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  "work": {
    "slug": "mechthild-flowing-light",
    "name": "The Flowing Light of the Godhead — Books I-VII (complete)"
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      "name": "Beguine Mystics",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 7,
    "slug": "vol-7-01-flowing-light-book-7",
    "title": "Book VII",
    "of": 7,
    "words": 22026,
    "text": "## Book VII\n\nThe closing book of the *Flowing Light*. Sixty-five chapters composed at Helfta in Mechthild's old age (she entered the Helfta convent c. 1270 and died there c. 1282), addressing the convent of nuns who became her audience and her copyists. Heavy chapters: I (the long apocalyptic crown of Christ with three arches, gathering all classes of saints into one final image); II (Mechthild's all-souls-day vision and the rescue of countless souls from purgatory); XVIII (Mechthild's commendation of the seven canonical hours to Christ's passion); XXXVI (the allegorical \"spiritual cloister\" with virtues as officials — Abbess Love, Prioress Holy Peace, etc.); XXXVII (the eternal high-time of the Trinity at the end of time, with the white-clothed maidens dancing before Christ); LVII (the twofold paradise where Enoch and Elijah still live in earthly-but-shielded form). Mechthild speaks of her physical decline in old age (Ch III), dictates prayers and devotional exercises for her sisters, and closes the book with messenger-chapters where she sends Gabriel to Christ on her behalf. Latin liturgical fragments preserved with footnotes; Books I-VI glossary anchors hold unchanged.\n\n*Editorial conventions.* Speaker tags in capitals (e.g., **OUR LORD:**, **THE SOUL:**) are added by the translator for clarity where Morel's source has only the inline Alemannic form (*Vnser herre*, *Die seh*) without dialog-style formatting; the all-caps tags are not in the manuscript. Square brackets `[…]` mark words supplied by the translator where the source is corrupt, lacunose, or grammatically inverted; corresponding footnotes flag the substantive cases. Italicized Latin fragments are preserved as Morel prints them; their translations are footnoted at first occurrence.\n\n---\n\n## This is the seventh part.\n\n### I. Of the crown and worth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he after the last day shall receive.\n\nOur Lord the heavenly Father has still kept in his divine wisdom many an unspeakable gift, with which after the last day he will adorn his chosen children, namely his only-begotten Son Jesus our Redeemer. For him the heavenly Father has prepared a crown made and adorned with such great, lordly, manifold works, that all the masters who ever were and now are and ever shall be could not fully write the brightness and the manifold bliss of the crown. The crown was seen with spiritual eyes of the loving soul in the eternal eternity, and her shaping was known. What is that, eternity? That is the uncreated wisdom of the endless Godhead, which has neither beginning nor end. The crown has three arches: the first arch of the crown were the patriarchs, the second the prophets, the third the holy Christendom. The crown is formed and adorned with the presence of all the blessed who on the last day shall possess God's kingdom. They shall yet hold their worth in orderly fashion according to their works.\n\nThe first arch of the crown is wrought and lit up with the precious stones of all the holy inwardness and good works which the patriarchs ever fulfilled. The arch is also formed with human image, soul and body. The first image on the arch of the crown is Saint Stephen and all the martyrs formed with him, who ever in Christian belief their blood have poured; beside this Saint Peter and all God's apostles also formed with him. Beside them all the blessed who have followed the apostles' teaching. The married people shall also on the arch be formed with their children, who with good works have followed God.\n\nThe second arch of the crown is formed with all popes and all spiritual fathers with him, to whom God has committed his sheep. The arch is wrought with all spiritual power and is adorned with Christian teaching.\n\nThe third arch of the crown is most beautifully formed with the noble manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and beside him his lordly mother Mary with all her maidens who shall follow the Lamb. Saint John the Baptist is there beside the Lamb very near, and all the blessed who under his hands became Christians. The arch of the crown is wrought with the shaping of all creatures, according to the love and the meaning of the creator, which he had to that purpose, when he created all things according to his will. **The crown is everywhere blossomed with many a knightly shield of the holy strong Christian faith.** The kingdom shall also stand on the crown formed, wrought and adorned unto the last commoner, ever according as they are worthy that they have served God. The crown shall also be adorned at Antichrist's time with many a lordly image — like Elijah and Enoch and many a holy martyr before them, adorned with the holiness of their life and consecrated with their faithful blood. The crown shall also be coloured with the Lamb's blood and lit up and gilded with the mighty love which broke Jesus' sweet heart within.\n\nThis crown has our heavenly Father created, Jesus Christ has earned it, the Holy Spirit has wrought and forged it in the fiery love, and so fittingly made it with the noble art of the holy Trinity, that it fits our Redeemer Jesus Christ so well and so lordly stands, that the heavenly Father receives more joys from his only-begotten Son. That must be. Although the eternal Godhead without beginning has all bliss and joy in itself, and now has and ever shall have, yet it does him singularly eternally well that he shall so joyfully look upon the eternal Son with all his followers. When Jesus Christ has done his last judgment, and his evening-meal has served and held, then shall he this crown from his heavenly Father in great honour receive, and with him all who with body and with soul to the eternal high-time come with labour. So shall every soul and body see their worth on the crown.\n\nThe crown is wrought on earth at precious cost, not with silver nor with gold nor with precious stone, but with human labour, with human tears, sweat and blood, with all virtues and finally with the painful death. The angels are not seen on the crown, because they are not humans; but they must with blissful song praise God at the crown. The first choir sings thus: We praise you, Lord, for your married law, from which all these have come who are formed on your crown. The second choir: We praise you, Lord, with the belief of Abraham and with the hot longing and prophecy of all the prophets. The third choir: We praise you, Lord, with the wisdom and merit of all your apostles. The fourth choir: We praise you, Lord, with the blood and with the patience of all your martyrs. The fifth choir: We praise you, Lord, for the holy prayer and Christian teaching of all the Baptists and all the confessors. The sixth choir: We praise you, Lord, with the contrition and steadfastness of your widows. The seventh choir: We praise you, Lord, with the chastity of all maidens. The eighth choir: We praise you, Lord, with the fruit of your mother and Maiden. The ninth choir: We praise you, Lord, for your holy death and for your lordly life after your death, and for your great outflow of all gifts and all goodness, with which you, Lord, have raised us and praiseworthily ordered. We praise you, Lord, with your fiery love, with which you have united us.\n\nAbove on the crown soars the very fairest banner that was ever in this kingdom seen. That is the holy cross, where Christ his death has suffered. The cross has four ends. The lowest end is adorned with bliss, brighter than the sun. At the front end under the cross soar upright the pillars, coloured with the Lamb's blood, adorned with the nails by which our Lord was wounded. Above on the tree of the cross soars the most beautiful imperial thorn-crown of the kingdom.\n\nThe thorns are blossomed,\nlily-white, rose-coloured,\nblissful, heaven-clear.\n\nThis is the banner of the crown, with which Jesus Christ won the victory and came alive back to his Father. At once after the last day in the eternal high-time, when God has made all things new, this crown is manifested and soars upon the head of the manhood of our Lord, to the holy Trinity's honour and praise and to all the blessed's joy ever more.\n\nThe manhood of our Lord is a graspable image of my eternal Godhead. So that we can grasp the Godhead with the manhood, enjoy alike the holy Trinity, embrace and kiss and the ungraspable Godhead surround, which neither heavenly kingdom nor earth, hell nor purgatory ever can grasp nor withstand.\n\nThe eternal Godhead shines\nand lights up, and makes love-delightful\nall the blessed who are present to him,\nthat they rejoice without labour\nand praise ever without heart-sorrow.\nThe manhood of our Lord greets,\ngladdens and loves without ceasing\nhis flesh and his blood.\nAlthough flesh and blood are now not [here],\nyet the brotherly kinship is so great\nthat he must his human nature\nsingularly love.\nThe Holy Spirit also gives out\nhis loving heaven-flood\nwith which he pours to the blessed\nand so fully drenches them\nthat they with joys sing,\ntenderly laugh and leap\nin well-bred fashion, and flow and swim;\nthey fly and climb\nfrom choir to choir and through the kingdom's heights.\nThere they see in the mirror of eternity\nand know the will and the works of the holy Trinity;\nand how they themselves are formed in body\nand in soul, as they shall ever remain.\n\nThe soul is in the body formed like to a person,\nand has the divine shining in her,\nand shines through the body\nas the shining gold through the clear crystal.\n\nSo they become so glad and so free,\nswift, mighty and love-rich,\nclear and like to God\nas that can possibly be.\nSo they go where they will above a thousand miles,\nas one can now think a thousand thoughts.\n\nBurning is the journeying;\nyet they cannot ever grasp the end of the kingdom\nnor touch the wide room and the golden streets;\nthey are over-great, and yet well-measured;\nand yet not gold, for they are eternally better\nthan gold and precious stones;\nthis is all earth\nand shall come to nothing.\n\nHere comes the end of the crown:\nThe Holy Spirit forges still the end of this crown\nuntil the last day;\nso will the Father and the Son reward his labour.\nHe will give him as reward all the souls and bodies\nwhich in God's kingdom are gathered.\nThere shall the Holy Spirit eternally rest in,\nand he shall them without ceasing greet and gladden.\nAll that for God's love ever became good\nor is yet to be done;\nall that through God is renounced and suffered,\nmust all on the crowns blossom stand.\nAh, what a crown!\nAh, who helps me that I yet on the crown\nmight be a small flowerlet,\nlike the unbaptized children,[^33] who are the smallest flowers on the crown!\n\nIs this speech too long, that is its fault, that I in the crown found manifold dwellings; yet I have set down many a long speech with short words. This I speak to myself: How long will you, base world, bark? You must yet keep silent, for the very dearest I must keep silent.\n\n### II. How on All Souls' day a person prayed for the souls in common.\n\nOn All Souls' day I prayed with the holy Christendom for the common souls who go their penance in purgatory. Then I became aware of a purgatory like an oven which was outside black and within was full of fire-flames. I looked in, how they stood in the flames and burnt like a bound straw. There stood one beside me who was like a great angel, whom I asked how it was that the souls were so greatly straining themselves when the prayer came to them from good people. Certain ones pressed out and certain ones could not get out. He whom I asked answered me: When they were on earth, they would not help those who in distress begged them. Then my soul had mercy beyond her might and beyond her worth, and called into heaven: Lord God, might I in to them go and suffer with them, that they the sooner might come to you! Then our Lord revealed himself, that he was the angel who stood beside me, and said: Will you go in, I will go with you in. Then our Lord embraced the person's spirit and led her in. When the soul came in with our Lord, then was it not woe to her. She asked, how many were of them? Then said our Lord: You cannot count them, and they are those for whom you have prayed when they were on earth.\n\nThere I found him for whom thirty years before I had been wont to pray, and I was troubled, for I had asked[^34] to give myself to him, and I dared not for my baseness ask such great a lord such great things. Then I spoke one word thus: Ah dear Lord, will you free them? Then they rose all together up in great company, blissful, whiter than a snow, and soared toward the paradise in sweet, clear bliss; there they rested with joys within. When they rose out of the fire, they sang the psalm all out: *Laudate, pueri, Dominum.*[^1] After this they sang: We praise you, Lord, for the greatness of your goodness, for the mildness of your gift, and the faithfulness of your help.\n\nStill our Lord stood beside the place of the fire, and had the person's spirit embraced. Then said the person's soul:\n\nAh Lord, you know well what I desire.\nThat was, she would gladly fall onto our Lord's feet,\nthat she might thank him.\nThen our Lord let her down,\nand she thanked him back,\nthat she might see the great honour\nwhich from God had happened to the poor souls.\nThen she found on his feet\nthe rose-coloured wounds\nof our true redemption.\nThen she begged: Lord, give me your blessing.\nThen said our Lord:\nI bless you with my wounds. —\nThat must happen to me\nand to all God's friends and mine.\nThis, alas, has not happened from my labours,\nfor I have many in the holy Christendom\nmuch dearer than what is mine.\n\n### III. How precious it is that a person with humble words look at his heart without ceasing.\n\nI know no one so good, but it is needful for him that he look at his heart without ceasing and know what dwells within, and also rebuke his works often. This one shall do with humble words. This God's voice taught me, for I never did any work so well that I could not have done it better. This is my rebuking, now let us thus rebuke our weakness: Ah, you most base creature, how long will you lodge your useless habit in your five senses? Our childhood was foolish; our youth was assailed; how we have prevailed in it is to God manifest. Alas, my old age now stands before me much to rebuke, for it is useless in shining works and is, alas, cold of graces. It is also powerless, that it does not have the youth with which it can bear the fiery God-love. It is also un-suffering, that small pain does much woe to it, which youth does not heed. Yet the good old age is gladly long-patient, and it trusts God alone.