(TMR 99

(TMR 99.04.17)

Margarete Hubrath. Schreiben und Erinnern. Zur "memoria" im
Liber Specialis Gratiae Mechthilds von Hakeborn. Paderborn,
Munich, Vienna, Zurich: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 1996. Pp. 149.
DM 48 (about US$ 26.00). ISBN 3-506-73945-X.

Reviewed by Albrecht Classen
University of Arizona
aclassen@u.arizona.edu

Among the many medieval German women mystics, Mechthild of
Magdeburg has probably received the most attention by medieval
scholarship. Her fellow sisters in the convent of Helfta,
Gertrud the Great and Mechthild of Hackeborn, on the other hand,
although they proved to be highly learned and also deeply
mystically inspired, have not attracted the same interest (see
Gertrud J. Lewis' Bibliographie zur deutschen
Frauenmystik, here not consulted). There are no good reasons
for this strange neglect, hence Margarete Hubrath's renewed
effort with Mechthild's liber specialis gratiae represents
a good start in this direction. The present study was originally
submitted as her doctoral thesis to the University of Bonn in
1993, but does not seem to have been revised for publication.
This explains the limited extent of Hubrath's investigation and
her hesitation to go beyond the well-trodden path of mystical
scholarship.

Hubrath is particularly interested in the function of Mechthild
of Hakeborn's (here always spelled without the 'c') liber
as a product of communal memorization, which would make it a
literary creation similar to the Middle English Ancrene
Wisse and many of the fourteenth-century southwestern German
Dominican "Schwesternbuecher" or "sister-books." The various
contributors to Mechthild's work -- Hubrath assumes that it was
the result of a collaborative effort -- were primarily concerned
to preserve the experience of a mystically influenced fellow
sister. Nevertheless, the individual scribes clearly identified
themselves and addressed the audience in idiosyncratic fashion.
In this way the liber fulfilled two purposes, to be a
spiritual biography and a communal document of mystical quality.
Insofar as the daily life in the convent, the activities of the
Abbess Gertrud the Great, and other aspects were also considered,
the text proved to be a kind of convent chronicle, with Mechthild
as the spiritual center.

Hubrath is particularly interested in the transfer of the oral
transmission into written form as the various comments by the
scribes about themselves indicate; they obviously kept their
audience in mind and edited the text accordingly.

The author identifies "memoria" in its manifold meanings as a
crucial function of the liber. To illuminate this point
she traces the art of memorizing far back to antiquity, but does
not essentially go beyond the current research by scholars such
as M. Carruthers (The Book of Memory, 1990) and Frances
Yates (The Art of Memory, 1966, here quoted from the
German translation Gedaechtnis und Erinnern, 2nd ed.
1992). Hubrath analyzes the particular role of memory for the
identification of the mystical images and their interpretation,
pointing out the individual signs contained in Mechthild's text
which must be recognized and read again.

Unfortunately, the term 'memory' in its traditional meaning here
seems to be infused with more philosophical significance than the
text actually carries. Of course, Mechthild's book served as a
vehicle for the future community to remember her mystical
visions. But then any book, any written text conforms to the
idea of serving memory, whereas Hubrath argues that 'memory'
fulfilled a particularly spiritual and religious function within
the monastic community. This would be true to some extent, but
it would also be erroneous to overemphasize the act of memorizing
as a good Christian would have to consider the future as well for
his or her salvation. Especially the attempt to relate the
text's memory function to the rhetorical "ars memoriae"
inappropriately diverts from the mystical experience. The mystic
discards all time limitations, hence neither needs the past nor
the future, but instead lives in the immediate presence of the
Godhead. The readers of mystical texts are invited to share this
experience, whereas the concept of 'memory' builds a distance
and historicizes the mystical visions expressed in the written
text which would be tantamount to transmogrifying its religious
meaning to a past event.

In the fourth chapter the author explores the imagery of Christ's
passion which the mystic tries to imitate, whether this be in the
form of "memoria passionis" (105) or in the form of ascetic
exercises as a gift of the loving soul to God (111). Finally, in
the fifth chapter, Hubrath turns to the significant intertextual
relationship between Mechthild's liber and the New
Testament, which, however, seems to be quite a common feature
of many mystical texts, especially when they were composed by
learned authors in Latin.

Overall, Hubrath has developed a detailed and convincing
interpretation of Mechthild's liber focusing on the
various aspects of writing and memory, to quote from the book
title. The term 'memory,' as used here, however, does not do
very much to enhance our understanding of Mechthild's work,
whereas the idea of the visionary's account being the product of
a communal process finds solid confirmation in the text.