Beatrice of Nazareth

Flemish mystic and writer

• Born: 1200
• Birthplace: Tienen, Flanders (now in Belgium)
• Died: 1268
• Place of death: Nazareth monastery, near Antwerp, Flanders

Beatrice of Nazareth’s Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving was one of the first texts of Christianity to reveal mystical visions primarily based on personal experience. Beatrice’s documented revelation was in stark contrast to Church tradition, which maintained that mystical experience could only be learned through biblical study.

Early Life

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the early years of Beatrice (BAY-uh-trees) is the young age at which she entered monastic life, becoming an oblate, that is, a member of a religious community without taking vows, at age ten. At seventeen, Beatrice began to have visions. What is known about her early life and about her adult life as a nun, mystic, and writer is gleaned from a set of four extant manuscripts called Vita Beatricis (c. 1320; The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1991), written by an anonymous male cleric beginning around 1320.

Beatrice was the youngest of six children. Her mother (name unknown) died when Beatrice was only seven. Her father, Bartholomew of Tienen, thought to be a merchant, later sent Beatrice from her family’s home in Tienen (near what is now Louvain, Belgium) to live with Beguines in the nearby town of Zoutleeuw. The Beguines were a mainly thirteenth century religious community of women not under vows to the Catholic Church, living in the Frankish realm of Flanders (now in the Netherlands and Belgium). The Beguines continued with the education Beatrice first received from her mother, who had taught her the scholastic arts, an exceptional education for a young girl in medieval times, but not entirely out of the ordinary for a girl in a religious community.

A year or so had passed, and Beatrice left the Beguines in Zoutleeuw for home, possibly called back by her father but for unknown reasons. Beatrice convinced her father, even at her young age, that she wanted to live a monastic life, the life of the spirit and devotion to God. She soon set out for the Cistercian abbey at Bloemendaal, a monastery of nuns possibly managed by her father. Beatrice’s basic education likely in grammar, rhetoric, and the arts, called the trivium in medieval schooling continued at the abbey at Bloemendaal for about six years. After she turned fifteen, she expressed a desire to become a novice so that she could be admitted to the religious community of the abbey for a probationary period as a “beginning” nun. Her superiors first refused to consider her request because of her age and her inability to pay the expense, but they soon relented and granted her wish. After a year as a novice, she formally affirmed and accepted her vows to the religious community at Bloemendaal, an act called a profession.

Life’s Work

The Cistercian order, of which Beatrice was a part for most of her sixty-eight years, was founded in 1098 in France. It is a monastic order that sprang from the Benedictine tradition. The Benedictines, which included men and women, devoted themselves to theological study, scholarship, and liturgical worship. However, within a matter of years, the Cistercians separated from the Benedictines because they wished for a more simple and austere spiritual life and wanted to be part of a community that was open to institutional change when changes in monastic values were for the good. They moved to a life of more physical labor, poverty, contemplation, and social reform and less liturgy, study, ostentation, and social isolation.

Beatrice’s life, Bernard McGinn has argued, was profoundly influenced by a twelfth century monasticism that began to move away from the traditional ideal of the cloister, with its life of prayer, penance, and the “personal appropriation of the mystical understanding of the Bible.” Before one could truly tell others about his or her vision of God, one had to know how to convey that vision based on what the Bible says makes a mystical vision. Experience does not count. However, in some circles, the tradition began to move toward a monastic mysticism where one’s experience of God, unencumbered by rules about how the Bible defines a mystical experience, came to prominence. Beatrice’s work, Van seun manieren van heiliger minnin (after 1235; Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving, 1964), was just this sort of mysticism: Her work shows that personal experience can equal mystical vision. Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercian order, was key in the move toward this new, experience-based, mysticism . In his Sermones super Cantica (c. 1135; Eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Songs, 1957-1977), he wrote, “Today we are reading in the book of experience.”

The anonymously written The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth tells one particular story of Beatrice’s life, but her own work, Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving, reveals a story of living the spiritual life through the personal, soulful acts of loving God and of being loved by God, acts that can help one live a life of hope for humanity. Why love God but not fear Him? Beatrice writes in the First Manner,

The first way is a desire that most certainly originates from love, for the good soul that wants to follow faithfully and wants to love durably is being drawn on by the craving for this desire to be loved and to be guarded most strongly in order to exist in purity and freedom and nobility in which she is made by her creator, after His image and to His resemblance. . . . For certain, such a way of desire of such a great purity and nobility originates from love and not out of fear. Because fear makes one suffer. . . .

