Matelda and the cloister of Hellfde

God’s fivefold Comparing of the Soul.

God’s sixfold Delight in the Soul.

Knowledge and Enjoyment.

The Prayer for Love, and the Answer thereof.

Love unto Death; Love Immeasurable; Love Eternal.

God asks the Soul what She brings, and She Answereth.

How the Soul praises God for Seven Things, and God praiseth the Soul who loves Him.

Then doth God praise the soul, and the words of His praise sound sweetly, thus—

The soul saith—

The soul saith—

A fivefold Song of the Soul to God, and how God is a Robe of the Soul, and the Soul a robe of God.

The Lord giveth a tenfold Honour to the Soul.

Between God and the Soul only Love.

How God maketh the Soul to be Free and Wise in His Love.

The Road wherein the Soul leadeth the Senses, and where the Soul is Free from Care.

How the Bride casts away the Solace of Created Things, and seeks only the Comfort of God.

Of Love, the Handmaiden of the Soul, and of the Soul whom Love hath Smitten.

Be thou in Suffering a Lamb, a Dove, and a Bride.

Of the Two Golden Chalices of Sorrow and of Comfort.

I, slothful sinner that I am, knelt down at my hour of prayer, and it seemed to me as if God were unwilling to give me the least measure of His grace. Then would I fain have wept and mourned, because of my sinful desires; for it seemed to me that they were the hindrance to my spiritual gladness.

But no, said my soul, think rather of the faithfulness of God, and praise Him for His goodness. Glory be to God in the highest!

And as I praised, there shone a great light into my soul; and in the light, God showed Himself to me in great majesty, and in unspeakable glory. And it was as if He held up in His hands two golden chalices, and both were full of living wine. In the left hand was the red wine, the wine of sorrow, and in the right hand the most holy consolation. Then did the Lord say, “There are some who drink of this wine alone, although I pour out both in My divine love. Yet the golden wine is in itself the noblest, and most noble are those who drink of both, the red wine and the golden.”

The Working of Blessed Love.

It were bitterer than death to me if ever I did that which is good, without God.

This is the nature of the great love which is of God. She does not flow forth in tears, but burns in the great fire of heavenly glory. And thus she spreads to the farthest distances, and yet remains in herself steadfast and still. She rises up into the nearest converse with God, and remains in herself in the lowest measure. She grasps the most, and retains the least.

O blessed Love, who are they who know thee? They are those through whom the light of God glows and burns. They dwell not in themselves. The more they are tried, the stronger they grow. Why so? Because the longer they are in conflict, yet abiding in love, the more glorious is God to their souls, and the more do they see themselves to be unworthy and vile.

Why so? Because the greater the love, the greater is holy fear; and the fuller the comfort, the stronger the dread of sin. The loving soul does not fear with terror, but she fears nobly. There are two things over which I cannot mourn enough—one is, that God is so forgotten in the world; the other, that His people are so imperfect. Therefore many fall, because the godly have fallen before them.

How God speaks to the Soul in Three Places.

In the first of these places does the devil also speak, which he cannot do in the other two.

The first place is the mind of man, and this stands open not to God only, but to the devil and to all creatures, who enter in as they will, and hold converse with the soul through the mind.

The second place in which God speaks, is in the soul itself. And into the soul none can enter but God only. When God speaks to the soul, it is without the aid of the senses. It is in a mighty, strong, and swift communication, in a speech the mind cannot comprehend, unless the mind is so humbled as to take the lowest place amongst created things.

The third place where God speaks with the soul is in heaven, when God draws the soul up thither, and brings her into His secret place, where He shows her all His wonders.

Of False Love.

All, who do not in all things cleave to the truth of God, must fall with bitter loss. For love, which has not humility for her mother, and holy fear for her father, will be a barren love.

Matilda’s Faith.

Thus far in the five first books of Matilda’s writings can we trace the history of her soul before she found her last refuge in the convent of Hellfde.

Preger’s remarks are valuable as showing how Matilda, in expressions which she borrowed from the common stock of the writings of the mystics, as well as in expressions of her own, might appear to have wandered into the regions of Pantheism. That she herself attached a meaning to these expressions, which those who were simply mystics, and not believers in Christ as their Saviour, could not understand, seems, however, clear. But the expressions were open to the danger of being thus misunderstood. To those who were mystics, and nothing more, intercourse with God was a vague sentiment; and what they called the love of God, was merely a name given to their own human thoughts of God, the God of their imagination.

