"A mystery only metaphor could contain"

I've been struggling with this post, as is only appropriate, and attempting to place my thoughts into words that seem insufficient to describe what is at work, not only in the Marian mystery, but in these texts. Which, again, is only appropriate, for as we discussed in class, our poets have staged the mystery of how Mary, as vessel, might “contain the uncontainable” as a problem of how words might attempt to “describe the indescribable.” We also mentioned that one way to attempt this is by sheer length of description, as Walter's attempt to exhaust Marian attributes (or, in other cases, to systematize them) is really an expression of infinity— to list all that one could possibly contribute to Mary and then declare that she yet supersedes them all.

By offering so many possible metaphors, the poets suggest that she is many things simultaneously, not bound by any particular comparison but combining and surpassing them all, to create a composite of attributes that is yet non-composite (I am reminded at this point of the encyclopedic/natural science tradition of reading aspects of nature as the reflection of divine attributes; perhaps it is not that Mary is like a cell, but rather a cell like Mary). “KP” posits that “The answer of why these songs are so difficult to comprehend is that they have so many underlying themes.” I agree, this is a very important aspect of the difficulty—the very multiplicity and richness of the referents (Song of Songs, wisdom literature, etc.) creates a sense of cognitive vastness, of so many individual possible correlations that the whole seems unattainably incomprehensible.

But what else might be happening to assist this effect of infinity and indescribability? I am hypothesizing that there is also something even more deliberate at work in these poems, suggesting a complexity that surpasses that of multiplicity. Compare, for instance, these two passages from Walter of Wimborne:

3.  Hail, glorious virgin,
you who are the comment and gloss
of prophetic scripture,
whose gloss lays bare
that which is veiled 
by the hard shell of the letter.

8.  Hail, virgin, cell of the Word,
concealing the light-beam of deity
under a cloud of flesh;
hail, virgin, covering of God,
through whom the clouded, bleary, blind
eye of the mind has its salve.

Mary's role in the first is that of revealing; in exegetical terms, she is the explanation, the text that pulls meaning from content, the addition that gives purpose to an already written text. She frees and unveils. In the second passage, Mary conceals, she clouds, she provides a “cell” for the Word. On the surface, so to speak, these passages appear in conflict-- Mary simultaneously veils and unveils. Yet this is what I think is a “productive cognitive dissonance,” if I may be allowed such a jargon-y phrase. The contrast is, I assume, deliberate. What can it mean that Mary simultaneously veils and unveils? The metaphors appear incompatible. And yet it is the case, and force us into some mental gymnastics. In this case, perhaps they can be reconciled by inferring that in both passages, Mary is an agent of human understanding—first by giving something a clear explanation, then by giving that explanation a form that is accessible to human cognitive abilities (she “clouds” the Word so that the “clouded” human thought process can keep up.)

But can the metaphors always be reconciled? I also agree with “DAY” that light, and especially reflected light, is a powerful Marian image that describes her relationship to the divine. To “DAY”'s examples I would add this one:

86.  Hail, bright torch of heaven,
whose brightness and splendor is never covered
by damp cloud,
whose face produces a quivering [dazzle],
at which the cherub, that he may gaze upon it,
is compelled to blink.

Yet, then, what do we do with this?

18.  Hail, cloud shot through
with the flames of Phoebus and adorned
with the rainbow of divinity,
you who conceal the light under a shadow
and who cover the eternal Word
with the mantle of our flesh.

Is she light or is she cloud? Is she veil or is she mirror? The answer, I think, is both; the contradictions open up new cognitive associations as we attempt to align them into something that is a unified, comprehensible whole, and in moments when that is simply untenable, we are forced to acknowledge that she is both and she is neither because she herself is simply not containable in metaphorical terms. The dissonance created by these metaphors creates a larger space in which she may dwell. This is perhaps also the point of lines in which Walter juxtaposes opposite images, as in s.77, “through you the crooked is made straight,/ through you the ancient one becomes a boy.” Mary's “span” is sufficiently broad as to bring together polar opposites:

84.  Hail, virgin, through whom
your diseased host is made healthy,
through whom the exile returns;
hail, through whom harsh death
is subdued, which loosens
and unbinds that which is joined.

