OF SIX MEDIAEVAL WOMEN 



centre of mystic tendencies. It was here that, 

 harassed and ill, Mechthild of Magdeburg took 

 refuge, and entered as a nun in 1270. But we 

 are anticipating. 



Mechthild, at first a beguine, and afterwards 

 a nun, but a visionary from the days of her 

 childhood, was born, most probably of noble 

 parents, in the diocese of Magdeburg, in 1212. 

 That she is perhaps better known to the general 

 reader than are other contemplatives of her day 

 is probably due to the suggestion that she may 

 be the Matilda immortalised by Dante in the 

 "Earthly Paradise" (Purg. xxviii. 22 seq.), 

 rather than to her own writings. This may be 

 partly because the personality of that supreme 

 visionary and poet tended, as does all superlative 

 genius, to cast a shadow over the lesser lights of 

 both earlier and later times, and partly because, 

 although Mechthild's works were early trans- 

 lated into Latin, she wrote in Low German. 

 Though this original MS. has not yet been 

 found, there exists one, translated into High 

 German in 1345 at Basle (a centre of the 

 " Friends of God ") by the Dominican, Heinrich 

 von Nordlingen, by which Mechthild's work 

 has been made known to us, but the language 

 even of this proves a very real stumbling-block 

 to the most strenuous student. Still, by record- 

 ing her thoughts and visions in the language 

 of her country and her day, she gained a lay' 

 audience, a result which would have been hardly 

 possible if she herself had been a classic. But 



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