Chapter 16: When Visions Became Texts

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Lost Women.

The fever had lasted three days when the visions began. In May 1373, thirty-year-old Julian lay dying in her cell at Norwich, surrounded by her mother, friends, and a parish priest who had come to administer last rites. As the crucifix was held before her failing eyes, Julian later wrote, she received sixteen "showings" or revelations about the nature of divine love, sin, and salvation. What makes Julian's experience remarkable is not just that she survived her illness and lived another forty years, but that she spent two decades carefully analyzing her visions, transforming ecstatic experience into sophisticated theology. Her Revelations of Divine Love became the first book written in English by a woman, yet Julian insisted throughout that she was merely recording what God had shown her, not creating original theology.¹

Julian's careful transformation of mystical experience into written text exemplifies a crucial development in medieval religious culture: the emergence of women's visionary literature as a legitimate form of theological discourse. Unlike the oral traditions and domestic practices we explored in previous chapters, these texts achieved remarkable durability and influence precisely because their authors claimed divine rather than human authority for their insights.

This chapter examines how women across religious traditions used mystical experience as a pathway to textual authority, the scholarly debates surrounding this phenomenon, and the lasting theological innovations that emerged from what might be called the "visionization" of women's religious thought.

The Authority of Divine Experience

The emergence of women's visionary literature in medieval Christianity coincided with broader theological developments that emphasized direct religious experience alongside scriptural authority. As Bernard McGinn has documented, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of mystical literature across Europe, much of it authored by women who claimed their insights came through divine revelation rather than scholarly study.²

This pattern was not unique to Christianity. In Islamic Sufism, women like Rābi'a al-'Adawiyya (d. 801) and Fāṭima al-Naysābūrī (d. 849) developed sophisticated theological teachings about divine love and the spiritual path, grounding their authority in direct mystical experience rather than formal religious education.³ In medieval Judaism, despite restrictions on women's Torah study, figures like the thirteenth-century German mystic known only as "the pious woman of Speyer" received recognition for their spiritual insights when framed as divine gifts rather than scholarly achievements.⁴

The genius of this strategy lay in its ability to circumvent institutional gatekeeping. As Grace Jantzen has observed, mystical experience could not be credentialed or regulated in the same way as formal education.⁵ When a woman claimed that God had spoken directly to her, religious authorities faced a dilemma: rejecting her claims might mean rejecting divine communication itself.

Yet this authority was always precarious. Women mystics had to navigate carefully between claiming divine inspiration and avoiding charges of heresy or presumption. Their texts reveal sophisticated rhetorical strategies designed to maximize spiritual authority while minimizing institutional threat.

Strategies of Textual Legitimation

Analysis of women's visionary texts reveals recurring patterns in how mystical experience was transformed into written authority. These strategies appear across religious traditions, suggesting common challenges faced by women seeking to participate in theological discourse.

Scribal Mediation and Collaborative Authorship

Many women mystics claimed to be illiterate or emphasized their need for male scribes to record their visions. Hildegard of Bingen worked closely with the monk Volmar for decades, while the Bavarian visionary Mechthild of Magdeburg dictated her Flowing Light of the Godhead to Dominican friars.⁶ Recent scholarship by Alison Beach and others has shown that this claimed illiteracy was often strategic rather than literal, allowing women to maintain the fiction that they were passive conduits for divine revelation rather than active theological authors.⁷

This collaborative model appeared in other traditions as well. In Tibetan Buddhism, female tertöns (treasure-revealers) like Sera Khandro (1892-1940) often worked with male collaborators to transcribe and disseminate their revealed texts, maintaining the fiction that they were discovering rather than creating religious literature.⁸ Similarly, in Islamic contexts, women's mystical insights were often preserved and transmitted through the writings of male disciples who positioned themselves as faithful recorders rather than co-authors.

Temporal Displacement and Retrospective Validation

Many women mystics separated the moment of vision from the act of theological reflection, creating temporal distance that allowed for sophisticated analysis while maintaining claims of divine origin. Julian of Norwich explicitly distinguished between her "showings" received during illness and her subsequent twenty-year meditation on their meaning, which she called "the ghostly sight."⁹ This temporal gap allowed her to develop complex theological arguments about universal salvation and divine motherhood while insisting she was merely unpacking what had been revealed to her.