But Matilda insisted strongly upon the truth, that there is no way to God but through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of sinners. That otherwise all communication between the soul and God is cut off, “the bolt fastened by Adam” holding fast the door between God and men.

In speaking of some (no doubt the “Brethren of the Free Spirit”), she mentions as the greatest sin, and as the highest degree of unbelief, that “men should think to enter into the presence of the eternal God, passing by the holy Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. When such people imagine themselves to have entered into communication with the being of God, they enter instead into eternal condemnation. And yet by that means they intend to become holier than others. They set at nought and deride the words of God, which are written regarding the Manhood of our Lord.”

Thus to an unbelieving mystic, the term “union with God” was familiar, and meant nothing better than the dreams of a Buddhist. But to Matilda, though she did not, and no doubt could not, clearly define it, the truth was revealed, expressed in so few words in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, where, with reference to Christ and the Church, it is written, “He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” And again, in 1 Cor. xii. 12, “As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.”

That this truth, taught so plainly in many passages of Scripture, notably by the Lord Himself in the one word which smote the heart of Paul, “Why persecutest thou Me?” was the truth Matilda believed, seems to be clear. But she was apt to use, when speaking of it, the stereotyped expression “union with God,” not perceiving that this is untrue, and incapable of being symbolised, as in Ephesians, by the figure of Adam and Eve. It is not Christ as God, but as the second Adam, who is there symbolised.

Many such incorrect expressions may, no doubt, be found now in modern Protestant books.^[9]

Preger further remarks, “If we would describe religious life, as shown in Matilda, by its distinctive features, we should remark, in the first place, that she is seeking after a consciousness, or is, in fact, conscious of being in immediate intercourse with God. Whilst the majority of her contemporaries knew of no relation with God, except through culture or learning, or the medium of saints, or the ordinances of the Church, and were satisfied to know no more, Matilda looked upon all these things merely as helps to personal and immediate communion with God. This alone could satisfy her.

“And further, she was aware that into this communion with God she could only be brought through God’s free grace. And only by free grace could she retain it. It is true she speaks of human merit, and alludes to the intercession of Mary, but in so doing was rather expressing the ruling thoughts of her age than her own innermost convictions. For it is only in speaking of others that she admits the merit of human works; she has another law for herself, finding, as she says, no peace in the good works of the saints, ‘and as for me, unhappily I have no good works to find peace in.’

“That which is the important matter with regard to Matilda’s faith is this—she grounds her peace not on imparted, but on imputed righteousness. ‘It is a fathomless mystery,’ she says, ‘that God can look upon a sinner as a converted man.’

“But in spite of this evangelical tendency in her writings, we cannot but receive the impression that in the heights of her communion with God she at times loses the safe path. The reason of this is, that the subordinate place which she gives to all relations between God and men by Church ordinances is also given more or less to the knowledge of God by means of the written Word. It does not appear to be the ring in which her new life is set; it would seem as though she endeavoured to soar above it, in order to assure herself more firmly of her state of grace by immediate communications from God to her soul.

“Therefore she seems in some passages to regard the written Word and the Divine Word spoken to her as distinct, and on the same level. Thus, as in mysticism generally, the safe path is lost, and the soul is cast forth upon the wide sea of subjective self-consciousness.

“We feel the presentiment of this danger, and the need of a safer path, in which the security of Divine teaching is ours. This can only be when the written Word is the seed of Divine knowledge, and the faculties of man the ground in which the seed takes root.”

So far Preger. It may also be remarked, that whilst Matilda evidently grounded her salvation and enjoyment of God upon the atoning work of Christ, she does not allude to it very frequently. We must remember that amongst all the errors of mediæval Catholicism, the blood-shedding of Christ was still regarded as the means by which sin was expiated. It was still an article of faith, though disfigured, and often kept out of sight by all that man had added to the Scriptures.

Matilda, therefore, regarded it as an understood necessity in Christian faith, and as not demanding frequent assertion or proof. Had she lived in our days it might have been otherwise.

That “Christ once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” was a truth known and believed amongst the “Friends of God,” Catholic or Waldensian. That “it is the Blood that maketh atonement for the soul,” that “without shedding of Blood there is no remission,” that on Christ, the Lamb who was slain, did “the Lord lay the iniquity of us all,” they knew, and rejoiced to know. However overlaid in Roman Catholicism by the teaching of human merit, and of the mediation and intercession of the saints, this truth was preserved through God’s great mercy in the corruption of the Church. It may be found yet as the anchor of the soul in the confession of faith of many an ignorant and unlearned Roman Catholic, who know little of the doctrines of their Church, but who do know from their service-books that “Christ died for our sins.”