\n\nSeven years ago, a troubled old person lamented this harm to our Lord. Then God answered him thus: Your childhood was a companion of my Holy Spirit, your youth was a bride of my manhood, your old age is now a housewife of my Godhead. — Alas, dear Lord, what avails that the dog barks; while the householder sleeps, the thief breaks into his house: the prayer of the pure heart yet sometimes wakens the same dead sinner. Alas sinner, how greatly may one weep for you, for you are a murderer of yourself, and you are a harm of all good, and also of their profit! The good person receives great profit; when he sees that another behaves basely or falls into sin, he looks far around himself, that he come not into the same distress; so the good person betters himself by evil things, with which gladly good works follow after; but the wicked becomes worse. When he sees evil examples, he becomes so evil that he despises good works and good people; so his own perverted wisdom pleases him best.\n\nMy dear schoolmaster, who taught me, simple and dull, this book, also taught me this speech thus: Whatever the person does, is he not truthful, you shall not be intimate with him. I know an enemy who is a quencher of divine truth in the person's heart. If one gives him the place, he writes with the person's free will the false wisdom in the person's heart and says: I am by nature angry and weak. — With this you cannot excuse yourself with God nor with honours. You shall by grace become gentle and strong. \"I have no grace.\" — Then shall you in dis-grace call upon the gracious God with humble tears and with steady prayer in holy longing, so must the worm of wrath die. You shall use power on yourself, so no painful power need go over you from God nor from anyone; so the worm of wrath becomes nothing. Would we our wrath and all our imperfection overcome and drive out with God, then must we rightly keep our sinful temptation secretly silent, and show outwardly holy joyful bearing.\n\nAh poor me! However long we storm in wrath, have we any good on ourselves. We must yet come back to our heart, so must we from guilts be ashamed, so has the wrath consumed our might and dried up our flesh, and so have we lost our useful time, in which we should have served God. O woe, that is an eternal harm! But ah! the sinful tears trouble me which one weeps in proud wrath. Of that the soul becomes so dark that the person cannot rightly enjoy any good things.\n\nThe contrite tears are so holy: could a great sinner weep one contrite tear for all his sins, he would never come to the eternal hell, would he remain so. Whatever small daily sin the good person has on him, which he wholly will not let go while he lives — dies he so without confession and without penance, however holy he is, he must to bitter purgatory. For as merciful as God is, so just is he also and against all sins angered.\n\nThis I counsel myself: there must love dwell; by dull-good we shall never be. There humility gladly dwells beside.\n\n### IV. Of our Lord's broom.\n\nWhen I came to the cloister, not long after, I was so greatly tormented by sickness that my Lady had mercy. Then I said to our Lord: Dear Lord, what will you with this pain? Then said our dear Lord thus: All your ways are measured, all your foot-steps are counted, your life is sanctified, your end will be joyful, and my kingdom is very near to you. — Lord, why is my life sanctified, and I can so little good do? Then said our Lord: With this is your life sanctified, that my broom never goes from your back. — *Te deum laudamus,* that God is so good.\n\n### V. Why the cloister at one time was assailed.\n\nThose shall do good secretly whom they know to be in need, for the good that one withholds from them, I will not have at the cloister. — This is the gloss: That each one from his office mercifully does good to those whom he knows to be needful.\n\n### VI. Of the chapter, and how the person shall look at his sins and weep for them. Of two golden pennies and of good will and longing.\n\nWhoever has this knowing, let him lament and weep with me. For God's chosen children often receive God's body and holily receive it, then must I with burning contrition go into my chapter-house. Then comes my unworthiness and touches me; then comes my un-diligence and accuses me; then comes the lightness of my mood and reproaches me for my unsteadiness; then comes the baseness of my useless life and troubles me; then comes the divine fear and scourges me; then I crawl like a small worm in the earth and hide myself under the grass of my manifold neglect all my days. Then I sit and cry up into the heaven: Ah merciful God! Grant me that I may today be a sharer of the graces which your chosen ones have now received. Here our Lord answers thus: Take two golden pennies which are both alike heavy and buy with them; pay they alike much, then they are alike good. O woe, dear Lord, how can my baseness be like to your goodness, for I am not as I would wish to give you honour! I have not as well befits you, and I cleave to nothing with comfort of my soul in the world. Thus I am cast away and sorrowful become. I am not as I have long desired. Our Lord says thus: With good will and with holy longing you can repay what you will.\n\n### VII. How the person at all times shall be united with God.\n\nThat the person without ceasing be united with God, that is heavenly dwelling above all earthly delight. How shall this happen to us? Our longing shall without ceasing walk in all our work, and we shall with Christian belief and with divine knowing without ceasing look at all our works and never be useless, so we live to our Lord God with all our works, for all his works which he ever wrought on earth for our love. Thus are we united with him in his earthly works with heavenly love. Hereafter we are spiritually enlightened, so we praise our Lord God with all the gifts that were ever given — our body and good, friends and kin and all earthly delight that we could desire. With this we thank God for all his mild gifts which he ever gave us on earth in body or in soul. So we are again united with God in nameable love and humble thankfulness. With this we shall draw all God-gifts into our heart, so our Lord becomes love-full, so our senses become opened, and so our soul becomes so clear, that we see into the divine knowing, as a person looks at his face in a clear mirror. So we can know God's will in all our works, that we honour God's will and have it dear in painful gift as in consoling gift, and rejoice over what happens to us without sin. We shall weep over the sin and hate it, for it is a cursed time. With this we are on earth united with the saints in the heavenly kingdom, for they rejoice most over the will of God in the heavenly kingdom.\n\nI do not know how the enemy became aware that God gave me this knowing in the night, and I therein with great bliss was united, when he came to me and spoke faithfully, for he wished to deceive me. His voice I heard with my fleshly ears, and I saw a shape with spiritual eyes — black, honey-coloured, and like to a horrible man. I feared him yet not. That is from this: when God's gift soars in the soul and wrestles in the senses, then the body cannot in his presence fear. But when the body yet in useful works wrestles, comes he then, then it becomes so woe to the body in his presence that I (never) came to so great pain on earth.\n\nThen he said to me: I dreamed at night that I was rich and had much. Then he would have me suppose that this holy God-union with the soul was all a dream. Then the housewife within, the body's[^2] soul, spoke: You are not truthful. Then he said: Yes, I shall last as long as God lives. Then the soul said: Now you are yet learned; tell me, what shall I do? The devil made too much of it: You should rejoice yourself and should bear this great thing in great mood. The soul: I am yet, alas, so small that I can grip through the needle's eye,[^35] beyond all my enemies, into the heaven-gate of my eternal land. The devil: You are too greatly fenced in. The soul: In your words I know your falseness, doubt, empty honour and pride. Were a steel wall to go up to the clouds round about me, yet my heart would never from my enemies be secure and free. Then he stood and trembled before me. O woe, how full of falseness this seemed to me. Then he raised his head and sprang wrathfully hence.\n\n### VIII. How a person seeks God.\n\nWhen God will be strange to the person, then he seeks our Lord God and says: Lord, my pain is deeper than the abyss, my heart-sorrow is bitterer than the world, my fear is greater than the mountains, my longing is higher than the stars. In these things I cannot find you anywhere. — In this sorrow the soul became aware of her Beloved beside her, like a fair Youth so fair that it is unspeakable. And had he yet hidden himself, then she falls upon his feet and greets his wounds, which are so sweet that she of all her pain and all her age cannot feel. Then she thought: O woe, how gladly would you see his face! Then must you renounce the wounds; and how gladly would you hear his words and his desire! Then she stands up in unwavering breeding, clothed and adorned. Then he says: Welcome, my dearest! In the voice of the words she knew that to him every soul that in his favour serves God is the dearest. Then he said: I must spare you on the enjoyment, both yours and mine. \"The enjoyment is unspeakable.\" — Then he said: Take this crown of the maidens. Then the crown came from him and went onto her head; it shone as if it were of pure gold. The crown was twofold and was also of the love crown. Then said our Lord: This crown shall be manifest before all the heavenly host. Then she begged: Lord, will you tomorrow receive my soul, as I have today received your holy body? Then he said: You shall yet become richer through suffering. — Lord, what shall I now do here in this cloister? — You shall enlighten and teach them, and shall with them dwell in great honour. — Then she thought: Ah, now you are here alone with our Lord. In this thought she saw two angels stand by her, who were as noteworthy as earthly princes before other poor people. Then she said: How shall I now hide myself? Then they said: We will bring you from pain to pain, from virtues to virtues, from knowing to knowing, from love to love. — That a sinful mouth shall and must speak this is heavy to me, and I dare yet not let it from God, and from obedience of human shame and of divine fear must I keep all my days.\n\n### IX. How the loving soul praises our Lord with all creatures.\n\nThe loving soul never grows sated of praise, therefore she gathers in herself all that God ever created in her longing and calls into the heaven: Lord, were all these persons so perfect, and so holy as it were possible, as your blessed mother Mary, yet would it not suffice to me, poor one, that I could not fully praise you with your only-begotten Son. Lord, can one fully praise you? No, of that I rejoice. Then our Lord answered thus: The maidens who have long served me shall praise me.\n\n### X. This happened at one time when great war was.\n\nI prayed our Lord God for the distress of war and for many a sin of the world. Then our Lord answered thus and said: The sins stink at me, from the abyss of the earth up to the heaven. Were it possible, they would drive me out. The sins had once driven me out; then I came humbly and served the world unto my death; that cannot again happen to me. Now I must sometimes my justice through the sin (work).[^36] — Dear Lord, what shall we poor now do? Then said our Lord: You shall humble yourselves under the trembling hand of the almighty God, and fear him in all your works. I will still free people from all distress; these are my friends. The common prayer fills my heart. How my mood stands, that I show. The prayer I gladly hear from spiritual people who pray it from the heart.\n\n*Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes. Gloria Patri. Regnum mundi. Eructavit cor meum. Quem vidi. Gloria Patri etc.*[^3]\n\nLord, heavenly Father, receive your service and your praise from your troubled children, and free your people from this present distress, and free us from all our bonds, save only the bonds of love, which must never be taken from us.\n\n### XI. How our Lord was seen like to a labouring man.\n\nOur Lord showed me a likeness, which he has fulfilled on me and still does. I saw a poor one stand up on the earth who was clothed with poor linen cloths like a labouring man. A bier he had in his hand, on which lay a burden like the earth. Then I said: Good man, what do you bear? I bear, said he, your pain. Turn your will to the pain and lift up and bear. Then said the person: Lord, yes, I am so poor that I have nothing. Then said our Lord: Thus I taught my disciples when I said: *Beati pauperes spiritu.*[^4] That is, when a person cannot and would gladly, that is spiritual poverty. The person: Lord, is it you? Turn your face to me, that I may know you. Then said our Lord: Know me within. The soul: Lord, saw I you among a thousand, I would know you well. My heart has built me up within for a peril, and I dared not declare it to him that it were he. Then I said: Dear Lord, this burden is to me too heavy. Then said our Lord: I will lay it so near to me that you well may bear it. Follow me, and see how I stood before my heavenly Father on the cross, and remained so. Then she said: Lord, give me your blessing on it. — I bless you without cease. Good counsel shall come to your pain. — Lord, help all those who gladly suffer pain for you.\n\n### XII. How a person should withstand empty honour and temptation.\n\nWhen the person thinks any good of himself, then comes at once the empty honour, sprung out of the corner of the heavenly heart, with a sinful delight and will prepare itself in the five senses. So shall the person constrain his mood and shall himself at once before his heart with humble fear strike and bless himself with the sign of the holy cross, so it becomes at once nothing, as if it had never been. This I, poor one, have often experienced. The same one shall do at once when the evil flying thoughts come. They also vanish from the power of the holy cross when it is grievous to the person.\n\n### XIII. How our Lord was seen like a pilgrim.\n\nI, poor unworthy, I deny myself and speak what I have seen and heard in God. In one night I saw our Lord stand in the likeness of a pilgrim, and he did as he had wandered through Christendom. Then I fell upon his feet and said: My dear pilgrim, where do you come from? Then he said: I come from Jerusalem (he meant the Christendom), and I am driven from my lodging. The heathen do not know me; the Jews will not have me; the Christians fight me. — Then I prayed for Christendom. There our Lord cleared himself most fairly of the great disgrace which he suffers from the Christendom, and laid out how much good he had done to the Christendom from the beginning, and how much he had laboured for the Christendom and still every day seeks the place in them, where he might pour his grace into them. Then our Lord again lamented and said: With their free choice the people drive me from the lodging of their heart, and when I find no place at them, I let them remain at their free choice, and when they die, as I then find them, so I judge over them. — Then I prayed for the gathering: Dear Lord, let them not perish; I will set a light in their churchyard, by which they shall know themselves.