MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG 



visions and ideas in a wealth of word-pictures. 

 Such visions and ideas had accumulated adown 

 the ages, varying but slightly one from another, 

 and Mechthild, in making use of this stereotyped 

 material, only took from, or added to, the general 

 sum. Yet even so, she contrives to make her 

 personality felt. She begins : " I have seen a 

 place whose name is Eternal Hatred." Lucifer, 

 farthest removed from the source of Light, forms 

 the foundation-stone, and around him are arranged 

 the deadly sins. Above him are the Christians, 

 then the Jews, and, farthest removed from Hell's 

 dire depths, the Heathen. Horror upon horror 

 follows, like those pictured a hundred years 

 before by Herrad von Landsperg, abbess at 

 Hohenburg, in Alsace, and, fifty years later, by 

 Dante, and when she concludes by saying that, 

 after seeing the terrors of Hell, all her five senses 

 were paralysed for three days, as if struck by 

 lightning, it is significant that Dante tells that, 

 overwhelmed with sorrow for the lovers, doomed 

 for ever to be borne upon the winds, he " fainted 

 with pity . . . and fell, as a dead body falls." 



It is with a sense of relief that we leave such 

 sad scenes, to glance at her vision of Paradise, 

 although it does not follow in this sequence in 

 her recorded revelations, for, as seems fitting, it is 

 one of the very latest. Calling it " a glimpse of 

 Paradise," she says that "of the length and breadth 

 of Paradise there is no end." Then she continues 

 and this is especially interesting because it is in 

 this opening that some commentators have seen 



