Vernacular Mysticism Among the Sisters of the Common Life

Abstract

In the late medieval period, a religious reform movement called the devotio moderna (Modern Devotion) began in the Low Countries and grew to become influential in the development of the early modern world. This dissertation challenges the regnant view of the women within this important movement, the Sisters of the Common Life. Scholarship has heretofore insufficiently recognized and appreciated the mystical aspirations and mystical practices central to the Sisters' spirituality. This project investigates the Sisters' own extant writings in the form Zusterboeken (Sister Books), which narrate the spiritual life stories of exemplary Sisters in Middle Dutch viten (a vernacular version of Latin vitae). Through a close reading of the ideal forms of spirituality represented in the viten, I demonstrate that the Sisters engaged with both mystical heuristics (i.e., discourses, such as union with God and contemplation of God) and mystical praxes (i.e., disciplines like detachment, "going out of the self," and pursuit of a "common life ideal"). As such, my description of the Sisters' piety as mystical not only allows for the term to be defined with flexibility but also extends beyond an analysis of the women as experiencers of paranormal phenomena. By explicating the evidence of mystical heuristics and praxes within the viten, I reveal the agency and theological work of the Sisters as thinkers and practitioners engaging with the resources available to them and cultivating an expression of mystical piety that fit their own context, needs, and desires. My analysis reveals that the Sisters pursued mystical ideals in and through ordinary and mundane life as well as in and through community and relationship, practicing what I have termed a "mysticism of the common life."