\n\n### XIV. Of God's choosing and blessing.\n\nIn another night when I was in my prayer and longing, and looked for nothing, then I became aware of our Lord. He stood in the churchyard and had before him the whole gathering, ordered as they had come to the cloister. Then said our Lord to them: I have chosen you; choose me, then I will give you. Then I said: Lord, what will you give them? Then he said: I will make shining mirrors of them on earth, so all those who desire shall know their life by them. And in the heavenly kingdom I will make them shining mirrors, so all who see them shall know how I have chosen them.\n\nThen our Lord reached out his hand and gave them his blessing and said: I bless you with myself; you will [have] me in all your thoughts. — Those who will have our Lord in all their thoughts, those are the blessed who rightly praise our Lord. Then I said, they will ask me in what manner I have seen you. Then he said: There are certain among them who know me.\n\n### XV. How the person who loves the truth shall pray.\n\nThe person who loves the truth gladly prays thus: Ah dear Lord, grant me and help me that I without ceasing seek you with all my five senses, in all things holily, for I have chosen you above all lords, and I have chosen you above all princes as my soul's Bridegroom. Give me also, Lord, that I may find you with all my longing, burning and quenched. I desire also that I may enjoy you with flowing love of all your gifts. Give me, Lord, fully your return-flow, which fills my mouth, so that pain, mockery, bitterness are ever softness to me. That must to me from your grace ever happen; mild God, now grant it me. Help me also, Lord, that I may keep you in renouncing of all my will according to your desire, so I would never lose love, unquenched, ever more. Amen.\n\n### XVI. How a person desires and prays.\n\nA person desired above all gift and above all pain, that God would free his soul with a holy end. Then said our Lord: Wait for me. Then the person said: Dear Lord, I cannot steer my longing — I were so gladly with you. Then said our Lord: I have desired you before the world's beginning; I desire you and you desire me. Where two hot longings meet together, there is love perfect.\n\n### XVII. How Knowing speaks to Conscience.\n\nKnowing spoke to Conscience: How much one shames you and does you pain, that you yet purely in God stand.\n\nConscience: Lady Knowing, you have spoken a good little word. When all his hindrances hang, he must have a humble heart.\n\nKnowing: Lady Conscience, you have so noble a mirror in which you so often look at yourself. That well may be the living God's Son with all his works. It might also not otherwise be, that you are so wise.\n\nConscience: Lady Knowing, when I [look at][^37] myself, it is to me both well and woe; well, that God the flowing goodness is toward me; woe, that I am so small in good works.\n\nKnowing: Lady Conscience, you have in all things dearer God's will and God's honour than your profit in body and in soul; you are the devil's hell and God's heavenly kingdom. What may I then liken to you?\n\nConscience: Lady Knowing, all that I have from God, that he has lent me, that I may with it work his praise and his honour and also my profit; for I must give it back to him, so I need his graces well.\n\nKnowing: Lady Conscience, you are sorely bound with the world's sins, and spiritual people's imperfection does you many a heart-sorrow. They have free choice, that they can journey to the heavenly kingdom or to the hell or into the long purgatory; that is to you a heavy burden.\n\nConscience: Lady Knowing, I do not lament that I have unwill and that I suffer ache. The world's sins regret me, just as love-pain purifies the body from sins and sanctifies the soul in God. Thus we will with joys stand at his command.\n\nKnowing: Lady Conscience, the good-willed rich in the world offer God their goods and their alms; the spiritual people offer God in his service their flesh and their blood; above all things they offer God in obedience their own will. What weighs more must pay more.\n\nConscience: Lady Knowing, with this it is not enough. Will we enjoy God in the heights, then must we have the crown of humility and purity, of chastity inborn or acquired, and the heights of love above all things. This same blissful garment wears the holy Trinity on her — the Father the heights of love, the Son the humble pure chastity, that he has shared with all his chosen ones; the Holy Spirit the love-burning toward us, in all our good works.\n\nKnowing: Lady Conscience, the steadfastness at good things, that is a labouring love that one cannot do without, if one will with God possess the highest honour in both, here and in his eternal kingdom. Well is he who here exerts himself in it.\n\n### XVIII. Of the commending of the seven hours of the martyrdom of our Lord.\n\n*At matins.*\nO great dew of the noble Godhead!\nO small flower of the sweet Maiden!\nO useful fruit of the fair flower!\nO holy offering of the heavenly Father!\nO faithful ransom-pledge of all the world, Lord Jesus Christ!\nReceive your holy matins to the praise and honour\nof your exiled birth, your exiled need,\nyour sore martyrdom, your holy death,\nyour lordly resurrection, your fair ascension,\nyour almighty honour, to praise and honour.\nThink of me, dear Lord,\nthat I in all my doing, in all my leaving,\nin all my living\nyour holy will may fulfil\nto a good end, to your holy Trinity's honour,\nand all who with me in your name\nare your and my friends.\n\n*At prime.*\nO exiled disgrace, O sorrowful smart,\nwhich killed your lordly body and your sweet heart!\nHelp me, dear Lord, that I all my disgrace\nand all my heart-sorrow\nin your love must and may lament away.\nAs it in your eternal honour may please,\nand I therein ever blessed remain.\n\n*At terce.*\nO heavy burden, O exiled bearing,\nwhich you, Lord, have borne under your cross!\nBear us, Lord, above all our distress\ninto the eternal life.\n\n*At sext.*\nO bloody distress,\nO wound deep, O great smart!\nLet me, Lord, not perish\nin all my pain's distress. Amen.\n\n*At none.*\nO most blessed distress!\nO most holy death!\nO most blissful mirror of the heavenly Father,\nJesus Christ, hung high on the cross\nthrough feet and through hands:\nI commend to you, Lord, my soul at my last end,\nthat I may without ceasing ever more united be.\nAs your heavenly Father was and is with you.\nGrant me this and all who mean you with faith. Amen.\n\n*At vespers.*\nO bound love-flowing!\nO faithful heart-pouring!\nO lordly body that for me was killed,\nvery dear Jesus Christ!\nI beg you,\nthat my five senses without ceasing\nmust and may rejoice themselves\nat the bloody spear\nand at the wounds of your sweet heart,\nand that my exiled soul\nthere eternally may within rejoice itself,\nand those with me, for whom I\nmust and will Christianly pray. Amen.\n\n*At compline.*\nO holy depth of all humility!\nO mild breadth of all gifts!\nO lordly love of all heights, of all loves, Jesus Christ,\nthat you within beg your heavenly Father!\nFulfil now, Lord, your prayer on us\nand sanctify us in the truth,\nand give us the depth of all humility,\nin which we may incline ourselves under all creatures,\nwhen the creatures withstand us\nwho do not as we.\n\nGive us, Lord, the breadth of all generosity,\ngood-willed in all our ordering,\nto fulfil for your love.\n\nAnd give us, Lord, the heights of your love,\nwhich keeps us pure in you\nand unspoiled from all earthly things. Amen.\n\n### XIX. Of the greeting of our Lady.\n\nI greet you, Lady, dear Mary:[^5]\nthat you are a bliss of the holy Trinity,\nthat you are a beginning of all our blessedness,\nthat you are a companion of the holy angels here and in God's kingdom. —\n\nI greet you, Lady, dear Mary:\nthat you are a flower of the patriarchs,\nthat you are a hope of the prophets,\nthat you are a white lily of the humble maidens\n\nThink how to you came the greeting from Gabriel's mouth,\nand greet my soul at my last hour,\nand bring me with joys untroubled\nout of this exile into the joy-rich land\nof your dear child, where I rest find.\n\nI greet you, etc.\nthat you are a teaching wisdom of the apostles,\nthat you are a rose of the martyrs,\nthat you are a sending of the confessors,\nthat you are a helper of all widows,\nthat you are an honour of all saints of your dear Child.\nPray for me, that I with all my works\nmay be sanctified with them\nas it is to me, poor one, possible.\nMary, dear empress.\n\nI greet you, etc.\nthat you are a refuge of the sinners,\nthat you are a manly helper of the despaired,\nthat you are a comforter of all holy Christendom,\nthat you are a terror of all evil spirits —\nfor they are cursed by you.\nCompel them, dear Lady, from me,\nthat they never rejoice themselves at me,\nand I ever steady be at your service.\n\n### XX. How one shall commend the Ave Maria to our Lady.\n\nGreeted be you, heavenly Empress, God's mother and heart-dear Lady, receive, Lady, today your *Ave Maria*, to the praise and honour of the blissful eye-glance of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which so blissfully toward the maidenly motherly face open and unhidden stands, full of all blessedness.\n\nAh Lady, on this I think\nwith all my longing and all my prayers.\nAll my pain and all my distress,\nand all my heart-sorrow, my honour,\nmy soul's and my last end,\nwhen I turn hence\nout of this sorrowful exile —\nthis must all to your motherly faithfulness\nand your maidenly honour be commended,\nand to your ladylike goodness without ceasing commended,\nand on top of that all those with me,\nwho your and my friends\nin the name of the almighty God are.\nHeart-dear Lady mine,\nMary, noble Empress.\n\n### XXI. How a person shall look at his heart before he goes to God's table.\n\nYou will have teaching from me, and I myself am unlearned. What you desire, you find a thousandfold in your books.\n\nWhen I, poor one, go thither and must receive the body of our Lord, I look at the face of my soul in the mirror of my sins. There I see in myself how I have lived, how I now live, and how I yet will live. In this mirror of my sins I see nothing in it but *O woe!* and *O woe!* So I cast my face to the earth and lament and weep if I can, that the eternal ungraspable God is so good that he will incline himself into the foul puddle of my heart. Then I think thus, that it were more fitting in right, that one drag my body to the gallows like a thief, who has stolen from his right lord the precious treasure of purity which God gave me in the holy baptism.\n\nThis will we sorrowfully lament\nall the while we live,\nthat we have often darkened\nwhat you must, Lord, fatherly forgive,\nwhatever sin the person has not confessed, nor yet will confess,\nwith that he shall not receive God's body.\nNow I will trust the true hope\nand thank God that I was ever made,\nthat to me, poor one, this can happen,\nthat I must receive God's body.\nNow I will with joys go to God's table,\nand I will receive the same bloody Lamb\nthat on the holy cross would stand,\nbloody, unbound,\nwith his holy five wounds.\nWell to us that it ever happened!\nIn his holy martyrdom\nwill I lament away all my discomfort.\nSo we go then with joys and with heart-loving love,\nand with an open soul receive our Beloved.\nOur very heart-dearest Beloved,\nand lay him in our soul\nas in a sweet sucking cradle,\nand sing to him then praise and honour\nfor the first discomfort he would suffer,\nwhen he in the manger lay.\nSo we bow ourselves to him with our soul\nand with our five senses,\nand thank our Beloved and say thus:\nLord, I thank you for yourself.\nNow I beg you, very dear,\nthat you give me your jewel,\nthat I purely may live\nout from all sins.\nLord, where will I lay you then?\nWhat I have, that I will give you.\nI will lay you on my bed.\nThe bedding is all pain.\nWhen I think on your pain,\nI forget mine.\nYou shall, Lord, lay your hip[^38] on me.\nThe pillow, that is my heart-sorrow,\nthat I am not at all times ready\nto receive your painful gift;\nof that, Lord, is all my lament.\n\nThis bed's cover is my longing,\nwith which I am bound.\nWill you now, Lord, still me,\nthen do my will.\nAnd give me the sinners who are in mortal sins,\nso you gladden the soul of mine.\nLord, what will we now of love speak,\nwhen we so near together are laid\nin the bed of my pain.\n\nI have you, Lord, received,\nas you on earth are risen from death.\nDear heart-Love, now console my mood,\nthat I without ceasing purely by you stand.\nThere follows great blessedness after.\nGive me, Lord, the guilty soul out of purgatory\nalone for me; the recompense is far too dear.\n\nNow have I you, Lord, received,\nas you to heaven are journeyed,\nnow must you, very dear, not too greatly spare me.\nI must yet die of love,\nyou can me, Lord, never otherwise still.\n\nGive me, Lord, and take from me, Lord, all that you will,\nand let me yet this will,\nthat I die of love in the love. Amen.\n\n### XXII. Of the praise of the heavenly Father.\n\nWell am I! I praise you all ways,\nGod, of your noble goodness,\nthat you have chosen me\nfor your holy service.\nSanctify my mood,\nthat I with holy inwardness\nreceive all your gifts,\nand I with joys with you stand.\n\n### XXIII. How one shall thank the Son.\n\nWell am I! I thank you, imperial God's Son.\nFor that I think you ever more,\nthat you have me in the world from the world taken.\nYour holy pain is mine,\nthat you for me have suffered.\nAll that I ever suffer,\nthat I will give you back.\nAlthough it be unequal,\nit makes my soul yet free.\nHold me ever in your favour,\nthat you ever praised may be.\nJesus, my very dear,\nloose my bands, let me with you remain.\n\n### XXIV. Of the love-flood.\n\nWell am I! I thank you, Holy Spirit,\nthis is my belief, that you are\none Person of the holy Trinity.\nYour sweet loving burning-flows\nextinguish all my heart-sorrow,\nfor they gently come\nout of the holy Trinity.\nI beg you, Lord, Holy Spirit,\nthat you cover me from all wickedness\nof the evil spirits with your divine love,\nthat what they at me seek, they not find.\n\n### XXV. Of the greeting of the holy Trinity.\n\nI, poor of all virtues,\nI, base in my being,\ndo I dare or can —\nthen I greet the height, the brightness,\nthe bliss, the wisdom, the nobility,\nthe marvellous union of the holy Trinity,\nwhere all has flowed out, unspoiled,\nthat was, that is, that ever shall be.\nThere I must go again in;\nhow shall this happen to me?