All this is not to deny that “every keen rhetor sours/ and seems paltry in eloquence” (s.35) when they attempt to describe Mary, but to assert that part of this “souring” is not only running out of words because no amount of words is sufficient, but also recognizing that though Mary is logic, she yet defies logic. The overlapping and competing metaphors gesture to whole that not only supersedes them in number of attributes, but reconciles them. The very juxtaposition, confluence, or divergence of the metaphors help the poets to say something about Mary, even as they must admit that they can say nothing; or, perhaps, to repurpose Frauenlob's words,

“See what is mixed, what is unmixed,

and what is threshed from the mixture.

If the mixture keeps its force,

how it rejuvenates the source!” (s.17)

(The phrase that I used for my title, and most of the ruminating that went into this post, must be attributed to Professor Fulton Brown's talk on Thursday at DePaul)

JLST

Frauenlob the Outsider

Listening to the recording of Frauenlob’s Marienleich included in our text reinforced its context as a song to be performed.  Somewhat uniquely among our Marian readings, this performance was not primarily meditative or liturgical, but first and foremost entertaining.  From the liner notes provided on the Sequentia Ensemble as well as from Newman’s text, I glean that the recorded performance is based upon surviving copies of Frauenlob’s original musical score (see p. 144).  The harp accompaniment is modern (albeit presumably in the medieval style of improvisational accompaniment), as is the ensemble performance (Frauenlob would have performed the song alone, also singing the Mary parts).  The notes for the main vocal line are Frauenlob’s.

Assuming the recording provides at least a relatively accurate account of the song’s “mood” as performed (bear with me: I don’t study music formally), what struck me as particularly appealing was its accessibility.  While the poetry of the Marienleich is certainly fraught with complexity and erudition, I can picture Frauenlob’s noble patrons finding his performances entertaining and even vaguely catchy (I am thinking of strophe three).  Perhaps this is intentional: strophe three especially conjures the sensual love-related images of the Song of Songs.  In any case, the extent to which the Marienleich as a musical performance can be said to be popular as well as devotional music interested me.

Newman’s contextual material about the poet’s life and art paint Frauenlob as quite the celebrity.  Like many (musically serious) modern entertainers, he was deeply engaged with a group of like-minded contemporary artists, both competing with them and borrowing elements of their work to carry on shaping the craft.  He also appears flamboyant, eager to show off, and perhaps a bit egotistical, as befits a man calling himself “praise of ladies”.  As much as this perennial entertainer’s showiness - in combination with his secular noble audiences and vernacular composition - conjures up an image of medieval rock star, Frauenlob’s portrayal of Mary as God’s wisdom in Nature hints at deeper ambitions. 

Frauenlob’s mysterious origins outside the cloister and the noble court render his distinct erudition noteworthy among his minstrel peers, as Newman maintains.  The question of how he obtained his unlikely education aside, does he advance his philosophical knowledge in the Marienleich purely as a theological statement, or as a means to showcase his ability before wealthy patrons?  While those motivations may certainly underlie Frauenlob’s work, his sapiential portrayal of the Virgin suggests the poet was deeply concerned with matters of unification and the theme of coming together.

As we discussed in class, each of the Marienleich’s strophes explores various means in which Mary both can be understood by and participates in the various branches of medieval humanistic scholarship.  In a sense, by personifying God’s wisdom present at the moment of creation and enduring into the present as the figure of Mary, Frauenlob unifies the liberal arts, recombining the classical female wisdom figures into one supremely Christian entity.  At the same time, he denies the charge that the conception and theotokos confound the principles of logical thought, instead choosing to weave Mary intimately with those very principles.  By injecting the universal into the categories, Frauenlob not only demonstrates his own learning, but also may show a concern for bringing disparate elements of his society together. 

