Abstract
This chapter shows how the materiality, imagined and actual, of devotional genres popular within the devotio moderna enabled the Jhesus Collacien sermon cycle to elicit an affective response reinforced by material context. Section 2.1 of the chapter demonstrates how the Jhesus Collacien depicts imagined touch using literary strategies popular within female devotio moderna communities. Section 2.2 of the chapter examines three late medieval compilations that include the Jhesus Collacien. I show how each promotes affective piety through imagined touch, and also elicits affective response through compilation. In this way, I show women’s participation in the devotional reading life of the devotio moderna, and argue for the affective valence of that material context in the broader devotional culture of the late medieval Low Countries.
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Notes
- 1.
The anonymous visionary narrator identifies herself as a female member of a Franciscan tertiary order of the devotio moderna . The visions have been dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth century, mostly like the 1480s. All quotations taken from Jhesus Collacien . Een laatmiddeleeuwse prekenbundel uit de kringen der Tertiarissen, ed. Anna Maria Baaij (Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1962); all translations are my own. Baaij’s edition of the text, though instrumental in introducing the text to the academic public, was unfortunately based on an incomplete manuscript; additional manuscripts have been identified since her edition. For complete list of manuscripts see the Repertorium van Middelnederlandse preken in handschriften tot en met 1550. I. Antwerpen-Brussel [Repertorium of Middle Dutch Sermons Preserved in Manuscript to 1550. Vol. I: Antwerp-Brussels], ed. Maria Sherwood-Smith and Patricia Stoop (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2003), 462–497.
- 2.
Very little scholarship exists in Dutch or English on the Jhesus Collacien . None existed prior to Baaij’s edition of the text, which itself elicited scholarly resistance. In 1978, for example, Gerrit Zieleman disagreed with Baaij’s identification of the text as a sermon cycle, and little subsequent attention was paid to the text within the field of Dutch Sermon Studies. Thomas Mertens has only recently re-opened critical dialogue about the text’s genre. See Zieleman, ‘Middelnederlandse epistel-en evangeliepreken’ (Ph.D., Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1978); for Mertens, see note 3.
- 3.
Thomas Mertens has discussed the text’s literary and spiritual contents in a pair of articles: ‘Discourse and Spirituality in the Jhesus Collacien ’, in Seeking the Seeker: Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality, a Festschrift for Kees Waaijman on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Blommestijn et al. (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2008), 415–425; and ‘Private Revelation and Public Relevance in the Middle Dutch Sermon Cycle Jhesus Collacien ’, Medieval Sermon Studies 53 (2009): 33–42. Mertens does not consider the text to be very sophisticated; he notes the lack of discursive or spiritual development within the text, which he identifies as the result of an image-based, allegorical narrative style intended to provide meditation for monastic readers. While I agree with Mertens, I read this narrative quality as facet of the text’s participation in the sort of image-attuned discourse of affective piety intended for medieval women.
- 4.
See José van Aelst, Vruchten van de Passie: De laatmiddeleeuwse passieliteratuur verkend aan de hand van Suso’s Honderd artickelen [Fruits of the Passion: Late Medieval Passion Literature Explored Through Suso’s Hundred Articles] (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011) and Katrijn Van Loo, ‘Die conincynne des hemels. De beeldspraak rond Maria in de “Jhesus Collacien” [The Queen of Heaven: the Marian Metaphors of the Jhesus Collacien ]’ (PhD dissertation, Universiteit Antwerpen, 2015).
- 5.
For an overview of the Devotio Moderna in English, see John Van Engen, Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); for the incorporation of literary activities into the daily life of the modern devout, see Thomas Mertens, ‘Mystieke Cultuur en Literatuur in de Late Middeleeuwen’, in Grote Lijnen: Synthesis over Middelnederlandse Letterkunde, ed. Frits van Oostrom (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1995), 117–135. A brief but succinct summary can be found in Rik van Nieuwenhove, Robert Faesen, and Helen Rolfson, eds., Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries (New York: Paulist Press, 2008), 76: ‘Gradually the movement was organized into several institutional “branches”: Brothers of the Common Life, Sisters of the Common Life, Canons and Canonesses of St. Augustine, and Tertiaries of St. Francis. After about fifty years this phase of development was completed, and the convents had united in the Chapter of Windesheim to support one another materially and spiritually… The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life constituted the initial, lay branch of this movement, while the canons and canonesses regular of St. Augustine, united in the Windesheim chapter, formed the monastic branch’.
- 6.
