Content

This unit explores developments in mystical piety in the Middle Ages. The unit will pay particular attention to the Rhineland Mystics. It will also consider the religious response to urbanization as expressed by the Beguine Movement and the emergence of mendicant friars. The development of particularly feminine responses of women to mysticism and relationship of women mystics to the wider church will also be examined. A seminar based unit, it emphasises the reading of texts and the interpretative process involved in a receptive and critical reading of Medieval sources. It also explores some contemporary approaches to the interpretation of Medieval women’s spiritual experience in a social and cultural context. Students will be required to read and to analyse primary sources from medieval writers including: Hildegard of Bingen; Mechtilde of Magdeburg; Margueritte de Porette, Gertrude the Great, Meister Eckhardt, Francis and Clare, Bonaventure, Catherine of Siena, Angela of Foligno.

Unit code: CH2121C

Unit status: Archived (New unit)

Points: 18.0

Unit level: Undergraduate Level 2

Unit discipline: Church History

Delivery Mode: Face to Face

Proposing College: Catholic Theological College

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Learning outcomes

1.

Identify significant spiritual movements in the Middle Ages

2.

Elaborate a range of spiritual styles and responses in their cultural and historical context

3.

Analyse the relationship of women mystics to their culture and the Church

4.

Evaluate the role of mysticism as a means of renewal for the Church.

Unit sequence

CH1001C and CH1002C or equivalent

Pedagogy

Lectures and seminars

Indicative Bibliography

Pre-Reading

  • Sheldrake, Phillip. Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and Method. London: SPCK, 1991.

Bibliography

  • Recommended translations of primary sources: Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist).
  • Beer, Frances. Woman and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992.
  • Bynum, Caroline W. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York, NY: Zone, 1992.
  • ———. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987.
  • Coakley, John W. Women, Men and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006.
  • Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (†203) to Marguerite Porete (†1310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
  • Jantzen, Grace M. Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • McGinn, Bernard, ed., with the collaboration of Frank Tobin and Eluira Borgstadf. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechtild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete. New York, NY: Continuum, 1994.
  • Nichols, John A., and Lillian T. Shank, eds. Medieval Religious Women. 4 vols. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984–95.
  • Zum Brunn, Emilie, and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, eds. Women Mystics in Medieval Europe. Translated by Sheila Hughes. New York, NY: Paragon, 1989.

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)
Seminar or Tutorial

1,000 word seminar paper

0 20.0
Essay

2,500 word essay

0 60.0
Seminar or Tutorial

1,000 word seminar paper

0 20.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by John Capper on 19 Oct, 2017

Unit record last updated: 2022-04-13 14:26:31 +1000