\nI must crawl back, for I am guilty;\nI must go on bettering with good works;\nI must run with faithful diligence;\nI must fly with dove-feathers,\nthat is virtues, and good works and holy mood.\nI must soar at all things above myself;\nwhen I am most weary,\nthen I come again in.\nHow I shall then be received,\nthat no human eye ever saw,\nthat no human ear ever heard,\nno human mouth could ever speak.\n*Gloria tibi Trinitas!*\n\n### XXVI. How one shall flee to God in the temptation.\n\nLord Jesus Christ, I, poor person,\nflee to you and desire your help,\nfor my enemies hunt me.\nLord God, I lament to you,\nfor they wish to drive me from you.\nLord, almighty God's Son, drive them from me.\nGive me not into their power,\nand hold me purely in you,\nfor you have me with your martyrdom redeemed.\nBe now my help and my comfort\nand let me, Lord, not perish,\nfor you would for me die.\nLord Jesus Christ, I seek your help.\nWaken my soul from the sleep of my laziness\nand enlighten my senses from the darkness of my flesh,\ngive me your guidance,\nto walk all my ways to you without sin,\nas it is possible from a person,\nfor my faults see your eyes.\n\nMary, God's mother, heavenly empress,\non this must be my helper,\nfor I, alas, am guilty,\nthat I find grace\nat your dear Child,\nmother of all chastity,\nI lament to you all my heart-sorrow. *Salve Regina.*\n\n### XXVII. How the spiritual person shall keep his heart from the world.\n\nWhen the spiritual person sees his kin and his dearest friend before him fair adorned and clothed after the world's fashion, then he needs to be armed with the Holy Spirit, that he not think: Thus could you also well have done! From the thought becomes his heart so dark and his senses so unready to God, and his mood so lazy to holy prayer, and his soul so rightly exiled from God, that he then to his worldly kin inwardly becomes more like than to a spiritual person.\n\nWill he purely with God stand,\nthen must it come to a strife,\nthen is then his conscience troubled,\nwhich is a lantern-vessel of the Holy Spirit;\nfor the conscience does not shine\nwithout the Holy Spirit's light.\n\nWhen the light is fair in the lantern lit,\nthen is the lantern's adornment fairly known.\nSo it is with the spiritual person:\nto him all the world's adornment\nis a horror in his heart.\nHe keeps his lantern fair and unquenched.\nBut is his heart open toward the world,\nthen is his lantern broken,\nthen comes the bitter northwind of the greed\nof the world from our kin,\nthat they to us greatly lament\nthat they have of the puddle too little,\nwhere they alas yet within sink down,\nand in the sins drown.\nThis quenches our light,\nand we have yet not of the world.\nAfter that comes the sin-wind,\nthe false delight of the world, that fair shines,\nand has yet many a bitter pain.\nWill this please us well,\nthen we have the eternal harm.\nThat we may gladly guard,\nfor there is no sin so small,\nbut that it is to us at our soul an eternal harm.\nWhy? There was never a sin so holily changed,\nbut it were better undone.\nTherefore must we steady fear have[^6]\nwhether we with God may bitterly stand.\nWhat we have to God given,\nwe may from him never without our harm take back,\nfor we have it to him lordly given.\n\nThe fish in the water looks\nwith great desire on the red bait\nwith which one will catch him;\nhe sees yet not the hook.\nSo it is with the world's poison,\nit knows not its harm.\nWill you now rightly return,\nthen look at your Bridegroom, all the world's Lord,\nhow fair he stood clothed\nwith purple garments, red-blood,\nblack-coloured, with scourges struck,\nto the pillar bound.\nThere he received for your love\nmany a sharp wound.\nThis let into your heart go,\nso can you the world's deceits escape.\nWill you further follow with your holy thoughts,\nthen look up how he on the cross stood,\nupright high,\nbefore all the world's eyes with blood bedewed.\nThe garments shall be your heart's joys.\nHis imperial eyes with tears overflowed,\nhis sweet heart with the love pierced through.[^7]\nNow hear yet the voice;\nthat teaches you the God-love,\nhow the smiths' hammers knocked and struck\nthrough his hands and feet on the cross.\n\nThink also of the spear's wound\nthat through the side went to the ground of his heart,\nand lament to him all your sin;\nthus you win God's knowing.\nLook at the sharp crown\nthat he upon his head bore;\nkiss him above all things,\nhe gives you enough of all bliss.\nThank him how he would die\nfor your great love,\nand let no one deceive you,\nso you can a queen be of his kingdom ever more.\nWill you choose to this, then you overcome\nwith joys all the world's heart-sorrow.\n\n### XXVIII. Of the distress of a war.\n\nI was commanded with a holy earnestness that I pray for the distress that is now in Saxon lands and in Thuringian lands. When I offered myself with praise and with longing, our dear Lord would not receive me, and kept silence with earnest stillness; that I had to bear for seventeen days with loving patience. Then I said to our dear Lord: Ah dear Lord, when shall come the welcome hour, that you will and that I must pray for this distress. Then our Lord showed himself to me and said:\n\nThe blissful red morning\nwith manifold colour — these are the poor\nwho now suffer manifold distress.\n\nThere shall to them the eternal sun afterward rise of the eternal light,\nwhich shall shine on them with eternal joy after this distress.\nThere become they sanctified\nand clarified as the playful sun,\nwhen she toward the mid-morning forces in\nand the height steps.\n\nCertain ones are in the host\nwhere they are in need and with fears;\nthese I let be captured and bodiless,\nthat they to me may come.\nThose who are the cause of the war\nare more horrible in themselves\nand grim in their works,\nthat they the images of my God-house dare to assail.\nThere I knew that the eternal death follows after.\nThose who rob the street on foot —\nwere there no war, they would be thieves and false people.\nThus the evil make the blessed good.\nThus must God his own out of pain love;\nhe can them otherwise not gain.\n\nThus has God told me of the foes,\nand I yet know not where it shall end take.\nI know that well for sure,\nthat I to God's friends from the heart shall well please.\nI know that well for sure what God's friends suffer,\nthat their God never forgets,\nfor he is their help and their comfort in all their distress.\nAfter this we shall strive and with joys gladly suffer,\nso we can before God look and shine.\n\n### XXIX. Of a teaching.\n\nWill you your heart wholly to God turn,\nthen must you three things have as a teaching:\nfear yourself for all sins,\ngood-willed for all virtues,\nsteady for all good things,\nso can you your life to a good end bring.\nWill you yourself to this compel,\nthen can you with God's help well fulfil.\nBeg God steadily on this,\nso you bear softly all your trouble.\nBeg purely and serve God with diligence,\nso you become joy-rich.\n\n### XXX. A prayer when one crowns the maidens.\n\nReceive, Lord, your brides[^8] and meet them with the lilies of pure chastity all their days.\n\nReceive, Lord, your brides and meet them with the roses of diligent labour for a good end.\n\nReceive, Lord, your brides and meet them with the violets of bottomless humility, and lead them into your bride-bed, and embrace them with all love ever undivided.\n\n### XXXI. Of a lament.[^9]\n\nThis is the loving soul's lament,\nwhich she alone cannot bear;\nshe must say it to God's friends,\nthat to them love-service may please.\n\nLove-sick and body-weak,\npain, distress and hard compulsion,\nthat makes me the way too long\nto my dear Lord.\nHow shall I, Beloved, do without you so long?\nYes, I am to you, alas, all too far.\n\nWill you, Lord, my lament not receive,\nthen must I go again into my mourning,\nand wait and suffer, both silent and openly.\nYou know that well, dear Lord,\nhow gladly I were with you.\n\nOUR LORD: When I come, then I come great.\nThere was never discomfort so great,\nthat I cannot heal it.\nYou must yet more wait;\nI will better prepare you,\nbefore I bring you before my Father,\nthat you us the better please.\nI still gladly hear your love-sound.\nWhen dark become our human senses,\nthen we awaken with the lament\nin our heart the divine love.\n\n### XXXII. How the good person's works shine against the works of our Lord.\n\nHow the good person's works shall light up and shine in the heavenly honour, mark in these words:\n\nAs we here have been guiltless, so shall God's guiltlessness shine and light up in our holy guiltlessness.\n\nAs we here labour in good works, so shall God's holy labour light up and shine in our holy labour.\n\nAs we here have inwardness in God secretly, so shall God's holy inwardness light up and gleam in our holy inwardness manifoldly.\n\nAs we here our pain thankfully receive and patiently suffer, so shall God's holy pain light up and shine in our pain.\n\nAs we here all virtues have practised with diligence, so shall God's holy virtues light up and shine in our virtues in manifold honour. This were eternally ever more.\n\nAs we here in love burn and shine in holy living, so shall God's love in our soul and in our body burn and shine without ceasing, ever more unquenched.\n\nThese answering-glances shine and light up from the eternal Godhead. These good works we have received from God's holy manhood. And we have fulfilled them with the Holy Spirit's help.\n\nThus come our works and our life back into the holy Trinity. There it becomes manifest, how it stands with us now here. After that we here holily in divine love live, after that shall we there in the heights blissfully soar, and after that shall love's might be given us as reward, that we shall become mighty to do all our will, that we from the saints shall be known how we have been; therewith must we their companion be. Amen.\n\n### XXXIII. Of the spiritual drink.[^10]\n\nI am sick; I greatly delight in a healthy drink\nthat Jesus Christ himself drank.\nWhen he, God and human, came into the manger,\nthen was the drink at once prepared for him.\nOf this he drank so much,\nthat he was so love-fiery drunken\nthat he in all virtues drove away[^11] all his heart-sorrow.\nHe gave ever virtues; the goodness in him became never sick.\nFor the healthy drink I long.\nThis drink is pain through God's love.\nThe pain is bitter.\nSo we grind into it a root, called: *gladly suffer.*\nThe other root is called: *patience in the pain;*\nwhich is also bitter;\nso we grind into it a root, called: *holy inwardness,*\nwhich makes the patience sweet and all our labour.\nThe third root is: *in pain long wait*\nfor our eternal life and our salvation;\nwhich is also very bitter.\nSo we grind into it a root, called: *with joys unwearied.*\n\nAh dear Lord, would you give me this drink,\nthen could I unwearied with joy in pain live.\nThere would I a while of the heavenly kingdom do without;\nso sweet after it is my desire.\nNow must you this, Lord, to me\nafter your dearest will give,\nand to all who through your love desire it.\n\n### XXXIV. Of the spiritual food.\n\nAfter a bitter drink one needs gentle food. The upstanding longing and the sinking humility and the flowing love — these three maidens bring the soul up to heaven before God, and so she becomes aware of her Beloved. Then she says: Lord, I lament that you are so greatly assailed by the dearest you have on earth — that is the Christian person. Lord, I lament to you, that your friends are so sorely hindered by your enemies. Our Lord: Have they the right goodness in them, all that goes over them without sin, that they consume blissfully into the true God-knowing. Therefore the pain calls loudest: above all God-service, give way to me, for that the person is unconsoled according to the will of God, since the person were consoled according to his own will. God's will is pure; our will is greatly mingled with the flesh. All who greatly love within become outwardly stilled, for all outward labour hinders the inward spirit. That then the spirit within sings, goes above all earthly voice.\n\nThe patience sings most fairly above all the angels' choirs, for the angels have no patience, for they feel no pain. This we have from the manhood of our Lord, on top of all the honour with which we from God on earth are honoured, and with which in the heavenly kingdom along be exalted. From the noble labour of our Lord and from his holy pain is our Christian labour and our good-willed pain ennobled and sanctified, just as all waters are sanctified from the Jordan in which our dear Lord was baptized.\n\nAh dear Lord, help us that our holy longing never must grow weary, and our sinking humility never must raise itself with pride, and the flowing burning of the holy God-love must here be our purgatory, in which all our sins are blotted out.\n\n### XXXV. Of the seven psalms.[^12]\n\nDear Lord Jesus Christ, these holy seven psalms I speak to the praise and honour of all your holy pain, in which you would die for me on the holy cross.\n\n[Then follow seven prayers commending each of the seven penitential psalms to a moment of Christ's coming at her death: as a *faithful physician* (*Domine, ne in furore*); as *the dearest friend in distress* (*Beati quorum*); as *a faithful confessor* (*Domine, ne in furore* second); as *a faithful brother* (*Miserere mei Deus*); as *a faithful Father to his child* (*Domine, exaudi*); sending *his maidenly mother* (*De profundis*); coming finally *as the dearest Bridegroom* with the morning-gift on the arm of his love (*Domine, exaudi*).]\n\n### XXXVI. Of a spiritual cloister.\n\nI desired of God, if it were his will, that he would let me understand that I write no more. Why? Because I know myself so base and so unworthy as I was thirty years ago and more, when I had to begin it. Then our Lord showed me in his hand a small sack and said: I have still roots. Then I said: Lord, I do not know the roots. Then he said: You shall know them well when you see them. One shall refresh the sick with them, strengthen the healthy, waken the dead, sanctify the good with them. Hereafter I saw a spiritual cloister, which was built with virtues.\n\nThe abbess is the true Love,\nwho has many holy senses,\nwith which she diligently keeps the gathering\nin body and in soul, all to God's honour;\nshe gives them many a holy teaching,\nthat ever God's will may be —\nof which her own soul becomes free.\n\nThe love-chaplainess is divine humility;\nwho is ever to love subject,\nso must pride go aside.\n\nThe prioress is the holy God-peace.\nTo her good will is given patience,\nso that she the gathering with divine wisdom teaches;\nto whatever things she turns,\nthat is ever to God's honour.\n\nThe sub-prioress is love-fellowship;\nshe shall the small fragments gather\nand quench them with divinity,\nwhatever one does wrong, that one shall not long bear in mood;\nwith this God increases the person's goodness.