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THE MEDIAEVAL MIND
BOOK III
though from modesty their lips dissimulated: "Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis, quia amore langueo."[1] The cheeks of one were seen to waste away, while her soul was melted with the greatness of her love. Another's flow of tears had made visible furrows down her face. Others were drawn with such intoxication of spirit that in sacred silence they would remain quiet a whole day, 'while the King was on His couch' (i.e. at meat),[2] with no sense or feeling for things without them, so that they could not be roused by clamour or feel a blow. I saw another whom for thirty years her Spouse had so zealously guarded in her cell, that she could not leave it herself, nor could the hands of others drag her out. I saw another who sometimes was seized with ecstasy five-and-twenty times a day, in which state she was motionless, and on returning to herself was so enraptured that she could not keep from displaying her inner joy with movements of the body, like David leaping before the Ark. And I saw still another who after she had lain for some time dead, before burial was permitted by the Lord to return to the flesh, that she might on earth do purgatorial penance; and long was she thus afflicted of the Lord, sometimes rolling herself in the fire, and in the winter standing in frozen water."[3]
But what need to say more of these, as all their graces are found in one precious and pre-excellent pearl—and Jacques proceeds to tell the life of Mary of Ognies. She was born in a village near Namur in Belgium, about the year 1177. She never took part in games or foolishness with other girls; but kept her soul free from vanity. Married at fourteen to a young man, she burned the more to afflict her body, passing the nights in austerities and prayer. Her husband soon was willing to dwell with her in continence, himself sustaining her in her holy life, and giving his goods to the poor for Christ's sake.
There was nothing more marvellous with Mary than her
- ↑ Cant. ii. 5. The translation in the English Revised Version is: "Stay me with cakes of raisins, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love." The phrases of Canticles, always in the words of the Latin Vulgate, come continually into the minds of these ecstatic women and their biographers. The sonorous language of the Vulgate is not always close to the meaning of the Hebrew. But it was the Vulgate and not the Hebrew that formed the mediaeval Bible, and its language should be observed in discussing mediaeval applications of Scripture.
- ↑ "Dum esset Rex in accubitu suo," Cant. i. 11, in Vulgate; Cant. i. 12, in the English version, which renders it: "While the King sitteth at His table."
- ↑ Vita B. Mariae, etc., par. 2–8. Since we are seeing these mediaeval religious phenomena as they impressed contemporaries, it would be irrelevant to subject them to the analyses which pathological psychology applies to not dissimilar phenomena.