At the risk of becoming overly anecdotal regarding a figure for which I lack the proper autobiographical information, it seems Frauenlob’s position as itinerant minstrel – while allowing him access to prestigious noble courts throughout the Empire – also made him something of an outsider.  As Newman mentions in her contextual material, traveling entertainers like Frauenlob were appreciated for their talents but also looked upon with suspicion (or opportunism) as potential spies (p. 48-49).  Frequenting the courts of high nobility, Frauenlob was not himself noble; gaining access to devotional material and theological treatises of monks and nuns, his position remained firmly outside the cloister.  It is possible that this rare position in medieval society colored Frauenlob’s art, leading him to draw connections between the many worlds he saw during his travels rather than to solidify their differences. 

As a possible case in point, Newman frequently mentions the paradoxical fact that while Frauenlob is poetic champion of ladies and of Our Lady, there is no surviving material about any of the real women in his life.  Although this may be a symptom of lack of evidence, medieval German society as a whole – especially among the nobility – was very male-oriented in a way places further west were somewhat less so.  With perhaps few opportunities to enter the “world of women”, Frauenlob attempts to draw them into favorable connection with the patriarchal mainstream, again showing a concern for linkage and cohesion over division.

To return for a moment to the accessibility and what must have been the popular form of the musical performance, it can be argued that this mode of presentation made the otherwise difficult metaphorical puzzles and allusions more palatable to a lay audience.  Frauenlob does not compromise in maintaining the complexity and mystery of the poetry in the manner of Hildegard’s songs, but couches these intricacies in a medium his audience will enjoy, encouraging them to seriously contemplate them.

Newman rejects the notion that Frauenlob’s work was didactic in the way Walter of Wimborne’s may have been.  Frauenlob is an artist before he is a teacher.  But this does not necessarily negate the possibility that the Marienleich carried some social weight.  The picture Frauenlob paints of a Mary who embodies the divine wisdom of God and thus unifies the disparate notions of sense, spirit, and intellect goes hand in hand with another unification: bringing serious contemplation of the Virgin out of the cloister and into the seat of worldly power.  Perhaps the only kind of person who can succeed in this feat must come from neither one.

PWR

The Mirror

If you've ever read a book on the 12^th 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 12^th 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 12^th 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

Understanding Mary

Wednesday’s readings differed from Monday’s readings in almost every way. Mary was seen as personal and relatable as she discussed her experience witnessing the Crucifixion of her son. Details were given to make us relate to her sorrow and it was easy to follow along. Now Mary is elevated and sometimes is not seen as a woman. Wednesday’s readings were difficult to follow along and had to be read slowly so you can comprehend the metaphors and contemplate what the meanings were. Why were they so hard?

I think they were particularly difficult because they were portraying difficult themes and concepts. The major themes discussed in these songs were the Incarnation, Mary as the New Eve, and Mary’s virginity. All these have been focused on in class before, and are all connected to each other, but when you think about it, it’s hard to grasp. Therefore, as we listened to the slow melody of one of them, Ave Generosa (Hildegard’s Symphonia number 17), we had time to let the words sink in to us. Furthermore, the music would react to the words in the song, like the word joy, which helps direct us to the crucial parts of the song and helps us understand what is meaningful. The Incarnation made the Word into Flesh and Mary is so important because she contained the Uncontainable. The many metaphors reinforce this idea and drive it home with repetition. We are left with no doubt of Mary’s importance as she is the one who enables us to be redeemed us after Eve made us fall.