\n\nThe chapter shall four things in it have;\nthat is the manifestation of the holiness,\nthat at God-service lies. Her gentle labour\ndoes the enemies many a sorrow\nand God many an honour,\nof which she may rejoice herself greatly.\nShe guard herself from empty honour,\nto be a help of the honours of others.\nServe they with diligence, then rewards them God alike.\n\nThe choir-mistress is the hope,\nfilled with holy, humble devotion,\nthat the heart's powerlessness\nin the song before God so fairly may compel,\nthat God loves the notes that in the heart sing.\nWhoever with her thus sings, with her shall succeed\nin the heavenly love.\n\nThe school-mistress is the wisdom,\nwho with good will diligently teaches the dull,\nof which the cloister is sanctified and honoured.\n\nThe cellaress is an outflow in helpful gift.\nThat she that in divine joy does,\nof this she wins holy mood in divine gift.\nAll who anything of her desire,\nthose shall be well-bred and content\never without lament.\nSo flows into her heart the sweet God-gift.\n\nThose who help her thereto,\nthose shall ever win\nas she the sweet God-gift.\n\nThe chamber-ess is the generosity,\nwho ever gladly does well in orderly measure.\nShe gives what she has not with kindly will,\nof which she must from God singular gift win.\nThose to whom she gives anything, they thank God for it\nwith holy inwardness; of this the heart's place takes\nlike the noble drink in pure vessel.\n\nThe infirmarian is the flowing mercy,\nwho ever hungers after this:\nthat she unwearied be ready for the sick\nwith help and with purity,\nwith refreshing and with joyfulness,\nwith comfort and with love-fellowship.\nSo God gives her his return-reward,\nthat she ever gladly does it,\nwho shall help her with it:\nthe same from God shall come to pass.\n\nThe portress is the watchfulness,\nwho ever exerts herself with holy mood\nto gain whatever is commended to her,\nso her labour remains unlost,\nso she may readily come to God\nwhen she will pray;\nso God is with her in a holy stillness,\nto lament away her heart-sorrow.\nFor she sometimes does heavily,\nwhich all reconciles the holy obedience,\nto which she then with joys is subject.\n\nThe novice-mistress is the holy custom,\nwho shall ever burn as a candle,\nunquenched in the heavenly freedom,\nthus we bear softly all our heart-sorrow\nunto a holy end.\n\nThe provost is the divine obedience,\nto whom all virtues are subject,\nso may the cloister in God stand.\nWhoever will give himself to this cloister,\nhe shall ever with divine joy live,\nhere and in the eternal life.\nWell is he who in it remains!\n\n### XXXVII. Of the eternal high-time of the holy Trinity.\n\nWhoever in true love will prepare himself\nfor the eternal high-time of the holy Trinity,\nhe must ever begin:\nhe shall the heavenly Father follow and serve\nwithout ceasing with holy fear\nand with humble humility in all things.\nHe shall his Son follow and serve\nwith pain and with patience,\nwith willing poverty in holy labours.\nHe shall the Holy Spirit follow and serve\nin holy hope above all words,\nwith sweet heart in gentle mood,\nso one tastes his goodness.\n\nThe pure loving maidens\nshall further follow the noble Youth\nJesus Christ, the pure Maiden's child,\nwho all-full love-loving,\nas he was at eighteen years; so is his Person\nto the maidens most love-delightful and most fair;\nso they follow him with blissful tenderness\ninto the blossoming meadow of their pure conscience.\nThere the Youth breaks for them\nthe flowers of all virtues,\nof which they make the noble wreaths\nthat one to the eternal high-time shall wear.\n\nWhen the noble judgments are happened,\nwhere Jesus Christ himself will serve,\nthen one sees there the highest praise-dance,\nwhere shall then every soul and body\nbear their virtues' wreath,\nwhich they here have fulfilled\nwith many a holy devotion.\nSo they follow the Lamb in uncountable bliss,\nfrom bliss to love, from love to joys,\nfrom joys to clarity, from clarity to power,\nfrom power into the highest height,\nbefore the heavenly Father's eyes.\n\nSo he greets his only-begotten Son\nand on top of that many a pure bride\nwho there with him have come.\n\nAh dear Son, what you are, that I am,\nand that they are, of that I rejoice.\nMy dear brides, rejoice yourselves ever more,\nrejoice yourselves in my eternal purity,\nlament away now softly all woe and all sorrow.\nMy holy angels shall serve you,\nmy saints shall honour you.\nThe mother of my Son's manhood\nshall be ready to praise you,\nthat you are her companions. Rejoice yourselves, dear brides,\nmy Son shall embrace you all,\nmy Godhead shall go through you all,\nmy Holy Spirit shall ever more lead you\nin blissful eye-sight\nafter all your will.\nHow could it go better for you?\nI will myself love you.\n\nThose who are not pure maidens,[^13]\nthey shall this high-time possess and see\nand enjoy as far as it is possible.\n\nWhen I in a short hour with my soul's eyes this heard and saw, I was a human dust and ash as I before was.\n\n### XXXVIII. How a spiritual person shall lament and know to God his sins every day.\n\nI, sinful person,\nI lament and know to God all my sins\nof which I am guilty before God's eyes.\nI know and lament all my good works\nwhich I have neglected.\nI know and lament the sins which I committed\nwhen I did not know what sin was.\nI lament the sins that are worse,\nwhich I have done knowingly\nand with wickedness and with un-leisure and with emptiness.\nHave mercy, Lord, on me,\nfor they are to me truly sorrowful.\nAnd give me, Lord, your whole certainty\nthat you have forgiven me them all.\nI cannot otherwise with joys live.\n\nJesus, very dear Beloved mine,\nhold me in true contrition\nand in heart-loving love to you in,\nand let me never grow cool;\nso that I your heart-loving love\nin my heart and my soul\nand in my five senses,\nand in all my members\nwithout ceasing feel.\nSo I cannot grow cool.\n\n### XXXIX. How the devils strike each other and hunt, bite and gnaw, when a loving soul, who burns of divine love, parts from this world.\n\nWell to the good person, that he ever was born,\nwho with all virtues follows God.\nThat were possible to fulfil!\nHis soul becomes in love free.\nAt his last end, then come the holy angels\nand receive the pure soul\nwith uncountable love in heavenly bliss\nand bear her from hence with joys,\nand with great praise bring her to God.\nThe enemies from hell, who were come there,\nwere of all their labour deprived.\nWith hatred and with fierceness were they come;\nwhen they then saw\nthat their will was not happened…\n\n### XL. Thus speaks the loving soul to her dear Lord.\n\nWere all the world mine,\nand were it of pure gold,\nand should I in it after wish eternally be,\nthe all-noblest, the all-fairest,\nthe all-richest empress, —\nthat were to me ever worthless.\n\nSo very gladly\nwould I see Jesus Christ my dear Lord\nin his heavenly honour.\n\nMark what they suffer who long await him.\n\n### XLI. How a preacher-brother was seen.\n\nForty years ago I knew a spiritual man; for then spiritual people were simple and meek of mind. He took to him a spiritual life and devoutness, and performed for our Lord openly many a holy labour. He is now departed; then I begged our Lord for his soul as a Christian should, that if any guilt were upon him, God would forgive him. Then I saw at first a brightness which was prepared for him from God, but I did not find him within it, and my soul was troubled. Thereafter at another time, when I again prayed for him, I found him in a fiery cloud, and he begged that one would give him something.[^14] Then I spoke with all my might to our dear Lord: Ah dear Lord, grant me that I may with good repay woe. Then he raised himself up in the cloud and said: Lord, how strong is your power, how truly upright is your truth. Then I said: Now then, how are you faring? Then he said: I fare as it appears to you. — \"Whence have you this pain?\" — The souls who false-holy shine, they accused the innocent to me; for that I made them pay, and I held sinful suspicion against them — from that I have this pain. — \"Ah, had I one sigh, nothing could come to him from me, for he had also somewhat forgotten himself toward me.\"[^15]\n\nThe third time I prayed for him; then he journeyed away in bliss. Then our dear Lord met him and said to him: That your way after your death has been so long and so heavy, that is given you from evil people. You have followed me secretly and served me faithfully; you shall wear the maidens' crown — the crown of righteousness and the crown of truth. — Then he journeyed shining away over eight choirs and touched the ninth; then I saw him no more. Had the false liars not borne tales against him, he would have journeyed without pain to the eternal joy. That he would trust them — that was his loss.\n\n### XLII. Of the honey-drink.\n\nLord God, lock now your dear treasure\nwith a holy end,\nand unlock him, that he to you to praise may be\nin heaven and on earth.\n\nThen spoke a voice: You shall keep for me the honey-drink,\nwhich lies in many a fold;\nI will unlock it;\nof it shall yet many enjoy.\n\n### XLIII. Of the simple love, how the wise was seen.\n\nThose who would know much and love little,\nthey remain ever in a beginning\nof a good life.\nOf that we must ever steady fear bear,\nhow we may there please God.\n\nThe simple-mannered love\nand small knowing,\nthose grow to great things in.\n\nThe holy simplicity\nis a physic of all wisdom;\nit makes the wise man hold himself for a dull one.\nFor the simplicity of the heart\ndwells in the wisdom of the senses,\nand from this comes many a holiness on the person's soul.\n\n### XLIV. Of five sins and of five virtues.\n\nIn poverty greediness,\nand lying in the truth,\nslow toward mercy,\nshameful mockery in present company,\n[an unmeasured one][^16] in ordering: —\nthese five things unfulfilled\nmake sick the spiritual life.\n\nTruth without falseness,\nmanifest love among one another,\nfear in three fears,\nhidden love to God in my heart manifest,\ndiligence to all good things, —\nthese five things keep healthy the spiritual love.\n\n### XLV. Of seven things in the loving longing.\n\nSeven things must I to God's honour speak:\n\nLord God, is it possible, then give it me,\nthat I never on earth may forget them.\n\nFive one finds in the heavenly kingdom;\ntwo must here remain.\n\nThe first is the harm of my guilt,\nfor I have sinned and neglected good works\nwhich I might well have done.\n\nThe second is, Lord, that I without ceasing wait for you, when you\nwill come to me — in whatever manner\nyou appoint, with a holy end to me.\n\nThe third, your unresting longing\nwhich I have for you.\n\nThe fourth, love's burning never quenched, ever through you.\n\nThe fifth, the first answering-glance\nof your noble face toward me.\nThat could not on earth\naccording to my longing, alas, ever happen to me;\nof that my soul sings often: O woe!\n\nThe sixth I dare scarcely name;\nI become dumb as I know it.\nI never on earth heard it named.\n\nThat is the playful love-flood\nwhich from God secretly flows into the soul\nand her back again with its strength according to its might.\nWhat between them both then is bliss,\nno one knows from another,\nwhat they work between themselves,\nfor each finds his share.\nWhat he has here lent out,\nshall there all be given back to him.\nThis is the heavenly God-love\nwhich he here pours out very small\nand there never wins end.\n\nThe seventh one can scarcely with words touch;\nwith Christian belief one may sense it —\nhow great, how high, how wide, how blissful,\nhow lordly, how joy-rich, how rich.\nWell to him who eternally with him shall dwell!\n\nThe joyful eye-sights full of all delight\nand the holy enjoyment according to wish,\nthose are very manifold without number,\nand never seen, ever more lordly drawn,\nfor they soar out from the living God.\n\nThe over-sweet longings, blissfully hungry, love-full,\nthey flow ever more into the souls,\noverflowing from God.\nStill the soul keeps her sweet hunger\nand lives without burden.\n\n### XLVI. How the soul announces herself in spiritual poverty.\n\nHere announces herself the soul in spiritual poverty and in eternal love toward God, and in unresting longing toward God to journey hence.\n\nShe speaks thus: The long waiting now goes away; the coming-to passes that God and the soul shall be united, undivided, ever more. When I think on this, my heart rejoices itself greatly.\n\nAh dear Lord, how still you now keep silent.\nFor this I thank you ever more, that you so long forbear me.\nElse must you ever eternally be praised,\nthat your will is done and not mine.\n\nNow will I shelter myself in your words\nwhich I in Christian belief have heard,\nwhere you say: Those who love me, I have love for them.\nTo them will we come, my Father and I,\nand we will make a dwelling with him.\nWell to me, dear Lord, of your mild goodness!\nThat can you not refuse.\n\nThen said our Lord:\nWhen comes the time of my saving,\nthat I will give you the heavenly gifts,\nthen am I very swift,\nin which my eternity lies kept.\nI will still unfold them,\nand I will raise her up out of the bloody earth,\nfor to me nothing dearer can be.\n\nThe eternal love toward God dwells in the soul;\nthe transient love toward earthly things dwells in the flesh.\nHere are five senses, mighty over [the soul], to whichever she turns.\n\n### XLVII. Of a sin that is evil above all sins.\n\nA sin I have heard named. I thank God for it, that I do not know her. She seems to me, and is above all sins evil, for she is the highest unbelief. I am, of her, with all my soul and with all my body, and with all my five senses, and with all my heart, an enemy. I thank Jesus Christ, the living Son of God, that she never came into my heart. This sin has not arisen from Christian people; the humble[^17] enemy has betrayed the simple people with it. They would so holy be, that they into the eternal Godhead would draw themselves and lay themselves beside the eternal holy Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. When they find themselves in haughtiness, then they give themselves into the eternal curse. They will yet be the most holy. They have their mockery of God's words which are written of the Manhood of our Lord.\n\nYou allerpoorest person, did you truly know the eternal Godhead, then were that impossible: you would also know the eternal Manhood which there soars in the eternal Godhead; you must also know the Holy Spirit, who there enlightens the Christian person's heart and tastes in his soul above all sweetness, and teaches the person's senses above all mastery, that he humbly might say [only] what before God [he] can complete.[^18]\n\n### XLVIII. How Love was seen with her maidens.