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Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World
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Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 November 2023) | Viewed by 8770

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Laura Saetveit Miles

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway
Interests: medieval religious culture; Middle English; mystical and visionary literature; contemplative literature; monastic studies; Marian Studies; book history; female authors; feminism and gender studies; queer studies
Dr. Katherine Zieman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre d'études supérieures de civilisation médiévale, University of Poitiers, 24, Rue de la Chaîne - TSA 81118, CEDEX, 86073 Poitiers, France
Interests: late medieval literature and culture; devotional practice; attention; liturgy; Chaucer; Langland; reading practices; media studies; gender and sexuality

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The past few decades have seen important developments in research on visions and visionaries, and on contemplation and contemplatives, in the Middle Ages both inside and outside of Europe. This Special Issue seeks to develop established as well as new connections between medieval visionary practice and medieval contemplative practice. While both focus on interior perception and reception of the divine, they present quite different modes of individual agency, and different relationships to other forms of spiritual practice such as reading, prayer, meditation, liturgy, etc. How might we better understand medieval religious culture and spirituality by better mapping the relationship between visionary and contemplative practice? How does this relationship vary chronologically and geographically? Scholars working on medieval sources in a wide range of humanities fields are invited to submit abstracts that consider these questions in religions including but not limited to Christianity, across the medieval world, defined broadly.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors ([email protected] and [email protected]) or to the Religions editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Time schedule:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 15 August 2022
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 1 September 2022
  • Full manuscript deadline: 1 March 2023

Prof. Dr. Laura Saetveit Miles
Dr. Katherine Zieman
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • divine visions
  • visionary literature
  • contemplation
  • contemplative literature
  • medieval religious cultures
  • medieval spirituality