Speaking of Eve, the songs refer to Mary as being present at the moment of creation with God. This portrayal of her is that she is Wisdom. Frauenlob’s Marienleich is rich in this theme. Mary is more than a person here. She is cosmological and she transcends the natural realm as is evident from talk about the sun and moon. She is no longer someone we can relate directly with, as on Monday because she is elevated. How do we relate to her then? This question is hard to answer because before she is our mother, but now she seems to have more of a divine status. Instead of identifying with her, we honor and praise her. That’s the best answer I can think of really, but it raises the concern of worshipping Mary. She refers to herself as almost divine when she discusses her relationship with the Trinity but it had to be clear that she was not divine otherwise that is heresy.

St. Paul identified Christ as Wisdom. (1 Cor. 1:24) I was looking at pictures portraying Mary as Sedes Sapientiae and found images similar to the famous Virgin and Child Enthroned images. That’s when I realized that Jesus, or Wisdom, is seated on Mary’s lap, making her the Seat of Wisdom, or Sedes Sapientiae. Why does it seem that Mary is calling herself Wisdom though? Since Mary is the Mother of Christ, then that would make her Lady Wisdom then, which might be why she is referred to as Wisdom. This concept would have had to be understood otherwise it sounds somewhat heretical to place Mary this high up.

What I like about these sets of readings is how Mary is given all these titles. She’s a virgin, a bride, a mother, Lady Wisdom, and the New Eve. So many themes are woven into these songs. We get a sense of her whole being and her role in salvation instead of an intense focus on a part of her life. Most of the metaphors and allusions can be found in the Bible, especially the Song of Songs. We also get a sense of why she deserves praise and honor because she has a role in everything. All this takes thought and contemplation so the songs make us stop and process all this and helps us understand why she needs so much praise.

Walt Wimborne discusses in Ave Virgo Mater Christi that no amount of praise for Mary will ever be enough. The distinction must be kept in mind between praise and worship. While Mary is many things, she is still a creation. Yet she deserves praises because she plays a huge role in the salvation process. She’s a virgin, but became a mother. She is the bearer of God. That certainly deserves praise. She is our mother and can intercede and pray for us which Walt demonstrated. A phrase from class which really stuck with me was “How do you describe in words the one who gave birth to the Word?” I’ve been thinking about that and it is completely true! How does one honor the person who brought Christ into this world? Not only that, but she works with us and prays for us. How do we thank her enough?

The answer of why these songs are so difficult to comprehend is that they have so many underlying themes. If a person could guess where all the allusions and metaphors are from, that would be pretty awesome. We know they are found in Scripture and the liturgies. The Marian Psalters were broken into divisions of fifty and that how we pray the rosary-Mary’s prayer. I think about this and I wonder why many people today do not recognize Mary’s role in our salvation or how her obedience is another fulfillment of the Old Testament. I see why it is easy to confuse her human status with a more divine sense, but it seems to me that her role is central to the Christian faith.

KP

Divinizing Mary?

“I God, they God, he God: this I will never hide.” (Frauenlob 12)

WHAT?

Even if Frauenlob was just an ordinary minstrel, a comment like this could be considered heretical. Mary as God? Mary as more than just eternal Sapientia, but as divine? This theme can be found throughout his Marienlob, in a manner much more prevalent than before. Consider this example:

“Becoming and unbecoming

start with birth, so I may say:

I am their pure beginning…

I am the Form beyond each form,

drawn from the inmost meaning’s norm,

which was and is and ever shall be blooming” (Verse 17)

Here, perhaps appealing to the educated listener’s knowledge of logic, Mary claims that she not only gave birth to God, but came before God. Oh, Chicken and Egg puzzle, how perplexing you are! Newman, on page 106, also draws our attention to the fact that in Aristotelian theology, forma formarum is a term for God. Then again, this concept of Mary’s divinity is not new. We have already encountered Epiphanius of Salamis, who argued against this Collyridian doctrine in his Panarion. Epiphanius maintains that Mary cannot be a goddess because there is nothing spectacular about a goddess giving birth to God. Basically, if Mary was not human, then there could be no salvation. So what changed? Did Frauenlob, 700 years later, decide to ignore Epiphanius and the Church’s teachings? Did the doctrine of salvation change? Based on Frauenlob’s extensive literary background and rumored ‘doctor of theology’ status, I bet that he knew full well about the Panarion and the history of this complex question. That begs the question, why would he write this? My (educated) guess is that Frauenlob attempted to address the issues of his age. To support this claim, we should look at his fellow ‘poet theologians,’ mainly Hildegard of Bingen and Walter of Wimborne.

