou are more burdened with your hound-like body\nthan with Jesus, your sweet Lord.\nFor this you win before his eyes no honour.\n\nSOUL: I live my own will,\nthat I gladly carry it out.\n\nLOVE: Would you keep right faith with God,\nthen must you in his love follow his Spirit.\n\nSOUL: I rest in the world of my body.\n\nLOVE: Of that you may today be ashamed before God,\nthat you yet bear a spiritual name,\nand yet go about always with your body.\n\nSOUL: With what should I nourish myself\nif I were to burden myself with you?\n\nLOVE: Ah, faithless one — he who made the soul so noble\nthat she may eat nothing but God,\nhe will not leave her body to waste.\n\nSOUL: You scold me sorely;\ndid I but know where he was,\nI might yet turn round.\n\nLOVE: Would you dwell with him in noble freedom,\nthen must you first leave this dwelling of evil habit.\n\nSOUL: O woe! Many a one of wise teaching does this not,\nnor of natural sense,\nthat they dare lay themselves\ninto the power of the naked love.\n\nLOVE: But the simple, the pure,\nwho in all their doing purely intend God —\ntoward those God must by nature incline.\n\nSOUL: I had thought that when I gave myself to God,\nI had then climbed very high.\n\nLOVE: What avails it that one finely clothes a sleeping man,\nand sets noble food before him while he sleeps,\nwhen he yet cannot eat?\nAh, dear, let him be wakened.\n\nSOUL: Ah, now tell me, where is his dwelling?\n\nLOVE: There is no other Lord\nwho dwells together in all his houses, save only he.\nHe dwells in the peace of holy love-fellowship\nand whispers with his Beloved in the narrow tight-space of the soul.\nHe also embraces her in the noble pleasure of his love.\nHe greets her with his bodily eyes\nwhen the lovers truly behold one another.\nHe kisses her through with his divine mouth.\nAh, well are you — more than well — beyond all lordly stations!\nIf she goes with full strength in the bed of love,\nthen she comes into the highest weal\nand into the most loving woe,\nwhen she becomes his rightful love.\n\nSOUL: Ah dear, now let me love\nand arm yourself not with fierceness.\n\nSOUL: Who are those who arm themselves with fierceness?[^20a]\n\nLOVE: They are those who burden other people and themselves\nwith their wickedness.\nNow I tell you who he is:\nhe is the very highest height,\nand the same highest height has bowed himself\ninto the very lowest valley;\nand this lowest valley\nhas set itself into the very highest height.\nDull soul, look about you, all around,\nand open your blind eyes.\n\nSOUL: If he is from the highest height come down to me, his beloved,\nand has suddenly given himself to me with all creatures —\nyes, would not deny me his goodness —\nthen could I ever be ashamed before his eyes\nif I would give my unpleasing copper for his precious gold.\nO woe, where have I been, I unblessed blind one,\nthat I have lived so long without strong love,\nwith which truly I should have overcome\nall my distress without thanks to my enemies?\nNow though I have, alas, neglected much good,\nyet will I go out from all things into God.\nAh Love, will you yet receive me?\n\nLOVE: Yes, God has refused himself to no one;\nthat is a fair measure.\nIf you would have Love, then must you let love.\n\n### XXIV. How the loving soul joins God and his chosen Beloved, and shall be like to all the saints. How the devil and the soul speak together.[^21]\n\nAh, Lord Jesus Christ, the guiltless pain comforts me,[^22] for I am in all my pains guilty; and your holy death keeps my bow-leaning living[^30] in you, and your unstained blood has flowed through my soul.\n\nMary, dear Mother, I stand by you beside the cross with all my Christian belief, and the sword of holy sorrow cuts through my soul, because so many are changeable who appear spiritual.\n\nJohn the Baptist, I am captured with you, for the unfaithful in their falseness have killed God's word in my mouth.\n\nJohn the Evangelist, I have fallen asleep with you in heart-loving love upon the breasts of Jesus Christ, and from there have I seen and heard such weighty wonders that my body has often come away from itself.\n\nPeter, I have wept with God with you, for to me it is never humanly well, and to me it is often spiritually woeful for the praise of Jesus Christ.