Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant

Abstract

Reviewed by Valerie Lesniak Seattle University Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant. By Elizabeth A. Dreyer. New York: Paulist Press, 2005. 180 pp. $16.95 Passionate Spirituality is a newly revised and expanded version of the 1989 Madeleva Lecture, delivered by the author, Elizabeth Dreyer at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. The earlier version was entitled Passionate Women: Two Medieval Mystics. This volume, appearing sixteen years later, reflects the author's continuing scholarship in the field of medieval women's religious experience and the "responsible, critical and productive" (7) retrieval of historical texts for contemporary spirituality. The book has four chapters. In the first chapter, Dreyer deals with what she terms methodological cautions regarding the recovery of medieval materials for contemporary spirituality. In fourteen pages of this thirty-five page chapter, Dreyer highlights several recent yet contrasting approaches taken by several leading women scholars, such as Gerda Lerner, Grace Jantzen, and Luce Irigaray, to the relative significance of medieval women's writings. Dreyer is cognizant that some scholars have rightly critiqued medieval women mystics' writing as being elitist, thus placing their value in question. Dreyer contends, however, that written evidence of "ordinary women" at the time simply does not exist. Further she reasons that "any cohort of a population" does reflect currents found in the wider culture since any spirituality is embedded in the culture in which it exists. Thus, after one takes class into consideration, these literate medieval women should not be arbitrarily dismissed, for they do provide insights into the broader dynamics of medieval society. Dreyer concludes that some evidence of women's spiritual lives is better than nothing at all. After advancing this position, Dreyer notes the long marginalization of women's history in Christianity and the issues of authorship particular to the Middle Ages. Dreyer addresses the issue of whether these texts were truly self authored or were editorialized by scribes. She emphasizes impressively the real risks these women took as they dared to write or teach in the public sphere in the face of social and ecclesial disapproval. The women's unconventionality is given high relief in her discussion. The author next turns to the problematic question of the extreme and exaggerated ascetical practices for which some of these women were known. Practices such as drinking pus (Catherine of Siena), eating lice (Catherine of Genoa), drinking the water from the sores of lepers (Angela of Foligno) makes the lives of these women, Dreyer contends, both sensational and "weird" (3) to modern readers. [End Page 278] Dreyer relies heavily on the positive interpretation proposed by historian Carolyn Walker Bynum to interpret these strange contextual practices. Bynum suggests that one must see these behaviors as "efforts to gain power and to give meaning" (16). She links their behavior with spiritual fertility and generativity that underlies the women's great desire to imitate the suffering Christ. Dreyer notes the writings of these women are still compelling to contemporary readers in spite of their severe behavior. For those unfamiliar with many of these methodological issues, Dreyer provides a short and crisp introduction. For those who are more familiar with the increasing historical scholarship on the period, nothing particularly new will be found in these pages. Perhaps what Dreyer does best in this chapter is to draw forward aspects of medieval spirituality for a critical contemporary appropriation. She asks, "what are some of the themes in this literature that can be of service to women and men on a postmodern quest for holiness?" (17) Dreyer suggests four themes from medieval women's accounts: 1) the experiential base of their spirituality; 2) the focus on the human Christ; 3) hope and optimism in the face of difficulty; and 4) their implicit invitation to be delivered from lukewarm affection (18). The fourth theme, the implicit invitation to be delivered from lukewarm affection, is the real thrust of the entire book. Dreyer devotes the entire second...