The three have ever borne witness on earth, the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one—a witness never silenced through the darkest ages of the Church.

It was during the last years of Matilda’s life that she wrote for “the children of the world” a call to Christ.

The Echo of the Book.

Matilda had a friend, called Jutta von Sangershausen. A relation of hers, Anno von Sangershausen, was the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights. Other members of the family had offered their services to the order in defence of their country from the invasions of the heathen Prussians.

Jutta’s husband had died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her children entered various convents. Jutta then joined herself to the Béguines, and was employed for a time in nursing the sick, especially those afflicted with leprosy. In the year 1260 she determined to go forth as a missionary amongst the Prussians. She took up her abode in a forest near Culm, where she lived as a hermitess, making known the faith of Christ by word and example.

Matilda for a time resolved to go also as a missionary to the heathen. But she was now growing old, and worn-out by labours and persecutions. It was evident that she no longer had the needful strength. She was grieved to the heart that she could not thus make Christ known, and she laid the matter before the Lord.

He consoled her, and showed her that as He had sent Jutta to the heathen, so had He also given her His message, which should be sent far and wide in the book which she was writing.

And so it proved, as her book was widely known and read for a considerable time after her death. Even now it may be that the words so lately brought to light in the convent of Einsiedeln may lead some weary souls to Christ. And still the reflection of the light which shone into the heart of Matilda shines forth more faintly in the poem known and read through so many ages, and in so many lands—the great poem of Dante.

It is now more than seventy years ago that a young man travelling in Italy employed himself at Venice in reading the Divine Commedia, for the sake of learning Italian. He had cared till then for the things of this world only, but he left Venice with the first beginning of a love which was to shape his long life, and make him the means of life to many.

It was from the poem of Dante, he said, that he had first learnt to know Christ as his Saviour. He may be known to many as the writer of the hymn so often sung—

a distant echo of Matilda’s voice sounding in many places still.

What was it that Dante learnt, or believed that he learnt, from the lady whose joyful singing sounded to him across the river of forgetfulness, whose eyes shone with a light greater than that of earthly love?

She explained to him her joy by the words of that psalm, the ninety-second, which forms a key-note to the poems of the Béguine Matilda, of her to whom the Lord had taught “the song and the music of heaven,” whom He had made glad through His work, who triumphed in the work of His hands.

It was in the work “wrought in the land of the Jews,” the great work that “loosed the bolt with which Adam had barred the heavenly door,” that Matilda the Béguine rejoiced, showing forth the Lord’s lovingkindness in the morning, and his faithfulness every night—the work which “the brutish man knoweth not, neither doth the fool understand it,” for “the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness,” “the foolishness of God that is wiser than men.”

In the work which brought her into the “sweet garden of Paradise,” where she was no more a stranger, which had won for her the right to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God, and to pluck the flowers, which were hers, because they were Christ’s.

It may truly be said that if there is anything distinctive in the writing of Matilda the Béguine, it is that she wrote from her own experience of the gladness of the heavenly place, revealed to her whilst yet in the body on the earth. She had learnt that there is an “earthly Paradise,” earthly not because it is of the earth, but because it is a foretaste and earnest of the heavenly, given to those who are still pilgrims upon the earth.

To reach it the river had to be crossed, wherein the old things pass away, and all things become new; where the things that are behind are forgotten, and the things that are before become the possession, by faith, of the redeemed soul. Her sins were amongst the forgotten things, for God remembered them no more, and the sorrow of the earth was forgotten, swallowed up in the tide of eternal joy, and

Thus, in the poem of Dante, does Matelda draw him through the water of the river at the moment when the remembrance of his sin had stung him at the heart, so that he fell overpowered and helpless and ashamed. It needed that the sin should be left behind amongst the former things that had passed away.

Those who have known the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, the Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, will gladly own that this is the true Christian experience of the saints of God—the land of Canaan beyond the river, reached and entered before the warfare and the trial of faith are over; the Father’s house become a familiar place before the murmuring of the self-righteous is for ever silenced.

Did Dante know it as the Béguine knew it? Was it in his case but a vague sense of a place of joy and beauty which the soul might find on this side of heaven? Did he know that the river was a river of death—the death which is the death of deaths, “in the land of the Jews” so long ago?

We cannot know. It needs the simple faith of those who have become fools that they may be wise. Then does the garden of the Lord become a blessed reality, no dreamland, but an eternal inheritance.