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 319 KiB  
Article
Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation
by Antje Elisa Chan
Religions 2024, 15(1), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010119 - 17 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1190
Abstract
This article examines the use of contemplation in the religious poetry of John Lydgate, a fifteenth-century Benedictine monk and poet from England. While our understanding of Lydgate as a Benedictine poet has gained scholarly momentum, his paraliturgical writings have received less sustained attention. [...] Read more.
This article examines the use of contemplation in the religious poetry of John Lydgate, a fifteenth-century Benedictine monk and poet from England. While our understanding of Lydgate as a Benedictine poet has gained scholarly momentum, his paraliturgical writings have received less sustained attention. In this article, I argue that Lydgate democratizes the millennium-old monastic practice of lectio and meditatio by introducing a new contemplative mode for lay- and non-Latinate people in the vernacular, which I refer to as a performative lectio domini. This lectio is on an image instead of scripture and takes place within the context of the liturgy. Lydgate offers directions for participation in a liturgical ritual, enabling his readers to fully inhabit the surplus of materiality, somatic movements, and figurative language emanating from the liturgy in order for them to abandon themselves to contemplation in the crux of the rite. By looking at the poem On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est as a case study, I demonstrate how for Lydgate the liturgical kiss becomes a threshold of encounter with Christ through the incarnation. Rather than producing an emotive response, as is often characterized, the liturgical kiss fosters an intellectual illumination and deeper knowledge of Christ crucified. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
14 pages, 240 KiB  
Article
Mystic on a Tilting Stage: Julian of Norwich’s Performance of English Visionary Devotion
by Elizabeth F. Perry
Religions 2023, 14(12), 1466; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14121466 - 27 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1164
Abstract
Julian of Norwich’s performance within her longer Revelations of Divine Love involves layers of authorizing and devotional steps that frame it as a gift for her community. She presents herself not as an author, but as a revelator, in step with John’s acts [...] Read more.
Julian of Norwich’s performance within her longer Revelations of Divine Love involves layers of authorizing and devotional steps that frame it as a gift for her community. She presents herself not as an author, but as a revelator, in step with John’s acts of unveiling his visions and dialogue with the divine in the Biblical Revelations. Examining Julian’s act of presenting her visions in writing demonstrates how her daring yet insistently orthodox visions handle issues of spiritual authority and individual faith made urgent by the rise of Lollardy. My work with Julian’s Revelations is the foundation for a wider argument about the interchange between vernacular mysticism and public devotion through their use of affective piety and the performance of spiritual dialogue. In this article, I examine Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Divine Love to determine how it works as contemplative drama. I also look at The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ and The Cloud of Unknowing to set up Julian’s performance of contemplative devotion and the potential pitfalls of a pious English readership. Julian’s revelations demonstrate where interior contemplation is transformed into collective acts of devotion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
13 pages, 3472 KiB  
Article
The Odbert Psalter (Boulogne-sur-Mer, BM, ms. 20); or, the Image as a Medium for Contemplative Practice
by Blanche Lagrange
Religions 2023, 14(9), 1213; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091213 - 21 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1194
Abstract
The monastic reforms of the 10th century greatly increased the role of the psalter, a biblical book that became the main tool of a monk in personal and collective prayer. The Odbert Psalter, produced in Saint-Bertin around 999, opens with a scene of [...] Read more.
The monastic reforms of the 10th century greatly increased the role of the psalter, a biblical book that became the main tool of a monk in personal and collective prayer. The Odbert Psalter, produced in Saint-Bertin around 999, opens with a scene of Pentecost in which we see Christ represented as a king who is static and in a space distinct from the apostles, exhibiting an attitude of meditation. This is not a narrative image: this scene is an indication for the reader of the Psalms. If he follows the example of the apostles, he will arrive at the vision of God, which can only be attained through continuous meditation on the Psalms as it was defined by the reforms. This image serves as a medium for the act of contemplation itself: according to the three modes of vision defined by Saint Augustine, the image of Christ constitutes a pathway from corporeal vision to intellectual vision. By constituting the support of divine contemplation, the psalter and its images are set up here as perfect mediators of the power of the intellect. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
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13 pages, 1151 KiB  
Article
Visualisation in Late-Medieval Franciscan Passion Literature from the Low Countries: Cransken van minnen (Wreath of Love), 1518
by Marcin Polkowski
Religions 2023, 14(9), 1156; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091156 - 11 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1087
Abstract
Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-devotee with the experience of being a virtual witness during a text-guided meditation. Based on a new reading of Cransken van minnen, a Middle Dutch prayer book from Franciscan milieus, this [...] Read more.
Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-devotee with the experience of being a virtual witness during a text-guided meditation. Based on a new reading of Cransken van minnen, a Middle Dutch prayer book from Franciscan milieus, this paper will propose a framework based on the interrelations between visualization and other key aspects pointed out in recent research as significant for understanding this type of literature: affective reactions, anamnesis and virtual witnessing. This framework entails two assumptions. The first is that visualization, especially with Mary as the compassionate “focaliser”, was instrumental in achieving the goal of devotion, which was to promote an affective reaction (contrition). The second is that this prayer book offered devotees an experience of anamnesis (“recalling”) that depended on the provision of sensory perceptions through which readers could become virtual witnesses to the events meditated upon. Using a combination of philological and literary–historical methods, the structure and content of this prayer book are scrutinized in detail to provide new insights into the strategies used by the compiler to infuse the prayer discourse with elements suggesting visual perception. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
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11 pages, 259 KiB  
Article
Imagination and the Cosmic Consciousness in Chaucer’s The House of Fame
by Dominika Ruszkiewicz
Religions 2023, 14(8), 959; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14080959 - 25 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1553
Abstract
The aim of this article is to situate Chaucer’s The House of Fame in the tradition of exercising the self as practiced by ancient philosophers and theorized by Pierre Hadot. It shows that Chaucer’s poem contains echoes of an ancient exercise referred to [...] Read more.
The aim of this article is to situate Chaucer’s The House of Fame in the tradition of exercising the self as practiced by ancient philosophers and theorized by Pierre Hadot. It shows that Chaucer’s poem contains echoes of an ancient exercise referred to as ‘the view from above’, which engages the faculties of the imagination in order to enable an individual to review their life and to situate it in the context of universal nature. The poet’s creative use of the ancient motif of the celestial flight, I will argue, distances him from those writers who use the theme to develop the contemptus mundi topos and affiliates him with those ancient thinkers who, like Marcus Aurelius, employ it to turn their attention to their own self, which may be achieved via meditations on the identity and homogeneity of all things (homoeides). It is Chaucer’s use of the view from above topos that vindicates the role of imagination by showing how it contributes to self-knowledge, that is, to an awareness of where one stands. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
13 pages, 280 KiB  
Article
In Loving Memory? Indecent Forgetting of the Dead in Continental Sister-Books and Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love
by Godelinde Gertrude Perk
Religions 2023, 14(7), 922; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14070922 - 17 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1268
Abstract
Medieval nuns and anchorites (recluses) were spiritually and economically bound to pray for the dead, no matter their feelings towards the departed, who frequently appear to them in visions. This article charts medieval enclosed women’s attempts to intervene in this economy by forgetting [...] Read more.
Medieval nuns and anchorites (recluses) were spiritually and economically bound to pray for the dead, no matter their feelings towards the departed, who frequently appear to them in visions. This article charts medieval enclosed women’s attempts to intervene in this economy by forgetting souls. Staging a generative conversation between medieval women’s writings and Marcella Althaus-Reid’s (1952–2009) ‘indecent theology’ (queer liberation theology), this essay scrutinizes medieval female-authored texts for indecent forgetting (socially and economically disruptive forgetting). It juxtaposes a Middle English visionary text, A Revelation of Love by anchorite Julian of Norwich (1342/1343–c. 1416), with the mid-fourteenth-century Middle High German sister-book (compilation of nuns’ lives) of the Dominican convent of St Katharinental in Diessenhofen (in present-day Switzerland) and the early sixteenth-century Middle Dutch sister-book of Diepenveen (in the present-day Netherlands), originating from a Devotio Moderna convent of Augustinian canonesses regular. Heeding Althaus-Reid’s call, it dissects how forgetting unsettles systems of sanctioned spiritual and economic exchanges. I first examine how the sister-books forget certain souls and define their own terms for their participation in this system. I then turn to how Julian enlists all believers for her intercessory duties but also misplaces souls. Throughout, this article considers how these texts prise open space for medieval women within indecent theology. Ultimately, it illustrates how medieval women’s negotiations of their economic conditions supply a fertile ground for considering larger concerns of defiance, community, and the charity that binds together the living and the dead. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visionary and Contemplative Practice in the Medieval World)
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