^[1]Described in her own words in “Trees Planted by the River” (Nisbet).

^[2]This pope was Gregory X.

^[3]The Latin translation of Matilda’s book appears to have been published very early, as it does not contain the seventh book, probably, therefore, considerably earlier than the year 1300. We know that the 6th and 7th Cantos of the Purgatorio were written between 1308 and 1313; the 24th Canto after the year 1314. If Dante passed through Cologne in his wanderings, as appears probable from his reference to Cologne in the Inferno, xxiii. 63, he may there have seen the book. It was, however, no doubt widely circulated before the end of the thirteenth century. The supposition that Matilda of Hackeborn was the origin of Dante’s Matilda is disproved by the later date of the Mechthilden Buch, which could scarcely have been published before the year 1310.

^[4]In his lecture on Dante’s Matilda, delivered at a later period, Preger raises the question whether the book of the Béguine is of such a nature as to have attracted in so considerable a measure the appreciation of a Dante. “I must here only repeat,” he says, “that which I have formerly written with regard to the spirit and poetical power of this work, as it appears in Morel’s edition. I think I may say that amongst all the known works of this nature up to the end of the thirteenth century, there is none that attains to the importance of this work. Only the second part of the book of the Nun Gertrude, written by herself, can be placed in any point of view in comparison with it. It is evident that the Béguine Matilda was of sufficient significance to make an impression on Dante, and to be used by him as a type of that form of contemplation which I have described under the name of practical mysticism.”

^[5]The contents of the seven books may be thus summarised:—

1. Disconnected passages—visions, or parables related as visions.

2. Disconnected parables, visions, and prophecies. With regard to one of these visions Matilda remarks, “That this so happened is not to be understood literally, but spiritually; it was that which the soul saw, and recognised, and rejoiced in. The words sound human, but the natural mind can but partly receive that which the higher sense of the soul perceives of spiritual things.”

Commendations of the preaching friars of the order of S. Dominic.

References to passing events and contemporary persons, or persons lately departed.

3. Refers chiefly to ecclesiastical matters. Contains prophecies of the last days, of the Antichrist, of the return of Enoch and Elijah. In these prophecies occur passages reproduced in the Divine Commedia.

4. The book of love, between God and the soul.

5. Practical.

6. Descriptions of hell (the City of Eternal Hate) and Purgatory, with which the Divine Commedia may be compared.

Preparation for death.

7. Various and disconnected. References to contemporary persons and events.

^[6]Author of the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin.”

^[7]See Purgatoria, Canto xxxi. 129.

^[8]See Isaiah lx. 19, 20, as explaining this thought: “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.”

^[9]In which the Church, the Body of Christ, is spoken of as existing not only before His death and resurrection, but before He became Incarnate.

^[10]“Why did I thus pray?” she writes. “Because I find that I am still just as despicable and unworthy as I was thirty years ago when I began to write. But the Lord showed me that He had healing roots stored, as it were, in a little sack, and with them should the sick be refreshed, and the healthy strengthened, and the dead raised, and the godly sanctified.”

^[11]Matilda the Béguine’s own words relating to the death of a friend may better describe her own—

The account given by Matilda of Hackeborn is but an evidence of the unreal state of those who were for ever craving for some fresh revelations to supplement the Word of God; who unconsciously to themselves were walking, so far, by sight, and not by faith, and by the sight, moreover, of a disordered body.

^[12]In general no doubt their delusions arose from the fact that the falsehood presented itself in the form of authorised teaching. They were not on their guard against those whom they had learnt from their cradles to reverence—who represented to them the Apostles of Christ. And these delusions, acting upon over-strained and ill-taught minds and half-starved bodies, kept up a state of mental disease, in which clear and reasonable thought was at times obliterated. It was a spiritual alcohol or opium that was constantly measured out by the accredited teachers of the Church.