The thirteenth-century Flemish mystic Hadewijch employed a similar strategy in her Visions, separating ecstatic experiences from their theological interpretation while maintaining that both were divinely inspired.¹⁰ This temporal displacement appears in Islamic mystical literature as well, where women like the tenth-century Sufi Fāṭima of Nishapur separated their visionary experiences from their subsequent teaching, allowing them to develop sophisticated doctrines about spiritual wayfaring while grounding their authority in divine revelation.¹¹

Gendered Theological Innovation

Women's visionary literature often introduced theological innovations that differed markedly from contemporary male-authored texts. Julian of Norwich's sustained reflection on divine motherhood, for instance, was virtually unprecedented in medieval Christian theology. Her assertion that "God is our Mother as truly as he is our Father" was grounded in her mystical experience but developed through careful theological analysis that drew on patristic sources and contemporary scholastic thought.¹²

Similarly, women's mystical literature across traditions often emphasized embodied spiritual experience in ways that challenged prevailing theological abstraction. Mechthild of Magdeburg's descriptions of spiritual union used explicitly erotic metaphors that scandalized some contemporaries but influenced later mystical theology.¹³ In Islamic contexts, women Sufis developed teachings about spiritual love that often differed from their male counterparts in their emphasis on emotional intensity and embodied devotion.¹⁴

These innovations were possible partly because mystical experience provided a space outside formal theological education where alternative approaches to religious questions could develop. As Caroline Walker Bynum has demonstrated, medieval women's religious writing often emphasized themes marginalized in scholastic theology: the humanity of Christ, the maternal aspects of divine love, and the spiritual significance of bodily experience.¹⁵

Scholarly Debates: Empowerment or Containment?

Contemporary scholars disagree significantly about how to interpret women's mystical literature and its relationship to broader patterns of religious authority. These debates illuminate both the possibilities and limitations of mysticism as a pathway to women's theological participation.

Bernard McGinn, perhaps the leading scholar of medieval Christian mysticism, argues for a nuanced view that recognizes both the genuine spiritual authority achieved by women mystics and the constraints under which they operated. McGinn notes that women's mystical authority was often conditional, granted only so long as they remained obedient to ecclesiastical structures and avoided challenging core doctrinal positions.¹⁶

Barbara Newman offers a more optimistic interpretation, arguing that mysticism provided women with "an alternate public sphere" where they could develop and express complex theological ideas. Newman's analysis of figures like Hildegard and Mechthild demonstrates how mystical literature allowed women to participate in theological debates about the nature of God, the meaning of salvation, and the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority.¹⁷

In Islamic studies, Kecia Ali has cautioned against romanticizing women mystics' authority, noting that figures like Rābi'a are often remembered primarily for their piety and asceticism rather than their theological innovations. Ali argues that while mysticism provided some space for women's religious expression, it also channeled them away from formal scholarly discourse and legal interpretation.¹⁸

Leila Ahmed has emphasized the gendered nature of mystical authority in Islamic contexts, observing that women's mystical recognition often required renunciation of conventional female roles including marriage and motherhood. For Ahmed, mysticism was both liberating and limiting, offering spiritual authority at the cost of social marginalization.¹⁹

In Buddhist contexts, Janet Gyatso's work on Tibetan women tertöns reveals similar ambivalence. While some women treasure-revealers achieved significant authority through their discovered texts, Gyatso notes that their recognition was often contingent on their revelations reinforcing orthodox teachings. When women's visionary texts challenged established doctrine, they were more likely to be dismissed or heavily edited by male collaborators.²⁰

These scholarly debates highlight a fundamental tension in women's mystical literature: while divine revelation provided a pathway around institutional gatekeeping, it also reinforced assumptions about women's emotional rather than intellectual nature. The very strategy that enabled women's theological participation may have limited its long-term impact on religious institutions.

What Might Have Been: Theological Trajectories

Understanding the constraints under which women mystics operated illuminates alternative theological trajectories that might have developed had their insights been fully integrated into mainstream religious thought. This speculative exercise, grounded in careful analysis of their surviving texts, reveals significant missed opportunities for religious development.

Expanded Theological Anthropology

Had Julian of Norwich's theology of divine motherhood been incorporated into mainstream Christian thought, medieval and modern Christianity might have developed a more balanced understanding of divine nature that incorporated both masculine and feminine imagery. As modern theologian Sallie McFague has argued, Julian's maternal metaphors offer resources for ecological theology and social justice that were largely ignored by subsequent theological development.²¹

Similarly, if Islamic theology had fully incorporated women Sufis' emphasis on divine love and emotional spirituality, the tradition might have developed different approaches to religious law and practice that balanced jurisprudential reasoning with mystical insight. As Sachiko Murata has shown, early Islamic thought contained resources for understanding divine nature in terms that transcended gender categories, but these were marginalized as Islamic law became increasingly systematized.²²

Alternative Canonical Genres

The marginalization of mystical literature as "devotional" rather than "theological" reflects broader assumptions about the relationship between emotion and rational thought in religious discourse. Had women's visionary literature been treated as authoritative theological commentary rather than pious sentiment, religious traditions might have developed different understandings of how divine truth is communicated and preserved.

