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St. Mechtilde
(MATILDA VON HACKEBORN-WIPPRA).
Benedictine; born in 1240 or 1241 at the ancestral castle of Helfta, near
Eisleben, Saxony; died in the monastery of Helfta, 19 November, 1298. She
belonged to one of the noblest and most powerful Thuringian families, while here
sister was the saintly and illustrious Abbess Gertrude von Hackeborn. Some
writers have considered that Mechtilde von Hackeborn and Mechtilde von Wippra
were two distinct persons, but, as the Barons of Hackeborn were also Lords of
Wippra, it was customary for members of that family to take their name
indifferently from either, or both of these estates. So fragile was she at birth,
that the attendants, fearing she might die unbaptized, hurried her off to the
priest who was just then preparing to say Mass. He was a man of great sanctity,
and after baptizing the child, uttered these prophetic words: What do you fear?
This child most certainly will not die, but she will become a saintly religious
in whom God will work many wonders, and she will end her days in a good old age.
When she was seven years old, having been taken by her mother on a visit to her
elder sister Gertrude, then a nun in the monastery of Rodardsdorf, she became so
enamoured of the cloister that her pious parents yielded to her entreaties and,
acknowledging the workings of grace, allowed her to enter the alumnate. Here,
being highly gifted in mind as well as in body, she made remarkable progress in
virtue and learning.
Ten years later (1258) she followed her sister, who, now abbess, had
transferred the monastery to an estate at Helfta given her by her brothers Louis
and Albert. As a nun, Mechtilde was soon distinguished for her humility, her
fervour, and that extreme amiability which had characterized her from childhood
and which, like piety, seemed hereditary in her race. While still very young,
she became a valuable helpmate to Abbess Gertrude, who entrusted to her
direction the alumnate and the choir. Mechtilde was fully equipped for her task
when, in 1261, God committed to her prudent care a child of five who was
destined to shed lustre upon the monastery of Helfta. This was that Gertrude who
in later generations became known as St. Gertrude the Great. Gifted with a
beautiful voice, Mechtilde also possessed a special talent for rendering the
solemn and sacred music over which she presided as domna cantrix. All her life
she held this office and trained the choir with indefatigable zeal. Indeed,
Divine praise was the keynote of her life as it is of her book; in this she
never tired, despite her continual and severe physical sufferings, so that in
His revelations Christ was wont to call her His nightingale
. Richly endowed,
naturally and supernaturally, ever gracious, beloved of all who came within the
radius of her saintly and charming personality, there is little wonder that this
cloistered virgin should strive to keep hidden her wondrous life. Souls
thirsting for consolation or groping for light sought her advice; learned
Dominicans consulted her on spiritual matters. At the beginning of her own
mystic life it was from St. Mechtilde that St. Gertrude the Great learnt that
the marvellous gifts lavished upon her were from God.
Only in her fiftieth year did St. Mechtilde learn that the two nuns in whom
she had especially confided had noted down the favours granted her, and,
moreover, that St. Gertrude had nearly finished a book on the subject. Much
troubled at this, she, as usual, first had recourse to prayer. She had a vision
of Christ holding in His hand the book of her revelations, and saying: All this
has been committed to writing by my will and inspiration; and, therefore you
have no cause to be troubled about it.
He also told her that, as He had been so
generous towards her, she must make Him a like return, and that the diffusion of
the revelations would cause many to increase in His love; moreover, He wished
this book to be called The Book of Special Grace
, because it would prove such
to many. When the saint understood that the book would tend to God's glory, she
ceased to be troubled, and even corrected the manuscript herself. Immediately
after her death it was made public, and copies were rapidly multiplied, owing
chiefly to the widespread influence of the Friars Preachers. Boccaccio tells how,
a few years after the death of Mechtilde, the book of her revelations was
brought to Florence and popularized under the title of La Laude di donna
Matelda
. It is related that the Florentines were accustomed to repeat daily
before their sacred images the praises learned from St. Mechtilde's book. St.