Beatrice’s first task after her profession at Bloemendaal was to learn the art of manuscript writing (or copying), a common job performed by Cistercian women. She was sent to the Cistercian community at La Ramée, where she would learn how to copy manuscripts copy by hand, that is the words of one text to another, an almost unthinkable task today. At La Ramée, Beatrice met Ida of Nivelles, another Cistercian nun three years her senior, who would impact her spiritual life and learning significantly and who would remain her lifelong friend.

Ida opened the proverbial gates of Heaven for Beatrice when she assured her that she would encounter the Lord in a vision. Beatrice had her first mystical experience at age seventeen, a vision in which, according to The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, she had seen the Trinity the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit “not with bodily but with intellectual eyes, with eyes not of the flesh but of the mind.” Between 1217 and about 1221, Beatrice had returned to Bloemendaal and then entered the monastery at Maagdendal, was consecrated a virgin around 1225, and stayed at Maagdendal until 1235 or 1236. In about 1236, Beatrice was elected prioress of a newly built monastery called Nazareth, the place she would spend the rest of her life and where it is believed she wrote her life’s work, Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving, written in Middle Dutch (more accessible to lay readers) instead of the scholarly Latin.

One of the main conflicts between scholars working on Beatrice’s life is centered on the primacy she affords the body and feelings versus the mind and spirit in her religious commitment. First, there exists the Bynum thesis, so called after Carolyn Walker Bynum proposed that Beatrice’s work indicates a sort of somatic mysticism, whereby women’s bodies are not rejected as barriers to the spiritual life but are instead elevated as the place of possibility, the means for the spiritual life and closeness to God. However, scholars such as Amy Hollywood argue precisely the reverse, that Beatrice countered her contemporaries and the religious, philosophical, and even common thought of the time, which believed that to be a woman meant to be anything but spiritual and holy. To be a woman meant to be of the body and of emotion and, therefore, unholy. Beatrice’s Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving evokes a spirituality that differs radically from what was thought to be the norm for women conveying their mystical experiences. Most medieval, and even modern, accounts of women’s mystical visions relate experiences of the body, such as being attacked by demons or suffering panic and fever or feeling ecstasy, and not “reasonable” experiences or contemplation. Beatrice’s work in actuality, the argument continues, differs remarkably from how it has been interpreted by men of the Church (in Beatrice’s case by a male cleric) who were given the job of documenting the lives of women mystics and theologians. Hollywood and others argue that The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth is a prime example of how misinterpretation, tradition, and expectation twisted the deeply thoughtful intent of her work.

Having been educated from a young age in topics mostly taught to boys and men, Beatrice likely knew and understood the traditional ways in which monastic women related their visions. She might also have known of the storytelling and mythmaking power held by the interpreters, biographers, hagiographers, and chroniclers of these women’s lives, but we cannot be certain of this. Beatrice’s Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving, however, articulated a different spiritual path. Her writing, which uses the pronoun “she” throughout, clearly shows that a woman is speaking of her love for God.

Katrien Vander Straeten has argued that Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving prioritizes neither the body nor the soul in the search for God. Beatrice evokes a searching that depends on the changing reactions both of the body and of the mind in seven steps toward spiritual fulfillment, the “seven manners of holy loving.”

In a remarkably rich and vivid Seventh Manner, Beatrice tells of how the soul, full of love for the spirit, is pulled to overflowing by both the desire and despair of the body and the desire and despair of the mind. Beatrice writes that, “So profound is she here sunk in love and so strong is she pulled by her desire, that her heart is moved strongly and is restless inside, so that her soul flows out and melts of love, and her mind is ardently connected to a strong desire.” An everlasting and unrelenting conflict of desire, delight, pain, and despair brought about by yearning for God erupts from the soul, as it is yanked and prodded by a combination of feelings and thoughts. Recognizing this absolute mind-body connection is a necessary step on the path leading to spiritual perfection. In a series of what could now be called metaphors about acts such as “surrendering” and “submitting to,” and of “not resisting” the powers of love, metaphors that might trouble or concern some readers today because they imply weakness, Beatrice is adamant that one must embrace the loving power of the soul: It is the soul’s ability to perpetually love God, a love absolutely unattainable and timeless, to which one should surrender. Timeless love means a hope forever unfulfilled, an eternal hope, so hope for love is what maintains one’s never-ending faith in God.