\n\nIn the night I spoke thus to our Lord: Lord, I dwell in a land which is called *exile*, that is this world, for all that is therein cannot console me nor gladden me without pain. Therein I have a house called *full-of-pain*, that is the house in which my soul lies captive — my body. This house is old, small and dark. This one shall spiritually understand. In this house I have a bed which is called *unrest*, for I am with all things in woe that do not to God belong. Before it I have a chair which is called *unease*. Unease gives me strange sins to know, of which I never was guilty. Before the chair I have a table which is called *unwill*, that of spiritual living among spiritual people I should so small find. Upon the table lies a tablecloth which is pure, called *poverty*; that has in it very many a holy good. Would one rightly enjoy it, one would have it from the heart dear. The love of riches is a thief of poverty. Upon the table comes for me a food called *bitterness of sins*, and beside it shall be called *good-willed labour*. The drink is called *barely-praise*, for I have, alas, all too little of good works on me.\n\nThis I saw within darkly; then to me revealed herself the true God-love. She was like a noble Empress' maiden. She was nobly formed in her body, white and red in blossoming youth. She had with her very many a virtue, all of them maiden-like; with these she served me as I myself willed. Yet they all wished gladly to give themselves to my service. She was crowned more than with the shining gold. Her garment was like green silk.\n\nWhen I rightly looked at her, then was my dark house enlightened, that I knew all that was within it, and all that ever there happened. When I saw her, I knew her well, for I also had seen her when she was my dear companion. Of this I will now keep silent, for those things are also in the [former] book written. — Then I said: Ah dearest maiden, now are you more than thousand-fold above me; yet you serve me with so great honour, as if I before then were an empress. Then she said: When I found you in pure will, that you of all transient things would let go, then I would not be alone your lady — I must also be your steady maiden, so greatly does a pure heart move me, which has through the true God-love loosed herself from all earthly things. (She means this: however many earthly things one has, that they yet not cleave to the person at his heart.)\n\nDear maiden, since you have served me so long, that is the base lady's right,[^32] that she of the noble maidens lordly reward. I have given you as reward all that I had, and all that could on earth have happened to me. Then she said:\n\nI have it all gathered up;\nI will give it back to you with great honour.\n\nI know not, lady, what more I shall give you;\nunless you wish my soul, that will I gladly give you.\n\nThen she said: This I have long desired of you,\nnow have you at the last fulfilled it for me.\nSpeak now to my maidens,\nthat they to you diligently serve,\nso may I dwell with you in true God-love,\nwhich I myself am.\n\nThen speaks the soul to the first maiden, to Rest:[^19]\n\nLady true Rest, come here to me,\nand bring me holy tears,\nwhich make me sin-free.\n\nLady Humility, sit here beside me,\nand drive haughtiness and empty honour from me.\nWhen they see you beside me, they must flee before me.\n\nDear Lady Gentleness,\nsit here beside me under my garment,\nso love-fellowship remains ready for me.\n\nAh noble Obedience, I give myself to you\nin all my works subject.\nYou shall never from me go,\nso may I keep in all my works\nthe divine truth without lying,\nwhich God's friends well becomes.\n\nDear Lady Mercy,\nbe beside me when I serve the sick diligently,\nthat I may well bear the cost,\nthat I may serve them with goods and with body.\n\nAh dear Lady Chastity,\nto you I commend my maidenly garment,\nthat it may ever pure and clean be,\nfor my dear Bridegroom Jesus Christ\nis at all times beside me.\n\nLady Patience, I have great strength\nin keeping silent and in suffering;\nyou take from all my temptations their might,\nthat they may not harm me.\nI will keep you with labours beside me.\n\nLady Holiness, come here to me,\nand kiss my soul's mouth,\nand dwell in my heart's ground,\nso I remain ever more whole.\n\nLady Hope, I beg you,\nthat you bind together all my heart-wounds,\nwhich Love has struck me with;\nthat I may ever keep God's blessing,\nwhatever unease shall be given me.\n\nAh lordly, holy Christian belief,\nyou ever enlighten my soul's eye,\nthat I well know whither I am turned\nin Christian things;\nI commend to you my works and my senses.\n\nAh dear Lady Watchfulness, do not sit,\nstand at all times beside me,\nso I remain free of evil.\n\nLady Measure, be at all times beside me,\nso may I to God at all times\nto his service ready be.\n\nLady Sufficiency, you are my dear chamber-maid;\nI must love you greatly,\nyou make my hard bed soft,\nmy coarse food savoury,\nyou give me power in poverty;\nthis comes from God's goodness.\n\nPeace and stillness I cannot do without,\nyou must with me wander in all my ways.\nThose who much speak and much whisper,\nthey keep their honour scarcely;\nthose who much rumour-speak,\nthat can never be useful.\n\nWisdom is at all times beside Love,\nand is of all maidens the mistress.\nShe keeps whatever Love gives;\nshe makes the person useful for what he teaches or reads.\nChaste Shamefacedness has singular virtue on her,\nshe is gladly unpraised in all people's presence.\n\nNow am I with maidens well possessed;\nyet are there two whom I will not forget —\nFear and Steadfastness:\nthese two shall ever be beside me,\nso may all my maidens\nof their office well take care.\n\nI thank you, dear God-love,\nLady Empress;\nfor you have all to my help given\nin my exiled heavenly-way.\n\n### XLIX. Of a lay-brother.\n\nIn the order of Preachers a brother was struck dead by the thunder. There was prayer made for his soul with faithful longing, that if anything were on him unchanged, it would be forgiven him. Then his soul was shown to the same person who prayed for him; he was fair in heavenly bliss and had no pain. That was from this, as his soul spoke: I was humble in my works, I was fearful in my senses, I was good-willed in all my works — therefore have I no pain. The soul: Why did you not journey at once to the heavenly kingdom? Then he said: I must first here receive divine knowing and heavenly love, of which I had none on earth. — \"Whence is it that you have the small spot on your face?\" Then he said: I bore my face severely against those who did not do my will; that remained unchanged on me. — \"By what may one take this spot from you?\" Then he said: Had I a single sigh! — Then nothing of that could come to him from the person, for [the sigh] was given him in the meanwhile. Then he rejoiced and said: Now it is gone. — \"Why bear you this crown? Now you are not yet to the heavenly kingdom come.\" Then he said: I had a singular death; from that God has given it me.\n\n### L. Of the painful gold.[^20]\n\nAh dear Lord Jesus Christ, who are an eternal God with the eternal Father, think on me. I thank you, Lord, for your sonly gifts with which you touch me without ceasing, which all my bones and all my veins and all my flesh cut through. When I, Lord, may thank you for these with holy thankfulness, then am I safe, and otherwise not. You may well hold your base ones basely, for, Lord, your meaning is good and better than good; for many a thing is called good which is not so good as that of yours, which you do to me. But when you touch me with your overlordly sweetness which goes through all my soul and all my body, then I fear myself, that I of your divine delight may all-too-much draw into me, since I am on earth unworthy of it. Therefore I beg you sometimes for other people more than for myself, that I may renounce my delight through God's love and through Christian faithfulness.\n\nHereafter I fear the rising up of haughtiness, which threw the noblest angel out of the heavenly kingdom. I fear also the serpent of empty honour which deceived Eve. I fear the unfaith which sundered Judas from God. Am I faithful to God, then I stand with all virtues, with all goodness in all watch, beside God with our dear Lady, his maidenly Mother.\n\n### LI. A prayer against negligence.\n\nI, allerleast, I allerbasest, I allerunworthiest among all the people known, I desire, I beg you, heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ, Lord Holy Spirit, Lord holy Trinity, that you would today forgive me all the negligence with which I have neglected myself in your holy service, not alone through need and through necessity, but rather through my sinful wickedness, which I well could have let alone had I willed. Now receive, Lord, this small bettering which I now offer you with my will, to the honour of your dear Mother and to all the saints whom one today celebrates in holy Christendom, and to all God's saints to praise and honour in blessedness, with which they, dear Lord, have come to you.\n\nNow help me, dear Lord, to such an amendment in my life, that I to your holy ones may be a companion on earth in holy living, that in your kingdom I may possess their fellowship before your lordly face, and all those with me who beg my prayer.\n\n### LII. How the loving soul bows under the hand of God.\n\nI speak to my five senses: Bow yourselves under the almighty hand of God, for the enemies from hell must bow themselves and bend, however haughty they are, in their fiery bonds under the hard compulsion of the almighty God.\n\nThose who are in the purgatory,\nthey must bow themselves in their guilt under the penance,\nuntil at the last hour\nthey may pure be found.\n\nThe sinners on earth, they must bow themselves under the burden of their guilt at the judgment, with contrition, into penance, or else into the eternal hell.\n\nThe good people on earth, they must bow themselves with the [contrition][^21] into penance all their days.\n\nThe chosen pure, who mean our Lord God with all faithfulness, are sorely beset, and they suffer many a holy burden. They bow and bend themselves under all pain and under all creatures with soaring love. To them haughtiness is very dear-priced.[^22] On this I shall think, and I will and must out of the same cup drink which my Father drank from, if I shall possess his kingdom.\n\nThe heavenly kingdom bows itself with all holy angels in blissful holiness, for what they are and live, that God has given them for nothing.\n\nThe saints bow themselves and bend before God\nin flowing love and blissful longing\nwith diligent acceptance.\nSo they thank God,\nthat to them his gifts in their needs\non earth were so lovingly ready;\ntherewith they bore softly all their heart-sorrow.\n\nSo must to me happen,\nfor I also through his love\nin many a pain am.\n\n### LIII. Of the imprisonment of spiritual people.\n\nIt moves me at my heart, the burden of this gathering in which I am. Then I spoke in the night, in the desert of my heart, to our Lord thus: Lord, how pleases you this imprisonment? Then said our Lord: I am imprisoned in him. — In this word was given me the sense of all these words thus:\n\nI fasted with them in the wilderness.\nI was tempted by the enemy with them.\nI laboured all my days in well-bred fashion in useful fruit with them.\nI was betrayed with a kiss with them.\nI was sold in faith with them, when they reveal themselves to me in God-service.\nI was sought in peril with them.\nI was attacked with them in full fierceness.\nI was captured in greedy ill-will with them.\nI was bound in obedience with them.\nI was mocked in great disfavour with them.\nI was struck[^23] in great innocence with them.\nWhatever bitterness they hear, that shall not trouble them.\nI was dragged before judgment with them as a guilty thief.\nOn this they shall think in chapter and in confession.\nI was scourged with them; when they scourge themselves, they shall think on me.\nI bore my cross with them.\nWhen they are burdened, by that they shall think on me.\nI was nailed to the cross with them,\nthrough which they gladly suffer and scarcely lament their burden.\nI commended my spirit at my death to my Father with them;\nso shall they commend themselves to me in all their needs.\nI died with them in a holy end,\nso shall all their bonds become loosed.\nI was buried with them in an earthly stone;\nso shall they be and remain, pure from all earthly things.\nI rose up from death, so shall they ever from their failings rise up,\nso may they the heavenly clarity in their soul receive.\nI journeyed to heaven with my divine strength;\nthither shall they follow me in all this fear's might.\n\nI hope this truly, that you without ceasing perform this and know it. In whom it is not yet, that the true God may yet bring it to completion!\n\n### LIV. Of four things of belief.\n\nThat one Christianly believes in God, and that one loves God holily, and that one Jesus Christ truly knows, that one his teaching faithfully follows unto the person's end — of this I believe, that one in these four things finds the eternal life. We believe Christianly, not as Jews, nor as unbelieving Christian people. They will believe in God and not in his allerholiest work which he wrought, that is, that he has given us his only-begotten Son; him they despise. Lord God, this we lament to you. We believe in him unto the will of God, that he has sent us his only-begotten Son into this world. We believe in the works and in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, with which he has redeemed us. We believe in the Holy Spirit, who has fulfilled all our blessedness in the Father and in the Son, and still fulfils it in all our good works.\n\nHow shall we love God holily? We shall love all that the holy Trinity bids. God has not created sin, therefore he hates it on us. God loves the goodness on us, which he himself is.\n\nHow shall we know Jesus Christ? By his works we shall know him, and shall love him above us. How shall we follow his teaching? As he has taught us, and his followers still teach us. The while that we here are, our blessedness shall be increased.\n\n### LV. So writes a friend to his friend.\n\nBecause you love God above your human might, because you have God dear with all your soul's strength, because you know God with all your soul's wisdom, because you have received God's gift with many a holy thankfulness — therefore I send you this letter.\n\nThe great overflow of divine love, which never stands still and flows ever more without ceasing, without any kind of labour, with such sweet flowing ever unwearied, that our small vessel becomes full and overflowing — would we not stop it up with our own will, our vessel flows ever over from God's gift.