\n\nPaul, I have been wondrously caught up with you and have seen such a house that nothing has ever so amazed me — so that ever since then I have been able to be a living person. When I think that the heavenly Father is there the blessed cup-bearer, and Jesus the chalice, the Holy Spirit the pure wine, and how the whole Trinity is the full chalice, and Love the mighty cellarer — God knows, I would gladly that Love had me there at home. But here I yet will gladly drink gall.\n\nAh, dear Jesus, now reward bodily all those who pour out bitterness to me here, for they make me grace-rich. There came to me a chalice with gall, which was so strong that it went through my body and my soul. Then I prayed especially to God for my cup-bearer, that he might pour to him the heavenly wine. Truly he did so, and said: You maiden, take heart. The greatness of my wonder shall come over you; the lions shall fear you, the bears shall hold you safe, the wolves shall flee you. That shall be your companion. I am certain of this, and as it has happened to me until now, that I shall yet drink out many a chalice of gall, for, alas, the devil has yet among spiritual people many a cup-bearer who is so full of poison that they cannot alone drink it; they must bitterly pour it to God's children.\n\nStephen, I kneel by you before the Jewish heart under the sharp stones, for they fall on me both great and small. Those who appear good people stone me from behind, and flee, and would not that I should know it had come to me from them. God yet has seen it.\n\nLawrence, I was with you bound more than twenty years upon a dreadful grill, yet God preserved me unburned, and has now for more than seven years quenched me.\n\nMartin, I dwell with you in the unworthiness, and the true love of God has martyred me beyond all labour.\n\nDominic, dear father of mine, I have a little part with you, for I have desired it many a day.\n\nYet shall my sinful heart-blood flow\nunder the feet of the unbelieving heretics.\n\nCatherine, I go with you to the battle, for the masters of hell would gladly have brought me down. There one came to me, fair, as it were a shine from the sun, that I should know he was an angel. And he brought a shining book and said: Take this *Pater [noster]*,[^21a] since you cannot come to Mass. Then the soul said with well-bred wisdom: He who himself has no peace can give peace to none. Then he went away and was transformed and came back like to a very poor sick mole, whose entrails are coming out, and said: Ah, you are so holy, make me whole. Then the soul said again: He who is himself sick cannot heal anyone. It is written: Whoever is better able shall help the other. It is also written: One shall help no one against God; what one does well is not against God. Where there is no good, no one can do good. You have an eternal sickness; if you would recover, then go and show yourself to a priest, or a bishop, or an archbishop, or the Pope. I have no power but only that I may sin. Then he said with fierceness: That will I never do. Then he became like a black smoke, and showed himself ill-bred and went away. I yet fear him not.\n\nMary Magdalene, I dwell with you in the wilderness, for to me all things are exile, save only God. — Lord, heavenly Father, between you and me passes without ceasing an incomprehensible breath, in which I know and see much wonder and unspeakable things, and yet receive, alas, little benefit; for I am so base a vessel that I cannot endure your least spark. The unbound love dwells in the senses, for it is yet mixed with earthly things; so that a person may cry: In grace love has settled in the senses, and yet has, alas, not climbed the soul. Of such people many have fallen, for their soul remained unwounded. Solomon and David received the Holy Spirit in their human senses; but when the senses changed, then they fell into the false love. God knows, their soul was not sunk into the lowest depth beneath all creatures, nor wounded with the mighty part of love.\n\nHe who has never tasted of the best wine\ngroans most often the loudest.