Beatrice’s Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving indicates an individual being “taken” by an all-powerful love that nothing could counter, a love of give and take. More significantly, her work considered this moment not a failing of the body or the mind a literal giving in to but a union, in which the soul is both protected and strong in its love for God: “This superior power of love has drawn the soul and has accompanied, guarded and protected it.” This union of flesh and spirit, of body and soul and mind, is a perfect state of life on Earth and of life everlasting for Beatrice: “This is freedom of conscience, sweetness of heart, well-disposedness, nobility of soul, exaltation of the spirit, and the beginning and foundation of everlasting life. This is to live the life of angels here in the flesh.”

Significance

Beatrice of Nazareth spent a lifetime trying to show that hope cannot be maintained simply through personal salvation and individual spiritual growth, despite what Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving might imply with its focus on personal, bodily, and mindful experience. Beatrice and other medieval women monastics and mystics, especially the Cistercians and the Beguines, showed through example a spiritual life in service both to God and Church and to everyday people outside the religious community. They maintained an ascetic life of hard physical work and self-reliance. Beatrice preached that loving God and humanity meant also a life of “work” and “drudgery”; the heart “never rests” nor “does it subside from searching, demanding and learning.” This unrest of the loving, forever-yearning heart translated, for Beatrice and like-minded medieval mystics, into a three-part spirituality of commitment: to oneself, to one’s community, and to God.

Paul Rorem argues that Beatrice and many other medieval female mystics and religious writers, including Hildegard von Bingen, Saint Clare of Assisi, Marguerite Porete, Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch, Hilda of Whitby, Dhuoda, Mechtild von Magdeburg, Christina of Markyate, Catherine of Siena, Saint Brigit, and Margery Kempe, “directed their writings outward, for the sake of others, intending change or reform.” They lived a life of contemplation coupled with community service. The Cistercian life demanded such a multitiered commitment, and Beatrice demanded such a commitment from herself, as her life’s work has shown.

Bibliography

Beatrice of Nazareth. “There Are Seven Manners of Loving.” Translated by Eric Colledge. In Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, edited by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. The first translation in English, with a different title, of Beatrice’s work. Bibliography, index.

Bowie, Fiona, ed. Beguine Spirituality: Mystical Writings of Mechtild of Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Hadewijch of Brabant. Translated by Oliver Davies. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Focuses on the female mystics and Beguines of Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Map and bibliography.

Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1992. This detailed, scholarly study discusses the experiential literary voices of medieval women mystics and emphasizes the physical, bodily nature of women’s mystical experiences.

De Ganck, Roger, trans. The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth. Cistercian Fathers Series 50. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1991. Considered the best translation of the Vita Beatricis, by a scholar known for his work on Beatrice.

Hollywood, Amy. “Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer.” In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, edited by Catherine M. Mooney. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Argues that Beatrice’s intent, in Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving, was to express an inner and not an outer, or bodily, mysticism, as The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth indicates. Bibliography, index.

McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200-1350. New York: Crossroad, 1998. An important, exhaustive study of medieval mysticism, and especially the emergence of women as mystics, during and after Beatrice’s time. Extensive bibliography, index.

Pedersen, Else Marie Wiberg. “Can God Speak in the Vernacular? On Beatrice of Nazareth’s Flemish Exposition of the Love for God.” In The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, edited by R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, D. Robertson, and N. Bradley Warren. New York: Palgrave, 2002. This essay compares the Latin version of Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving found in the Vita Beatricis with Beatrice’s Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving written in the vernacular Middle Dutch. Also discusses the contemporary resistance to writing in the vernacular instead of the expected scholarly Latin. Bibliography, index.

Pedersen, Else Marie Wiberg. “The In-carnation of Beatrice of Nazareth’s Theology.” In New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact, edited by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999. Discusses Of Seven Manners of Holy Loving as a text misinterpreted and misrepresented as one relating a physical experience of mystic love instead of a spiritual experience.

Rorem, Paul. “The Company of Medieval Women Theologians.” Theology Today 60 (2003): 82-93. Argues that mystics such as Beatrice practiced a life of contemplative action, taking their messages into the social realm through community action or through writing in the vernacular, or both. Bibliographical footnotes.