\n\nLord, you are full and make us also full with your gift. You are great, and we are small; how shall we become like to you? Lord, you have given us, and we shall further give. Although we are a small vessel, you have yet filled it. One can pour a small full vessel into a great vessel so often, that the great vessel becomes full from the small vessel. The great [vessel] is the sufficiency of God which he receives from our works; we are, alas, so small, that a small fear from God or from holy scripture so fills us, that we cannot more at the hour [hold]. So we pour the gift out again into the great vessel which is God. How shall we do that? We shall pour it with holy longing upon the sinners, that they be purified — so it becomes full again. So we pour it again upon the imperfection of spiritual people, that they further strive and become and remain perfect. So it becomes again full; so we pour it out again upon the need of the poor souls who are tormented in purgatory, that God through his goodness may take from them their manifold need. So we pour it with holy mercy upon the need of holy Christendom which stands in many sins. Our Lord God has first loved us; he has also first laboured for us; he has also through us suffered most. The same shall we give back to him, will we be like to him.\n\nSo spoke our Lord to a person: Give me all that is yours, then I give you all that is mine. The recompense of the love which we to God offer, that is very sweet. The recompense of the labour, that is to us, alas, very often heavy. For what the love has within consumed, the person must, alas, sometimes without do without. How heavy that is, asks one of me? That I could yet with human senses never put forth. Our Lord has very much for us suffered, unto death. Now seems to us, alas, a small suffering so great, that I must myself despise and to God lament, that I have so small virtues. Love makes suffering sweet, more than one may say; and would we God become like, then must we win over many a strife. The remembrance of God and of the loving soul come together in like fashion as the sun and the air, with the noble God-strength, mingle themselves together in a sweet press, that the sun overcomes the air's coldness and darkness.\n\nThat one cannot mark, it is all one sweetness;\nthat comes from the divine bliss.\n\nGod give us and keep us all this love! Amen.\n\n### LVI. How God touches his friends with pain.\n\nWhen the person has a sorrow\nwhich he did not seek\nand has small guilt in himself,\nthus speaks our Lord to it:\nI have touched them. Gloss.\n\nIn like fashion as my Father let me be touched on earth,\nso those whom I draw to me on earth,\nto them the drawing does much woe.\nThey shall know this for sure:\nthe more heavily I draw them to me,\nthe nearer they come to me.\n\nWhen the person over himself gains the victory,\nthat he weighs pain and consolation alike,\nthen will I lift him into the sweetness.\nSo shall to him taste the eternal life.\n\n### LVII. A little of the paradise.\n\nThis was shown me, and I saw how the paradise was made. Of its breadth and its length I found no end. When I first came thither, that was between this world and the paradise's beginning, I saw trees, leaves and bright grass, and no weed. Some trees bore apples, and the greatest most bore nothing but leaves with noble scent. Swift waters flow there through, and a southwind toward the north. There met me in the waters earthly sweetness tempered with heavenly bliss. There was the air sweeter than I can speak of. Within there was no animal nor bird, for God had committed it to the person alone, that he might with ease therein dwell.\n\nThen I saw two men therein — that were Enoch and Elijah. Enoch sat, and Elijah lay on the earth in great inwardness. Then I spoke to Enoch. I asked him what they lived on after human nature. Then he said: We eat a little of the apples and drink a little of the water, that the body may keep its living, and the greatest is the God-strength. I asked him: How came you hither? — I came hither so that I knew not how I came hither, nor how it was with me when I sat down here. I asked about his prayer. — Belief and hope — out of these we prayed. I asked how it fared with him, whether it irked him to be there. Then he said: It is all well with me and nowhere woe. — Do you fear anything before the strife that yet shall happen in the world? — God shall arm me with his strength, that I shall well stand the stroke. — Do you pray for the Christendom? — I beg that God loose them from sins and bring them into his kingdom. Elijah raised himself up; then was his face fairly fiery, heaven-coloured; as white wool was his hair. They were clothed as poor men who with the staff go for their bread. Then I asked Elijah how he prayed for the Christendom. — I beg merciful, humble, faithful and obedient. — Do you beg for the souls? — Yes; as I desire, so their pain is lessened.[^24] As I beg, so the pain also passes away. — Are they ever loosed? — Yes, many. — Why has God brought you hither? — That we shall be helpers of the Christendom and God's, before the youngest day.\n\nI saw a twofold paradise. Of the earthly part I have spoken; the heavenly is there above, which covers the earthly part from all unweather. In the highest part are within the souls who were not worthy of the purgatory and yet were not come into God's kingdom.\n\nThey soar in bliss\nas the air in the sun.\nLordship and honour, reward and crowns\nhave they not yet, before they come into God's kingdom.\n\nWhen all earth passes away\nand the earthly paradise does not stand,\nas God his judgment has done,\nthen shall the heavenly paradise also pass away.\nAll shall in the common house dwell\nthat to God will come.\nThen shall be no sick-house more;\nwhoever in God's kingdom comes,\nhe is free from all sickness.\nPraised may Jesus Christ be,\nwho has given us his kingdom!\n\n### LVIII. Of Saint Gabriel.\n\nHoly angel Gabriel, think on me!\nThe message of my longing I commend to you.\nSay to my dear Lord Jesus Christ\nhow love-sick I am for him.\nShall I ever be healed,\nthen must he himself be my physician.\n\nYou may say to him in trust:\nthe wounds which he himself has struck me,\nthose I may no longer unsalved bear,\nand unbound.\nHe has wounded me\nunto death;\nleaves he me now unsalved lying,\nthen I can never be healed.\nWere all mountains a wound-salve,\nand all waters a physician's drink,\nand all trees with blossoms a healing wound-binding —\nwith these I could never be healed.\nHe must himself in my soul's wound lay [his salve].\n\nHoly angel Gabriel, think on me!\nThis love-message I commend to you.\nWhoever will have God dear,\nthis love-letter will awaken his senses,\nwhether he will follow God.\n\n### LIX. How the message came before God.\n\nI have the truth in my spirit well taken,\nmy message has to God come.\nThe answer that to me back shall come,\nit is so great,\nso mighty, so bottomless,\nso manifold, so wonder-rich and so over-clear,\nthat I cannot receive it\nthe while I shall be in earthly being.\nI part for a little while\nfrom this poor life,\nand so that I there never remain.\nNow must I swiftly the speech keep silent;\nI could not more of it receive,\nthat one openly of it should speak.\nBut I saw Saint Gabriel in blissful honour\nin the heavenly heights before God stand,\nas I, poor one, could receive it.\n\nThere were put on him\nnew love-fiery garments, which were given him as reward,\nthat he the true message so lordly can perform.\nHis face I saw love-fiery, playful, clear.\nHe was with the Godhead surrounded and gone-through.\nHis words I could neither understand nor hear,\nfor I am yet like an earthly fool.\n\n### LX. How the Child was seen.\n\nIn the night, when God's Son was born, then was the Child seen wound in poor cloths and bound with cords. The Child lay alone on the hard straw before two beasts. Then I spoke to the Mother: Ah dear Lady, how long shall your dear Child so alone lie? When will you take him upon your bosom? Then said our Lady — she yet did not let the Child anywhere from her eyes — she reached him her hands[^25] and said: He shall these seven hours under night and under day on this straw lie. His heavenly Father wills it so. To the heavenly Father this was particularly well, that I knew well. I begged the Child for those who had commended themselves to me. Then spoke a voice out of the Child — he yet did not stir his mouth anywhere: Will they keep me in their remembrance, then I will keep them in my grace. I have them nothing to give but my body and the eternal life. *In presepio* the Child lay on the hard straw; his heavenly Father willed it so.\n\n### LXI. How one shall prepare oneself for God.\n\nWhen the bird is long upon the earth, by that it spoils its wings, and its feathers become heavy. So it lifts itself up into a height and weighs its feathers, and draws itself up into a height so long, until it touches the air; then it comes into the flight. The longer it flies, the more blissfully it soars — scarcely so much that it touches the earth, that it refresh itself. So has love's bird taken from it the earthly delight; in like fashion shall we prepare ourselves, as we [to him] shall come. We shall the feathers of our longing ever weigh upward to God. We shall raise our virtues and our good works with love. Will we here not let go, then we shall become God's own.\n\n(*Vacat.*)\n\nAh desiring love,\nyou call many a sweet voice\ninto the ear of your dear Lord;\nyour rest is small.\nNow rejoice yourself and keep not silent,\nhe will yet himself with joys turn toward you.\n\nAh loving love,\nyou suffer many a sweet need;\nyour exile is great.\nHow shall you Jesus win?\nHe runs all-too-long before you.\nYou have yet him for sin chosen,\nand have lost yourself in him;\nof that must you many a pain suffer;\nI will console myself in him.\n\nAh full[^26] love,\nyou stretch sorely my heart and my senses,\nso that I would soon away from here.\nI cannot win you according to wish,\nso must I yet after lament-love love.\n\nAh strong love, you are in great watch,\nyou mean all things with goodness,\nyou bear sorely above all need,\nyour hope and your belief are great,\nyou shall overcome all your need.\n\nAh wise love, you have holy ordering,\nhow you God therein may praise and know\nand his will in all things fulfil.\nDo you this with faithfulness,\nso may you in God rest;\nof this will I rejoice myself.\n\n### LXII. How the maidens serve their lady the Queen.\n\nSo was the speech revealed to a person in his spirit thus: I saw a way which went from the east where the sun rises, into the west where she goes down. On this way wandered all those who of good will are toward God. They all wandered in the valley and yet hurried unequally. They wandered as pilgrims who had let go what they had dear and would seek the allerbest, which is God. Certain ones turned back with the delight which they had let go, and did not complete it. Certain ones rested in the grass of manifold delight and in the flowers of empty honour; these remained very long in the way. To them is afterward very heavy the broom of bitter purgatory given, although they live without mortal sin.\n\nHereto answered our Lord thus: Certain people who wander with good will in holy works, and yet have on themselves so heavy manners, and make themselves with their roughness so unbecoming that one can scarcely bear them — in those people is my judgment kept. They should sorely seek my mercy with humble words, so they would keep their good works unlost, and the bitterness of their heart would become nothing, and so they could come to themselves. He who seeks my mercy can darkness not bear.\n\nOne went alone in the way. That was from this, that earthly delight could give no consolation to his soul. Then he saw two persons go before him. The one went at the left hand, the other at the right hand of the way. Then the person asked who they were and what they took care of. Then said he at the left hand:\n\nI am God's justice;\nGod's judgment was given me, that is mine,\nsince Adam in the paradise sin committed.\nMy judgment has been long and great;\nnow has come this maiden who beside me goes,\nwho is become my companion,\nwho is called Mercy.\nAll who seek her and steadily call upon her,\nthose overcome all their heart-sorrow.\nShe is very perfect;\nshe has taken my justice from me.\nWhatever burden befalls the person,\nand he with contrition to me flees,\nshe lays her gentle hand upon the crime;\nso I stand as a dumb one\nand may against it nothing do.\nThis does all the true God's Son,\nwho has taken my greatest justice from me with his mercy.\nShe consoles the troubled, she heals the wounded,\nshe gladdens all who come to her,\nshe has taken great power from me.\nShe has me dear, and I her;\nwe shall ever together be,\nuntil the youngest day, when the judgment is mine.\n\nGod's judgment and God's justice,\nthat is not all one.[^27]\nThe judgment judges the guilt\nwhich has fallen on him without contrition;\nthe justice is a holy life\nwhich God has given to all his dear friends;\nof which he himself in his living took care,\nfor he was just in all his doing.\nSo knows he that we take care,\nso may we pure with him be.\n\nThis God's mercy and his Son's holy justice, which he himself held on earth in his living, and both their Holy Spirit's gift — these followed in the way a lordly company. They were all maidens-like. When I saw them, I knew them all well, yet would I question them, that I might have an answer from them. I asked who they were and what office they took care of. Then said they:\n\nWe are maidens noble and well-bred,\nand serve God to his praise\non his dearest Queen,\nwhom God has chosen above all things,\nthat is the person's soul and body.\nWe serve our Lady the Queen\nthat she with all diligence and with all her senses\nin all things her Lord's will may fulfil\nin Christian ordering;\nso she shall never be found guilty.\n\n\"Lady Wisdom, what can you serve\nwith your sister Discernment?\"\nWe teach my Lady the Queen\nthat she may ever know how to part the evil from the good\nwith divine wisdom\nin holy discernment;\nthat she may think how it now is\n\nand how it yet may become.\nOf this she wins in all things profit.\n\n\"Lady Truth, what can you serve at court\nwith your sister Holiness?\"\nI serve my Lord and my Lady the Queen\nwith all faithfulness, that she to her Lord\nin all her needs ever faithful may be;\nof which she remains safe and free,\nand that she ever within holy may be.\nIn all things to her Lord subject,\nso she remains outwardly praiseworthy.\n\n\"Lady Humility, what can you serve\nwith your sister Gentleness?\"\nI teach my Lady the Queen\nthat she my Lord's will\nand all his gifts from the heart loves.\nSo may she rest in holy gentleness,\nso she drives away with joys all her heart-sorrow.\n\n\"Lady Mildness, what can you serve\nwith your sister Obedience?\"\nI teach my Lady the Queen\nthat she with desiring God-love\nin her prayer mild be\nto the evil and the good,\nto the living and the dead.\nThe treasure is manifold and great;\nit comes all back into her bosom.\nWill she do her Lord's will,\nthat shall she, holy obedience,\nin all her works fulfil,\nso she remains God's Queen.\n\n\"Lady Strength, what can you serve\nwith your sister Steadfastness?\"\nI teach my Lady that she be strong in all strife,\nso may she in her kingdom remain.\nThat she ever steady be,\nso she remains ever free from her Lord.