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Jan. 18th, 2008 12:14 amOf course, the violent rain would start two minutes after I had finally managed to turn out the light....
Sometimes I'm not keen on living in an attic!
Sometimes I'm not keen on living in an attic!
Jan. 18th, 2008
On a less wibbly note
Jan. 18th, 2008 09:09 pmI was reading Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese beguine (†1315) today. She gets a rotten press, because she recorded some visions about the eventual fate of Christ's foreskin - which was a source of genuine and fairly serious theological controversy at the time, because of its implications for the nature of Christ's risen body - which firstly contradict the eventual answer the church settled on, and which secondly have a rather odd subtext to the modern reader. But this is unfair: she has some interesting ideas, and I rather like this vision of the universe, presented in the first chapters of her book (or rather, her confessor's book, which is why it's in the third person):
Since the hand of God came on a holy person after Mass in church, she began to lose her strength with a sensation of sweetness. Experiencing raptures and enfolded in unspeakable light, she saw a man, handsome before the sons of man, and in that man she saw that light. And in the man and in the divine light, she saw the elements, and creatures and the things made thereof, the small and the big, distinct in such great luminosity that it seemed that each, no matter how small, shone a hundred times brighter than the sun. As the sun shines, so does even the smallest grain or stone. And the clarity of the sun as it is now would be judged dark in comparison, much like the moon when it is hidden by a cloud. The created things were so distinct in their brightness that each was different according to its characteristics, so the green seed, and the red rose, and so the others.
Among all elements and created objects, the earth was especially bright, the reason being that God assumed His body from the earth, and that during the Lord’s passion, the earth was soaked in the blood of the Saviour and the saints. All of this was [revealed] in that man, that is, Christ.
(translation: Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese Beguine: Life and Revelations. Translated from the Latin with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive Essay. Ulrike Wiethaus. Cambridge: DS Brewer, 2002.
Since the hand of God came on a holy person after Mass in church, she began to lose her strength with a sensation of sweetness. Experiencing raptures and enfolded in unspeakable light, she saw a man, handsome before the sons of man, and in that man she saw that light. And in the man and in the divine light, she saw the elements, and creatures and the things made thereof, the small and the big, distinct in such great luminosity that it seemed that each, no matter how small, shone a hundred times brighter than the sun. As the sun shines, so does even the smallest grain or stone. And the clarity of the sun as it is now would be judged dark in comparison, much like the moon when it is hidden by a cloud. The created things were so distinct in their brightness that each was different according to its characteristics, so the green seed, and the red rose, and so the others.
Among all elements and created objects, the earth was especially bright, the reason being that God assumed His body from the earth, and that during the Lord’s passion, the earth was soaked in the blood of the Saviour and the saints. All of this was [revealed] in that man, that is, Christ.
(translation: Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese Beguine: Life and Revelations. Translated from the Latin with Introduction, Notes and Interpretive Essay. Ulrike Wiethaus. Cambridge: DS Brewer, 2002.