The Béguine had seen by faith her name engraved on the pierced Hands and Feet of Christ. Should she not rejoice and sing? Should she not praise Him that He was wounded for her transgressions, that He was bruised for her iniquities, that the chastisement of her peace was upon Him, that by His stripes she was healed? And thus she knew that her “robe was white, for Christ’s was white, and brighter than the sun.”

How far this was the experience of Dante, his poem does not tell us. But he knew that there was an earthly Paradise, and it seems all but certain that in Matilda’s book he had found one who was rejoicing there with unspeakable joy.

The remarks of Preger in his lecture on Dante’s Matelda confirm the thought that this is the true key to his description of the beautiful lady, whose appearance formed the great era in his spiritual life. The song taken from the words of the fifty-first Psalm, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow,” the introduction into the knowledge of heavenly things, are but an echo of the songs of the Béguine.

But the heavenly things of Dante are far more clouded with the evil teaching of his age than the heavenly experiences of Matilda of Magdeburg. The glory of the Catholic Church, rather than the glory of Christ, is the light that lightens his heavenly Paradise. It was the Lamb who was the light of Matilda’s heaven. In the bewildering medley of Catholic and heathen mythologies in Dante’s poem, it is only here and there that a gleam of the true light can make its way. But Matilda the Béguine rose above the clouds and mists of man’s imagination, and she saw Jesus.

Preger refers us to the ordinary explanation of Matelda and Beatrice; namely, that like Leah and Rachel in mediæval theology, they represent the life of action and the life of contemplation.

This theory as regards Matelda was, as Preger observes, founded on the idea that the Countess Matilda of Tuscany was the Matelda of Dante. That the warlike countess was a fair specimen of activity, we cannot doubt; but that it had any resemblance to Christian activity, is more than doubtful. Probably the identity of name was the only foundation of this idea.

“It is true,” writes Preger, “that Dante saw these two women prefigured in a dream as Leah and Rachel, and that Leah said, referring to her sister, ‘Her seeing, and me doing, satisfies.’ But that therefore doing and seeing are the only characteristics of these women is a conclusion to which Dante did not advance, nor need we do so. They both looked in the mirror, but Leah first crowned herself with flowers; and it was after hearing the call, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,’ that this dream presented itself to Dante.”

Matelda, who corresponds to Leah in the dream, conducts Dante into the earthly Paradise, and the place accords with the guide. She was not yet in heaven, the working-day was not yet over, but Matelda was rejoicing, not in her work, but in the work of God. She was glad that the flowers of His garden were her crown of beauty.

So wrote Matilda the Béguine—

It was a place in which the flowers of the earth had never grown, and it needed the washing which makes whiter than snow to fit the soul for that garden of God upon the earth. Therefore the song which came to Dante across the river was the ancient song of the soul that is washed from sin: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” Virgil never crossed the river.

However clouded may have been the faith of mediæval Christendom, the need of Christ was felt. The distinction between a Christian and a heathen was acknowledged as one which told upon the eternal destiny of men. By means of Christ the Saviour could the Christian man pass on, washed and sanctified, into the land beyond the river. A “land beyond,” was that Paradise to men of the world of sense and of earthly knowledge, but without the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. And singing the song of the forgiven, whilst she made garlands of the flowers, Matelda appeared to Dante, separated from him at first by the river of forgetfulness. She drew near to him as one who dances. She spoke to him of the nature of the mysterious wind that moved the branches of the trees which grew in the land “given as the earnest of eternal peace”—the earnest whilst here on earth of heavenly things, of the flowers that grew from no earthly seed, and of the river that flows from no earthly source, and of the other river which divides the earthly Paradise from the heavenly, as the river Lethe divided it from all that was before.

And we see that Matelda is to Dante the medium of supernatural revelations, just as afterwards, Beatrice.

Matelda, then, in the earthly Paradise appears as the representative of the insight into the heavenly joy whilst still on earth, Beatrice as the beholding of it when the earthly life is past. And this knowledge of the heavenly things was to be brought back by him who had seen them whilst still in the body, as the palm-leaves upon the staff of the pilgrim who had been within the boundary of the holy land.

And it was Matelda who drew Dante through the river into that land whilst still upon the earth—the land where he should hear the singing, and know the sweetness, and learn more in the Paradise here of the Paradise hereafter.

It was the earnest of the inheritance which was given to him through Matelda.

