We continue our alphabetical romp thorough the bracket a Mechtild of Magdeburg stares down Ninian (of Nowhere in Particular). Sorry, sometimes you have to add some alliteration where it doesn't exist. Nonetheless, it's a German medieval mystic vs. a Scottish missionary.

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Mechthild of Magdeburg

Mechthild of Magdeburg was a medieval mystic, a groundbreaking poet and a self-described “unruly woman of God.” Honestly, what more do you need to know?

Mechthild was born around 1207 in northern Germany and had her first religious vision at age twelve. “The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw all things in God and God in all things,” she wrote.

Her visions continued daily, which led Mechthild to travel to the diocesan seat of Magdeburg in her twenties to join a group of Beguines there. Beguines were one of a number of religious orders springing up at the time. Many lived together in community, encouraging one another to imitate Jesus by living lives of prayer and service in the world, but they were not officially recognized by the pope and did not take formal vows.

In her forties, her confessor, a Dominican priest named Henry of Halle, encouraged her to write about her mystical encounters, which became the spiritual classic Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, or The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Notably, Mechthild composed the seven volumes of The Flowing Light of the Godhead in the Low German spoken in Magdeburg at the time, rather than in the usual Latin of the Church. Hundreds of years before Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, Mechthild was one of the first European Christians to popularize the language of the people as language able to communicate the sacred.

The books include accounts of her experiences, revelations of the divine, devotional poems, and criticisms of church corruption so fiery that there were calls to burn her books. Some scholars believe her descriptions of heaven, hell, and purgatory may have influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy. In one of her best-known poems, Mechthild wrote: “A fish in water does not drown. A bird in the air does not plummet. Gold in fire does not perish. Rather, it gets its purity and its radiant color there. God has created all creatures to live according to their nature. How, then, am I to resist my nature? I must go from all things to God.”

Elderly and blind, Mechthild dictated the seventh and final book of The Flowing Light of the Godhead while living among a group of Cistercian sisters in Helfta, near Eisleben. It’s unclear if she officially joined the order or simply lived in their care in her final years. She died sometime between 1282 and 1294, and her writing was largely forgotten until hundreds of pages were found hidden in a Swiss monastery in 1860.

Mechthild is venerated as “blessed” in the Catholic Diocese of Magdeburg and remembered on different days in several Christian traditions, including in the Catholic and Episcopal churches.

Collect for Mechthild of Magdeburg

Draw the souls of your people into your love, O God, that like your servant Mechthild, we may yearn to be fully yours, for you know us better than we can know ourselves; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.

— Emily Miller

Ninian

Ninian was the first missionary to Scotland and spread the gospel throughout the fourth century. The Venerable Bede records stories of a holy man named Ninian who came to the Southern Picts and brought them back to Christianity. Bede reports that Ninian had been trained in Rome and made his base of operations at a place in Whithorn—establishing the diocese of Galloway. The locals called the place Candida Casa, because the church was built of white stone, instead of wood, like most other British churches were at the time, and they were extremely impressed.

Ninian also established a monastery there, which became a major site of industry and pilgrimage. St. Aelred of Rievaulx has a slightly different story, and reports that Ninian was not a foreign missionary, but a local—the son of a Christian British chief, who traveled to Rome to be ordained and educated, and came home via Gaul, befriending Martin of Tours along the way.

Either way, Ninian’s effects are hard to deny. The lowlands of Scotland are filled with sites and churches dedicated to him. The missionary work he undertook was continued by Columba, Patrick, Bridget, and other Celtic saints. The diocese of Galloway still calls itself Candida Casa in honor of St. Ninian, and even though the saint’s story has faded into the mists of history, his impact has not.

Collect for Ninian

O God, by the preaching of your blessed servant and bishop Ninian you caused the light of the Gospel to  shine in the land of Britain: Grant, we pray, that having his life and labors in remembrance we may show our thankfulness by following the example of his zeal and patience; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— Megan Castellan