If you've ever read a book on the 12th
century renaissance (and who hasn't?) you've almost certainly
encountered the famous lines of Alain of Lille from his poem
“Rhythmus de Incarnatione
Christi,” which are taken to be paradigmatic of the approach taken
by 12th
century thinkers to Creation:
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, et speculum
All the creatures of the world
are like a book and a picture
and a mirror to us1
Much like Eriugena, and to some extent
because of Eriugena, these thinkers viewed the world as a sphere of
continuous and infinite divine revelation.2
Nature acted, to use the memorable phrasing of Eriugena in his
commentary on the Gospel of John, as one of the two vestments of
Christ, simultaneously covering and revealing the figure of God.3
Through reading the Book of Nature, through meditation,
contemplation, and prayer, the devout could hope to receive the
illumination which would enable them to see the divinity reflected in
nature.
In
both Hildegard and Frauenlob, we find Mary depicted as a mirror of
the divine. With the (very brief) sketch above in mind I think we
can unpack these images to understand better how Mary functions in
their texts, especially in relation to the divine, and I believe we
can see some real similarities to the prayers of Anselm, which at the
outset appear quite different than the work of our Benedictine abbess
and wandering minstrel.
Hildegard
tells us:
O how
great
in
its powers is the side of man
from
which God brought forth the form of woman,
which
he made the mirror
of
all his beauty
and
the embrace
of
his whole creation.4
Over a
century later, Frauenlob, writing in the voice of Mary:
I am
the mirror of great purity
in
which God gazed before all time.
I was
with him when he formed creation,
he
gazed at me with desire unceasing.5
This,
we have Mary as a mirror, a mirror gazed at by the divine. This of
course raises the question: what does this mirror reflect? The
answer, I think, lies in one of the most dominant images in both
texts: light. Mary reflects the light of the divine, through which
all creation is illuminated.
and
your womb
illumined
all creatures6
Light
metaphors, configuring God as the sun, as illuminator, as supreme
source of light, are quite common, especially within the neoplatonic
tradition. Notable I the metaphor, used often in the Greek tradition
but present in the Latin West as well,7
of union with God as analogous to the relation between the light of
the Sun and the air. In sunlight, the air is wholly infused with
light, in a very real way it can be said to be light.
Yet there remains a distinction. They are not wholly identical even
as every square inch of air is permeated by the light from above.
Thus also the human soul in union with God. We can conceive of
Mary-Mirror in similar terms. The overpowering divine light shies
out from the mirror, when we look to Mary it is this divine light
that we see. The ability to distinguish between the mirror and what
if reflects is lost. Frauenlob strikingly collapses this
distinction, Mary speaks: “I God, they God, he God, this I will
never hide.”8
Light
pours forth from Mary, both in the form of her Son, Himself a sun,9
and from his reflection, infinitely emitting from the mirror-vial of
her womb:
he
wrought by art a mirror-vial
and
sat down in its midst awhile
to
stake his skill against ill will.
The
mirror-vial contained him
in
his greatness, framed him
until
he burst from it, unquenched
and
blossomed like a flowering branch –
whole
the vial, intact, untouched.10
I
think we can see clear similarities here to the Mary of Anselm's
prayers,. She too was an illuminator, driving away the darkness, and
making the divine visible within Creation. Like Anselm, both
Frauenlob and Hildegard also play with Mary's relation to time.
Hildegard:
You
are the shining white lily
on
which God gazed
before
all creation.11
Frauenlob:
I was
with him when he formed creation,
he
gazed at me with desire unceasing.12
We can
see that Mary's place in salvation history was ordained from the
beginning. In the neoplatonic understanding of creation as the
unfolding of the eternal ideas of God within temporal reality, Mary
shone, she illuminated, as an object of God's contemplation (His
gaze) before she appeared within history. Again the eternity of God,
His distinction from the temporal, collapses and expands time around
the central moment of the Incarnation, the in-breaking of the
absolute into Creation. I think we can thus see real continuity
between the prayers of Anselm, Hildegard, and Frauenlob, despite
their apparent differences. They stand within the same stream,
although perhaps at different places along its path.
DAY
1The
subject of the book and picture, what the mirror is reflecting, is
of course the Divine. I think there is a lot of room to unpack this
image, especially given that mirrors in the 12th century
didn't necessarily give a reflection of the quality that we are used
to today, but instead one necessarily distorted by the materials
they used. This, however, is a topic for another day.
2See
my
last post, for more on Eriguena's understanding of creation.
3This
phrasing is taken up by, Honorius in his Liber Duodecim
Questiones, and the idea behind
it persists throughout the period.
4St.
Hildegard of Bingen. Symphonia.
trans. Barbara Newman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) 131
5Frauenlob.
Frauenlob's Song of Songs trans.
Barbara Newman (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State
University, 2006) 25
6Hildegard
125
7Here,
as in my last post, I'm unable to give a proper citation due to the
fact that all of my books currently sit in precarious stacks of
boxes, apologies again. Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor,
and Eriugena all, as far as I can remember use this image.
8Frauenlob
25. A similar union, of Christ and Mary's will also seems to occur
in Anselm's prayers, particularly his second and third prayers to
Mary.
9“But
O dawn/from your womb/a new sun has come forth” Hildegard 131
10Frauenlob
29. I was unable to discover exactly what a “mirror-vial” was,
but I imagine a mirrored container infinitely reflecting the divine
light within, as two mirrors facing each other project our
reflections into infinity.
11Hildegard
123
12Frauenlob
25
I have to say that initially I did not expect you to write that light was reflected in the mirror of Mary, thinking that it was a much more straightforward metaphor, i.e., that Mary reflected all of creation because she provided the body to the Maker of all (as discussed in a previous post and comments). However, I think that you are not only correct, but that you elucidate (pun intended?) this points from the reading very convincingly.
ReplyDeleteMary is not the original Source of light, but does reflect this Light, permitting us to see all the things that we see. In fact, as David Grandy points out in his several books on the philosophy of light (which I recommend), light has omnipresent characteristics as far as our visual apprehension goes, because it is necessarily previous to our seeing anything. However, if it were dense or opaque, its omnipresence would only serve to obscure or block our view of creation. Through the Source of light, and by its reflection, we see all things, but we need to be specially aware to realize that the creation is not simply, of itself visible and knowable to us.
I also think that your explanation of Mary at the creation is well done, and the temporal considerations are helpful for those who may be troubled by the possible implications of Mary “in the beginning.”
One question: In the “seeing/apprehending” process, do the Source of light and the mirror really become indistinguishable (ontologically), or are you making an epistemological point instead?
Very nice job.
~TA
Wonderful meditation on the image of Mary as mirror! I think that you capture its purpose beautifully, by the by cutting through the difficulties that some readers have had with the idea of Mary as somehow participating in divinity. I think that you are right: she is the perfect reflection in which God gazes upon Himself. This does not make her divine as such even if, in gazing upon her, we might see divinity in her. I particularly like the image of light in air as an image of Mary's soul shining with the light of the Sun. Very nice job, indeed!
ReplyDeleteRLFB