And truly this is the message and mission of the Béguine, not as Matelda’s, to Dante only, but to us also, who can receive the message without the bewildering counter teaching of the corrupted Church. It is true the message, more clearly given, is in the Bible we have known so long; and it was through the blessed teaching of that Bible that Matilda the Béguine learnt it. But it is well for us not only to read the glorious promises of God, but to meet with those to whom they have been fulfilled, the sharers of the like precious faith with us, who now believe in Jesus. Now, from the holy women of Hellfde have the clouds passed away which at times hid from them the brightness of the glory, but the words of love spoken to their hearts by the mouth of their Beloved remain to them as an everlasting possession.

And are not the same words still spoken day by day to those who have ears to hear? And in the midst of this sorrowful world, is there not still a blessed company who have entered the same Paradise, and learnt the same songs, taught by the lips of Christ?

It will not render us less fit for the common earthly life, that we have been there, in the garden where the Lord God walks, and His own are not afraid. In truth, it is only those who have been there who have the healing leaves for the sick and the suffering ones around them. It is only those who see the Son, and believe on Him, who are thus brought back to the garden of the Lord, to feed upon the fruit of the tree of life. And these are they who are again sent forth as His messengers into the world of man’s exile.

“As My Father hath sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.”

Thus the Lord spake of all who believe on His Name. The message sent long ago by Matilda the Béguine has been heard again after the silence of ages, and it is once more a call to the sinful, the sorrowful, and the fearful, who have been living in ignorance of the marvellous love which is unchanged, and which answers to the great need of our age, as to that of the thirteenth century. May God the Holy Ghost open the hearts of many to hear and to rejoice.

Matilda’s Last Years.

Matilda was fifty-three years old when, in the year 1265, she took refuge in the convent of Hellfde.

Gertrude von Hackeborn was not one who would refuse admission to a persecuted “Friend of God.” Gertrude had now been abbess fourteen years, and was in the prime of her life and activity. Mechthild von Hackeborn, “the maiden so marvellously lovable,” as they said in the convent, was then twenty-five. The little Gertrude, who was to be the brightest star amongst the sisters of Hellfde, was only nine.

But during the twelve remaining years of the life of Matilda of Magdeburg there was time enough for some good seed to be sown in the heart of Gertrude, which should one day spring up and bear much fruit.

Soon after Matilda’s entrance into the convent she had a severe and painful illness. But she was tended with loving care, and found amongst her sisters of Hellfde a happy and peaceful home. She in her turn was regarded by them as an honoured teacher, and her influence made itself quickly felt.

It was at Hellfde that she wrote the two remaining books, “rich,” says Preger, “in light and instruction.” When she had finished the sixth book she thought that her task was done. She therefore concluded it with a word of farewell—“This book was begun in love, it shall also end in love; for there is nought so wise, nor so holy, nor so beautiful, nor so strong, nor so perfect as love.”

But afterwards Matilda felt herself led to write “more of that which God had shown her,” although she had prayed that she might now lay down her pen and cease from her labours.^[10]

In the last years of her life she was obliged to write by dictation, her eyes and hands having failed her. The following extracts from the last two books will show an advance in the knowledge of Him she loved, and for whom she laboured to the last.

The Labour of the Lord.

The Lord showed me in a parable that which He has ever done, and will ever do, to fulfil to me the meaning thereof.

I saw a poor man rise up from the ground where he was sitting. He was dressed like a workman, in common linen clothing, and he had a crowbar in his hand, which he thrust under a heavy burden that was as large as the earth.

I said to him, “Good man, what is it you are lifting?”

“I am going to lift and carry your sorrows,” said he. “Try it thyself,” he said; “with all thy might, lift and carry.”

Then did I answer Him, for I knew Him, “Lord, I am so poor, I have no strength.”

And He answered me, “So did I teach My disciples. I said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’”

And my soul spake to Him, and I said, “O Lord, it is Thyself. Turn Thou Thy face to me that I may know Thee.”

And He answered, “Learn to know Me inwardly.”

I said, “O Lord, if I saw Thee amongst thousands, I could not but know Thee.”

And then I said further, “This burden is too heavy for me.”

And He answered me, “I will lay it so close to Myself, that thou mayest easily bear it. Follow Me, and see how I stood before My Father on the Cross, sustaining all.”

Then did I ask Him to bless me; and He said, “I always bless thee. Thy sorrow shall turn to a good blessing for thee.”

And I said no more but this, “O Lord, come Thou thus to the help of all who love to suffer for Thee.”

The Prayer of the Longing Heart.

There was one who for a long while, amidst the mercies of God, and also many sorrows, longed continually that God would release the soul and take her to Himself. And the Lord said to her, “Wait.” Then did the suffering one answer, “Lord, I cannot cease from longing. Oh, how gladly would I be with Thee!” Then said the Lord—