Hildegard wrote her Symphonia around 150 years earlier, and it is clear that her interpretation of Marian theology is not quite the same. In her various antiphons, Mary is portrayed more as a conduit for divine light than as divinity itself. Still, there are a couple of intriguing passages. In Antiphon 21, Hildegard writes, “God gazed at you like an eagle staring into the sun,” and in 16, “To a submissive woman the king came bowing.” God is in such awe of Mary’s purity, power and humility! Have we encountered these images of God in reverence of Mary anywhere in the past? Additionally, in Antiphon 12, Hildegard tells us to “Seek the supreme one in the form of a woman surpassing all that God made.”  Hildegard’s descriptions of Mary make it seem like Mary is not quite human. She is an object of divinity, but not explicitly divine. Hildegard’s Mary does not have as much agency as Frauenlob’s Mary, but Hildegard was never one for blatant feminism – she had her legitimacy as a mystic and position as Magistra to think about – and she was writing a century earlier than Frauenlob. Still, Hildegard’s Mary seems much more corporeally liberated than the previous encounters we have had with the eternal virgin.

In Walter of Wimborne’s Ave Virgo Mater Christi, we are presented with a wealth of analogies, from the very ordinary (Mary as a loaf of bread) to the incredibly convoluted (Mary as the pyx of divinity - yes, I looked that word up). Even though Walter was writing in a completely different geographical location, his depiction of Mary is very similar to Hildegard’s and Frauenlob’s. But is Walter’s Mary divine? His virgin certainly has a significant amount of agency, more agency than Hildegard’s virgin. She actively inverts hierarchies, evidenced by her success in “join[ing] God with mud and the lowest with the highest” (Verse 9). Mary also seems to have some supernatural qualities. Walter describes Mary in Verse 18 as the “rainbow of divinity.” And when she “respond[s] with practiced words” (Verse 113) at the Incarnation, does that mean that she had some higher knowledge that she would be chosen to carry the Son of God?  Walter’s description of Mary’s physical presence hints at Mary’s godliness:

“Hail, beautiful through whom, in whom
the light of beautiful Divinity
rises near us.” (Verse 94)

Even if you argue that Jesus is the Divinity mentioned in the verse above, can he shine both in Mary’s womb and through Mary? Is a certain amount of ambiguity intentional? What about Verse 140, which describes how Mary came into being:

“Hail, in whose form
Nature more powerful than art
exhausted her talent,
but when Nature failed
the art of God the Father
completed the task.”

It seems as though Walter’s Mary is not exactly divine, but she, like Hildegard’s Mary, is definitely not just Nature’s art, not just a human.

Based on the works of Frauenlob, Walter and Hildegard, I assume that some people in the 11^th and 12^th centuries worshipped Mary as a fourth member of the Trinity. Did these poets temper their messages so that they would be able to continue their art? If they did temper their messages, what does it say about the strength and size of the Marian-focused Christian population? Or the power of a folk theology versus a doctrinal theology?

It may be true that I am over-interpreting certain passages in these poems. Mary is not consistently given aspects of the divine, by any means. I merely wanted to point out that she was described in the same terms and given powers similar to either one or all three members of the Trinity. I am curious to see if Mary continues to be divinized in this way, and when this extreme adoration of Mary will lessen. I bet our friend Martin Luther will have something to do about it! 

-CB