‘Inder hoenichvloeyender tijt van kermises doe die deerne Christi vereenicht was mit gode haren brudegom. Soe hoerde si hem segghen dese woerden Ic wil somwilen den susteren prediken ende collacie doen. Ende Ic wild at ghi alle dat scrijft ended at ghi voer hem allen west horende uut minen monde’ (Baaij, Jhesus Collacien, 128).
- 7.
The practice of ‘collacie’ was itself a self-conscious vernacular adaptation of the Latinate ‘Collationes’, a textual tradition reaching back to the mid-fifth-century collationes patrum of John Cassian. See John Cassian: Conferences, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1985).
- 8.
For fuller discussion of collacien as a devotional practice, see Mertens, Grote Lijnen.
- 9.
Thomas Mertens has argued in ‘The Modern Devotion and Innovation in Middle Dutch Literature’, in Medieval Dutch Literature and Its European Context, ed. Eric Kooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 233, that the ‘collacien’ of the Devotio Moderna can be described as ‘a new genre based on an experience from actual life, which itself has sprung from an old genre’.
- 10.
For a sense of collacien’s popularity as a literary genre, see Sherwood-Smith and Stoop, Repertorium.
- 11.
‘Leered onse lieve here in sijnre collacien ende seide. Susteren ghi selt staedelic inden boec sack uwer ghedachten draeghen twe costelike bede boeken daer ghi u aendachtelic in oefenen selt. dochteren ghemint. Die twee costelike bedeboeken. Dien ic u voer ghenoemt hebbe. Dat sijn mijn costelike conynclike handen altemael doerwont ende my seer wee dede. Ende elc van desen bede boeken heeft xix quiteerne. Biden welken ghi mercken selt dat ghi elc lit mijnre handen nemen selt voer een quiteerne. Deze twe costelike bede boeken. Gheminde susteren. Sijn ghescreven mit gulden letteren dat is. Mit menichvoudicheit// der wonden die mi seer wee deden. In desen tween suverlike bede boeken legghen die roede zijden registeren. Waer bi dat ghi verstaen selt dat mijn rode bloet over al die leden mijnre handed vloeyde. Gheminde susteren. Die eerste hooftletter van desen tween bede boeken is een M. Ende is die eerste letter daermen mede spelt die mynne. Die M. gheminde susteren is drievoudicheit van trec. Ende is recht ghelijc der guldenre M. die inden soeten bede boeken. Die overmits die driecante des naghels ghescreven wort mijn sachtmoedicheit ende oetmoedicheit moet altoes gheoefent werden in u. op dat altoes in uwer sielen ruste die godlike gracie’ (Baaij, Jhesus Collacien, 206–207).
- 12.
For the high Middle Ages, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); for the later Middle Ages, see Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: the University of Philadelphia Press, 2009).
- 13.
Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998).
- 14.
‘Ende hi keerde hem totten susteren. Ende gaf elken een bal. Ende sprak. Susteren. Desen bal is mijn godlike mynne die ic u brenge // uten goutferneys van boven om dat ghi des sonnendages ende des heilighen daechs onder malcander daer mede selt maken een hemels spel als ghi te samen collacijt. Ende werpen malcander mitten bal der godliker mynnen. Elc werp uut den bal der godliker mynnen mit alle sinen crachten opt hertste’. Baaij, Jhesus Collacien, 205.
- 15.
On this type of ‘love mysticism’ see Barbara Newman, ‘La mystique courtoise: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love’, in From Virile Woman to Woman-Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1995), 137–167. See also Bernard McGinn, ‘Three Great Beguine Mystics’, in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism: 1200–1350 (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 199–265.
- 16.
There is far too much work on medieval sermons to cover here, so I mention two sources particularly germane to this discussion. For recent wide-ranging coverage of medieval sermon culture generally, see Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ed., The Sermon (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); for focused attention to sermon culture in the medieval Low Countries, see Wybren Scheepsma, The Limburg Sermons: Preaching in the Medieval Low Countries at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century, trans. David Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
- 17.
Mertens comments that ‘[a]pparently the sermon is considered as the preferred form of speaking to the convent on religious matters’ (‘Public’, 41).
- 18.
See Thomas Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters. The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth Century’, in Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 121–141; and Patricia Stoop, ‘Sermon-Writing Women: Fifteenth-Century Vernacular Sermons from the Augustinian Convent of Jericho in Brussels’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 38, no. 2 (2012): 211–232.
- 19.
As Kees Schepers has shown, these types of literary sermons privilege liturgical organization and allegorical complexity. See Kees Schepers, ‘The Arnhem Mystical Sermons and the Sixteenth-Century Mystical Renaissance in Arnhem and Cologne’, Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, ed. Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 84–123; ‘A Web of Texts: Sixteenth Century Mystical Culture and the Arnhem Saint-Agnes Convent’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 269–288.
- 20.
‘Hi den susteren scheincte enen palmboem die drie tacken hadde ende elc tack bi sonder was verciert mit een gulden croen ende hi seide totter ghemeenten. Dochteren ghemynt van den vader. Desen palmboem beteykent die victorie die ghi immer moet hebben ende vercrighen. Seldi kijnderen gods hieten. Die eerste tack beteykent die victorie den gheenre die verwonnen hebben die werlt ende al hoer ghenoechten. Dese palm der victorien verdient inden hemel te dragen die coninclike chroon der eren ende der glorien. Die ander tack is die victorie der gheenre die verwonnen hebben hoer eyghen vleysch mit sijnre sinlicheit. Dese palm der verwinninghe verdient oec inden hemel te draghen die croen der martelaren. Want die martelaren gaven eens hoer vleysch inden doot. Mer dese sterven daghelix inden vleysche. // Die sommighe seven jaer lanc. Die sommighe xij jaer lanc. Die sommighe xx. Jaer lanc. Sommighe xxx jaer lanc. Sommighe meer. Sommighe min. nae datse god inden kercher des vleysch of des lichaems ghebonden hout tot sinen dienst. Die derde tack is die palm der verwinninghe der gheenre die verwonnen hebben den vyant. … Dese palm der victorien verdient te draghen die croen der leerres’ (Baaij, Jhesus Collacien , 231).
- 21.
See Sherwood-Smith and Stoop, Repertorium, vol. 1, 462–497; Repertorium, vol. 7, 103–104.
- 22.
Mertens discusses the manuscript record in ‘Discourse’, 415–417.
- 23.
Arthur Bahr, Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 8. Bahr coins the phrase ‘compilational poetics’ to describe this type of organizational design.
- 24.
Full catalogue description of the manuscript in S. J. Joseph Van Den Gheyn, Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique. Tome Troisième: Théologie (Bruxelles: Henri Lamertin, 1903), 469. For catalogue description of the Jhesus Collacien alone, see Sherwood-Smith and Stoop, Repertorium, vol. 1, 616–619. I base my list of contents on my own examination and on Van Den Gheyn’s descriptive catalogue.
- 25.
The final text in this grouping gives an exposition of Song of Songs 7:8 (Vulgate): ‘Dixi: Ascendam in palmam, et apprehendam fructus ejus; et erunt ubera tua sicut botri vineae, et odor oris tui sicut malorum’ [Douay-Rheims: ‘I said: “I will go up into the palm tree, and will take hold of the fruit thereof: and thy breasts shall be as the clusters of the vine: and the odour of thy mouth like apples”’].
- 26.
‘Dit boeck hoert toe den susteren van Bree der derder regelen Sinte Francissus’, fol. 1r.
- 27.
For the development of Bree and the Kempen, see Arblaster, A History of the Low Countries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 60.
- 28.
This fifth sermon on ‘de 40 celleken van Christus [the forty little cells of Christ]’ may be the only sermon in the collection to contain previously existing material—but this has not yet been definitively proven. See Mertens, ‘Private’, 38.
- 29.
For the edited text of the fifth collacie, see Baaij, Jhesus Collacien, 140–144.
- 30.
Van Den Gheyn, Catalogue, 466–467; Sherwood-Smith and Stoop, Repertorium, vol. 1, 616–619. I base my list of contents on my own examination and on Van Den Gheyn’s descriptive catalogue.
- 31.
For information on the Abbey of Vorst see Paul F. State, Historical Dictionary of Brussels (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 170.
- 32.
Van Den Gheyn, Catalogue, 487 and Sherwood-Smith and Stoop, Repertorium, 456–461. I base my list of contents on my own examination and Van Den Gheyn’s descriptive catalogue.
References
Primary Sources
Baaij, Anna Maria, ed. Jhesus collacien. Een laatmiddeleeuwse prekenbundel uit de kringen der Tertiarissen. Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1962.
Luibheid, Colm, trans. John Cassian: Conferences. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.
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Hamburger, Jeffrey. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York: Zone Books, 1998.
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, ed. The Sermon. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000.
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Zimbalist, B. (2019). Touching the Page and Touching the Heart: Manuscript Culture and Affective Devotion in Late Medieval Flemish Communities. In: Carrillo-Rangel, D., Nieto-Isabel, D., Acosta-García, P. (eds) Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experience in the Late Middle Ages . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26029-3_2
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