\n\nThe bound love dwells in the soul, and climbs above human senses, and grants the body none of its will. It is well-bred and very still. It lets its wings down and listens to the unspeakable voice, and sees into the incomprehensible light, and labours with great longing after its Lord's will. If the body then beat its wings, the soul may yet bear that no human can ever endure.[^23] In this bound love the wounded soul becomes rich, and her outward senses very poor; for the more wealth God finds in her, the more she from right nobility of love humbles herself deeper. Whatever person becomes thus bound with the ground-stirring of strong love — in such a one I can find no falling into mortal sins, for the soul is bound: she must love. God must bind us all thus!\n\n### XXV. Of the complaint of the loving soul, how God spares her and withholds his gift; of wisdom; how the soul asks God who he is and how he is. Of the garden of joy, of the flowers, and of the song of the maidens.[^24]\n\nO you uncountable treasure in your riches! O you incomprehensible wonder in your manifoldness! O you endless honour in the lordship of your nobility! How woe it then is to me after you, when you would spare me.\n\nThat all creatures could never fully tell you,\nif they must complain on my behalf,\nfor I suffer inhuman distress;\na human death would be far gentler to me.\n\nI seek you with thoughts,\nas a maiden does her hidden Beloved;\nof that I must greatly sicken,\nfor I am bound with you.\n\nThe bond is stronger than I am;\nof this I may not be free from love.\nI call you with great desire\nin an exiled voice.\nI wait for you with heart-pain;\nI may not rest, I burn,\nunextinguished in your hot love.\nI hunt you with all my power.\nHad I a giant's strength,\nyou would be lost to me quickly,\nshould I come truly upon your scent.\n\nAh dear, now run not too long before her,\nand rest a little lovingly\nthat I may grasp you.\n\nAh Lord, as you have taken from me all that I have from you,\nso leave me yet of grace that same gift\nwhich you have by nature given to a dog —\nthat is, that I be faithful to you in my distress\nwithout any cross-vexation;\nthat I desire surely more deeply than your heavenly kingdom.\n\nGOD: Dear dove, now hear me.\nMy divine wisdom is so great over you\nthat I order all my gifts upon you\nas you may bear them on your poor body.\nYour hidden seeking must find me;\nyour heart's sorrow may compel me;\nyour sweet hunting makes me so tired\nthat I desire to cool myself\nin your pure soul,\nwhere I am bound.\nYour sore heart, sighing,\nhas driven my justice from you;\nthis is most fitting for you and for me.\nI may not be one without you.\nHowever widely we are parted,\nwe may yet not be sundered.\nI cannot touch you ever so slightly\nwithout doing immeasurable woe to your body.\nWere I to give myself to you at all times after your desire,\nthen must I do without my sweet lodging\nin the earth in you;\nfor a thousand bodies could not\nfully grant the desire of a single loving soul.\nTherefore: the higher the love, the holier the martyr.\n\nSOUL: O Lord, you spare too much my mire-dungeon,\nwhere I drink the world's water\nand eat with great sorrow\nthe ash-cake of my frailty;\nand I am wounded unto death\nwith the fiery arrow of your love.\nNow you let me, Lord, lie unanointed\nin great torment.\n\nGOD: Dear heart, my Queen,\nhow long will you thus be impatient?\nWhen I have most sorely wounded you,\nthen will I most lovingly anoint you in that same hour.\nThe greatness of my riches is yours alone,\nand over myself you shall be mighty.\nI am lovingly devoted to you;\nhave you the weight, I have the gold.\n\nAll that you have for my sake done, let go, and suffered —\nthat will I all weigh again to you\nand will give myself to you eternally\naccording to all your will, to give.\n\nSOUL: Lord, I will ask you of two things;\nof those instruct me by your grace:\nWhen my eyes mourn in exile\nand my mouth is simply silent\nand my tongue is bound with sorrow\nand my senses ask me from hour to hour\nhow it is with me, then it is with me,\nLord, all according to you;\nand my flesh fails me, my blood dries up,\nmy bones grow cold, my breath grows cramped,\nand my heart melts after your love,\nand my soul burns with the voice of a hungry lion[^25] —\nhow it then is with me, where then you are,\ndearest, that tell me.