Gertrude, to whose devotedness we owe the Liber Specialis Gratiae
exclaims:
Never has there arisen one like to her in our monastery; nor, alas! I fear,
will there ever arise another such!
- little dreaming that her own name would
be inseparably linked with that of Mechtilde. With that of St. Gertrude, the
body of St. Mechtilde most probably still reposes at Old Helfta thought the
exact spot is unknown. Her feast is kept 26 or 27 February in different
congregations and monasteries of her order, by special permission of the Holy
See. (For an account of the general life at Helfta and the estimate of the
writings of St. Mechtilde, see GERTRUDE OF HACKEBORN; GERTRUDE
THE GREAT, SAINT.)
There is another honour, inferior certainly to that of sanctity, yet great in
itself and worthy of mention here: the homage of a transcendent genius was to be
laid at the feet of St. Mechtilde. Critics have long been perplexed as to one of
the characters introduced by Dante in his Purgatorio
under the name of Matelda.
After ascending seven terraces of a mountain, on each of which the process of
purification is carried on, Dante, in Canto xxvii, hears a voice singing:
Venite, benedicti patris mei
; then later, in Canto xxviii, there appears to
him on the opposite bank of the mysterious stream a lady, solitary, beautiful,
and gracious. To her Dante addresses himself; she it is who initiates him into
secrets, which it is not given to Virgil to penetrate, and it is to her that
Beatrice refers Dante in the words: Entreat Matilda that she teach thee this.
Most commentators have identified Matilda with the warrior-Countess of Tuscany,
the spiritual daughter and dauntless champion of St. Gregory VII, but all agree
that beyond the name the two have little or nothing in common. She is no Amazon
who, at Dante's prayer that she may draw nearer to let him understand her song,
turns towards him not otherwise than a virgin that droppeth her modest eyes
.
In more places than one the revelations granted to the mystics of Helfta seem in
turn to have become the inspirations of the Florentine poet. All writers on
Dante recognize his indebtedness to St. Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, St.
Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor. These are precisely the writers whose
doctrines had been most assimilated by the mystics of Helfta, and thus they
would the more appeal to the sympathies of the poet. The city of Florence was
among the first to welcome St. Mechtilde's book. Now Dante, like all true poets,
was a child of his age, and could not have been a stranger to a book which was
so popular among his fellow-citizens. The Purgatorio
was finished between 1314
and 1318, or 1319 - just about the time when St. Mechtilde's book was popular.
This interpretation is supported by the fact that St. Mechtilde in her Book of
Special Grace
(pt. I, c. xiii) describes the place of purification under the
same figure of a seven-terraced mountain. The coincidence of the simile and of
the name, Matelda, can scarcely be accidental. For another among many points of
resemblance between the two writers compare Purgatorio
, Canto xxxi, where
Dante is drawn by Matelda through the mysterious stream with pt. II, c. ii. of
the Liber Specialis Gratiae
. The serene atmosphere which seems to cling about
the gracious and beautiful songstress, her virgin modesty and simple dignity,
all seem to point to the recluse of Helfta rather than to the stern heroine of
Canossa, whose hand was thrice bestowed in marriage. Besides, in politics Dante,
as an ardent Ghibelline, supported the imperial pretensions and he would have
been little inclined to sing the praises of the Tuscan Countess. The conclusion
may therefore be hazarded that this Donna Matelda
of the Purgatorio
personifies St. Mechtilde as representing mystic theology.
ST. MECHTILDIS, Liber specialis gratiae; ST. GERTRUDIS, Legatus divine pictatis; Preface to Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildinae, I, II (Paris and Poitiers, 1875); LEDOS, Ste. Gertrude (Paris, 1907); ZIEGELBAUER, Hist. Lit. Bened. (Vienna, 1754); PREGER, Gesch. Deutsch. Mystik. I (Leipzig, 1874); Revelations de S. Mechtilde (Paris and Poitiers, 1909).
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