Contemporary scholars like Amy Hollywood have argued that the exclusion of mystical literature from theological canons impoverished religious thought by privileging abstract reasoning over experiential knowledge.²³ The integration of women's mystical insights might have led to more holistic approaches to religious education that valued contemplative practice alongside textual study.

Interfaith Theological Development

One of the most striking features of women's mystical literature across traditions is its thematic consistency: emphasis on divine love, concern with spiritual union, attention to embodied religious experience. Had these commonalities been recognized and explored, they might have provided foundations for earlier and more substantial interfaith theological dialogue.

The Persian Sufi poet Rābi'a's teachings about disinterested divine love, for instance, bear remarkable similarity to concepts developed by Christian mystics like Marguerite Porete and Hindu bhakti poets like Mirabai. Recognition of these parallels might have facilitated different approaches to interfaith relations that emphasized shared spiritual concerns over doctrinal differences.²⁴

The Textual Legacy

Despite their marginalization from mainstream theological development, women's mystical texts achieved remarkable durability and influence. Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love has never been out of print since its first publication in 1670, and contemporary theologians continue to find resources in her theology for addressing modern religious questions.²⁵ Hildegard of Bingen's visionary texts have been recovered by feminist theologians as sources for ecological spirituality and alternative approaches to divine imagery.²⁶

In Islamic contexts, women Sufis' teachings continue to influence contemporary spiritual movements, even as their theological innovations remain marginalized in formal religious education. The poetry of Rābi'a and her successors provides resources for Muslim feminists seeking authentic Islamic foundations for women's spiritual authority.²⁷

These continuing influences suggest that women's mystical literature represents more than historical curiosity; it constitutes an alternative theological tradition that offers resources for contemporary religious thought. Understanding how mystical experience was transformed into textual authority illuminates both the possibilities and limitations of alternative pathways to religious participation.

The transformation of women's visions into lasting theological texts represents one of the most significant developments in medieval religious culture. While these texts operated within significant constraints and rarely achieved full institutional recognition, they created space for theological innovations that continue to influence religious thought. Their authors' careful navigation of the relationship between mystical experience and textual authority offers insights into how religious traditions might more fully incorporate diverse voices and perspectives.

Most importantly, these texts demonstrate that theological innovation has never been confined to formal institutional channels. When official pathways were closed, women found alternative routes to religious authority that were often more creative and enduring than their creators could have imagined. Their visions became texts, and their texts continue to speak across centuries of religious development.

Notes

On Julian's illness and visions, see Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 41-44. For the dating and historical context, see Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (London: SPCK, 2000), 23-45.
Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350) (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 211-235.
On early Islamic women mystics, see Rkia Elaroui Cornell, Early Sufi Women: Dhikr an-niswa al-muta'abbidat as-sufiyyat (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1999), 67-89.
On Jewish women mystics, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, "Attitudes Toward Childhood and Children in Medieval Jewish Society," in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. David Blumenthal (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 89-134.
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 198-234.
On collaborative authorship, see Alison I. Beach, Women as Scribes: Manuscript Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 89-112.
Beach, Women as Scribes, 134-156.
On Tibetan women tertöns, see Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (Boston: Shambhala, 2001), 234-267.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations, Long Text, chapters 51-86.
On Hadewijch's temporal strategies, see Columba Hart, trans., Hadewijch: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 25-39.
Cornell, Early Sufi Women, 156-178.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations, Long Text, chapter 59. On the theological significance, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 110-169.
On Mechthild's theological innovations, see Frank Tobin, Mechthild von Magdeburg: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995), 67-89.
On gendered differences in Islamic mysticism, see Annemarie Schimmel, My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam (New York: Continuum, 1997), 56-73.
Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 257-262.
McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, 211-235.
Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 85-99.
Kecia Ali, The Lives of Muhammad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 93-106.
Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 66-74.
Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 47-62.
Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 97-123.
Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 134-167.
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 23-45.
On mystical parallels across traditions, see Ewert Cousins, ed., World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, 25 vols. (New York: Crossroad, 1985-2000), especially volumes on comparative mysticism.
On Julian's continuing influence, see Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).
On Hildegard's contemporary recovery, see Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
On contemporary Islamic feminism and mystical traditions, see Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 67-89.

Further Reading

Primary Sources

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop

Secondary Studies

Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism
Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism
Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies

Rkia Elaroui Cornell, Early Sufi Women
Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart

Contemporary Theological Engagement

Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age
Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought