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  "work": {
    "slug": "mechthild-flowing-light",
    "name": "The Flowing Light of the Godhead — Books I-VII (complete)"
  },
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      "slug": "beguine-mystics",
      "name": "Beguine Mystics",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 3,
    "slug": "vol-3-01-flowing-light-book-3",
    "title": "Book III",
    "of": 7,
    "words": 13770,
    "text": "## Book III\n\nThis is the largest of Mechthild's seven books — almost 12,000 words of Middle Low German, with 24 chapters whose centre is Chapter X, the *passio* of the loving soul in thirty parts: Mechthild's most sustained meditation on the soul's mimetic conformity to Christ's passion. Book III also contains: the long cosmological opening (Chapter I, on the nine choirs, Mary's throne above the Seraphim, John the Baptist filling Lucifer's broken-off place, and the unbaptized children); the doctrinally weighted question of whether the Virgin could have sinned (Chapter IV); the creation-of-Adam-and-Eve narrative as a discussion within the Trinity (Chapter IX); the 168 pawnings and the freeing of seventy thousand souls from purgatory (Chapter XV); Mechthild's own claim that her book is illuminated by five prophets — Moses, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Daniel (Chapter XX); and the graphic three-part hell-vision (Chapter XXI), with sixteen categories of damned and Lucifer's garment woven of foulness.\n\nA word on Chapter XXI. Mechthild's hell-vision divides hell into three vertical regions: Christians at the bottom (with the heaviest torments, because they had the most light and rejected it), Jews in the middle, heathens at the top (lightest torments, because they did not have access to the gospel). This is standard high-medieval Christian thinking about post-mortem reward and punishment scaled to revelation; it is not Mechthild's invention. I render the chapter as Mechthild wrote it. The medieval framework is preserved; readers will judge it as they will.\n\nTwo other passages in Chapter XXI deserve advance flagging. The chapter title speaks of *sixteen kinds of damned*, but the body lists fifteen specific categories (the prideful, sodomites, the false-holy, the usurer, the robber, the thief, the unchaste, the unbelieving teachers, the greedy, the murderers, the hateful, the gluttonous, the slothful, the wrathful, the sinful musician); the title-vs-body mismatch is a feature of the Alemannic source, not of the translation, and is footnoted in place. (Chapter XIII has the same title-vs-body sixteen-vs-fifteen mismatch — *sixteenfold love* in the title, fifteen kinds of love in the body — and is footnoted similarly.) The image of Lucifer's *new garment* after the last judgment, woven from \"the dung of all foul sins that ever a person or angel brought into knowing,\" is one of Mechthild's most bodily-grotesque images, and is rendered as such.\n\nThe translator's-note glossary anchors established in Books I and II apply unchanged here. New anchors for Book III: *köpf* extends from Book II's golden chalices to the cup of gall (Chapter XV); *kapfer* (copper) appears in Chapter XXIV in the gold-and-copper contrast (false love is copper that contaminates gold); *bruch* (the breach, the rank-vacancy left by Lucifer's fall) is rendered \"breach\" or \"broken-off place\" throughout Chapter I.\n\nLatin and German liturgical fragments preserved untranslated: *Puer natus est nobis* (Chapter XV, the Christmas-Mass introit), *XXX partes habet* (Chapter X title, retained as Mechthild's Latin self-gloss), *Ave Maria* (Chapter XXI). Marginal scribal notes from Morel's edition (*Gregorius exponit* at Chapter I; two lines from Ovid in a later scribal hand at Chapter III) are footnoted.\n\n---\n\n## This is the third part of this book.\n\n### I. Of the heavenly kingdom, of the nine choirs, who shall fill the breach. Of the throne of the apostles and Saint Mary, where Christ sits. Of the reward of preachers, martyrs, and maidens, and of the unbaptized children.\n\nThe soul said thus to her longing:\nAh, go forth and see where my Beloved is.\nTell him I would love.\n\nThen longing journeyed swiftly hence —\nfor she is by nature swift — and came to the heights and called:\nGreat Lord, open and let me in. Then said the householder: What do you want, that you burn so sorely?\n\nLord, I make known to you,\nmy Lady cannot long live thus;\nwere you to flow, then she might soar,\nfor the fish cannot long live upon the sand\nand remain fresh.\n\nGo back; I will not let you in\nunless you bring me the hungry soul\nwhom I love above all things.\n\nWhen the messenger now returned\nand the soul learned her Lord's will,\nah, how lovingly she received it!\nShe rose up in a gentle drawing\nand in a delightful flight.\n\nThen there came to meet her two angels[^1] swiftly armed, whom God sent her from heart-loving love, and they said to her: Lady Soul, what do you want so far hence? You are yet clothed with the dark earth. Then she said: Ah, lords, hold your peace, and greet me a little better. I would journey to love. The nearer you sink to the earth, the more you hide your sweet heavenly glance; and the higher I climb, the more clearly I shine. Then they took the soul between them and bore her joyously hence.\n\nWhen the soul saw the angels' land,\nwhich is near and known without danger,\nthen was heaven shown her,\nand she stood and her heart melted, and she looked\nupon her Beloved and said:\nLord, when I see you,\nI must praise you in marvellous wisdom.\nWhere am I?\n\nI am come now, lost in you.\nYet I cannot think of the earth,\nnor of any of my heart-sorrow.\nI had purposed, when I should see you,\nto lament much to you from the earth;\nnow your gaze, Lord, has slain me,\nfor you have lifted me wholly above my nobility.\n\nThen she knelt down and thanked him for his grace, and took her crown from her head and set it upon the rose-coloured scars of his feet, and desired this — that she might come close to him. Then he took her under his divine arms, and laid his fatherly hand upon her breasts, and looked upon her face. Mark whether she was there kissed. In that kiss she was raised up into the highest height, above all the choirs of angels.\n\nThe least truth\nthat I have there seen, heard, and known,\nthe highest wisdom that was ever named in this earth\ndoes not equal.\n\nI have there seen unheard-of things, as my confessors say, though I am unlearned in Scripture. Now I fear God if I am silent, and I fear unknowing people if I speak. Most dear people, what can I do, that this happens to me and has often happened? In humble simplicity and in exiled poverty and in pressed-down disgrace, God has shown me his wonders. There I saw the shaping and ordering of God's house, which he himself with his mouth has built. In it he set the dearest, whom he has made with his hands. The shape of the house is called the heaven; the choirs therein are called the kingdom; therefore one says together: *heavenly kingdom*.\n\nThe heavenly kingdom has end in its ordering, but in its being no end shall ever be found. The heaven goes about the choirs, and between the heaven and the bodily choirs are ordered the worldly sinners, ever close to the choirs in height, when they amend and convert themselves. The choirs are so refined and holy and lordly that without chastity and love and the renouncing of all things no one comes into them; for all who fell out of them were holy, and so must those be holy who come in again. All westborn[^2] and children of six years fill the breach[^18] no higher than into the sixth choir. From there up to the Seraphim the maidens shall fill the breach, who defiled themselves with childlike will, though the deed never came to pass, and who cleansed themselves afterward in confession. They cannot, however, recover the loss; they have lost the purity. The purely spiritual maidens shall, after the last day, fill the breach above the Seraphim, where Lucifer and his nearest were cast out from.\n\nLucifer at one time committed three mortal sins — hatred, pride, and greed — which struck the choir so swiftly into the eternal abyss that one might pronounce *Alleluia*. Then the whole kingdom shook, and all the pillars of the heavenly kingdom trembled. Then certain of the others fell. That exile is still empty and unoccupied; no one is in it. And it is so pure in itself, and plays in bliss to God's honour. Above the exile is God's throne vaulted with the divine power in blossoming, shining, fiery clarity, and goes down to meet the heaven from the Cherubim, so that God's throne and the heaven are one lordly house; and there the exile and the nine choirs are enclosed within.\n\nAbove God's throne there is no more than God, God, God — immeasurable great God. High in the throne one sees the mirror of the Godhead, the image of the manhood, the light of the Holy Spirit; and one knows how the three are one God, and how they join in one. More I cannot speak of this.\n\nLucifer's breach shall John the Baptist fill, and his honour he shall possess in the sweet exile above the Seraphim, and all the purely spiritual maidens with him, who are still kept for the exile. At the throne of our Lady Saint Mary no breach is to be filled, for she has with her Child healed all human wounds — those who themselves grant grace, that they would and could keep it. Her Son is God, and she is goddess;[^3] no one can equal her. The apostles dwell next-to nearest to God in the throne and have the exile from the Seraphim as their reward, after the purity they bore. John the Baptist is also a prince in the throne. The angels dwell no higher than in the Seraphim. Above that all humans must be. The holy martyrs and God's preachers and the spiritual lovers come into the choirs, although they are not maidens. Yes, they come into the Cherubim with honour.\n\nThere have I seen, unsought, the preachers' reward\nas it shall yet happen.\nTheir stools are wondrous;\ntheir reward is singular.\n\nThe foremost stools are two burning lights,\nwhich signify love and the holy image and the faithful preaching.\nThe arm-rest of the stools is so soft, free,\nand in delightful rest so sweet\nthat more than one can say\nit answers the strong obedience to which they here were subject.\n\nTheir feet are adorned with manifold\nprecious gems, so fair\nthat I should truly rejoice\nwere so lordly a crown given to me.\nThat have they been given in return for their labour,\nwhich here lies at their feet.\n\nO preachers, how reluctantly you now move your tongues, and how grudgingly you bend your ears to the sinner's mouth!\n\nI have seen before God that in the heavenly kingdom it shall happen that a breath shall shine out of your mouth, which shall rise out of the choirs before the throne and shall praise the heavenly Father for the wisdom which he laid upon your tongue, and shall magnify the Son for his honoured fellowship — for he himself was a preacher — and shall thank the Holy Spirit for his grace, for he is a master of all gifts. Then God's preachers and the holy martyrs and the loving maidens shall raise themselves up, for to them the greatest honour is given in singular garment, in bodily song, and in marvellous chaplets which they bear to God's honour.\n\nThe maidens' garment is white as lilies.\nThe preachers' garment is fiery sun-bright.\nThe martyrs' garment is shining rose-red,\nfor they suffered with Jesus the bloody death.\nThe maidens' chaplet is of many colours.\nThe martyrs' crown is greatly manifest.\nThe preachers' chaplet is wholly of flowers — these are the words of God, by which they came into the great honour.\n\nThus go these three blessed throngs in the play before the holy Trinity in a sweet round-dance.\n\nThen there flows out to them, against them, out from God,\na threefold playful flood\nwhich fulfils their mood,\nthat they sing the truth\nwith joys without labour,\nas God has laid upon them.\n\nThus sing the preachers: O chosen Lord, we have followed your mild goodness in willing poverty, and have herded into the fold your senseless sheep, which your hired shepherds let go out of the rightful way.\n\nThus sing the martyrs: Lord, your guiltless blood has fulfilled our death, that we are companions of your martyrdom.\n\nThe blessed who now soar in heaven and live there so blissfully are all wrapped in one light, and are flowed through with one love, and are united in one will. Yet they have not the worth which the honoured stools bear. They rest in God's power and flow into the bliss and hold themselves in God's drawing as the air in the sun — but after the last day, when God will have his evening meal, they shall set stools for the brides to meet their Bridegroom, and love shall come to love, body to soul, and possess then the full lordship in the eternal honour.\n\nO you delightful Lamb and lovely Youth, Jesus, child of the heavenly Father — when you raise yourself up and pass through all the choirs and beckon lovingly to the maidens, they follow you praiseworthily into the most lordly place, of which I cannot speak. How they then play with you and consume your love-delight in themselves — that is so heavenly a sweetness and so lordly a unity that I know no like to it. The widows shall also follow in lordly delight, and in sweet beholding shall be content in the highest, since they must look upon how the Lamb joins to the maidens. The married couples shall also look lovingly upon each other, as far as their nobility allows it. For the more one sates oneself here with earthly things, the more we must do without the heavenly bliss there.\n\nThe choirs all have a singular shining in their glow,\nand the heaven has its own.\nThe shining is so rare and lordly\nthat I neither must nor may write it.\nTo the choirs and to the heaven much worth is given by God;\nyet I can say a little word of each.\nIt is no more than as much\nas a bee may bear of honey\non its foot out of a full hive.\n\nIn the first choir is delightfulness,\nthe highest that they have of all the gifts.\nIn the second choir, gentleness.\nIn the third choir, lovingness.\nIn the fourth, sweetness; in the fifth, joyfulness.\nIn the sixth, noble fragrance.\nIn the seventh is richness.\nIn the eighth, worth.\nIn the ninth, the burning of love.\nIn the sweet exile is pure holiness.\n\nThe highest in the throne is mighty honour,\nand the strong lordship.\nThe highest over all that was ever in heaven\nis the marvelling.\nThe highest there is, is that they may behold\nwhat now is and ever shall be.\n\nAh, the lordly cathedral,[^14] and the sweet eternity, and the mighty looking-through of all things, and the singular secret which between God and each soul without ceasing passes! It lies in such lordly tenderness that, had I the wisdom of all humans and the voice of all angels, I could not bring it forth!\n\nThe unbaptized children under five years dwell in a singular worth which God has prepared for them out of his kingdom.\n\nThey are not in their shape\ngrown of thirty years,\nfor they were not Christian with Christ.\nThey have no crowns;\nGod can give them nothing as reward.\nHe has yet given them his goodness,\nthat they live in great comfort.\nThe highest they have\nis the fulness of grace. They sing thus:\n*We praise him who has made us,\nalthough we have never seen him.\nMight we suffer pain, then would we ever complain;\nno, we shall hold ourselves well.*\n\nNow certain people may marvel how I, sinful person, can bear it that I write such speech. I tell you in truth: had God seven years ago not taken hold of my heart with a singular gift, I would still be silent and would never have done it. Now from God's goodness it has never been any harm to me; that comes from the mirror of my open wickedness, which stands rightly open against my soul, and from the nobility of grace, which lies in the rightful gift of God.\n\nYet the higher the soul is climbed, the more must the body in words and bearing receive less praise. One should not lament the body's trouble before your eyes either, for it is by nature a coward. One must hold it as an old pensioner who can no longer serve at court, so one gives him alms only for the love of God. This is truly profitable, for: the nobler the dog, the firmer the collar.\n\nNow, dear Lord, this speech will I commend to your mild goodness, and beg, dearest of mine, with a sighing heart and weeping eyes and exiled soul, that no Pharisee may ever read it; and I beg you, dear Lord, more — that your children may receive this speech as you, Lord, in the rightful truth have given it out.\n\n### II. How the soul praises God in seven things, and God awaits her with the salve.\n\nO sweet Jesus, fairest form unhidden in distress and in love for my exiled soul, I praise you with that same love, in distress and in love, with the fellowship of all creatures. This delights me above all things. Lord, you are the sun of all eyes, you are the joy of all ears, you are the voice of all words, you are the strength of all uprightness, you are the teaching of all wisdom, you are the love in all living, you are the ordering of all being.\n\nThere God praised the loving soul praiseworthily, and it delighted him sweetly thus: You are a light before my eyes, you are a lyre before my ears, you are a voice in my words, you are a meaning in my uprightness, you are an honour in my wisdom, you are a love in my living, you are a praise in my being.\n\nLord, you are love-sick at all times after me,\nthat you have shown well in yourself.\nYou have written me in your book of the Godhead,\nyou have painted me on your loving manhood,\nyou have engraved me on your side,\non your hands and on your feet.\nAh, allow me, dearest one,\nto anoint you.\n\"Yes, where would you take the salve, dear-heart?\"\nLord, I would tear my soul's heart in two\nand would lay you therein;\nthen no balm could you give me so lovely\nas without ceasing\nto soar in your soul.\nLord, if you would take me home with you,\nthen would I ever be your physician.[^4]\n\"Yes, I will. Yet my faithfulness bids you wait,\nmy love bids you labour,\nmy patience bids you keep silence,\nmy distress bids you suffer poverty,\nmy disgrace bids you bear,\nmy longing bids you lament distress,\nmy victory bids you go forth in all the virtues,\nmy end bids you bear much.[^5]\nOf this you have honour, when I unload your great burden.\"\n\n### III. A lament that the soul is a maiden, and of God's love.\n\nSOUL: O Lord, what a poor soul she is, and exiled, who in this earth is a maiden of your love! Ah, who will help me lament how woe it is to her — for she does not herself know what she lacks, what it is.\n\nLOVE: Lady Bride, you speak in love's book to your body that it should flee from you.[^5a] Inform me carefully, Lady, how this has come to you. For I would rather die, could that happen to me, in pure love, than to bid God depart from me in dark wisdom. When I would lordly play with my Beloved, no wisdom need teach me any distinction. But when I labour in other things with my five senses, I would gladly that she should bring me the holy Mass. Hear me, dear playmate.[^6] I was joyfully drunken in love; therefore I spoke tenderly of him. But when I become over-drunken, I cannot think of my Beloved, for love watches over me — what she will, that must be, and what God consoles himself with, that I venture; for if he takes my body from me, the soul is his.\n\nWill you go with me into the wine-cellar?\nThen must you have great cost.\nHave you a thousand marks' worth,\nthat you have spent in one hour.\n\nIf you will drink the wine unmixed, then you spend ever more than you have, and the host cannot pour you full. Then you become poor and naked and despised by all those who would rather rejoice in the puddle than spend their treasure in the high wine-cellar.\n\nYou must also suffer this,\nthat they envy you,\nwho go with you into the wine-cellar.\nO, how often they will despise you,\nbecause they dare not bear so great a cost;\nthey will have water mixed with the wine.\n\nDear Lady Bride, in the tavern I would gladly\nspend all that I have\nand let myself be drawn through the coals of love\nand beaten with the brands of disgrace,\nthat I may often go into the blessed wine-cellar.\nHere I will gladly choose, for I cannot lose at love.\nTherefore he who torments and despises me — he pours me of the host's wine that he himself has drunk.\n\nOf the wine I become so drunken\nthat I become truly attached to all creatures.\nThat seems to me, after my human ignobility\nand after my acquired wickedness,\nthat no human has so evilly done against me\nthat he should commit any sin against me, wretched.\nTherefore I may not work my injury upon my enemy.\nYet I know well, they can break God's commandment also in me.\n\nDear playmate, when it happens that one opens the wine-cellar, then must you go in the street hungry, poor, naked, and so despised that you have nothing left of the food of Christian living but the faith. If you can then love, you will never perish.\n\nLady Bride, I have a hunger for the heavenly Father.\nBy it I forget all sorrow.\nAnd I have a thirst for his Son\nwhich takes from me all earthly delight.\nAnd I have of both their spirits such a distress\nwhich passes above the Father's wisdom\nthat I may grasp,\nand above the Son's labour\nthat I may endure,\nand above the Holy Spirit's comfort\nthat may happen to me.\n\nWhoever is captured by this distress\nmust be hung eternally, unfreed,\nin God's bliss.\n\n### IV. How our Lady Saint Mary could have sinned and could not — the Holy Spirit teaches this.\n\nMary, lordly empress, God's mother and my Lady, I was asked by you whether you could have sinned like other humans, when you were on this sinful earth. Now the Holy Spirit has informed me — who knows, Lady, all your secret — that you could have sinned, for you were a fully made human from God, in all womanly nature and in all maidenly shape, and you were not lame in your nature. This makes the chastity that you long kept before God noble and precious.\n\nBut Lady, noble goddess above all pure humans, you also could not have sinned. That you had not from yourself, for the heavenly Father shielded your childhood with the foresight of his old choosing; and the Holy Spirit bound your youth with the fulness of his new love; and Jesus passed through your body as the dew through the flower, so that your chastity was never touched. And the strength of the holy Trinity had so pressed in upon your nature that it durst not nor could move humanly before its Creator. And the eternal Wisdom of the almighty Godhead had given you, Lady, a shadow, in which you kept your human life, that you might suffer pain without sin, and that your blossoming manhood in the sun of the mighty Godhead might not vanish. In the shadow you bore Jesus humanly and raised him motherly. But, Lady, in the Father's message and in the Holy Spirit's conceiving and in the Son's word — Lady, the fire of the Godhead and the light of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the Son were so great in you that you could little feel the shadow. God knows, Lady, after that you had to cool yourself in exile with poverty, with discomfort, and with many a heart-heaviness. Yet you remained in your heart, in good works, greatly fiery from the fire that burns without kindling and without help, in itself. That has, Lady, shone through your walls, and has driven all darkness out of your house.\n\n### V. How the soul laments that she hears neither Mass nor the hours, and how God praises her in ten things.\n\nThus an exiled soul lamented, when God had cast her from his lordly love and loved her with great pain. O woe, how grievously a rich man can suffer when after lordly riches he is shown into great poverty! And she said: Ah Lord, now I am very poor in my sick body and very exiled in my poor soul. So, Lord, in spiritual ordering, no one reads your hours before me, nor does anyone serve your holy office of the Mass before me.\n\nThen spoke the loving mouth\nwhich has wholly wounded my soul,\nwith his great words —\nwhich I never worthily heard, like this:\nYou are my longing, a sweet wonder of mine.\nYou are a sweet cooling of my breast.\nYou are a strong kiss of my mouth.\nYou are a joyful joy of my finding.\nI am in you and you are in me.\nWe can be no nearer,\nfor we two have flowed into one\nand are poured into one form;\nso we shall remain eternally unwearied.\n\nAh, dear one, why do you speak to me so near? Indeed, I dare never joyfully think of these words while the dead hound, my body, stinks without ceasing with sorrow next to me, and my other enemies burn so constantly next to me. And, Lord, I do not know in my senses how it shall go at my end. Yet in your gaze alone I know nothing of grief; so have you, Lord, taken me from myself, and have stolen yourself into me. What you have promised me must come to pass, and must yet come to your praise.\n\nThus our Lord answered:\nMy deep reaching, my wide journeying,\nmy high longing, my long waiting —\nI must yet teach you:\nThe noble maidens cost their breeding much.\nThey must constrain themselves in all their members,\nand must often tremble before their breeding-mistress.\n\nSo is it given to my brides on earth in their body. I was on earth wholly enclosed for love of you with distress, and my enemies grimly bore my death before my eyes in their hands, and I suffered in shame much poverty. Over that I trusted my Father with uncountable goodness. By this you shall direct your mood.\n\n### VI. If you would rightly follow God, you must have seven things.\n\nWhoever would follow God in faithful labour must not stand still; he should journey often. He should think what he was in sin and how he is now in the virtues, and what he may yet become in falling. He should lament and praise and pray night and day. When the faithful bride awakens, she thinks of her Beloved; if she cannot have him then, it goes to a weeping. Ah, how often this happens to God's brides spiritually.\n\n### VII. Of seven open enemies of our blessedness, who make seven harms.\n\nUselessness is in us a very harmful habit, and evil habit harms us also in all places, and earthly greed extinguishes in us the holy word of God, and the evil strife of self-will works in us many a harmful murder, and enmity of the heart drives the Holy Spirit out of us, and wrathful mind takes God's secrecy from us, and the false holiness can never stand, and the pure love of God can vanish from no one. If we will not avoid these enemies, they will take from us more than the heavenly kingdom; for there is a pre-heavenly kingdom that we live here secretly. If we grant these enemies their cunning and their power over us, they will rob us of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they will extinguish in us the true light of true love of God. They will also bind our eyes — the eyes of holy knowing — and lead us blinded into the seven mortal sins. Where then goes the road, but into the eternal abyss?\n\n### VIII. Of seven things that all priests should have.\n\nThe heavenly Father has told me seven things that every priest of God should have at himself, and said: They should be guiltless in themselves, and the vessel shall be perfect. Is there any doubt of this, then one should leave it and not do it. They should lay all fear from them, and shall forget the Jewish law, and shall eat my Lamb alive, and shall drink his blood sighing — then may they rightly think of his great suffering. But if he is guilty in himself, then my children eat the bread of heaven and Judas journeys to hell. And if the vessel which belongs to the Mass is not perfect, then God's table stands empty and the children's food is taken from them. But if they come at the altar into the distress of their body, it is better that they pour their own blood than mine.\n\n### IX. Of the beginning of all things which God has created.\n\nAh Father of all goodness, I, unworthy M.,[^7] thank you for all faithfulness, that you have drawn me with it out of myself into the wonder. So, Lord, that I have in your whole Trinity heard and seen the high council which before our time has happened, when you, Lord, were enclosed in yourself alone, and your uncountable bliss was shared with no one.\n\nThen the three Persons shone so beautifully into one\nthat each shone through the others,\nand yet was wholly in one.\n\nThe Father was adorned in himself in manly mind of almightiness, and the Son was equal to the Father in uncountable wisdom, and the Holy Spirit equal in both in full generosity. Then the Holy Spirit played the Father a play with great generosity, and struck up the holy Trinity, and said to him: Lord dear Father, I will give you out of yourself a mild counsel, and we will not longer be unfruitful. We will have a created kingdom, and you shall form the angels after me, that they are one spirit with me, and the other shall be the H. (human).\n\nFor, dear Father, this is called joy alone,\nthat one be in great mindful regard[^19]\nand in uncountable bliss before your eyes esteemed.\n\nThen said the Father: You are one spirit with me, that you counsel and will; that pleases me. When the angel was made, you know well how it happened. Were the angel's fall avoided, the human[^7a] had to be made anyway. The Holy Spirit shared with the angels his generosity, that they should serve us and rejoice in all our blessedness. Then the eternal Son spoke with great breeding: Dear Father, my nature should also bring forth fruit. Now we will begin wonders, and we will form the H. after me, although I foresee great sorrow; I must yet love the H. eternally. Then said the Father: Son, a mighty delight stirs me also in my divine breast, and I sing wholly of love. We will become fruitful, that one may love us again and that one may know our great honour a little. I will make for myself a bride who shall greet me with her mouth and wound me with her gazing; then first it shall go to a loving.\n\nThen the Holy Spirit said to the Father: Yes, dear Father, the bride will I bring to bed for you. Then said the Son: O Father, I shall yet die of love, you know it well; yet we shall in great holiness joyfully begin these things. Then the holy Trinity inclined itself to the shaping of all things, and made us body and soul in uncountable love. Adam and Eve were formed and noble-natured after the eternal Son, who without beginning is born from his Father. Then the Son shared with Adam his heavenly wisdom and his earthly power,\n\nso that he had in perfect love\ntrue knowing and holy senses\nand might command all earthly creatures.\nThat is now to us very precious.\n\nThen God gave to Adam from heart-loving love a well-bred, noble, dainty maiden, who was Eve, and shared with her his loving wedded breeding, which he himself bears to his Father's honour. Their bodies should be pure, for God created in them no shameful members; and they were clothed with angelic garment. Their children they should win in holy love, as the sun shining-playful into the water and yet the water unbroken remains. But when they ate the forbidden food, then they became shamefully shaped in body, as still shows in us. Had the holy Trinity created us thus angelic, we could never be ashamed of his noble nature in his shaping.\n\nThe heavenly Father shared with the soul his divine love and said: I am God of all gods, you are goddess of all creatures, and I give you my hand-troth that I never reject you. If you will not lose yourself, then my angels shall serve you without end. I will give you my Holy Spirit as a chamberlain, that you may unknowingly fall into no mortal sin, and I give you free choice. Love above all loves, now look about you carefully.\n\nYou shall keep a small commandment,\nthat you may think that I am your God.\nThe soul — the very pure food\nwhich God had promised them in paradise —\nthat should in great holiness with their bodies remain.\nBut when they ate the unpleasing food\nwhich did not fit their pure bodies —\nwhen they had eaten —\nthey were so full of the poison\nthat they lost the angels' purity\nand forgot their maidenly chastity.\n\nThen the soul cried in great darkness many a year for her Beloved with exiled voice, and called:\n\nAh Lord, Beloved, where is your over-sweet love gone?\nHow sorely have you cast off your noble Queen![^15]\n*(This is the prophets' meaning.)*\nGreat Lord, how can you bear this long distress\nthat you do not kill our death!\nYou will yet be born.\nBut, Lord, all your deed\nis yet perfect, as is also your wrath.\n\nThen a high counsel arose again in the holy Trinity.\nThen said the eternal Father: My labour grieves me,\nfor I had to my holy Trinity\ngiven so praiseworthy a bride\nthat the highest angels should be her servant-men.\nYes, were Lucifer also remained in his honour,\nshe should have been his goddess.\nFor to her alone was the bride-bed given.\nNow she would no longer be equal to me.\nNow she is mis-shaped and ghastly-formed.\nWho should take this foulness into himself?\n\nThen the eternal Son knelt before his Father and said: Dear Father, that will I be — if you will give me your blessing. I will gladly take to me the bloody manhood, and I will anoint the H.'s wounds with the blood of my innocence, and will bind all human suffering with a cloth of exiled disgrace until my end; and I will repay you, dear Father, the H.'s guilt with human death. Then said the Holy Spirit to the Father: O almighty God, we will have a fair procession, and will with great honour journey unmingled from this height down. I am yet Mary's chamberlain before now. — Then the Father inclined himself in great love to their united will, and said to the Holy Spirit: You shall bear my light before my dear Son into all the hearts which he with my words shall move; and Son, you shall take up your cross. I will journey with you all your ways, and I will give you a pure maiden as a mother, that you may bear the ignoble manhood the more lordly. Then the fair procession went with great joys down into the temple of Solomon, where the almighty God would for nine months be lodged.\n\n### X. Of the passion of the loving soul which she has from God; how she rises and journeys into heaven. *Vere XXX partes habet.*[^8]\n\nIn true love the loving soul is betrayed, in sighing after God. She is sold in holy sorrow after his love. She is sought with the throng of manifold tears after her dear Lord, whom she would have so gladly. She is captured in the first knowing, when God kisses her with sweet union. She is gripped with many a holy thought of how she shall slay her flesh that she does not waver. She is bound with the power of the Holy Spirit, and her bliss is very manifold. She is slapped with great weakness, that she cannot enjoy the eternal light without ceasing. She is brought before judgment in trembling shame, because God of her sin-spots is so often estranged from her. She also answers all things holily and cannot bear that she should occupy herself wickedly with anyone. She is struck on the ear before judgment, when the devils spiritually assail her. She is sent to Herod, when she knows herself worthless and unworthy and despises herself with the great lords of all her thoughts. To Pilate she is given back, when she must care for earthly things. She is cried out against, struck with great pain, when she must turn to her body. She is unclothed with the purple of fair love. She is sweetly crowned with manifold faithfulness, when she desires that God should never reward her of all her trouble — no, only to the highest of his praise. She is mocked with holy vanity, when she so far in God forgets that she loses earthly wisdom. Then one kneels for her in great disgrace, when she lays herself in the little humility under all creatures' feet. Her eyes are bound with her body's ignobility, for she lies so sorely captured in her darkness. She bears her cross on a sweet way, when she truly gives herself to God in all pains.\n\nHer head is struck with a reed,\nwhen one likens her great holiness to a fool's.\nShe is so fast nailed on the cross with the hammer of strong love's pour\nthat all creatures cannot draw her away again.\nShe also thirsts greatly on the cross of love,\nfor she would gladly drink the pure wine of all God's children.\n\nThen come they all together\nand pour out to her the gall.\nHer body is killed\nin the living love,\nwhen her spirit is raised\nabove all human senses.\n\nAfter this death she journeys to hell with her power and comforts the sorrowful souls with her prayer out of God's goodness, without her body's knowing. She is pierced by a blind one[^20] of innocent love through her side with a sweet spear; there flows out of her heart many a holy teaching.\n\nShe hangs also high in the sweet air of the Holy Spirit, against the eternal sun of the living Godhead on the cross of high love, which becomes utterly dry of all earthly things. So she is then taken in a holy ending from her cross. Then she says: Father, receive my spirit. Now it is all fulfilled. She is laid in a closed grave of deep humility, when she ever holds herself the unworthiest among all creatures. She rises again on an Easter day, when she with her Beloved has had in the lordly bride-bed a sweet love-lament. Then her young Lord consoles her in the morning with Mary, when she receives from God the true certainty that God has consumed all her sin in the contrition of love. She comes to her disciples again with closed doors, when her five senses so often denied the holy God-teaching. So she goes out from Jerusalem of holy Christendom with many a virtuous throng. Then the body becomes troubled, which with all its being according to all its ignobility would gladly take all its will. Then she says: I am your master, you should follow me and obey in all things. Did I not journey to my Father, you would remain like fools. She also journeys into the heaven, when in holy transformation God takes from her all earthly things. She is received in a white cloud of holy shielding, when she journeys lovingly and joyously returns without any trouble. Then come the angels back and comfort the men of Galilee, when we think on God's chosen friends and on their holy image. This martyrdom suffers every soul who in holy tempering of all her doing is truly flowed through with true love of God.\n\n### XI. Between God and the loving soul all things are beautiful.\n\nWhen the loving soul looks in the eternal mirror, she says: Lord, between you and me all things are beautiful; and between the devil and his bride, the damned soul, all things are horrible and so ghastly that when she thinks on the loving Jesus she trembles, and all her hell-pain is renewed.\n\n### XII. You shall praise, thank, desire, and pray. Of the lantern and the light.\n\nAh, dear Lord, how poor I was when I could not think on all these words, nor pray, nor love. Then I cried to you with my exiled senses and said thus: Ah, dear Lord, with what shall I now honour you? Then you said to the unworthiest whom you have ever made: You shall praise me for my faithful shielding. You shall thank me for my mild gifts. You shall desire my holy wonder. You shall pray for a good end.\n\nThen the soul asked with noble words: Most dear, what wonder shall I desire? This I must from now on write weeping. May God help me, lowliest of people, that I remain with Jesus. — Then my Beloved said: I will set the light upon the lantern, and on all the eyes that look on the light a singular ray shall shine into the eye of their knowing from the light. Then the soul asked with great submission, without fear: Most dear, how shall the lantern be? Then our Lord said: I am the light, and your breast is the lantern.\n\n### XIII. Of sixteenfold love.[^12a]\n\nThe mild love from holy mercy\ndrives out empty honour and the wicked weakness.\n\nThe true love from divine wisdom\nbrings sufficiency and drives out the unpraiseworthy greed.\n\nHumble love from holy simplicity\nalone conquers pride\nand brings the soul with power\ninto holy true knowledge.\n\nThe steady love from good customs\ncan not exercise any falseness.\n\nThe great love from bold deed\nknows in all things good counsel.\n\nThe experiencing love from God's secrecy\nblinds this earth without labour.\n\nThe bound love from holy custom\nrests never and yet lives in itself without labour.\n\nThe longing love from great overflow\nlies wholly still and to her all things are bitter save God alone.\n\nThe crying love from noble impatience\nis never silent and has blessedly forgotten all guilt.\n\nThe tongue-of-love from God's teaching\nbows herself gladly to a child.\n\nThe fair love from high power —\nthe soul becomes hungry, and the body becomes old.\n\nThe lovely love from open gift\nextinguishes the sour heart's lament.\n\nThe hidden love bears precious treasure\nof good will in holy deed.\n\nThe clear love from playing flood\ngives the soul sweet distress;\nshe also kills her without death.\n\nThe fierce love from over-power —\nthat is the one no one can bear.\n\n### XIV. Of two false virtues; whoever dwells in them lives by lies.\n\nI have a master, that is the Holy Spirit, who teaches me very gently what I will, and the rest he keeps for me. Now he speaks thus:\n\nWisdom without the founding of the Holy Spirit\nbecomes at last a mountain of high mood.\n\nThe peace without the bond of the Holy Spirit\nbecomes very soon an empty raving.\n\nHumility without the fire of love\nbecomes at last a manifest falseness.\n\nThe justice without the depth of God's humility —\nthat becomes in its place a horrible hatred.\n\nPoverty with steady greed —\nthat is in itself a sinful excess.\n\nThe horrid fear with true guilt\nbrings dreadful impatience.\n\nFair bearing with wolf's senses —\nthe wise know it quickly.\n\nHoly longing of whole truth\nhappens to no one without labour.\n\nDivine living without strife\nturns to useless things, much bearing.[^9]\n\nThe presumptuous virtue without God's gift\nbecomes silenced with the high mood.\n\nFair promise without faithful deed —\nthat is falseness and the devil's counsel.\n\nGood comfort without true certainty\nof the soul and of the Holy Spirit's deed —\nthat becomes at the last end an unjoyful death.\n\nGreat patience without the inclining of the heart in God —\nthat is a hidden guilt;\nfor all who in all things\ndo not hang on God's truth\nmust fall from the eternal God\nwith great shame.\n\nThe love without the mother of humility\nand without the father of holy fear —\nthat is, before all virtues, orphaned.[^9a]\n\n### XV. With eight virtues you shall go to God's table. With the 168 pawnings a person frees seventy thousand souls from the dreadful purgatory, which is manifold.\n\nYou very foolish beguines, how brazen you are that you do not tremble before our almighty Judge when you so often receive God's body with a blind habit! Now, I am the least among you; I must be ashamed, blaze, and tremble. On a high feast I was so abashed that I dared not receive him, because in my best clothing[^21] I was disgusted before his eyes. Then I prayed my very dear that he would show me his honour in this. Then he said: Truly, if you go before me with humble sorrow and with holy fear, then must I follow you as the high flood of the deep mills. But if you come toward me with the blossoming longing of flowing love, then must I taste of you and touch you with my divine nature as my one queen. I must reveal myself, if I would truly bring forth God's goodness. That truly hindered me no more than a hot oven would be hindered when one would shove it full of white loaves. Then I went to God's table in a noble throng. They watched over me very faithfully and yet held me in great peril. Truth drew me, fear scolded me, shame scourged me, contrition condemned me, longing pulled me, love led me, the Christian faith shielded me, the true meaning prepared me to all good things, and all my good works waved weapons over me. The mighty God received me, his pure manhood united itself with me, his Holy Spirit comforted me.\n\nThen I said: Lord, now you are mine, for you are given to me today, and also at the place where one says: *Puer natus est nobis*.[^10] Now I desire, Lord, your praise and not your profit, such that today your lordly body may come to the poor souls as comfort. You are truly mine; now, Lord, you shall be today the captives' pawning.\n\nThen she gained so great power that she led him with her strength, and they came to so horrible a place as my eye ever saw — so hideous, a bath made and mixed of fire and pitch, of slime, smoke, and stench. A thick dark mist passed over it like a black hide drawn over. There lay the souls within like toads in the mud. Their shape was like humans'; they were yet spirits and had the devil's likeness in them. They boiled and roasted together. They cried, and had countless sorrow over their flesh which had so deeply made them fall. The flesh had blinded their spirit; for that they most cooked. Then said the human's spirit: Lord, how many are these poor ones? You are my true pawning; you must yet have mercy. Then said our Lord: They are without number, and you cannot grasp their number, while your flesh shall have an earthly part with you. They have all been broken vessels, and have on earth forgotten spiritual life. They are of all lives and from all lands.\n\nThen the merciful spirit asked: Ah, dear Lord, where are the recluses? I see none of them here. Then our Lord answered: Their sins were secret; now they are in this depth alone with the devils, bound. Then the human's soul grieved very greatly, and laid herself on her dear Lord's arms and desired powerfully, labouring lovingly, and said: Most dear, you know well what I desire. Then said our Lord: You have brought me with rightness; I shall not leave them unrelieved.\n\nThere stood about her a very great throng of devils, who tended them in the unblessed bath. These were also beyond my counting, who rubbed them and washed them[^16] and devoured them and gnawed them and beat them with fiery scourges. Then the human's spirit said to them: Hear, you sin-devourers,[^24] look at the pawning — is it not so precious that it suffices you? Then they all shook in horrible shame, and said: Yes, now they journey from here. How miserable we are! We must acknowledge the truth to you. Then our Lord gave a sweet wish to the poor souls out of his divine heart. Then they rose out with great joys and love. Then the strange soul said: Ah dear Lord, where shall they now turn? Then he said: I will bring them to a flowering mountain, where they shall find more bliss than I can speak of. Then our Lord served them and was their chamberlain and their dear companion. Then our Lord told me that they were seventy thousand. Then the soul asked, how long had their pain been. Then our Lord said: For thirty years they came not to their bodies, and ten years they should yet be in pain, were not so noble a pawning given for them. The devils fled, they dared not take it. Most dear, said the soul again, how long shall they be here? Then our Lord answered and said: As long as it seems good to us.\n\n### XVI. After the gift follows the scourge, and after the disgrace, honour.\n\nThis soul reminds our Lord of his old words thus: Lord, you have said that there is no gift upon this earth that has not a scourge upon it. That have you said to me before with your own mouth, and have fulfilled it to me at many an hour. You said to me also more than six years ago that spiritual people would still despise me greatly. They do so now diligently, and have often done so wickedly. Is this, Lord, the wonder that I should desire? Then our Lord answered me and said: My Father gave me the power of his truth and gave me the knowledge of his holiness, and after that he gave me very much disgrace. But after that he gave me great honour and uncountable worth. So will I give you my holy Trinity.\n\n### XVII. Of a spiritual person's purgatory, of his fivefold help out of the pain, and of the nobility of the Preaching Order.\n\nIn pain I have also seen a spiritual man;\nof whom I had a good opinion during his life.\nI prayed three months for his soul\nwith heart-loving pain,\nthat it might never happen to me\nthat I should see his distress\nuntil evening on the last day.\n\nWhen he gave up his spirit, he was quickly shown to me in my prayer that I made for the poor souls. I saw him alone, and he could not show me his pain. He was of pale colour in a white mist. Then I asked: Alas, why are you not in heaven? Then he answered with hidden words in contrite shame, and he read a book all weeping, and all the words seemed bright; that smoked above him, and besides all the books which he had ever read. Then he said: I was much too dear to the world in thought, words, and bearing. Two dragons lay at his feet, who sucked from him all the comfort he should have received from holy Christendom against the sickly[^11] obedience — that he without necessity wished to go after his own will and not after his prelate's teaching. I asked him: Where are your enemies who often torment you? Then he answered: Out of the nobility of my Order, no devil could ever touch me. I had a great battle in my body, and I had a will to a thing which, had it been fulfilled, would have been very useless. Therefore God did not let me live longer. I burn in myself; my own will must torment me. Then I asked: Alas, tell me, with what can one help you? Then he said: Whoever for me a year, every day, makes a hundred genuflections and twelve disciplines and many tears with a contrite heart out of pure eyes — that should be my penance and would be. Masses should also be read. Ah, tell maidens and priests that they will pray for me. The end of my pain will I not tell you, for I do not want to grieve my brothers with it. Now go from me. Then he took the devil's likeness on himself and burned and became silent toward me.\n\n### XVIII. Of the knight's battle with full weapons against desire.\n\nI prayed for a person, as I was asked, that God would take from him the body's stirring, which yet happens without sin, when evil will does not bring it about. Then our Lord said: Be silent. Would it please you that you were a knight with full weapons and of noble craft and with true man-power and with nimble hands, that he was free and neglected his Lord's honour and forfeited the rich pay and the noble peal of praise — both, that the Lord and the knight in the lands should hold? But where there were an untried man who never came from foulness to battle, who would go into princes' tournaments — his life would soon be taken from him. Therefore must I spare the people who so easily come to falling. Those I let strive with the children, that they may win a flower-chaplet as reward.\n\n### XIX. Of two kinds of poor people: the lovingly poor and the painfully poor.\n\nI have seen two kinds of poor people. The one are lovingly poor and ever have anxiety that they may have too much of this poor earth. The others are without their thanks very painfully poor, and they run ever about and have great anxiety that they may not have enough of this poor earth. To this our Lord answers and says: The painfully poor stand in my justice, for, had they many earthly things, they would not love me back lovingly nor holily know me; therefore must I gain them with the hardest. To the lovingly poor I give more than they dare desire, for I cannot suffer the dust on them — that they should burden themselves too much with earthly things. And I desire that their heart ever stand open toward me, and that without hindrance and without ceasing I may shine and gleam through them.\n\n### XX. Of five prophets who illuminate this book.\n\nOur Lord has promised me that he will illumine this book with five lights: Moses' great secrecy and his holy labour and singular disgrace which he bore without guilt, and his lordly signs, and his sweet teaching, and the chosen love-speech which he often made to the eternal God on the high mountain. That shall all be one light, and God has given and will give it to me, that through it I may go without guilty shame in the shielding of all my enemies' wicked cunning, and may soar lovingly. As Moses did with his friends through the Red Sea. And Pharaoh and his friends,\n\nthey shall not follow us too far.\nO woe, how they are drowned in this sea!\nAh, have mercy, dear Lord,\nthat our enemies are converted!\n\nKing David is in this book the second light with the Psalter, in which he teaches us and laments, asks, admonishes, and praises God.\n\nSolomon's words shine and his works do not, for he himself is darkened, in the book *Canticles*, where the bride is so drunkenly bold-found, and the Bridegroom speaks to her so very lordly: *You are all fair, my friend, and there is no spot in you.*\n\nJeremiah shines also his part, when he speaks of our Lady's secrecy.\n\nFor God had told me thus,\nthat he had pure chastity,\nthe heights of love, and that he suffered the martyrdom\nin Christian faith,\nfor whom he never saw with his fleshly eyes.[^17]\n\nDaniel shines also in marvellous wisdom that God of grace gave him among all his enemies the food in soul and in body. Just so has it happened to me, unworthy, in my distresses.\n\nMy enemies have a little seen of this\nand cannot bear it;\ntherefore they give me many a pain.\n\n### XXI. Of hell, how it has three parts. How Lucifer and sixteen kinds of people are tormented. There is no help for them. Of Lucifer's garment.[^12b]\n\nI have seen a city —\nits name is *the eternal hatred*.\nIt is built in the lowest abyss\nof manifold stones of the mortal sins.\nPride was the first stone,\nas on Lucifer well showed.\n\nDisobedience, evil greed, overeating, unchastity — these were four stones very heavy, which our father Adam first sent there.\n\nWrath, falseness, and manslaughter —\nthese three stones Cain brought.\n\nLying, betrayal, despair,\nwho make themselves bodiless[^12] —\nwith these four stones, the poor Judas also murdered himself.\n\nThe sin of Sodom and false holiness —\nthese are the lordly corner-stones\nwhich on the work are laid.\n\nThis city is built many a year.\nWoe to all who send their help there!\nThe more they send there henceforth,\nwhen they themselves come after, they shall\nbe received with the greater harm.\n\nThe city is so inverted, that ever the highest are ordered into the lowest and ignoblest place. Lucifer sits in the lowest abyss with his guilt bound, and from him flow without ceasing out of his fiery heart and out of his mouth all the sins, pain, sickness, and shame in which hell, purgatory, and this earth are so miserably caught.\n\nIn the lowest part of hell the fire and the darkness and stench and freezing and all kinds of pain are greatest, and there the Christian people are ordered according to their works. In the middle part all kinds of pain are more moderate. There the Jews are ordered according to their works. In the uppermost part of hell all kinds of pain are least, and there the heathen are ordered according to their works.\n\nThe heathen lament thus:\nAlas, had we had a law,\nwe would not eternally have this horrible woe!\n\nThe Jews lament also thus:\nAlas, had we followed God in Moses' teaching,\nwe would not be damned so sorely!\n\nThe Christians lament still more\nthat they have lost the great honour\nthrough self-will\nwhich Christ with great love had chosen for them.\n\nLucifer they look upon without ceasing in great sorrow,\nand must openly with all their guilt naked go before him.\nO woe, how shamefully they will be received by him!\nHe greets them horribly and speaks bitterly:\n\"You cursed with me,\nwhat joys did you seek here?[^13]\nYou never heard anything good said of me;\nhow then could you please yourselves so well?\"\n\nSo he grasps the prideful first and presses them under his tail and speaks thus: I am not so sunk that I would not still have power over you. All the sodomites journey through his throat and dwell in his belly. When he draws his old breath, then they journey into his belly; but when he coughs, they journey out again. The false holy he sets in his lap and kisses them very horribly and says: You are my companions. I was also dressed in fair falseness; thence are you all deceived. The usurer he gnaws without ceasing, and reproaches him that he was never merciful. The robber he robs himself, and commits him then to his fellows that they may hunt him and beat him and have no mercy on him. The thief hangs by his feet and is in hell a lantern-vessel; the wretched yet do not see the better for it. Those who here have been unchaste with each other must lie bound before Lucifer in such fashion; but if anyone comes there alone, then the devil is his companion.\n\nThe unbelieving masters sit before Lucifer's feet, that they may rightly look upon their unclean god. He also disputes with them, that they must be put to shame. The greedy he devours, for he ever wanted to have more. When he has swallowed him then, he eats him through his tail. The murderers must stand bloody before him and must receive fiery sword-strokes from the devil. Those who here practice fierce hatred — they must there be his bath-vessel,[^22] and hang ever before his nose. Those who here practice gluttony and over-drinking so diligently must with eternal hunger stand before Lucifer and eat glowing stones. Their drink is sulphur and pitch. There is all sour given for sweet again, we see what we here practice. The slothful is there with all pains laden. The wrathful is there beaten with fiery scourges. The very poor minstrel, who with high mood can make sinful vanity, weeps in hell more tears than all the water that is in the sea.\n\nI saw under Lucifer the bottom of hell — that is a hard black flint stone, which shall bear the work for ever and ever. Although hell has neither bottom nor end, yet it has in its ordering both depth and end.