\n\nGOD: It is to you as to a new bride\nfrom whom her one dear has slipped away while asleep,\nto whom she had inclined herself with all faithfulness,\nand may not bear that he leaves her even one hour.\nWhen she then awakes, she may no longer have him\nthan as much as she can carry in her senses;\nfrom this rises all her lamentation.\n\nWhile the Youth has not given his bride home,\nshe must often be sundered from him.\nI come to you after my delight when I will;\nbe you well-bred and still\nand hide your trouble where you can,\nso that the strength of love increases in you.\nNow I tell you where I then am.\n\nI am in myself in all places and in all things,\nas I was without beginning,\nand I wait for you in the garden of joy,[^26]\nand break for you the flowers of sweet union\nand make there a bed for you\nof the delightful grass of holy knowing,\nand the bright sun of my eternal Godhead\nshines upon you with the hidden wonder of my delight\nof which you have a little secretly seen.\nAnd there I incline to you the highest bough of my holy Trinity,\nso that you may break the green, white, red apples of my gentle manhood,\nand the shadow of my Holy Spirit shields you\nfrom all earthly drying.\nYou can no longer think of your heart-sorrow.\n\nWhen you go around the bough, I teach you the song of the maidens —\nthe wise, the worthy, the sweet sound,\nwhich the ones cannot in themselves understand\nwho are gone through with unchastity;\nthey too shall have sweet exchange.\nDear, now sing now, and let me hear how you can.\n\nSOUL: O woe, my dearest, I am hoarse in the throat of my chastity,\nbut the sugar of your sweet generosity\nhas loosened my throat that I may now sing —\nthus, Lord:\n\nYour blood and mine is one unsullied;\nyour love and mine is one undivided;\nyour garment and mine is one unspotted;\nyour mouth and mine is one un-kissed[^27][^28] (etc.).\n\nThese are the words of the song of love's voice,\nand the sweet heart-sound must remain,\nfor that no earthly hand can write.\n\n### XXVI. Of this book and of the scribe of this book.\n\nI was warned of this book,\nand was told by people thus:\nif one would not keep it watched over,\na fire might run over it.[^25a]\nThen I did as I have done from childhood:\nwhenever I was troubled, I had to pray.\nThen I inclined toward my Beloved and said:\nAh Lord, now am I troubled.\nFor your honour shall I now remain without consolation from you?\nHave you so misled me,\nfor you bade me yourself to write it?\nThen God showed himself at once\nto my sorrowful soul, and held this book in his front hand,\nand said: Dear of mine, do not grieve yourself overmuch.\nThe truth no one may burn.\nHe who would take it from my hand\nmust be stronger than I am.\nThe book is threefold\nand signifies only me.\nThis parchment that surrounds it\nsignifies my pure white righteous manhood\nwhich for you suffered death.\nThe words signify my marvellous Godhead.\nThey flow from hour to hour\ninto your soul out of my divine mouth.\nThe voice of the words signifies my living Spirit\nand fulfils with itself the right truth.\nNow look at all these words,\nhow praiseworthily they make known my secret things,\nand doubt not yourself.\n\nSOUL: Ah Lord, were I a learned spiritual man,\nand had you done these great wonders in him,\nyou might receive eternal honour from him.\nHow shall one now trust you for this,\nthat you have built a golden house\nin the foul mire,\nand dwell there truly within, with your Mother\nand with all creatures\nand with all your heavenly retinue?\nLord, the earthly wisdom I cannot find in this.\n\nGOD: Daughter, many a wise man loses his precious gold\nthrough carelessness on the great highway,\non which he could have gone to high school;\nsomeone must find it.\nI have by nature done this many a day.\nWhen I gave special grace,\nI have ever sought the lowest,\nleast, and most hidden place;\nthe highest mountains cannot receive\nthe revelations of my grace,\nfor the flood of my Holy Spirit\nflows by nature into the valley.\nOne finds many a wise master of Scripture\nwho, in himself, is a fool before my eyes.