Of the Seven Manners of Holy Love

Translation: Of the Seven Manners of Holy Love (complete) · Beatrice of Nazareth, c. 1200-1268 · source: Beatrijs van Nazareth, Seven manieren van minne, ed. L. Reypens & J. Van Mierlo, Leuvensche Studien en Tekstuitgaven 11 (Leuven: De Vlaamsche Boekenhalle, 1926); DBNL diplomatic edition ID beat001lrey01, treatise body pp. 3-39 of Part 2.

Author:
Beatrice of Nazareth
Form:
mystical prose treatise
Approx. date:
c. 1240 CE
Includes a project-original translation. One or more chapters here are rendered into English by this project, not by a named public-domain translator. Project translations are paraphrase-level content, not verified primary sources; do not place them inside quotation marks attributed to the original author. Methodology, source-chain, and license: /about/translations/.

Beatrice of Nazareth (c. 1200–1268), Cistercian nun and prioress of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Nazareth near Lier in the Duchy of Brabant. The Seven manieren van minne is her only surviving treatise in her own vernacular, the earliest substantial work of Middle Dutch mystical prose, composed c. 1235–1245. The treatise traces seven graded manieren (manners) of holy Love's working in the soul: the first longing for conformity to the divine image; service of Love without any why (anticipating Eckhart's sunder warumbe by half a century); the third manner's anguish of inadequacy before Love; the fourth manner's sweet overflowing; the fifth — the orewoet, Beatrice's word for the storm of divine love that acts upon the body itself; the sixth manner's house-mistress, the soul as steady ruler of her own house in which Love now reigns; and the seventh manner's eschatological yearning for the country of eternity. The Middle Dutch text was identified as Beatrice's work by Jozef Van Mierlo in the mid-1920s, having previously been preserved unidentified as the 42nd sermon of the Limburgsche Sermoenen. Project translation from the critical edition of L. Reypens & J. Van Mierlo (Leuven, 1926), which collates three witnesses (Brussels KBR 3067-73; Vienna codex; the Limburgsche Sermoenen MS). The three published modern English translations — Eric Colledge 1986 (in Petroff), Oliver Davies 1990 (in Bowie, Beguine Spirituality), Roger De Ganck 1991 (Cistercian Studies 122) — are all in copyright; see /about/translations/.

Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
Stream
Greco-Christian
Cultural age
Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
Composed
c. 1240 CE

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