\n\nHow hell burns and rages in itself, and how the devils strike together with the souls, and how they boil and roast, and how they swim and wade in the stench and the mire, and in the worms and in the slime, and how they bathe in sulphur and pitch — that they themselves, nor any creature, can ever fully speak. When I from God's grace without labour had seen this distress, I, poor one, was so woe from the stench and from the unearthly heat that I could not sit nor walk, and was for three days without power over all my five senses, like a person whom the thunder has struck. My soul yet suffered no distress there, for she had not brought the sickness with her which is called *the eternal death*. Yet were it possible that a pure soul were therein, it would be to her an eternal light and a great comfort. For the guiltless soul must by nature ever shine and gleam, for she is born out of the eternal light without pain. But if she takes on herself the devil's likeness, then she loses her fair light.\n\nWhether to the eternal hell from prayer,\nfrom alms, the damned can come a single comfort,\nthat have I not heard,\nfor they are steadily in such fierce mood\nthat they shudder at all good.\n\nAfter the last day, Lucifer\nshall put on a new garment\nthat has grown in itself\nout of the dung of all foul sins\nthat ever a person or angel brought into knowing,\nfor he is the first vessel of all sin.\n\nThen he shall be unbound,\nand yet his fierceness and his frightfulness\nin all souls and in all devils are so mingled\nthat one nowhere misses his presence.\n\nHe shall then at hours yawn himself so great, and his snout shall be so wide for him, that with one breath of his breathing he swallows in the devils, Jews, and heathens. Yet they have their full reward in his belly, and their singular feast-day. Woe then to soul and body! That a human mouth cannot speak of this! That is all nothing against the uncountable distress that there happens to them. For truly, I cannot bear it that I think on it as long as one can pronounce *Ave Maria*. O woe, so horrible is it there!\n\nHell has a head above which is so monstrous and has in it many a horrible eye, from which the flames break forth, and that catch all the poor souls who dwell in the *outer fortress*,[^23] where God took Adam and our other fathers from. That is now the greatest purgatory into which a sinner can come. There have I seen bishops, regents, and great lords in long distress with uncountable suffering. All who come there — God has hardly taken the eternal hell from them, for I have found no one there who at his end ever spoke a pure confession with his fleshly mouth. When the outer senses were taken from them by the nature of death, the body lay still; even then soul and body had one will. Then they had lost the earthly darkness; then God gave them in the school-purgatory knowledge. Alas, how narrow is there the way to the heavenly kingdom! Then the fellowship of body and soul still spoke thus, undivided: True God, have mercy on me, my sins are truly sorrowful to me. That is a short hour, in which God has secretly found again many an openly lost soul. I have not found that this ever happened to a person who had not done some good with good will. The devils carry the defiled souls from the body to purgatory, for the pure angels cannot touch them, while in a clarity they do not shine equal to them.\n\nA soul can yet on earth have help from friends, that the devils preserve them well, that the devils ever drive at them. Is she greatly guilty, she must yet have other pain; that she may all the better bear, than when she would be captured by the devils and without ceasing held in mockery.\n\nWhen our holy fathers journeyed to hell — what they brought with them was true hope in Christian faith with holy God-love and many a humble virtue and faithful labour. All journeyed to hell, yet they were ready for the heavenly kingdom; nothing could afflict them in hell that they brought with them — that must burn there. That was love, which shall eternally burn in all God's children.\n\nThey came not yet to the heavenly kingdom.\nThis has God so measured:\nwhat we with us bear hence,\nthat we must there drink and eat.\nBut the neglecters who with such great sins\nnow unconverted journey from here,\nthey cannot have it without being damned to evil.\nThere before hell's mouth,\nwhere at all hours\nLucifer's breath strikes out with all pain\nand goes through them so miserably,\nthe poor are so sorely united\nin the flame and in the manifold fierceness\nas the very blessed are united\nin the sweet known God-love.\n\nI saw there of women no more than the high princesses, who here all kinds of sin alike with the princes loved.\n\nHell has also above on its head a mouth.\nIt stands open at all hours.\nAll who come into this mouth,\nfrom them the eternal death is never taken.\n\n### XXII. I have heard of God's mercy, of his temptation and his justice.\n\nI have heard and seen so immeasurable a mercy from God that I said: Lord, how can this happen?\n\nYet your justice is your mercy's companion;\nhow is your goodness so great?\n\nThen our Lord spoke a very faithful word thus:\nI tell you by my divine faithfulness\nthat more are there in holy Christendom\nwho from the mouth journey to the heavenly kingdom\nthan they who journey into the eternal hell.\n\nJustice yet has steadily her power.\nWhat with guilt is gone before her,\nthat is from me never taken from her.\nI will at first as a Father come to the burdened soul.\nHave I ever heard anything good undoubted of her,\nthat comes from the great temptation\nwhich I have toward my children.\n\nThen said the soul: Ah, most dear, would you tell me your temptation, that your delight and my longing may agree?\n\nThen our Lord said:\nNow hear how I am tempted.\nMy goodness and my generosity, my faithfulness and my mercy\ncompel me so sorely that I let them flow\nover the mountains of pride and over the valleys of humility\nand over the bushes of distance\nand over the simple ways of purity.\n\nAnd yet more strongly does my goodness compel me\nthan the evil person's ill-temper does him.\nAnd yet greater is my justice\nthan all the devils' wickedness.\n\nThen said the soul:\nLord, your justice fits you so right well in the living truth\nthat she gives me uncountable joy without heart-sorrow.\nWherever she also strikes,\nyet truth rejoices.\n\n### XXIII. The strength of longing takes away words. God cannot do without maidens. To embrace God's countenance and overcome his desire — a thousand deaths.\n\nWhoever burns in the mighty fire of love cannot bear that he should cool himself with sins anywhere lightly. Ah, dear one, when shall it delight you of that of which I delight? Thus an exiled soul spoke, and the dear one answered her and said as if he did not know what she would. Of what does it delight you? Then she said: Lord, the strength of longing has taken from me the voice of words. Then he said: The maidens cannot well woo, for their shame is by nature noble. Then she lamented: O woe, Lord! You are yet too long strange to me. Could I, Lord, win you with sorcery so that you could not rest but with me — ah, then would it go to a loving; then would you bid me journey out with senses. Then he answered and said thus:\n\nO you unstained dove,\nnow grant me this, that I must spare you;\nthis earth cannot yet do without you.\n\nThen she said: Ah Lord,\nmight it happen to me at one hour\nthat I might gaze on you after my heart's wish\nand embrace you with my arms,\nyour divine love-delights\nmust pass through my soul,\nas far as that can yet happen in a person on earth!\nWhat I would suffer after that\nwas never seen by human eyes;\nyes, a thousand deaths were as nothing.\nI am, Lord, so woe after you;\nnow I will stand in faithfulness.\nCan you, Lord, bear it,\nlet me long sorrowfully go after you.\nI know well: you, Lord, must yet\nhave the first delight after me.\n\n### XXIV. Two kinds of people are commanded two kinds of spirit. From God and from the devil. Of sevenfold love.\n\nNow I will write to you of a true spiritual sister and of a worldly Beguine, who speak together thus. The spiritual sister speaks from the true light of the Holy Spirit without heart-sorrow; but the worldly Beguine speaks from her flesh with Lucifer's spirit, in horrible labour. Two kinds of spiritual people are upon this earth; to them is born two kinds of spirit. God offers his Holy Spirit to the pure spirits who here live in faithful holy meaning of all their being. There come two pure natures together; that is called the fire of the Godhead and the flowing wax of the loving soul. Is there then a pure wick of steady humility, then there becomes a fair light from which one can see far away. O loving soul, then you become so rich that no one can impoverish you; even if you are poorest. From humility one becomes rich, from well-bred good customs one becomes noble and well-born, from love one becomes fair and praiseworthy, from disgrace one becomes very high in God raised. Of this think, spiritual sister, and let no one drive you from your good customs; so may you remain holy.\n\nThe devil also offers his spirit to the spirits\nwho with hatred and high-minded greed\nare ready to the worst.\nThey know not where love bears all goodness;\nthey become so poor from wicked hatred and from the devil's grip\nthat it were impossible\nthat they should ever find or follow God's love.\n\nThe faithful love has to God a steady praise.\nThe longing love does to pure hearts many a sweet distress.