\nAnd I tell you yet more:\nit is to me great honour over them,\nand strengthens holy Christendom in them very greatly,\nthat the unlearned mouth\nteaches the learned tongues out of my Holy Spirit.\n\nSOUL: Ah, my Lord, I sigh and desire\nand beg for your scribe,\nwho has written this book down after me,\nthat you also will choose the grace to give him in reward\nwhich never has been granted to a person;\nfor, Lord, your gift is a thousand times more\nthan your creatures may take.\n\nThen our Lord said:\nThey have written it with golden letters,\nso shall all these words of the book\non his uppermost garment stand\neternally revealed in my kingdom,\nin heavenly shining gold,\nwritten above all his other adornment.\nFor the free love must ever be the highest thing in a person.\n\nWhile our Lord said these words to me,\nI saw the lordly truth\nin eternal worth.\n\nAh Lord, I beg you that you will keep this book\nfrom the eyes of false fear,\nwhich is come up from hell among us.\nShe was never taken from the heavenly kingdom.\nShe is begotten in Lucifer's heart,\nand is born in spiritual pride,\nand is reared in hatred,\nand has grown so great in violent wrath\nthat she thinks no virtue is her companion.\nThen must God's children go under\nand must let themselves be pressed down with disgrace,\nif they would receive the highest honour with Jesus.\n\nA holy fear\nshould we in ourselves\nat all times bear,\nthat we keep ourselves from falling.\nA loving fear\nshould we have toward our fellow Christians,\nwhen they err, that we faithfully say so;\nthen may we many a useless speech avoid. Amen.\n\n---\n\n*Here ends the second part of this book.*\n\n---\n\n[^1]: Morel's note: \"Greith p. 237.\"\n\n[^2]: This long lyric of the four rays is one of Mechthild's most architecturally developed passages. The structure: from the *crossbow* of the Trinity, four rays of being are shot through the nine angelic choirs into every soul — Godhead-as-light, manhood-as-fellowship, Holy-Spirit-as-flowing-shaping, undivided-God-as-feeding-with-glance-and-breath. Morel's marginal note here reads: \"Mary still lacks the final adornment.\" That marginal gloss — almost certainly Morel's, not Mechthild's — anticipates the next passage.\n\n[^3]: The throne-vision moves into Christ-enthroned. Mechthild's *\"nun manot\"* (now lives / sits) is ambiguous between perfect and present; I render as present.\n\n[^4]: Morel notes: \"MS reads *lit*\" — scribal variant. The sense (lies heavy upon, presses) is preserved.\n\n[^5]: One of Mechthild's most famous lines about her own un-Latined position. The \"dog and the white loaf\" image that follows is hers: a meditation on the simple receptivity that does not depend on schooling.\n\n[^6]: \"Let us all rejoice in the Lord\" — the introit for several Marian feasts and for All Saints (and traditionally for Saint Catherine, who appears below). Mechthild's choice of introit is doctrinally weighted: this is a Mass at which both Mary and Catherine are present.\n\n[^7]: \"The book of the generation\" — the opening words of the gospel for the feast of the Nativity of Mary (Matthew 1:1, the genealogy of Jesus). The choice locates the maid's Mass within Mary's annual cycle.\n\n[^7a]: The Alemannic *vlelvar* in Morel's text is corrupted; the most defensible reading is *vielfar* (many-coloured / manifold-coloured), the standard intermediate hue between white (virgins) and rose (widows) in late-medieval colour-symbolism for the three states. I do not render it \"violet\" because the OCR does not support that specific colour. (Distinct from *vielaten* — violets — earlier in this chapter, which is the flower; the present word describes garments.)\n\n[^8]: The \"she\" of this closing is a third-person reference Mechthild adopts to displace the \"poor maid\" of the vision from herself; the convention of late-medieval visionary literature. The maid is almost certainly Mechthild herself in a self-displacing register.\n\n[^8a]: *Unedele kra* — base / lowly crow. The image's force is the humility-contrast: the maid (the base crow) granted by Mary to stand near the heavenly turtledove (purity / the Virgin / Catherine). My earlier reading \"noble crow\" was the opposite of the source and is here corrected.