‘Please don’t mind if I got this wrong’

Twelfth-century church lawyers employed concepts like spiritual marriage to justify norms regulating Christian life. In Medieval Marriage (2005), David d’Avray has argued that spiritual marriage was key to the notion of marriage as an unbreakable bond and exerted real influence on the domestic partnerships of Western Christians. The present chapter challenges this assertion, questioning (1) the contention that the related idea of canonical bigamy assumed shape under the decisive influence of theological tenets. The principle of matrimonial indissolubility is also discussed (2), again suggesting that spiritual marriage furnished juristic theory with just one rationale among many. Canonists drew on biblical imagery to reason by way of analogy but maintained much of their interpretive freedom in doing so.

Constructing a Bernard-Hubmaier Trinitarian Model of Prevenient Grace

This article constructs a Trinitarian model of prevenient grace based on the insights of Bernard of Clairvaux and Balthasar Hubmaier. Accordingly, the three persons of the Trinity play roles in prevenient grace’s calling, convicting, illuminating, and enabling aspects. The model proposes that the Holy Spirit serves for all persons as the functional equivalent of a good cognitive faculty lost to humanity in the Fall. Hence, the Spirit suggests to each person that they enter into spiritual marriage with Christ and suggests good thoughts to unbelievers and believers alike. Without the Spirit, no one could be saved or do anything good.

‘A pattern how to dye’

Medieval and early modern nuns and anchoresses, upon entering their enclosures, became metaphorically ‘dead to the world’ in order to join in a spiritual marriage with Christ that would (hopefully) lead them to heaven. Yet this death or exile rarely marked a complete departure from the world. It is within this context that the loving letters written to her family by Winefrid Thimelby (Prioress of St Monica’s from 1668 to 1690) are examined. This chapter argues that Thimelby was anxious to promote religiosity and right living among her family members in order for them all to unite in heaven. The letters reveal how nuns, even when limited to writing one or two letters per year, could articulate a clear selfhood, a clear convent identity, and a clear sense of familial identity without diminishing any of these identities for the sake of the others. Thimelby’s decades-long engagement with the theme of longing for death—‘that gate of lyfe’, in her words—is crucial to our understanding of the language of love and longing at the heart of her identity.

Revisiting the Subintroductae: Slavery, Asceticism, and “Syneisaktism” in the Exegesis of John Chrysostom

Building on Page duBois’ work on domestic slavery, and the relationship between literal and metaphorical slavery, this article revisits John Chrysostom’s treatises against the subintroductae (“female spiritual companions”), and reads the late ancient ascetic cohabitation of syneisaktism (often termed “spiritual marriage”) not so much as a type of spiritual marriage, but as an alternative form of slavery. The findings examine the discourse of slavery in the treatises, determine the type of service cohabiting ascetics may have provided to one another, and show how this popular living arrangement relates to late ancient domestic slavery. The thesis holds that syneisaktism provided an alternative to slaveholding, since many of these subintroductae would have been ascetics who got rid of most, if not all, of their slaves, and had to find other ways of coping with domestic labor demands. The close resemblance between slavery and syneisaktism thus shapes Chrysostom’s diatribe against the subintroductae.

TUSSEN DIE AARDSE JERIGO EN DIE HEMELSE JERUSALEM. RUTGER SCHUTTE (1708-1784) EN DIE PELGRIMSMOTIEF IN SUSANNA SMIT (1799-1863) SE GODSDIENSTIGE DAGBOEKE

Rutger Schutte (1708-1784), the pietistic author of popular hymnbooks, composed his spiritual verses at a time the religious culture of Pietism was approaching its zenith in the Netherlands and other European countries. In addition to his contribution to Een Nieuw Bundeltje Uitgeknipte Geestelyke Gezangen [A new collection of suitable spiritual songs] (third edition, 1721), he composed three collections of Stichtelijke Gezangen [Edifying hymns] from the early 1760s. In addition to the extensive prefaces in these collections, Schutte added long annotations, thereby creating the impression of academic depth – a style which elicited much criticism. However, Schutte’s hymns introduced a new popular culture of hymn-singing. At the time of his death his hymns had found staunch adherents in many spheres of life. This essay identifies several themes central to Schutte’s hymns: the quest for practical piety; the tension between the heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly Jericho; and the spiritual marriage bond between Jesus and the believer. These themes also surface prominently in the spiritual diaries of the Voortrekker woman Susanna Smit. The entries in her diaries from the early 1840s reflect extracts from Schutte’s hymn “The voyage to Jerusalem” in particular. Her descriptions of and reflection on the metaphor of the Christian pilgrim’s voyage to the eternal Jerusalem served as an important point of reference in her spiritual exercises.