[^28]\n\nThese maidens are without human number, for all that the good person in God does inwardly and outwardly, thereto belong all virtues. With these maidens in the way wandered a great Lord, who was like the most holy and most lordly bishop — that was our Christian belief, which was rich in love and burned all from divine love. With all these virtues he served this Queen. Above in the height soared a maiden who was like to a golden eagle. She was surrounded with a heavenly shining; she lightened and she taught and she tempered all these maidens to the service of their Lady the Queen.\n\nThis love dwells in the Christian belief; she rests in the palace of her Lady the Queen. That is her office.\n\nThat she draws love to love —\nGod to the soul and the soul to God,\ntherefore she stands in the first commandment.\n\n### LXIII. God's will is a prince in all being.\n\nSteady longing in the longing,\nsteady ache in the body,\nsteady pain in the senses,\nsteady hoping in the heart for Jesus alone.\nAll who have themselves let go in God,\nthose mark well what I mean.\nI was two days and two nights\nin such great unease come,\nthat I had hope that my end were come.\n\nThen I thanked God as far as I could for his gifts.\nThen I desired that God would take me to him,\nif it were his dearest will.\n\n\"Yet, Lord, may your praise from this be increased,\nthen will I gladly through your love remain\nin this poor body.\nLord, I have lived so many years and lonely days,[^29]\nthat I have given you, Lord, never so heavy an offering.\nLord, your will be done and not mine,\nfor I am not my own,\nbut in all things yours.\"\n\nThen I saw in the far heights a preparation of the saints, as if they would come to my end. Their persons, who they were, I did not see between them, for there was such a strong light that there in the midst shone, which made me think that I with them were one. This was high in the west, where the sun goes down. From the north were come evil spirits, who held there about, who must see my judgment. They had also together wound themselves and were compelled like beaten dogs. They roared with their throats at me. I feared them not, I consoled myself.\n\nThen I knew that they to God's honour must come thither,\nfor God's Son has freed his friends from all their need,\nand they with their disgrace go again to hell.\nIn these things was given me in my body\na change,\nthat I yet must remain\nin this bitter, exiled life.\nI was so safe and so free\nwithout fear and without pain — woe, woe, woe! —\nthat if it could not remain so in the death of God's goodness,\nthen were it now woe to my heart.\nHad I now human might and divine love,\nthen would I now first begin to serve God;\nthis would I to a good end bring,\nas I ever willed and still will.\n\n### LXIV. How God serves the person.\n\nThus speaks a beggar-woman in her prayer to God: Lord, I thank you, since you have taken from me with your love all earthly riches, that you now clothe me and feed me with foreign goods; for all that with possession to me with delight in the heart cleaves, that must all foreign be to me.\n\nLord, I thank you, since you have taken from me the might of my eyes, that you now serve me with foreign eyes.\n\nLord, I thank you, since you have taken from me the might of my hands.\n\nLord, I thank you, since you have taken from me the might of my heart, that you now serve me with foreign hands and heart.[^30]\n\nLord, I beg you for them, that you will reward it in earth with your divine love, that they must seek you and serve you with all virtues unto a holy end. All who with pure heart all things let go for God's love,\nthose are all archbeggars;\nthose shall on the youngest day\nsit at the judgment with Jesus our Redeemer.\n\nLord, all that I lament to you,\nthat must you change in me and in all sinners.\nLord, all that I beg of you,\nthat must you grant me\nand all imperfect spiritual people,\nthrough your own honour.\nLord, your praise must in my heart never become small,\nwhatever I do, leave undone, and suffer. Amen.\n\n### LXV. How God adorns the soul with pain.\n\nWhen the maidens are at all times clothed after the will of their Bridegroom, then they need no high-time garments — that is, that one with pain be in sickness, in aches, in temptation and in many a heart-suffering, of which we find much in the sinful Christendom.\n\nThese are the high-time garments of the loving soul. But the workday-garments — that is fasting, waking, discipline, confession, sighing, weeping, praying, fearing the[^31] sin, hard compulsion of the senses and of the body in God through God, sweet hope and without ceasing love-longing, and without ceasing a begging stillness in all works. These are the workday-garments of the good person. When we are sick, then we wear the high-time garments; but when we are well, then we wear the workday-garments.\n\nThus speaks the pained body to the exiled soul:\n\nWhen will you fly with the feathers of your longing\ninto the blissful heights, to Jesus, your only love?\nThank him there, Lady, for me,\nalthough I be sinful and unworthy,\nsince he yet would be mine\nwhen he into the exile came\nand took our manhood upon himself,\nand beg, that he me without guilt may keep\nin his pure care, unto a holy end.\n\nWhen you, dear soul, from me turn —\nthe soul. Ah my dearest imprisonment,\nin which I am bound,\nI thank you for all that you have followed me.\nAlthough I am often troubled by you,\nyet you have come to my help.\nTo you shall yet all your need be taken\non the youngest day,\nso shall we no more torment each other,\nso shall it to us all well please,\nthat God with us has done.\nWill you now steady stand\nand have sweet hope:\n\nObedience is a holy band — she binds the soul to God and the body to Jesus, and the five senses to the Holy Spirit. The longer she binds, the more the soul loves. The baser the body holds itself, the baser its works before God and before people with good will.\n\n---\n\n*Explicit liber.*\n\n---\n\n[^1]: \"Praise the Lord, you children\" — Psalm 113:1 in the Vulgate, an evening psalm.\n[^2]: The body's *housewife* is the soul — Mechthild's recurring image, picking up the long passage in Book IV Ch XIV.\n[^3]: A chain of psalm-incipits and antiphons: \"Our help is in the name of the Lord,\" \"Praise the Lord all peoples,\" \"Glory to the Father,\" \"The kingdom of the world,\" \"My heart has uttered,\" \"Whom I have seen,\" \"Glory to the Father.\" Mechthild adapts the prayer-formulae of the breviary into her own voice of intercession.\n[^4]: \"Blessed are the poor in spirit\" — Matthew 5:3, the first beatitude.\n[^5]: *I greet you, Lady, dear Mary* is repeated litany-fashion as each clause unfolds; the structure mirrors the *Litany of Loretto* (in formation in the late medieval period).\n[^6]: Morel: *haben* — emended *han*.\n[^7]: Morel: *durvlossen* — emended *durstossen* (pierced through).\n[^8]: Morel: *brüche* — emended *brüte* (brides).\n[^9]: Morel marginal note: \"Greith pp. 264 and 217.\"\n[^10]: Morel marginal note: \"Greith p. 265.\"\n[^11]: Morel: *vir* — emended *vür* (drove away).\n[^12]: The seven penitential psalms (*Domine ne in furore* — Ps 6; *Beati quorum* — Ps 32; *Domine ne in furore* — Ps 38; *Miserere mei Deus* — Ps 51; *Domine exaudi* — Ps 102; *De profundis* — Ps 130; *Domine exaudi* — Ps 143) are commended one by one to a moment of Christ's deathbed coming, in seven roles: physician, dearest friend, faithful confessor, faithful brother, faithful father, sending of the maidenly mother, and dearest Bridegroom with the morning-gift.\n[^13]: I.e., the widows; Morel's marginal note.\n[^14]: Morel: *deüe, man ime (welle) wc geben.* The OCR is corrupt here (\"then [he begged] that one would give him something\"); the sense is that the soul in purgatory asks for an alm (a sigh, a prayer) from the visiting living person.\n[^15]: The Lord's report of what the dead brother is now suffering is broken across exchanges in Morel; punctuation supplied to mark speaker turns. The \"had I one sigh\" clause is the soul's lament for a single act of penitential breath he failed to perform on earth.\n[^16]: Morel reads obscurely here (the line lacks a noun); rendered \"an unmeasured one\" on the grounds that the five-vice list is built on syntactic parallels and Mechthild elsewhere couples ordering with measure.\n[^17]: Morel: *diemfitige (sie)* — Morel marks the reading as suspect; rendered literally \"humble\" but probably meaning \"haughty\" or \"deceitful\" (the devil disguised as humility). The doctrinal target is the Free-Spirit heresy of dissolving the Manhood of Christ into the bare Godhead — Mechthild's most explicit anti-quietist passage.\n[^18]: Morel marginal note: \"the text seems corrupted.\" Translation hews close to the surface sense: the truly knowing person speaks humbly only what before God he can complete.\n[^19]: Morel: *rüwe* — here taken as Middle High German *Ruhe* (rest, stillness), as the address-litany begins with the soul calling on her holy companions for rest before any other virtue.\n[^20]: Morel: *pinlichin goltes* — \"painful gold.\" The chapter heading reads the gold of God's painful touch as a touch that is both wounding and gilding (*goltes* with the genitive of the touch that comes through the body's bones and veins).\n[^21]: Morel marks a word missing in the manuscript at this point; \"contrition\" supplied from the parallel construction of the surrounding clauses (sinners bend with contrition; good people likewise).\n[^22]: I.e., haughtiness is to them a very expensive thing to indulge in — they cannot afford it. The next sentence's \"cup which my Father drank from\" is Christ's word at Gethsemane, here transferred to the chosen who must bow under suffering as Christ bowed under the cup.\n[^23]: Morel: *georschlaget*; the OCR is corrupt. Most likely *geslagen* (struck/beaten) on the grounds that *gegeisselet* (scourged) occurs cleanly two lines later in the same litany and Mechthild does not pair the same verb to two different clauses in this Passion-list. Rendered \"struck\" to preserve the distinction.\n[^24]: Morel marginal note: \"here a question seems to be missing.\" The exchange-structure of the Elijah dialogue runs question-answer; the missing question is supplied implicitly by the answering clause (\"As I beg, so the pain also passes away\" — answering an unstated \"and what then?\").\n[^25]: Morel: *in ir h6de* — Morel emends to *ir hende* (her hands). The Christmas vision: Mary reaches her hands toward the Child but does not yet take him up, because the heavenly Father wills the Child to lie on the straw the full seven hours.\n[^26]: Morel: *volle*; manuscript reads *wlü*, perhaps *wole?*. Morel's reading *volle* (full) preserved; the litany of five loves runs *desiring / loving / full / strong / wise* — a stanzaic five-fold that parallels other Mechthild love-lists.\n[^27]: A doctrinal distinction Mechthild makes once and only once in the *Flowing Light*: *gerihte* (judgment, sentence-passing on unrepented guilt) and *gerehtekeit* (justice, righteousness, the holy life God gives his friends) are not one. The Latin *judicium / justitia* lies behind the distinction; Morel cites the biblical *justitia justos*.\n[^28]: Morel here is corrupt — *vri* (free) but the sense calls for the opposite. Either the text means \"free of her Lord's reproach\" (free in him) or the line has dropped a negation; the surface text is preserved.\n[^29]: Morel: *floanfgen tnf*; emended *einsamen tagen* (lonely days) is offered tentatively. Mechthild's old-age reckoning here, after thirty-plus years of dictating the *Flowing Light*, echoes Book VII Ch III.\n[^30]: Mechthild's beggar's prayer: the body's might has been taken from her (eyes, hands, heart) and given back to her through the hands and hearts of the sisters at Helfta who serve her in her infirmity. The \"foreign goods / foreign eyes / foreign hands\" is not estrangement but the doctrine of mutual service in the cloister.\n[^31]: Morel: *dise* — emended *die* (the).\n[^32]: Morel: *snöden vröwen* — \"base/lowly lady,\" the soul speaking of herself in third person against the dignity of her maiden Love. The Alemannic *snöde* carries the sense of \"base / lowly / unworthy,\" not the modern German \"disgraceful\"; the soul is contrasting her own lowliness with Love's nobility, not naming a moral flaw.\n[^33]: Source: *als die westbaren, die du miusten blümen an der crone sint*. *Westbaren* is an obscure Middle High German form not glossed by Morel and not attested elsewhere in the *Flowing Light*; rendered here as \"unbaptized children\" on the reading that it stands for *die nit getoft sint* — those (small ones) who could not receive baptism, and so figure as the smallest flowers at the very rim of the crown. Other readings are possible; the interpretive choice is flagged here.\n[^34]: Morel queries the manuscript reading *hatte* and conjectures *bäte* (\"asked\"): *wan ich hatte (bäte?) mich in ze geben*. The conjectural emendation is accepted here (\"for I had asked to give myself to him\"); without it the clause does not parse as a request.\n[^35]: Source: *Ich bin noch leider also deine niet, de ich möge griffen durch der nadelen oeri aller miner vienden*. The Alemannic is grammatically inverted relative to the conventional sense: literally \"I am still, alas, so small **as nothing**, that I might reach through the needle's eye, [past] all my enemies.\" The translator's rendering \"**can** grip through\" follows this reading (the soul's smallness is itself the qualification for passing through — Matthew 19:24 reversed: not the camel who cannot pass, but the small soul who can). The conventional alternative (\"I am still too small to reach through\") is grammatically defensible; Mechthild's habitual inversion of conventional images supports the reading taken here, but the choice is interpretive.\n[^36]: Morel: *hrmen (sic)*. The verb is corrupt in the manuscript; Morel marks it with *sic* and does not emend. Rendered conjecturally as \"(work)\" — that is, work out, accomplish, assert. The plausible underlying verb is *erwerben* (earn, win, accomplish) or *meren* (increase); the surface verb \"work\" is held in parentheses to mark the conjecture.\n[^37]: Morel's note at this line reads \"*Lücke in der Handschrift*\" (lacuna in the manuscript): *Vrö bekantnisse, swene ich ni....\\*) ich*. The bracketed `[look at]` is the translator's fill, on the parallel of Knowing's previous line (\"you have so noble a mirror in which you so often look at yourself\"). The fill is conjectural; the source itself breaks off at *ni....* with no preserved verb.\n[^38]: Source: *Da solt mir herre min hüffe legen* (\"there you shall, Lord, lay **my** hip\"). The grammatical sense requires *din hüffe* (\"your hip\"), since the soul is preparing the bed in which Christ shall rest — Christ is the one laid down, not the soul. The silent emendation *min → din* is accepted here on grammatical-sense grounds; Mechthild's bridal-bed imagery throughout the chapter consistently has Christ as the one received into the soul's bed of pain.",
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