\n\n[^9]: Morel's note: \"Greith p. 240.\"\n\n[^10]: Morel notes: \"MS reads *din*\" — scribal variant; sense is \"thine\" (yours) rather than \"din\" (thin); both are scribal possibilities. I follow the sense-reading.\n\n[^11]: \"Glory to God in the highest\" — the *Gloria* of the Mass; the opening words of the angelic song at the Nativity (Luke 2:14). The chapter pivots on the contrast between Mechthild's intended self-pity at her own bodily sickness and the cosmic praise into which she instead enters.\n\n[^12]: *Köpfe* — golden drinking-bowls/chalices. The eucharistic register is unmistakable: white wine = consolation, red wine = pain (the Eucharist of suffering and the Eucharist of consolation are both poured by the same hand). This is the foundational *köpf* passage that the glossary anchor in the Book I translator's note refers forward to.\n\n[^13]: Morel's note: \"Greith p. 267.\" Chapter XIX is one of Book II's two theologically densest passages (the other is Chapter XXII on Seraphim). The three-heavens schema — devil's false heaven, senses' partial heaven, true heaven of open love — anticipates later Rhineland-mystic discussions of false illumination (*ingenium falsum*) and the careful distinction between the *light of nature* and the *light of grace*. Saint Paul's third heaven is 2 Corinthians 12:2.\n\n[^13a]: Mechthild's wordplay turns on Paul's pre-conversion name: he was *Saul* before the Damascus road, *Paul* after (Acts 9). The Alemannic preserves both names exactly. The point: it was the *conversion* — the leaving-behind of the old name — that opened the third heaven. The English reader who does not know the Saul/Paul switch loses the structural argument.\n\n[^14]: The opening words quoted are the beginning of Book I, Chapter II (\"The true greeting of God, which comes from the heavenly flood out of the fountain of the flowing Trinity...\"). Mechthild closes Chapter XIX of Book II by echoing the opening of Book I — a structural ring composition that signals the third-heaven content as a return to the foundational vision.\n\n[^15]: Saint Barbara's feast is December 4. The *honour* (German *ere*) of a martyr-virgin is her crown; Sister Hiltegund \"received her honour\" — that is, died (or was acknowledged in heavenly company) — on that feast day. Hiltegund is otherwise unknown; she may be a Beguine companion of Mechthild's at Helfta or earlier at Magdeburg.\n\n[^16]: Mechthild's self-displacing self-description (\"a lame dog who still licks his wounds with sorrow\") is part of the *snödü* / paltry / lowly self-positioning that recurs through the *Flowing Light*. The dog is herself, alive on earth, while Hiltegund has gone into glory.\n\n[^17]: Morel notes: \"MS reads *herren*\" — scribal variant for *heren* (lordly).\n\n[^18]: Morel notes: \"MS reads *kan*\" — scribal variant; sense is *kam* (came), as I have rendered.\n\n[^19]: Morel's text shows a scribal \"(sic)\" at this point — the Alemannic *scheire* is a corrupted form. I render the line by sense.\n\n[^20]: Morel's note: \"MS reads *türe*\" — scribal variant; I follow *tür* (precious, dear).\n\n[^20a]: This question is unattributed in Morel's text at the point where it appears (preceded by a marginal sigil \"X/\"). Mechthild's dialogue elsewhere uses the pattern *Soul asks back, Love expounds* — so the natural reading, which I follow, is that the Soul asks who arms themselves with fierceness, and Love answers in the next line. An earlier draft mis-attributed both lines to Love.\n\n[^21]: Morel's note: \"Greith p. 241.\"\n\n[^22]: Morel's marginal note: \"*An vnsern pinen sind wir schuldig*\" — \"Of our pains we are guilty.\" This is Mechthild's theological frame for the long litany that follows: her sufferings are her own fault, and she addresses each saint as one whose innocent suffering she here joins.\n\n[^21a]: Morel's text has *\"Nime doch das peize\"* followed by a glossarial mark \"(jhxx)\" suggesting an unresolved scribal abbreviation. The most defensible reconstruction in context — the angelic-imposter offers the soul a \"*Pater [noster]*\" since she has missed Mass — fits the late-medieval convention of substituting the Our Father for omitted offices. The bracketed *noster* is my reconstruction.