\nThe seeking love is for itself alone.\nThe known love gives itself to all creatures in common.\nThe shining love is yet mingled with sorrow.\nThe silent love enjoys without labour;\nO what she works in stillness, that the body does not know!\nThe pure love is in God alone still,\nfor they have both one will,\nand there is no creature so noble that she may hinder it.\n\nThis has Knowing written out of the eternal book.\nGold is often spotted with copper very sorely;\nso does the falseness and the empty honour;\nthis destroys all virtues from the human's soul.\n\nThe ignoble soul to whom transient things are so dear\nthat of love she never trembled,\nand to whom God never spoke lovingly within her —\nO woe, to her all this life is night.\n\n---\n\n*Here ends the third part of this book.*\n\n---\n\n[^1]: Mechthild's two-angel-escort is a stock visionary topos (cf. Tobias 5; Apocalypse 22:8) and signals that the soul is journeying in vision, not in body.\n\n[^2]: Morel's marginal note: *Gregorius exponit* (\"Gregory expounds\"). *Westborn* (in Morel *westbaren*) is obscure; possibly a corruption of *westwart-baren* (those born toward the west — i.e., outside the Christian east-facing baptism). I render it as *westborn* with footnote rather than guess.\n\n[^3]: *Si … göttinne* — Mary as *goddess*. Mechthild's Marian register is one of the highest in medieval German mysticism; the title is preserved as written, not softened.\n\n[^4]: *Din arfedine* — *arzedin* / *arzedine* is \"physician.\" The soul's offer to be God's physician inverts the standard Christ-as-physician topos.\n\n[^5]: The *my X bids you Y* litany is Mechthild's most condensed instance of the bridal-suffering pattern; the parallelism is preserved.\n\n[^5a]: From this point through to the end of the chapter, Morel's source has a single explicit speaker tag (*Mifie:* / Love) at the opening and no further internal tags. The remaining speeches shift between Love and the Bride/Soul on rhetorical-context grounds; the rendering here marks the major shifts visible in the source but leaves the long inner-monologue passages as Love-speech where the source does not interpose a new tag. Other reasonable speaker-assignments are possible.\n\n[^6]: *Liep gespile* — dear playmate, dear fellow-player. The Alemannic marginal note here records two unattributed Latin verses from Ovid (per Morel's edition), added by a later scribal hand and not part of the main text; I do not reproduce them, since they are not Mechthild's.\n\n[^7]: Morel's text reads *M.* — Mechthild's own initial. The convention of self-naming by initial is common in late-medieval women's mystical literature.\n\n[^7a]: In Morel's text the abbreviation *M.* recurs later in this chapter standing for *Mensch* (human / humanity), gloss in parens. The single letter *M.* therefore performs two distinct functions within roughly thirty lines: Mechthild's self-reference (footnote 7), and the abbreviation for *the human being* (here). I expand the abbreviation to *human* in the body to avoid ambiguity.\n\n[^8]: \"Truly, it has thirty parts.\" Mechthild's Latin self-gloss on the chapter title; I count out the thirty parts in the body. The chapter is one of Mechthild's most sustained mystical-mimetic readings of Christ's passion as the structure of the soul's journey.\n\n[^9]: Morel: \"*tragen*\" (bearing); MS reads *träge* (slothful, sluggish). The sense reading prefers *tragen* as the right contextual completion of *vil tragen* (\"much bearing\"); I follow Morel's emendation.\n\n[^9a]: *Verweiset* — orphaned (cf. *Waise* = orphan). Mechthild's image grounds the verse: love is the child of the mother *humility* and the father *holy fear*; love without those parents is *orphaned* before all virtues. An earlier draft rendered this \"abandoned,\" which loses the parent-child conceit; corrected to \"orphaned.\"\n\n[^12a]: The chapter title says *sixteenfold love* (*sehszehenhande mine*), but the body lists fifteen kinds of love. The title-vs-body mismatch is a feature of the Alemannic source as preserved in MS Einsiedeln 277, not of the translation; whether the original Middle Low German had a sixteenth verse subsequently lost in the Alemannic recension, or whether the title-count is itself stylized, cannot be settled from the surviving text.\n\n[^12b]: As in Chapter XIII (footnote 12a above), the title here says *sixteen kinds of damned* but the body lists fifteen specific categories. The discrepancy is in the Alemannic source. Mechthild's catalogue may have originally included an additional category (e.g., a second-class of unchaste) that dropped in the Alemannic recension; the translation does not invent a sixteenth.\n\n[^10]: \"A child is born unto us\" — Isaiah 9:6 in the Vulgate, the introit of the third (day) Mass of Christmas. Mechthild's choice locates the eucharistic vision within the Christmas liturgy.\n\n[^11]: Morel: \"*siaranken*\" — *sicranken*, *siech-kranken* — \"sickly-weakly,\" the corrupted obedience of the spiritual man.\n\n[^12]: *Liblos* — \"bodiless,\" i.e., suicide. Morel's text reads *liebkos*; the correct reading is *liblos*. Judas hanged himself (Matthew 27:5), the canonical model.\n\n[^13]: Morel: \"*hie*\" — here. The double meaning (\"on this earth\") is preserved.\n[^14]: Alemannic *erliche tüme* — MHG *tuom* (cognate with modern German *Dom*, \"cathedral\"; English *doom*, \"judgment / glory\"). The sense is \"lordly cathedral / sovereignty / glory\" — *not* a bridal-bedroom image. An earlier rendering (\"bridegroom-tabernacle\") collapsed the architectural-sovereignty register onto the prior bride-bed imagery; corrected here.\n[^15]: Alemannic *verkebset* — a technical marital-law verb: \"to demote one's wife to the position of a concubine by replacement.\" Sharper than \"forsaken\"; the soul-as-Queen has been dishonored through substitution, not merely abandoned. Theologically loaded in the post-Fall lament.\n[^16]: Alemannic *twügen / twahen* — \"to wash\" (cognate with OE *þwēan*). The image is an ironic baptismal inversion: the devils ritually *wash* the souls in the foul bath of pitch and filth. An earlier rendering (\"twisted\") misread *twügen* as *twangen* / *twingen*; the baptismal-inversion register is restored here.\n[^17]: The Alemannic pronouns here are masculine (*er*, *sinen*). The subject is Jeremiah, named in the immediately preceding sentence — not Mary. Mechthild's image is Jeremiah-as-Christian-prophet-by-anticipation, suffering martyrdom in faith for the Christ he never saw in the flesh — the same typological logic by which she canonizes Moses and David elsewhere in this chapter as illuminators of her (Christian) book.\n\n[^18]: Morel's text reads *fallen den bruch* here, where the parallel sentences in the same passage read *erfallen den bruch* (\"fill the breach\"). I follow the parallel sense and render \"fill the breach\" uniformly; the MS verb-shift is likely a scribal slip in the Alemannic recension. The image throughout is the post-Fall replenishing of the angelic ranks left vacant by Lucifer's expulsion.\n\n[^19]: MHG *meine* / *gemeinen* in mystical idiom denotes mindful-regard / being-thought-of / being-borne-in-loving-intent — a relational-cognitive term, not the modern English \"meaning.\" The cognate verb *gemeint* in the next line (rendered \"esteemed\") tracks the same sense. Across Books I-II this is a recurring anchor: to be *gemeint* of God is to be held in his loving thought.\n\n[^20]: *Einem blinden* — Longinus, the centurion of the Christ-piercing tradition (John 19:34, refracted through the apocryphal *Acta Pilati* and the *Legenda aurea*), held in medieval tradition to have been blind at the moment of the spear-thrust and to have received sight from the blood and water that flowed from the wound. The image is transposed onto the soul: she is pierced by an innocent-loving blind one, and from her own wounded heart flows holy teaching — as the blood and water flowed from Christ's side.\n\n[^21]: *Frorn* is OCR-uncertain in Morel; the underlying word is not a recognized MHG form. Likely candidates: *vrum* (\"piety / virtue / soundness\" — \"in my best piety I was disgusted [with myself]\") or *frowen* (\"woman / womanhood\" — \"in my best womanhood...\"); a third possibility is corruption for *cleidern* (\"clothing\"), which is the rendering I follow. The \"best piety / best womanhood\" readings sit more naturally in context (one is not normally disgusted by one's own best clothes); the OCR is the constraint.\n\n[^22]: *Trisemvas* is corrupt in Morel; no clear MHG root yields the form. The best guess is a vessel for spittle (*triesen* = to drool / spit), fitting the \"hangs before his nose\" image and the \"fierce hatred\" association; *trisor-vas* (treasure-vessel, ironic) and a general hateful-burden-vessel are also possibilities. \"Bath-vessel\" is the conjectural rendering I follow; \"spittoon\" is also defensible.\n\n[^23]: *Verbürg* — literally \"fore-castle\" / \"outer fortress\"; the medieval German term for the *limbus patrum*, the Limbo of the Fathers: the outermost region of hell where the Old Testament patriarchs (Adam, Abraham, etc.) and prophets awaited Christ's *descensus*. Christ liberated them at the Harrowing of Hell (1 Pet 3:19; Apostles' Creed *descendit ad inferos*).\n\n[^24]: Morel queries the reading: *sündenfresse* (sin-devourers — *fressen* = to devour bestially) or *sündenfreise* (sin-terrors — *freise* = terror, horror). Both are coherent in context (the devils as either devourers or terrors). I render \"sin-devourers\" as the more vivid of the two; either reading is defensible.",
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