\n\n[^23]: The Alemannic at this point in Morel is somewhat ambiguous; I render the sentence by sense.\n\n[^24]: Morel's note: \"Greith p. 241.\"\n\n[^25]: Mechthild's image of the soul \"burning with the voice of a hungry lion\" is from Hosea 11:10 — *they shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.* The lion-roar of the soul's longing is a standard medieval image of contemplative desire.\n\n[^26]: *Bömgarten* — literally \"tree-garden,\" orchard. The traditional rendering for medieval German mystical literature is \"garden of joy\" or simply \"orchard.\" Mechthild's *bömgarten* is the Eden of restored union; the high bough of the Trinity, with the green-white-red apples of Christ's gentle manhood, descends from the cosmic Tree of Life of Apocalypse 22:2.\n\n[^25a]: Morel's text reads *braut* (bride), which makes no sense in context (\"a bride might run over [the book]\"). The natural scribal emendation is *brant* (fire); a fire running over a manuscript is the visible danger. I follow the emendation; the OCR may also be reading a corrupted *brant*.\n\n[^27]: *vnküst* — \"un-kissed\" (i.e., never pulled apart by another kiss; mouth-to-mouth-only). The Alemannic syntax of this line is condensed and I render it with the *un-* prefix preserved.\n\n[^28]: Parallel reading: MHG *kust* = \"quality, virtue, value\" (the noun built on *kiesen* = to choose, taste); *unkust* = \"vice, vileness, falsity, badness.\" On this privative-quality reading, *ein vnküst* = \"one un-feigned\" / \"one without falseness\" — fitting the parallel series with *vnbewollen* (one unsullied), *vngeteilet* (one undivided), *unbevleket* (one unspotted). Both readings (*küssen* = kiss; *kust* = quality) are in circulation; I keep \"un-kissed\" in the body and register the alternative here.\n\n[^30]: *bAgenisse* (= *biugenisse*, MHG, from the root *biegen* = to bend) names the bent posture of humility / the inclined-life-of-prayer; cognate senses include \"bending, joint, knee\" and figuratively \"inclination, humbling.\" The figure is that Christ's death *keeps alive* the bowed (penitent, inclined-toward-God) life in the soul. \"Bow-leaning living\" is the literal-syntactic rendering; the underlying image is the bowed life of devotional inclination kept in being by the holy death.\n\n[^31]: *phül* / *pfuhl* in MHG = \"pool of stagnant water, puddle, mire.\" Mechthild uses the same root in Ch XXV's *pfüligen kerkers* (\"mire-dungeon,\" line 845). An earlier draft rendered *phül* as \"creature,\" which lost the visceral self-deprecating image of mire / muck and broke the connection to the *pfüligen kerker* register of Ch XXV.\n\n[^32]: MHG *notlich* carries two senses both viable in context: (1) primary \"in distress, pressing, urgent, anguished\"; (2) Mechthild's customary mystical-register use \"noble, exquisite, precious, distinguished.\" I render \"distinguished love\" for Hiltegund's third inner mantle, the secret-in-soul love; the \"anguished/urgent\" reading (inner-fire register) is also defensible.\n\n[^29]: Source Alemannic *Die mine machet hohi in der sele nit vmbe menschlich sine, de kunt von eigem willen*. The *de* (= \"that\") in *de kunt von eigem willen* refers backward to the false-height-pursued-through-self-will, NOT to Love. The chapter body resolves the ambiguity: those who \"with grim, inhuman labours imagine they will scale the heights, and yet bear a fierce heart\" lack holy humility, \"and there false sanctity gladly steals in, where self-will carries the mastery in the heart\" (*da der eigener wille die meisterschaft in dem herzen treit*). An earlier rendering inverted the argument by reading *de kunt von* as predicating self-will of Love; corrected here.\n[^33]: MHG *e* covers both \"law\" and \"marriage / wedlock\" — the same lexeme. *Gottes e* therefore reads as \"God's law\" or \"God's marriage-bond / God's covenant of wedlock\" (the marriage sacrament). I render \"marriage-vow of God\" for this second rank (the married, between the unmarried-repentant and the widows); the dual sense — God's law and God's wedlock — is carried in the one MHG word.",
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